Galway Bay (27 page)

Champion looked at us with those big, quiet eyes.

Michael raised the jagged stone.

What were we doing? “Michael, stop!” I grabbed his arm. “Stop!” I hit his shoulder. “Stop!”

Finally he turned to me. We held each other for a long, long time in that small, dark place, listening to Champion’s breath.

“You great amadán,” I said. “You’ll butcher Champion, will you? With no knife, no ax, and no heart for it?” I patted the horse’s head. “And how would I cook her, anyway? We’d need a hearth like William Boy O’Kelly’s.”

Michael dropped the stone. “She only eats hay, and even you haven’t found a way to make a meal of hay.”

“Champion’s foal will be born near the same time as our own baby. How could we . . . Come,” I said. “The children will be awake and wondering.”

“We won’t tell them about the Ryans,” he said.

“We won’t.”

Outside, we passed the sad cairn again. The snow had stopped and the fields stretched before us. All white. No sound. The dogs silent.

Suddenly Michael broke away from me and started running across the long acre. What now?

Then I saw him fall flat onto the snow. I ran toward him.

“Michael!”

He stood up, holding a white hare by the ears, the creature kicking and squirming. Michael would not let go. He walked across the field toward me. When he reached the wall he lifted the rabbit and swung its head down against the stones. Blood spurted out—a thump, snow-muffled, another thump, and the rabbit was dead.

I was down on the ground, scrabbling for a sharp stone, something to scrape the skin off the rabbit. We wouldn’t need the giant fireplace of the O’Kellys. Our own hearth and our own pot would do for this miracle.

Michael came toward me. Blood dripped from the rabbit like a trail of holly berries in the snow.

“Our children will not die,” he said.

Was it you, Mary, who sent that hare out from his burrow? Thank you, thank you. Forgive me, Neddy, forgive me, Tessie, in heaven now, safe from all harm, at last.

Christmas morning we walked down to Mass at Bearna Chapel under a blue sky, the snow melting.

Father Roche read the Christmas gospel in Irish, then repeated, “She wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in the manger because there was no room for them in the inn.”

I looked over at Michael. His eyes were closed, listening to Father Roche, or sleeping.

Jesus had been born in such a poor place, Father Roche said, because God, his Father, loved the poor. A comfort to remember that in these hard times, he told us.

Too late to comfort the Ryans. Michael and I had decided to tell no one they were dead until spring, when we could bury them properly.

Michael
is
asleep. Spending himself for us, and never a complaint. He’d said the rabbit stew gave him strength to break twice as many rocks on the roads. Four extra pennies, a few more pounds of cornmeal. We’d given it to Mam. She’d cook a stirabout for our Christmas dinner. He’d had Paddy and Jamesy bring their chestnut battlers. “We’ll take on Hughie,” he’d said. You’re keeping our bodies and our spirits alive, a stór.

Now Father Roche was talking about these kind English gentlemen—Quakers, you call them—who’d been so appalled at the horrors they’d seen in Ireland that they were raising money to open soup kitchens for us. And they’d promised Father that Catholics would not have to give up their faith to receive this charity. Not like Reverend Smithson and the other Protestant “helpers” who gave only to those who jumped, turned Protestant.

Father Roche finished his sermon talking of the three Wise Men and the gifts they brought for the baby. Some good people in the world. I started to think of how after the Wise Men left an angel told Joseph to take Mary and Jesus and flee to Egypt, run from the evil. Flee. The image of the Holy Family escaping stayed with me through the end of Mass.

As we ate Mam’s attempt at Christmas dinner, Da said he hated the idea of lining up for soup—one station to serve an area twenty miles square. A huge cauldron would be set up over an open fire at the end of Barna pier. Eight ounces of soup would be given each adult, six for children, to be eaten then and there. The officials wouldn’t let us take the soup away, afraid we’d sell it for whiskey. Thousands of people would be drinking soup from the same cups, standing out in the rain and cold. “The government means to take our self-respect away,” Da said. “And the Quakers have to follow the regulations.”

“They can’t take what we won’t give,” said Granny, sucking on her empty pipe.

Granny had gotten so thin. The skin of her face was pulled tight against her cheekbones.

I noticed that Dennis’s two little ones sat close to her. Granny fed them from her stirabout, not taking any herself, only sucking the empty pipe. When I offered her some of mine, she shook her head.

“I’m fine, Honora,” she said.

“I met the Claddagh Admiral in Galway City when I was going to the roadworks,” Dennis was saying. “Worse storms in January. Only for my Josie and Mam and Granny turning every scrap of seaweed and winkles and Indian corn into food, we’d all be gone.”

I took Dennis aside. “Granny’s giving her food to your little girls,” I said softly.

He didn’t answer me.

I went up to Da and whispered to him, “Granny’s not eating.”

“We know, Honora.”

“You know? Then why don’t you do something?”

“Do what? No one can stop your granny from doing what she’s decided to do.”

Michael was talking to Joseph and Dennis. “If the seas would calm,” I heard Joseph say.

“We’d have to provision the boats, get our nets and tackle and sails back from the gombeen men. Instead of soup, give us money to redeem our nets,” Da said.

“No sense,” Michael said. “No sense in any of this. The roadworks are a disaster. Money wasted. Men collapsing from hunger and the strain of useless labor, and all the time the land lies neglected. Landlords won’t give seed on credit, and we’ll all be too worn down to plant in the spring. What good does it do the landlords to have the land lie fallow? It’s their land, their crops! No sense.”

“Perfect sense for the landlords, the Sassenach,” I said.

“What do you mean, Honora?” Da said.

“They want us gone, hell or Connaught, all over again. We took the bad lands of Connaught and made something of them. Now they’re taking them back. At least Cromwell was honest, told us plain. Killed us quick. False promises lure people like the Ryans to the workhouse and . . .” My voice was climbing.

“Honora.” Michael stopped me.

Paddy had turned from where he and Hughie were swinging the chestnuts at each other. “The Ryans, Mam? What about the Ryans?”

“Your mam’s giving off about the government.”

“Again?” Paddy said.

And the whole family laughed.

I stepped past Dennis, past Granny, past the children, and went out.

The Christmas sun was setting into the Bay, leaving a bank of bloodred clouds behind. A new year was coming, 1847. A black old year it will be. Black ’47.

“Honora.”

Michael crossed the strand to me and put his arm around my shoulders. We stood together looking at Galway Bay, the wide way that led to the sea and to Amerikay. Escape—is that our only hope? Take the child and flee, the angel told St. Joseph, and the children left behind were slaughtered, Holy Innocents. We cannot stay. We’ll die if we do.

“We must flee to Amerikay, Michael,” I said. “You have to get word to Patrick, in that place Chicago. He said there was work there. He will have earned money. He could send us our fare.”

Michael turned me to him. “Honora, a stór, how would I find him? And even if by some miracle we got passage, how could a child born in April travel during this sailing season? You’re upset because of the Ryans, but Honora, I’m not Neddy. I will not let our children die. I have the potato seeds Patrick gave me. Champion’s foal is due in the spring. We can sell it. We can’t give up. And could you really leave your family, Knocnacuradh, Galway Bay?”

I didn’t answer.

“Come, Honora. We should go in.” He took my face in his hands and kissed me.

Michael, I wanted to say, we’re none of us safe. The Ryans died first because they had nothing at all to fall back on, but now we’ve spent all our gold coins. If the roadworks are stopped or the soup kitchens don’t open, then even your strength and spirit won’t protect us.

Some of the neighbors came that night. Not like Christmases past—with Michael’s pipes hidden and every fiddle pawned.

Then Mam started to lilt. Josie joined her. We danced that Christmas night, waiting for Black ’47 to begin. For one moment we were as we had been. But the lilting and the dancing didn’t stop my heart from beating Amerikay. Amerikay.

Chapter 16

W
E MOVED
a few steps forward, not far now from the end of Barna pier where the cauldron of soup hung over the open fire. Paddy tugged at my hand, but Jamesy stopped.

“My legs won’t work,” he said.

Michael heard and picked him up, holding Jamesy in one arm, Bridget in the other.

“Hard on the little ones,” a woman I didn’t know said to me. Her children stood near her. A boy of about twelve carried a little fellow Jamesy’s size, and two girls of nine or ten held their mother’s hands. “Have you come from far away?” she asked me.

“Up the hill, near Saint James’ well,” I said. “An hour’s walk. My son usually doesn’t complain, but the line’s very slow today.”

“Tired, the poor wee fellow,” she said. “Aren’t we all? We walked five hours from Oughterard. There’s a government soup shop nearer, but the stuff they give’s only water with a little rice and a few peas. Goes right through you. Made my children sick. And you have to pay two farthings a cup for it.” She shook her head.

“The sisters put a bit of meat into the soup,” I said.

The Sisters of Mercy had started distributing soup in February, using money from the Quakers and the Church. But it was the English official sitting in the heated shed built for him near the end of the pier who was in charge. As Da had said, the government controlled all relief. Set the rules. No soup given to anyone not registered. None could be taken away.

Thousands lined up every day to go through the torturous process. Hundreds never reached the soup cauldron—sent away when the official closed distribution at sunset. The sisters had asked the relief committee to allow them to give the whole of a family’s ration to one member. So much more efficient, and the family could eat it at their own fire. Only sense. Save the old, the children, and the sick from making the long journey, keep disease from spreading. The government said no.

Sister Mary Agnes told us the official said the government did not intend to make charity agreeable. No matter how many died, she said, the government acted as if the whole terrible calamity were some kind of Irish trick to get food from them. That’s why most places in the country still didn’t have soup kitchens, in spite of a law in Parliament.

Sister’s right, I thought as I looked at the official standing in the doorway of the shed. A small, plump young fellow, sent over from England. Probably his first job, his salary paid from charitable donations and the little bit of money given by Parliament.

“Name and townland,” he said to Michael.

“Michael Kelly, Askeeboy.” He set Jamesy down.

The man knew us, saw us every day, but liked to make a show of finding Michael’s name on the roll and always said, “Michael Kelly,
pauper
,” then, “Not working on the roads?”

“The works have been closed, sir,” Michael said.

As the official well knew. “Three children,” he said. “Where are they?”

“Here,” Michael said, touching Jamesy and Paddy on the shoulder and holding Bridget out for the official to see.

The man made three checkmarks. “And another one in your woman’s belly. You people have no self-control.”

Keep quiet, Michael.

The fellow went on. “Yesterday one of you thought he’d fool me. Didn’t tell me his child had died. Trying to get the extra portion. I caught him, though.” The man laughed.

I kept my eyes down, but I could feel Michael tense his shoulders. “Don’t,” I murmured. A flash of anger and the fellow would take our names off the roll or have one of the company of soldiers guarding the pier arrest Michael—soldiers out here to keep order in a crowd of people too weak to do more than shuffle forward.

At the cauldron, Sister Mary Agnes filled two large tin cans for Michael and me and smaller ones for the children. She’d heard the official. “Sorry,” she whispered. Three other sisters worked with her.

A few dozen people stood hunched against the wind, eating the soup. All of us were aware of those in line watching, waiting for us to finish. I sat Bridget down and started to spoon the soup in her little mouth while Michael tried to keep the boys from gulping down their portion. Sometimes they ate so fast, they vomited their one meal of the day.

“Hurry up!” the official shouted at us.

“Here, a stór, eat, please.” I tried to get Bridget to take the last spoonful. She turned away. A bad sign when children couldn’t eat. The Dwyers’ youngest stopped eating the week before she died.

I rinsed the tin cans in a pot of water and gave them back to Sister Mary Agnes. The official was questioning the Oughterard woman, so Sister could speak to me without the official hearing.

“Still no letter,” she said to me.

The Sisters of Mercy had a convent in Chicago, and I had written to Patrick Kelly there. Michael, behind me, heard Sister. He hadn’t wanted me to send the letter. Not good to bring attention to Patrick. Sister Mary Agnes said she’d enclose the letter inside one she wrote to the Mother Superior. “Do you think the British read the sisters’ mail?” I’d asked him. He’d shrugged. Stranger things had happened.

Now Michael said to me, “Come along, Honora.”

The official was watching.

As we walked to Mam’s cottage with the children, I said to him, “No harm will come to Patrick. Sister Mary Agnes asked the Superior in Chicago to give the letter to the priest at Saint Patrick’s Church. He’ll know every Irishman in Chicago. Gives Patrick a way to send money to us.”