Galway Bay (29 page)

“Mam,” said Jamesy, “tell Da.”

“When we met the dog, Jamesy held out his hand and said, ‘Here, doggie, here,’ and the creature wagged his tail like a mad thing. The bishop insisted that Jamesy step up and pet the big head, and Jamesy did it! Very brave altogether.”

“Well, isn’t he a Kelly?” said Michael. “And isn’t the Enfield a kind of hound? An Enfield guarded the body of Thaddy O’Kelly when he was slain fighting for Brian Boru against the Vikings. I’ve told you boys that story.”

“What good does standing over a dead body do anybody?” Paddy asked. “I’d rather have a horse. Champion would have reared up and kicked those Vikings right in the head, then pulled Thaddy O’Kelly up by his cloak with her teeth, so he could mount her and ride away to fight some more. Right, Da?”

“Champion would have done that, surely,” Michael said, “but having a hound on your side is a good thing.”

“Can we have a dog someday?” asked Jamesy.

“Someday,” Michael said.

Wild dogs were taking over the empty townlands—not even the hungriest dared hunt them—though the bodies of the Ryans were safe enough. The animals preferred the freshly dead. Typhus in Clarenbridge, cholera in Bushy Park—too close.

“No dogs,” I said.

“Is the baby alive inside you?” Paddy asked suddenly.

I looked at Michael. “He is, Paddy.”

“If I had an egg, I’d give it to you, Mam. I wouldn’t even take a taste. It would be all for you, Mam, so that this baby wouldn’t . . . you know, like the other one. I would, Mam, I’d give it to you,” Paddy said.

“I know, alanna.”

“Me too,” said Jamesy. “Me too.”

“Brave boys you are. Now come with me to water Champion and let your mam have a lie-in,” Michael said. “Come now, Bridget. Let Da see you walk.”

Almost two now, and Bridget still not steady on her feet.

“Can I ride Champion?” I heard Paddy ask as Michael shut the door.

I did fall back asleep. When I awoke, alone, it was almost midday. Where were they? We’d miss the soup if we didn’t hurry.

“Michael? . . . Michael?”

“Here, Honora.” He came in, shepherding Bridget. “She ran up to the lane. Good girl you are,” he said to her. Bridget smiled at me.

“Where are the boys?”

“Aren’t they here? I sent them back up hours ago.”

“I haven’t seen them. Where are they?”

“I’ll try the Mulloys,” he said, and went out.

“Paddy! Jamesy! . . . Paddy! Jamesy!” I shouted from in front of the cottage, holding on to Bridget.

Michael came running. “Not at Mulloy’s,” he said.

“They shouldn’t go off like this.” The dogs in the hills attacked sheep. Would they go after two small boys?

Then we heard them—running steps, panting breath, heads down—not a word, going right past us and into the cottage.

“It didn’t break! It didn’t break!” Paddy said. He opened his hands. A big brown hen’s egg was cupped in his palm. “Here, Mam, here!”

“A raid, Da!” Jamesy said. “We got it on a raid! Tell them, Paddy, tell them!”

“I will. But first, Mam, take the egg. We didn’t steal it, Mam, truly. Like Finn and Cuchulain, Da—we raided the enemy! We were the Irish Legion! Faugh-a-Ballagh!” Paddy said. “We started out very polite. We went to the bishop’s door and when the housekeeper answered, I said, ‘Good morning, missus’—in English. But she wasn’t a bit nice, said, ‘What do you want? Stay back!’ Said, ‘Don’t be bringing sickness in here and don’t ask me for any food. We have none to spare. Go away.��

“But I stood there and said, ‘Missus, my brother wants to see your dog. We met the bishop and he said Jamesy could come and pet Angus.’”

“Then I said, ‘Doggie, doggie,’” Jamesy told us, “and I looked at her like this.” He smiled up at us—that baby smile of his that wasn’t to be resisted. I didn’t realize he knew its effect. A charmer.

“His father’s son,” I said to Michael.

Paddy went on, “Then she said we should stay in the yard and she’d bring Angus around to us, and to wait down at the wall. So I sat Jamesy on the wall and told him to tell the housekeeper I had to pee and was off in the trees.”

“Pee, pee, pee,” said Jamesy, and he grabbed Michael’s hand and swung it until he had Michael laughing.

“Listen!” Paddy said. “I hid behind the hedge. The housekeeper brought the dog out on a leash—”

“Let me tell this!” Jamesy said. “I patted him and said, ‘Doggie, doggie, doggie.’”

“And I,” Paddy said, “crawled right into the henhouse, Da! I reached under a fat red hen and took the egg. Then I ran away from the henhouse and yelled, ‘Missus? Would you send my little brother to me? I messed myself, missus,’ though I didn’t, Mam, really, I didn’t.”

“Pee, pee, pee,” Jamesy said. “Da, I was so,
so
brave. Tell them, Paddy.”

“He was, truly, Da. You were brave, Jamesy. He jumped from the wall by himself and walked past the dog, who was snapping and growling now—but Jamesy? Not a bother on him.”

“Not a bother,” said Jamesy.

“He walked right to me, slow and sure—I took his hand and then we ran and ran. So,” said Paddy.

“So,” I said. “What brave boys we have, Michael. My sturdy lads, come over to me.”

I set the egg down carefully and hugged them to me, one on each side of me. If they’d been caught, if the dog had attacked them . . .

Michael stood over us, rubbing the boys’ heads and saying, “Faugh-a-Ballagh! Hoo-rah! You didn’t let fear stop you, boys. That’s the thing. Fingers into a fist.”

“Will you eat it, Mam? Cook it and eat it now,” said Paddy, against my shoulder. “All for you, Mam. Right, Da?”

“All and only for Mam. Take it, Honora,” Michael said.

And so I did, cracking the egg into a bit of meal and mixing it, cooking them together. I offered some to Paddy and Jamesy.

“Taste it just,” I said to the boys.

But they clamped their lips shut until I had eaten it all.

“We will win,” Michael said. “With sons like this, Honora, we will win.”

In mid-April, the gombeen men reclaimed Da’s nets. The Quakers could no longer give money to fishermen, forbidden by government order—direct payments created dependency.

The roadworks reopened, at least. A few pennies earned and the weather easier on Michael. The boys helped him plant the turnip seeds. No potatoes to sow. Michael did put the seeds Patrick gave us last summer into the ground, though Owen Mulloy doubted potatoes would grow from them.

I waited for our child to be born and thought about Amerikay. Michael fed us with Champion’s blood mixed with dandelion stems and sorrel and the soup Sister Mary Agnes smuggled to him during those last days when I wasn’t able to walk down the hill to the pier. No letter from Patrick.

“I’m going to check Champion,” Michael said on a rainy April night. “Her time is close, too.”

The next day, my pains began. Mam was there, pressing the Mary Bean into one hand while I held the Connemara marble stone Michael had given me in the other. “Hold on, a stór. Hold on, Honora.”

I felt a deep cramping inside me, then pain much more intense than with the other three births. I couldn’t help myself—I screamed and screamed.

“That’s right, Honora. Yell,” Mam said.

Mam and Michael were bending over me. Paddy, Jamesy, and Bridget stood in the corner, staring at me, afraid.

“Michael, take them out,” I said. “Go on, children—help Da with Champion.”

“The horse is in labor, too,” Michael said to Mam.

“Go. Take the children,” Mam said.

They left us.

“Here we are, Mam, the two of us,” I said.

“We are. Shall I sing to you, Honora, a stór?”

“Do.”

And so she did. “
Siúil, siúil, siúil a rún
 . . .” Mam and I alone, but Granny here, too, and I saw St. Bridget herself standing behind her. Hour after hour the pain ripped through me. Finally Mam said, “Push, push,” and I clutched the Mary Bean, heaving and breathing and straining, and he came out of me, born. A long, scrawny bit of a thing, silent—no strong cry, only a whimper—but alive.

“Honora.” A whisper in my ear—Michael. “A stór mo chroí, our son needs you.”

I heard a chorus of, “Mam, Mam, Mam”—my children. I opened my eyes. Mam put the bundle of bones into my arms, and then he was at my breast. I felt him sucking and licking. But there was nothing there—nothing for him.

“I can’t, Mam. I’ve no milk. Baptize him now, Mam, now. Save him from the cillín.”

And she did, dripping the water on his pale forehead. “I baptize you,” she started. “Will you name him Michael? It’d be strength for him—Michael the archangel.”

“Not Michael,” I said.

If he dies . . . I won’t put Michael’s name . . . And he will die. I have no milk. And the Lynches with a herd of cows.

“Mam, Mam,” I said. “We’ll give him a Lynch name. Stephen, after that young soldier. Then, Mam, listen to me: Take him to Miss Lynch.” I tried to sit up. “She has no child, Mam. Tell her to take Stephen, feed him, and she can keep him. The Lynches have herds of cows. Plenty of milk. Give him to her. Try, Mam. Go. Now.”

“Honora, easy. You’re raving.”

“Please, Mam. Call him Stephen,” I said. “We will have a Michael. This one is Stephen.”

And Mam slowly repeated the name. “Stephen. I baptize you Stephen, in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. There now, he’s God’s child now.”

“He’s cold, Mam.”

“Hold him close, Honora.”

“I’m sorry, Stephen. Sorry.” Poor little thing, sucking nothing, not even crying, no strength for it. Lord, why did You let him live to die? “Take him to Miss Lynch, Mam. Take him.”

“Honora,” Mam said, “listen to me. Miss Lynch has gone away. And you would never give up your baby.”

“I would, Mam. So he can live.”

And then Michael was kneeling by me, holding the tin can. “Milk,” he said. He stuck my finger in the frothy liquid.

Milk, it was milk. I put my finger into Stephen’s mouth. He sucked the milk from it. I dipped my finger again, and again he took the milk. Mam ripped a piece from her blouse.

“Soak it,” she said.

I did. Stephen sucked milk from the cloth until the little body was warm and he mewed. A small sound, but something. His lips went like mad, taking every bit of the milk we could give to him until the can was empty, and then he howled. Thanks be to God, he howled.

“He won’t die,” I said.

“He won’t,” said Michael.

“You told Miss Lynch. She gave you milk from the cows for Stephen.”

“Not the cows, Mam.” It was Paddy, speaking up, pushing to be next to Michael.

“Not the cows,” said Jamesy.

“I’m telling her,” said Paddy. “You be quiet.”

“I won’t be quiet. I can tell.”

But it was Bridget told me. “Horsey, Mam, horsey.”

“What? What does she mean? . . . Michael? Mam?”

They started laughing, then told me. Champion had given birth, and our Stephen’s first meal was Champion’s milk.

“Mare’s milk?”

“Stephen drank it,” Michael said.

“He did, surely,” said Mam.

I went in and out of dreams the first night of Stephen’s life. I thought Miss Lynch had come to claim Stephen, then she turned into Máire. She took Stephen, put him at her own snowy breast—the Pearl. I even heard her children saying, “Aunt Honey, Aunt Honey.” I’d gone astray.

“Honora. Would you ever wake up and hold this rackety child? He’s sucking me dry. Honora!” Her face was close to mine. Máire, flesh spilling out of her blouse, real and warm and here. “They’ve left, the Pykes are gone and Jackson with them. I’m free, Honora. Free.”

We ate that night from the basket of food Máire had brought—loaves of wheaten bread, a frikin of butter, a sack of oatmeal, and another of Indian corn.

“We would’ve brought more,” she said, “but I had baby Gracie and Daniel. Johnny Og and Thomas carried the basket between them. They did a great job. Michael,” she said, “reach down in the bottom.”

He pulled some small hard balls from the basket, misshapen and gnarled but full of eyes. Seed potatoes ready to plant, dozens and dozens of them.

Michael lifted one up, turning it carefully in his hand. “Look at the number of eyes. Ten, at least. With these and the seeds Patrick gave us, the whole of the townland will be planted. The land won’t fail us again.”

Máire didn’t tell her story that first night. Too tired. The children slept together in a huddle and only grinned at one another. Our brothers and Da came up the hill to see Máire the next night—a grand reunion. “If only Granny were here,” Máire said. But her sadness at Granny’s death was balanced by her joy. Máire exclaimed at Hughie, grown as tall as Dennis, and wasn’t Joseph the image of Uncle Dan Walsh? She told Dennis she longed to meet Josie and their two little girls, but for now she had best stay quietly at Knocnacuradh. Mam smiled. Máire’s homecoming had smoothed some of the lines from her face, and she’d washed her blond hair into curls. Even Da, gaunt now, his black Spanish hair gray, seemed young again, happy. During the next week, we said nothing about Máire’s return to anyone outside the family. The new baby excused the comings and goings. Mam told Katie Mulloy I was sick and to keep the neighbors away. When seed potatoes were found in cottage doorways, the neighbors whispered: Mrs. Molly Maguire, the Quakers, and thanked God. Men suddenly felt strong enough to turn the earth and plant the pratties.

Finally, the night came for Máire to tell her story. Máire had both her baby Gracie and Stephen fed. Mam and Da, the children, my brothers, Josie, all of us gathered together—a bit of the before times. Fadó . . .

“After the second time the potatoes failed,” Máire said, “I kept my head down. We had food and I could still slip a bit to the stableman or one of the laborers. But then about the time you came, Michael, Jackson got bolder. He started telling the old Major what to do, no more pretending, giving orders, ‘Evict! Evict!’ Jackson convinced him getting rid of the tenants would make the estate profitable. Jackson kept quoting that boyo in the Treasury, Trevelyan. I mind him sitting at the table, reading from the London papers in that slow, dour way of his. The words would put the heart across you: ‘God is doing what man couldn’t.’”

“Doing what?” Da said.