Mending Horses (16 page)

“Sold two tin kitchens,” Billy declared with a grin. “Did it me very own self.”

Daniel raised a skeptical eyebrow. She must have been proud to be talking civil to him. “Did you now?”

The peddler nodded. “That's right. He came up with a comical verse about 'em. Put it to the tune of ‘Yankee Doodle.' Amazing the things he found to rhyme with ‘kitchen.' ”
He
, Mr. Stocking had said, referring to Billy, not
she
. It reminded Daniel that folk were in earshot. “I'll have him sing it to you after supper.”

Daniel couldn't help smiling. “I've heard of things bought for a song, but never any sold for one before.”

Mr. Stocking chuckled. “That's a good one. I'll have to save it to use later.” He nudged the lass to make room for Daniel on the bench. “We're just working on our grammar. Care to join us?”

“Grammar?” Daniel glanced over the peddler's shoulder at the book.

“Aye. So I don't talk ignorant,” Billy said. “Like you.” She let out a little
oof
as the peddler elbowed her in the ribs.

Daniel bristled, but she was right, now, wasn't she? All his
ain't
s and
brung
s had become as much a part of his speech as the Irish lilt that he struggled to disguise. The Irish, well, there was no question of what prompted that. Remembering Ma's Gaelic words and Da's voice kept them with him, even if the only one to hear was a horse. But the “talking ignorant” had come not from sentiment or stupidity, but from spite, a way to irk the Lymans. Mr. Lyman had missed the defiance that lay behind the
ain't
s, attributing them to stupidity rather than obstinance, and had decided that it would be a waste of time to try to beat them out of the boy. Now that the
ain't
s no longer served him, Daniel found them as hard to shed as the upward slant that his sentences took when he spoke.

“Ignorant, aye,” he said. He settled next to Mr. Stocking on the bench and looked over the grammar book on the peddler's knee. “But what I really need you to learn me—
teach
me, sir—is how to talk proper, like the rest of 'em.” At Mr. Stocking's puzzled
frown, he gestured toward the tavern door, where talk and laughter tumbled out in flat, angular tones. “Yankees. Americans. So I don't hang meself every time I open me mouth.” It felt like asking for a knife to cut the slender thread that still linked him to Ma and Da.

Mr. Stocking closed the grammar book and leaned back against the tavern wall. His glance drifted across the yard to where Ivy stood tethered, then to Billy on his left side and back to Daniel on his right. There was such a devilish spark in his green eyes that Daniel thought he'd put off the request with one of his tall tales.

“Talking proper, well, I could show you that, I guess,” the little man said. “But how about I teach the two of you to act? Then you can talk anyways you want, whenever you want.”

“To act?” Billy's face shone with the prospect. She hopped up from the bench as if she were ready to start learning right that moment.

The peddler grabbed her elbow and pinned her with a solemn gaze. “But you got to pay for the lessons.”

“How?” she asked. “Sell more of them tin kitchens?”

He shook his head. “I want you to work with Daniel on that Gaelic of yours. So you don't forget who you are.”

Billy was dying of consumption, and all Jonathan could do was sit by and watch. Rain hammered the tavern roof, the wind rattling the windows and moaning as if it were trying to get in and claim her soul. The girl curled listlessly on the settle, wheezing so hard that her eyes watered. She hid her agony in a handkerchief as a gurgling noise crept up her throat.

Daniel snatched the handkerchief away. “Don't be spitting in it! It's me only clean one!”

Billy snagged one corner of the cloth. It stretched between them, threatening to rip. “Give us something red, Mr. S. To make it look like blood.”

“He'll do no such thing.” Daniel tried to peel her fingers from the handkerchief.

“You want it to look real, don't you?” she pleaded, slapping at Daniel's arm.

He finally rescued his handkerchief and returned it to the safety of his pocket. “You want it to look real, you ought to be down in the cold, dark cellar, not up here cozy by the fire with a cup of tea to hand.”

Cozy
wasn't the first word Jonathan would have used to describe the dank little room he'd rented just in time to escape the storm. They'd moved the bed and settle twice to get them away from the dribbles now pattering into two buckets and a tin pan. The green firewood sputtered and squealed while gusts of wind sent the smoke down instead of up. The tea and sugar were from Jonathan's own goods, the landlord providing only vinegary ale for drink. But at least they had the room to themselves and were away from the dismal mess outside.

Jonathan cleared his throat noisily. “Let's get to where the ghost of the prisoner's mother appears to see if he's learned the error of his ways.”

Billy stood on the settle and emitted a spectral moan, raising her arms to loom over the now invisible prisoner.

“You can't be playing the mother's ghost and the prisoner, too,” Daniel protested.

“All right, then you be the prisoner,” Billy suggested tartly.

“No. That's fine,” Daniel replied. “Seems to me that part was made special for you.”

They were acting out an insipid moral tale from Billy's primer about a deceitful boy whose lies had caused his sainted mother's death and led him down a path of wantonness and degradation that finally brought him to gasp out the last days of his wretched life in prison.

“I think you're missing the point of the story, fellas,” Jonathan interjected.

Billy shook her head, staring daggers at Daniel. “I see the point just fine.”

“And that would be . . .” Daniel crossed his arms over his chest and tried to look fierce, but Jonathan noticed a twitch at one corner of his mouth.

“Don't get caught,” Billy said smugly.

The twitch turned into a smirk that dissolved into a snicker as Daniel swatted at Billy's ear. “Ee-jit.”

“Lout.” Billy aimed a kick at Daniel's shins. Like Daniel's swat, it never landed.

Jonathan smothered his chuckles with difficulty. “Maybe it's time for geography.” He pulled two books from his bag. “Here, Dan'l, you be Europe, and Billy, you be Asia. And why don't you sit on opposite sides of the world while you're at it?” He pointed at either end of the settle, which wasn't long enough by half.

Jonathan's idea about acting lessons had been pure genius, if he did say so himself. Not only had it made Billy's lessons more palatable, but it had cracked the barriers between her and Daniel. Where formerly they'd gotten along like cats and dogs, now they were more like two not unfriendly mongrels. The Irish lessons, on the other hand, were a disaster, with Billy tormenting Daniel over his rusty Gaelic.

“Dan'l's Irish is better than your reading,” Jonathan had snapped. As the words left his mouth, the answer had flown into his head. He'd handed Billy her primer and shoved her toward Daniel. “Here. I want you and him to turn this into Gaelic. Together.” Now each of them knew something the other needed. But what they really needed wasn't either Gaelic or reading.

“And who are you?”

“Fogarty, sir. Remember? I've been working for you these past two years now, sir.” Liam doffed his cap so Mr. Briggs could see his face, but the man never looked up from his ledger, his lips moving as if he didn't want to lose his place in his calculations.

At last Mr. Briggs spared Liam an upward roll of his eyes, then turned back to the record book and papers spread out on the table in his tiny closet of an office. “Fogarty . . .” He thumbed through the ledger to find the list of workers. “Last you worked was more'n two weeks ago.”

“I know, sir. I took sick with the fever. But I'm ready to go back to work now.”

Mr. Briggs looked Liam up and down through narrowed eyes. “Fever, indeed.” He clapped the ledger shut. “Fever for a bottle, no doubt.”

Liam bit down on the anger that singed his face. “I'm telling you no tales, sir. I've been ailing these two weeks and more. Me two brothers died of it, with only me to care for 'em.”

“Boy, do you know how many Paddies come crying to me about missing work for your poor brother's or granny's funeral? You seem to have more grannies than a duck's got feathers.”

Liam wrung his cap into a sweaty twist, fighting the urge to grab Mr. Briggs by the collar and throttle him on the spot. “It's true,” he said between clenched teeth.

“Fine. Show me the death notice in the paper.” Briggs opened his ledger again.

“You think there'd be any newspaper taking notice of whether
we Paddies live or die? What does it matter, anyway? I'm here to work. Me family isn't none of your business.” Liam stepped closer to the table, standing over the builder with clenched fists.

Mr. Briggs rose to meet Liam's glare. “I won't hire anyone who can't hold his liquor well enough to do a day's work.” He jabbed a forefinger at Liam's chest. “And I won't hire a liar.”

The fever had never burned Liam as hot as his anger did now. It was all he could do not to upend Mr. Briggs's table and throw it in his face.

“I'll speak for him, sir.” Ed Callahan stood in the doorway, all six feet tall and broad of him. Liam wondered how much Callahan had heard and how much he'd merely guessed.

Callahan laid a beefy hand on Liam's shoulder. “It's no tale he's telling you, Mr. Briggs. Didn't I see with me own eyes the two lads buried, and Liam here barely able to stand by the grave?” Although Callahan's tone was deferential, Mr. Briggs's power seemed to fade in the big man's presence. Callahan did not remove his hat.

“Did you?” said Mr. Briggs.

“That I did. Wasn't it meself helping to dig the grave with these two hands of mine?”

In truth, Liam had been aware of naught but the two boxes sliding into the earth and the dirt piled over them. There must have been someone stronger than Augusta holding him up through it all, but he'd no recollection of who'd been there.

“He's a good man, is Liam, sir, and not a bit of a drunk or layabout,” Callahan concluded.

Mr. Briggs scowled at Liam. “All right. Fifty cents a day. If he can do the work.” He jerked his head toward the window facing the partly dug canal, where the work crew was assembling.

“Fifty cents?” Liam protested. “But it was seventy-five before. That's two bits' difference.”

“Fifty cents. Prove to me you can do a man's work for two weeks and we'll see about bringing it up by one bit.” Mr. Briggs cast an uneasy look at Callahan before settling back in his chair and returning to his ledger.

One bit
. Twelve and a half cents, still short of what he'd made before. “And what about me back wages? 'Twas nigh on three weeks' pay you were owing me before I took ill.”

Mr. Briggs snapped his book shut. “Give me two weeks' work and then we'll see.”

Callahan's grip kept Liam from lunging at Briggs. “Swallow it, lad,” Callahan said softly. “Swallow your anger for now. Use it to give you the strength to do your work, aye?” He put a firm arm around Liam's shoulders and guided him out the door and toward the work site.

Slowly, the heat washed out of Liam's face and his fists loosened. When he could finally manage to speak, he thanked Callahan for vouching for him. “I'm grateful, too, for what you done for the lads. I should'a been thanking you then, but—”

“Don't fret on it, lad. Anyone with eyes could see what a state you were in. It's sorry I am we didn't know of your troubles sooner.” Callahan's blue eyes went soft for a moment, and he patted Liam's shoulder awkwardly. “All right, then, Liam, let's to work, eh?”

Liam felt as if he'd left work at eighteen and come back at eighty. Lads his own age looked like children. The craggy veterans with work- and drink- and loss-ravaged faces, scarred bodies and souls, the ones who kept to themselves and hacked at the rocky soil and heaved out boulders as if the earth itself were their enemy, no longer puzzled him. He wondered if his eyes had already turned glassy and hard like theirs.

“Well, lads, here's Liam back again,” Callahan said.

The Yankees paid him no mind, or at most offered him a curt nod. The other Paddies seemed at first to do the same, but as he made his way over to pick up his tools, each one brushed by him, put a hand on his shoulder, a few words in his ear: “Sorry for your loss.” “Lord rest their souls.” “Missed you, lad.” It was a strange sort of benediction they gave him: a welcome to a company he'd rather not have joined.