The Walking People (16 page)

"Did anyone come round here? Any strangers?"

Greta hesitated and then chose the easiest route. "No," she said.

 

The coffin arrived in Conch just as the airline promised it would, and from there it was transferred to the hearse that brought it to Ballyroan. They all went to the funeral, plus five of the old ones from Conch. It was quieter than most funerals, and all Greta could think about as she stared at the gleaming wooden box was how far it had come. First the place inside New York City called Queens, and inside Queens a place called Woodside, then the hospital, then a memorial service in America, then a trip to Idlewild Airport, then thousands of miles across the Atlantic, then Shannon Airport, then the long ride to Ballyroan.

Johanna, Greta, Lily, and Little Tom all noted to themselves that Mrs. O'Clery was buried next to Julia Ward. They also noted that on Julia's grave was a bundle of fresh wildflowers, but of the four Cahills, only Greta and Johanna looked at the bundle—it was dewy, as if the flowers were still rooted in the ground, not a wilted one in the bunch—and thought of the strange man standing on the shore. Privately, Greta also thought about the sounds she had heard from their own back room. On the other end of the graveyard, up at the highest point of the sloping land, where a single tree had grown bent in the wind, lay Big Tom.

As they walked back to the house, Johanna fell into step beside Shannon and looped her arm through the older woman's arm. Shannon found all this attention from Johanna flattering and thought it was funny that the girl seemed to have the impression that Queens
was an exotic place. After days of Johanna's questions and requests for more stories, Shannon realized how little her mother must have known about America before leaving Ireland. Many days, at home in Woodside, it was all Shannon could do to get up in the morning, press her uniform, get herself to work at the medical clinic on time, and get out to the bars and the community center once in a while to catch up with her girlfriends and meet a few guys. All of that, plus classes at the community college, had seemed like a lot, yet her mother had done all of that and more in a place that must have felt totally foreign to her. Thinking of Queens, now that her mother was buried, made Shannon eager to get back. What would she be like now, she wondered, if her parents had decided to stay? She couldn't imagine mustering up Johanna's energy in this lonely place, but she didn't see herself much like Greta either. Poor Greta, who, most days, didn't quite seem to know where she was.

"Will we walk up to the sea ledge?" Johanna asked. "The wind is calm, and you must go once before you go home."

Shannon followed Johanna's lead as she powered her way to the top. Greta tried to catch up to them, but Lily took her wrist and leaned on her all the way back to the cottage.

"What do you think they're talking about?" Greta asked as Johanna's and Shannon's silhouettes got smaller and smaller.

"Not the price of eggs," Lily said as she eyed the backs of the two girls. "Not the weather either."

"What then?" Greta asked. But she knew. America. What people did for work and what kind of dinners they ate at night and where they drove in their cars. Johanna had been greedy for stories of Shannon's life since the moment she'd stepped into the inn.

"Come on," Lily said. "I'm dying for a cup of tea."

 

Just before Shannon left, she dipped into her suitcase of slippery scarves and clacking necklaces like Santa in his sack. She had planned on staying at a hotel the whole time she was in Ireland and had not planned on thank-you gifts. "It's not much," she said as she handed Lily a small bottle of perfume. She doubted Lily would ever use it—a twelve-dollar bottle of Chantilly from Gimbels—and she'd gone back
and forth that morning in the room they'd given her over whether Lily would even realize how nice a gift it was. If Lily was anything like Shannon's mother, the bottle would sit on Lily's dresser gathering dust for the next two decades. She gave Johanna and Greta each a scarf, red with small white polka dots for Johanna, solid royal blue for Greta, who, upon accepting, said, "You gave the two prettiest away."

"I have nothing remotely masculine," Shannon said in Tom's direction, and smiled as his windburned neck and cheeks turned a deeper shade of red. "And this," she said, handing a card to Johanna. "It's my address and telephone number in New York should you ever come to visit. Any of you."

She imagined the card propped up on Johanna's dresser like the perfume on Lily's—to be looked at and admired but never used.

Lily swept in and kissed Shannon on the crown of her head. She squeezed the girl's hands together until the knuckles cracked. Greta was about to shoo her mother away, tell her to leave the poor girl alone, when she noticed Johanna still holding the small white card in both hands like the priest holds up the Communion wafer. "Go on," Greta said, nudging her sister with her hip. The rest of them were already outside, walking toward the black Ford that would bring Shannon to the bus. "I'm going," Johanna said, shoving the card into the pocket of her skirt and hurrying outside.

Later that evening, as they sat in a circle of light cast by the sixty-watt bulb, Lily said she'd miss Shannon, that the girl was a breath of fresh air, and wouldn't the girls miss her too? Yes, thought Greta, there was certainly a hole left behind in Shannon's absence—a big hole that had taken a place at the table, pulled a chair right up to the fire, and was shaped just like America.

M
ICHAEL WARD NOTICED
the bicycle on the caravan's first day in the Burren, before they had even set up camp. It had a white frame, which was unusual, and handlebars set wide so a rider could pedal without leaning forward. The chrome fenders were shining and the black rubber tires clean, as if the bicycle had dropped from the sky just to twinkle and catch Michael's eye in the late evening sun. It leaned against the mud-splashed gable of the first pub they'd seen in many miles, and Michael knew that wherever Dermot chose to camp would be within easy distance of this pub. An Bhoireann could not be crossed in a single day. Not by the old ones. Not by the ones who were too small to keep up but too heavy to carry. There were no trees in the Burren, few pastures, no bog, just slabs of limestone as far as the eye could see. Dermot claimed that there were rivers hidden beneath the bald landscape, that they flowed underground through caves and tunnels. As Michael walked, he tried to listen for the water rushing beneath his feet.

The Wards were on their way from Ennis to Kilkee, where one of their women would be married and handed off to her husband's people. Sometimes new husbands or wives joined up with the Wards, sometimes the new couple went to the in-laws. It was all a question of need, and in this case, the husband's people needed more women. The bride-to-be was young, only fifteen, and Dermot said that circumstance
alone would be her dowry. Maeve had also gotten married at fifteen and now, three years later, had two girl children. Sometimes Michael watched Maeve and wondered what life would have been like as a girl. They had shared their mother's womb, swam in there together for nine months, split everything fifty-fifty, and then when the cards were revealed, he came out a boy and she a girl. The two little ones roared at her all day and, when the older one could walk, toddled after her as if she were attached by a string. Maeve had gotten fat. She wore her skirts too tight, too short. Their mother would have had plenty to say about it, and about the way Maeve once left the younger baby on the ground, where she rolled off down a slope, under a wooden fence, and could have been stomped by one of the grazing cows if Michael had not seen the empty blanket lying in the grass.

Michael had been through the Burren only once before that he could remember. The campsite was a short stretch of earth and wind-eaten grass cordoned off by the government in an attempt to keep travellers off the roads. As Michael looked off into the distance, the limestone clints and grikes backlit by the setting sun, he realized that this might be the last stretch of grass for many miles, and when they started moving again, it would be up to the animals to find knots of green at the side of the road.

Normally, Dermot did not like to stop at these camps. He didn't like the particular designation, the poles set up special for tethering animals, the stones already arranged in neat circles to hold traveller fires, a well to the back of the site with the hand pump painted red in case they would miss it. "Only one half step until they've pushed us into flats in Ennis," Dermot usually complained, but this time he whistled to the boys who'd gone ahead and used his thumb to jab the air, just once, in the direction of the camp. "Two nights," he said to Michael as he took off his cap and rubbed his head.

It was evening, almost completely dark, and within five minutes of turning off the road, the youngest boys had already set to work milking the goats. The women with infant children sat down on the sparse grass and unbuttoned their blouses as they pulled their babies into their laps. The oldest woman of the group—Grandmother, they called her, though to most of them she was a great-aunt—continued her work on
a piece of lace for the bride-to-be. The rest of the women peeled potatoes and carrots. One woman unwrapped a large section of smoked pork loin from the grub box and began dividing it into portions. As they prepared supper, they discussed what would have to be done once they arrived in Kilkee. There was a wedding cake to be made and the ingredients to be begged. For fifty guests they needed two dozen eggs, two pounds of sweet butter, eight cups of sugar, and five pounds of flour just to make the inside of the cake. For the frosting, ingredients would have to be bought. And they'd have to protect these ingredients as they gathered them. The little ones would take spoonfuls of the sugar and pour it onto their tongues if they knew no one would catch them. Michael, who was far too old for such theft, had been caught and boxed for eating a spoonful of sugar as recently as his sixteenth birthday. Then there were the cake decorations: colored paper flowers, enough satin ribbon to circle the base of each tier. As the women fretted over what they might be forgetting, they also discussed how in their day a wedding cake always meant a fruitcake, which could be made six months ahead and tucked into the bottom of a trunk until the wedding day came. Not anymore. The young ones now had their heads turned by shopwindows that displayed pure white three-tiered cakes that looked like they'd blow away in the wind as soon as they met with the blade of a knife.

In addition to planning the ingredients they'd need, the women also reminded the bride-to-be of the things she absolutely musn't forget, just as they'd been reminding her since the day the arrangement was made. Go on, laugh at your old aunties, they told her, but mind you do what we say. "First," Grandmother said, taking the girl by the wrist and pulling her close to the sharp angles of her face, her breath like the dank bottom of the grain barrel, "you'll eat the oatmeal with your husband before any celebration begins. No matter what's going on about you, you'll eat it, and well salted too, for the salt and the oatmeal together is what protects. They're pure useless on their own, you see. Three big spoonfuls of it, and then carry on. Him too. It'll be your first duty as a wife. Second, if there's dancing—and I never saw a wedding where there wasn't—mind you keep one foot on the ground all the time. If you were to jump or hop or do any sort of thing where
both feet are off the ground, like if he lifted you up in the air—some husbands do it without thinking, though his people should have him warned—or if one of your brothers should swing you. Fairies love all beautiful things and nothing so much as a bride. Don't smirk at me, girl. You're not too big for a slap on the mouth. Not today, not any day while I'm alive, married or no, are you too big for a slap. You think I'm blind as well as slow? I survived this long because I am wise. As you, please God, will be wise one day. Third, remember not to sing, even if you love the song, even if everyone else's throat is burst from singing..."

Michael looked at the bride-to-be, a second cousin, and wondered if she knew what this wedding meant for her. She would be lashed to her husband's people just like a new animal bought at the fair. He stood and strolled away from the light of the fire to where he'd tossed the tarp he'd sleep on. It was a clear night so far, and he decided to chance the weather until morning without building a tent. The rest of the men were busy constructing their low shelters, and as Michael watched the others tap long stakes into the hard earth, lug jugs of water from the well, talk, stir, chop, feed, he wondered if any of them had ever lain awake at night and thought about settling.

There were eighteen in the group now, including the babies, and for supper they divided among three separate fires. "Soon it will be your wedding we're off to," Dermot said to Michael as he tucked his fork and knife into his pocket and took his wedge of pork in his hand. "Did you hear me? Don't you want a warm body next to you at night? Don't you want someone when the wind finds a way beneath the tent flaps?"

Michael knew he was only teasing. Men got married later than women; Maeve's husband was thirty-one. Lately, Dermot's teasing had touched on everything related to females. What kind of shape did Michael like in a woman? What color hair? At every question, Michael shrugged and Dermot laughed. Marriage was practical, Michael knew. It was the way things were done. But for a long time now he had been wondering where a partnership left a person except chained more tightly to the camp and to the wagon. Dermot spoke of the travellers' life as if theirs was the only way to live, as if they were the only ones
who truly saw the world because they were up to their necks in it, not only when it was dry and fair but also when it was wet and miserable. To Michael it felt like all they ever did was go round and round, with fair days few and far between. A few months back, on the way from Bantry to Kinsale, the caravan had passed a construction site—three identical squares dug into the ground, three wood frames, and two men pouring wet cement from buckets. And just like the gray splatters that had already hardened on the toes of the workers' boots, the concrete foundation would also harden and become an anchor for these structures, keep them from being blown away in the wind. It would be easy to build a house like that, Michael had thought as the group passed by and the two men stopped their work to watch them, and the thought had prodded him forward like an iron taken from the fire and pushed into a goat's flank. Also like the hot iron, the thought marked him, and later, when Dermot shouted for him to hurry up, Michael flinched.