The men began to harvest the wheat. They moved slowly at first but went faster as the motions of cutting and carrying and tying up sheaves came back to them—hard labor, but not senseless like work on the roads had been. Máire and I brought potatoes out to them at midday. The men stared at the piles we set in front of them.
“How many can we have?” said the youngest, the Connemara man.
“We have a good few in the pit,” I said. “Eat up.”
“It’s just my wife and baby are in a scalpeen out on the Moycullen Road, and I’d like to take half of what I’m allowed to them.”
Each one made the same request.
“You have to eat,” I said, “or you won’t have strength to work.”
Michael said each man could have five potatoes to eat and fifteen to take home. Well, that delighted them. They fell on the potatoes, and as they ate, each man told us why he had no pratties of his own. Two had no seed potatoes to plant, two had been evicted, and the oldest man, from Mayo, admitted that he’d simply despaired of the land and had left, sure that the blight was waiting to ambush him all over again.
“What would we have done without you, Máire, and the seed potatoes you brought?” I said as we walked back to the cottage.
That afternoon, Paddy and Jamesy as well as Máire’s Johnny Og and Daniel and even Silken Thomas—his nickname now—worked along with the men. Máire and I took Stephen and Gracie and Bridget down to Bearna. “They can play on the strand, well away from the fever hospital,” Máire’d said. Máire and I sat talking on the rocks of the strand as we had as girls while Bridget played with Gracie and Stephen.
“Bridget’s a real little mother,” Máire said. “We could do with more daughters.”
“We’ve enough children,” I started, but stopped when I saw Mam hurrying toward us. “Máire, she’s waving a letter!”
I picked up Stephen and Bridget and she grabbed Gracie and we ran to Mam. The American letter—finally.
Mam hadn’t even opened it. Sister Mary Agnes had brought it to her. The envelope said: “To Michael and Honora Kelly, Askeeboy.”
Patrick Kelly, at last, or word from Owen Mulloy, our brothers? I gripped it in my fist. A bank draft? Our passage?
“Open it!” Mam and Máire said together.
Inside the envelope was nothing but two written pages, each signed at the bottom, “O. Mulloy.”
“It’s from Owen Mulloy, and it’s a letter, only . . .” I scanned it quickly. I looked up. “Mam, come, let’s go inside.”
“Honora, what?”
“Tell us,” Máire said.
Stephen and Gracie started crying, sensing something.
“Inside,” I said.
I made Mam sit down by the fire. “Where’s Da?” I said.
“He rowed into Claddagh.”
“Now, Mam, Owen’s letter has very bad news.”
“The boys,” she said.
I nodded.
“Oh, God help us, not all of them—please God, not all of them.”
“Dennis,” I said.
Máire put her arm around Mam.
“Holy Mary, Mother of God,” said Mam. “Poor Josie, the poor girl.”
“Josie’s gone, too, Mam,” I said.
“And the babies, the little ones?”
“He’s not sure,” I said.
“Not sure? What about Joseph and Hughie?”
“Owen’s not sure about them either.”
“I don’t understand,” she said.
“Read the letter to us, Honora,” Máire said.
But I couldn’t. Owen Mulloy described a horrific journey. Mam didn’t need to hear the details of five hundred passengers crammed belowdecks, whole families made to sleep on rough plank beds six feet long by six feet wide, stacked one upon the other, a terrible passage beyond imagining: “A benighted hole full of dirt and depravity, with only ten wooden buckets to contain all the . . .” Owen had crossed out “shit” and had written “waste.”
He wrote of wild seas, terrible winds, people screaming with fear, vomit and waste ankle-deep, a forty-day crossing with water for only thirty days and most of it fouled because the storage barrels had once been used for vinegar and wine. What chance for any of them when the fever attacked? Dennis had tended the sick ones before falling ill himself. Owen wrote: “Nothing we could do for him. Josie begged the sailors for pure water to give Dennis, but they are heartless men. He endured days and days of awful suffering and his brothers never left his side. His death was a release. We buried him at sea. Forty others have met the same fate.”
“What does he say, Honora?” Mam asked.
“Dennis went quickly, Mam. Josie and the boys were with him. A peaceful death.”
“Thank God for that. My poor boy. I dread telling your father. We thought they were safe.”
“A grave in the deep for Dennis, the same as for my Johnny,” said Máire.
“But what about Josie and little Katie and Mary?” Mam asked.
I couldn’t tell her what Owen Mulloy wrote about the place they landed, Grosse Île: “The sick were stretched out on the ground and left to die.”
Instead, I said to Mam that Owen had lost track of them during the time they were kept in quarantine. He and his family went on to Quebec. He’d heard that Josie had died, but there’d been no news of Joseph, Hughie, or the little girls. “There’s a good chance they’re alive,” I said.
“Please God,” Mam said. She took our hands in hers. “Pray, girls. Pray hard.”
We did, until Mam told me to go home before darkness fell.
“Stay here with Mam. I’ll keep your boys,” I told Máire. A slow, sad walk up to Knocnacuradh. I was carrying Stephen, matching my steps to Bridget’s pace. I prayed for Dennis’s and Josie’s souls, asking God to please spare the others. Right foot, left foot. It was after sundown when we reached the cottage.
“Good girl, Bridget,” I said as I opened the door for her.
Two and a half and not a complaint from her on the long way home. Such a help to me, Bridget sang little tunes of her own making to Stephen, lulling him to sleep. So young, but I depended on her as Mam had depended on me when Dennis was born. Oh, Dennis, Dennis . . .
“Da! Da!” Bridget screamed.
Michael lay stretched out on the floor.
“Michael? . . . Michael?” I squatted to touch his face. Warm.
He opened one eye and winked at me.
Then with a rush the boys attacked from the dark corner where they’d been hiding.
“We’ve killed Finn McCool!” yelled Paddy.
He and Jamesy, Johnny Og, Thomas, and Daniel ran round and round Michael, screaming and jumping.
“I’m Cuchulain!” Paddy said. “I’m in the battle rage!”
“I’m Finn!” said Johnny Og. “And here’s my salmon leap!” He jumped up a foot or more.
“I’m Silken Thomas, the Earl of Kildare!” said Thomas, stomping his left foot on the ground, then his right. “And I’ve fringe on my armor and helmet.”
“I’m Red Hugh O’Neill!” said Daniel. “I have a magic sword which you can’t see!” He swung the weapon over his head.
Jamesy ran to me. “I’m William Boy O’Kelly and I want you to come to my party! Bridget, too, and Stephen, and everybody!”
“No party until we finish the fighting,” said Paddy.
“It looks like you’ve finished off this boyo,” I said, pointing to Michael.
“We killed the Giant, Aunt Honey,” said Johnny Og.
“Don’t be so sure,” Michael said, reaching out to catch Johnny Og’s ankle.
Battle cries, laughter—the troops rescued their comrade, then dashed away.
“I’m with Da!” Bridget said as she lay down next to him.
“That will even up the sides,” Michael said.
Stephen wriggled in my arms, and I put him down. He crawled up to Michael and threw himself on his chest.
“Are you for me or against me, Stephen?” Michael said, getting his breath back.
“Truce!” I said. “Truce! This is a magic white flag I’m waving, and you’re all to lay down your arms. In fact, you’re to lay down your whole bodies. We start early tomorrow with the harvesters.”
When they’re asleep, I’ll tell Michael the hard news and show him Owen’s letter.
“But, Mam,” Paddy started, “Da’s been telling us stories, like the before times. Great stories—the Irish Brigade, the warriors of the Red Branch. Even Thomas wants to be with the Irish now that he can be an earl. Can’t we hear about another war?”
“Our warrior queen has spoken, boys,” said Michael. “Come now, the pratties are boiled. Eat a few to sleep on.”
They needed no second telling. During the meal, Jamesy—acting William Boy O’Kelly—ordered Michael to pipe a tune.
“I have no pipes,” Michael said.
Still buried. Too dangerous to try to pawn or sell them.
“Da! We’re all pretending—can’t you?” Jamesy said.
“I can, of course!” said Michael, and whistled a bit of a tune while Jamesy nodded and kept time. “Would you like to learn the tin whistle?” Michael asked him.
“I would, Da,” he said.
Michael looked at me.
“I think we can spare a few pennies from the harvest money,” I said.
“Thank you, Mam,” Jamesy said.
“All right now,” I said. “Eat up and go to sleep. We’re all tired, even the Giant.”
But the children wouldn’t settle, and when they did lie down to sleep, the laughing and poking and grunting continued. Three weeks of food had restored them. Finally, they slept. I handed Owen Mulloy’s letter to Michael, putting my finger to my lips as I did.
He hunched over the fire for light and read it. After a long time, he looked up. His eyes were wet—the only tears he’d shed during the whole of this ordeal.
“To have gotten so close—to be there, to see it . . .”
Michael had read the facts I’d kept from Mam: The
Emigrant
had anchored in the river, Owen said, with a load of other ships with Irish people aboard. Passengers were not allowed ashore. Owen wrote:
The authorities were afraid of fever. We’d little food or water left. Finally the sickest, Josie and the two little girls among them, were taken off and put into a tent hospital—no bed, laid on the grass floor. It was so crowded, some of the sick were left in the open. Terrible cold weather. Ice in the river. They put the rest of us on the other side of the island, with a troop of British soldiers to keep the sick and the well apart. We had to buy our own food. The doctor who ran the island sold milk from his own cows at double the price charged in Quebec City. Joseph and Hughie sneaked across to find Josie and the children. When the steamer came to take us to Quebec, there was no sign of the boys. We’ve been in Quebec for three weeks, and I’ve heard from a priest that Josie died and her children were being cared for by a French family. I hope the boys are alive, but I’m not sure.
Then Michael read the last bit of Owen’s letter out, whispering the words:
I’m writing to tell you to stay home. Remember these names: the Virginius, the Agnes, the Larch. These are the coffin ships, and dozens more as bad. Thousands buried at sea, and on that island. God knows how many of us will survive this winter. Michael, they say there was a fellow here in Quebec with a golden staff last year. I name no names. He had quite a bit of bother, but is said to be in good form now and working for the Cause. The United States is meant to be better than here. I’ll write again when we get there. Hoping you and all are well. I am yours very truly, Owen Mulloy.
“Patrick,” Michael said. “Alive. Some one thing to thank God for.”
I nodded. Now, I thought, he’ll say, Wasn’t it good that we didn’t go with them? It could be us dead of fever and buried at sea, or on that hell island, our children orphaned or lost. And there will be nothing I can answer except, You’re right.
But he said nothing.
“I love you, Michael Kelly,” I said.
“Oh,” he said. “Good. But why, exactly, at this moment?”
“For playing with the boys. Children need to laugh. And for crying for Dennis and Josie . . . and for not saying, ‘I told you so!’ and for so many things.”
I sat beside him at the fire. We listened to the up and down breathing of the seven children—easy and sweet. No sickness.
We lay down on our bed of straw. I stretched out my legs and arms. I’d never thought to thank God for space to sleep in, and yet since a child I’d hated being cramped. I liked to fling my arm out and not hit anyone with it. Even though I might put my back against Michael, I wanted room. I couldn’t bear sleeping crowded together in a wooden box surrounded by strangers.
When I’d watched the
Cushlamachree
sailing down the Bay, she’d seemed so wide and so high. Were those ships really only floating tombs? Coffin ships, Mulloy called them, carrying our people to graves in the cruel sea or to hostile land. No escape, then, no Amerikay. And yet the Mulloys survived the crossing and tens of thousands with them. A risk, a terrible risk. And now we’d the pratties and a good harvest. I couldn’t settle, thinking of Dennis and Josie, God rest them, Joseph, Hughie, the little girls . . . and Patrick Kelly.
“What do you think Mulloy meant by Patrick’s ‘a bit of bother’?”
“Sounds like jail,” Michael said. “But out now. We’ll hear from him one day. That’s Patrick’s way. There will be a letter.”
Máire didn’t come up to help with the harvest. Mam needed her, full of grief Mam was, with not even a wake to ease the pain of these deaths. Nor would she be able to visit Dennis’s and Josie’s graves in Bearna churchyard.
At noon, the harvesters made fires and produced pots to boil their potatoes right there in the field. They’d managed to hold on to the pots, through evictions or the quarter acre exile.
“One more day,” Michael told the men. “One more day if the weather holds.”
Which it did. By sunset the next day, Michael and his crew had harvested all the fields and had the sheaves tied up and ready for loading. Pleased with themselves, and rightly, the men sat together enjoying the last bit of the October sun. Michael got each one to tell his story. First they spoke only of the woes and injustices they’d suffered, but then they began to talk about their families and the before times in their own townlands. They conjured up other harvests, grand fairs, green hills, and clear lakes. A bit of joking, some give-and-take, men restored to themselves for a few moments—the harvest gathered and the potatoes whole.
“Here comes Billy Dubh,” Michael said, standing up. “I see the wagons. He’s even brought a troop of soldiers to guard the crops.”