Galway Bay (37 page)

“You mean money?” she asked.

“We do, Miss Lynch,” Máire said. Very direct.

She looked beyond us at the Bay. “But won’t you find it hard to leave?”

We didn’t bother to answer.

“We may be going, too, you know,” she said. “The new laws. Nicholas has had offers. . . .” She stopped. Ná habair tada, for her, too. “I have very little money of my own. A token, maybe? I could give you a book or a comb. . . .”

“We’re walking to Dublin, Miss Lynch,” I said. “Then we’re taking a steamer to Liverpool and the ship across the ocean from there. We’re only taking what we can carry. We have eight children with us.”

“Our hands will be too full for books,” said Máire.

“On our way here from Dublin, the roads were clogged with people leaving,” Miss Lynch said. “Not paupers, oh no, but families with wagonloads of furniture and trunks. The big farmers are going, shopkeepers, lawyers, doctors . . . The joke in London is that pretty soon it’ll be harder to find a Celt on the banks of the Shannon than a red Indian on the banks of the Hudson. Oh, they think themselves great wits in London!”

Máire and I kept our eyes down.

“Are you sure you’ll even get a ship in Liverpool with all that are going?” she asked.

“We need to look over the ships, find an American one. Money will make the difference. Please, Miss Lynch.”

She still stared at the Bay.

“I’m sure Our Lord will bless your generosity,” I said.

“Our Lady, too,” Máire said.

“I’d like to bring the memory of your goodness with me,” I said. “I’d like to be able to tell our children so they can tell their children that there was kindness in Ireland, that our landlord cared about us, that our teacher had compassion for us.”

“All right,” Miss Lynch said. “Yes, I will. You know, the only thing they really fear in London is that the Irish in America will pass on to their children a hatred for the British.”

Máire and I said nothing.

I did want to take good memories of her with me to erase the anger I felt toward the Lynches. Be kind, Miss Lynch, please.

“How much?” she asked.

“How much?” I said.

“How much do you want?” No fluttering tone now, a merchant’s daughter after all. A member of a merchant tribe, making us name a sum.

I wanted to say, Keep your money. How can I put a price on what you meant to me and I to you?

“Ten pounds,” Máire said.

“Ten pounds! A fortune!” Miss Lynch took a step back into the house. “Oh dear,” she said, “I would never have that much in cash! Never!” Then, “Three pounds?”

“Five,” Máire said.

Miss Lynch nodded and went inside.

“Oh, Máire, you were wonderful!”

“Shh . . . Act disappointed,” Máire said.

But when Miss Lynch came back with the money I showed my gratitude.

“Thank you, Miss Lynch, thank you. This means so much, you’ll never know. May God bless you.”

Máire said, “Good-bye, Miss Lynch.”

“Safe journey, girls,” she said, then turned, walked through the door, and shut it behind her.

“She’s sad, Máire.”

“Maybe.”

“Well, she was very generous.”

“She knows,” Máire said. “Knows a great crime has been committed, but as long as the victims are dead or gone, she’ll be able to forget. Now she can say, ‘I helped. Remember the Keeley girls? I gave them five pounds! A fortune!’ So, sixty pounds between us.”

“Good,” I said. “Watch—we’ll convince Da to come along.”

“This fellow Patrick Kelly. Might he be a match for me?” Máire asked.

I laughed and told her that Michael had told me once that the only woman Patrick loved was the dark Rosaleen—Ireland herself.

“Is he any way good-looking?” Máire asked.

“He’s Michael’s brother, isn’t he? Handsome enough, but he’s not easygoing like Michael. A coiled-up kind of fellow, doesn’t have Michael’s blue eyes, his smile . . .”

That evening, I walked out to meet Michael for a quiet word before he came home to the children. We couldn’t talk about going to Amerikay in front of them. Ná habair tada, say nothing. Billy Dubh, the gombeen man, was sidling through the townlands seeking whom he could devour. The new laws that made selling land easier created an opportunity for Billy Dubh. A word to the wise to one of the insurance companies or banks eager to buy up bankrupt estates meant a nice fee for him. The vultures circled, and the gombeen man was waving them down.

But we’re escaping. Thank God. They won’t pick our bones.

Now Michael climbed the hill to me—something of his old high stride back, his black hair thick again. Hard to see those lines around his blue eyes. Twenty-seven’s not old. He’ll grow young again in Amerikay, I thought as we walked through the gap between the stone walls he and Patrick had repaired that first spring.

“Mrs. Carrigan said she’d give me two shillings extra tomorrow—my last day.”

“Look, Michael, our turnips and cabbages are coming up. The Dwyers and the Tierneys and the Widow Dolan, all the neighbors, will be glad of them through the winter.”

“Leaving them something, at least.” He glanced up at the ridges of dead potatoes and shook his head.

“Come into Champion’s shed,” I said. “We can talk inside.”

“I can’t, Honora,” he said. “Too many memories of Champion and the foals born there, the dreams Owen and I had. And the fields . . . Our life’s blood put into them, and now . . .”

“Now what?”

“Gone. What’s that Mangan piece? I learned it in the hedge school from Master Murphy:

Solomon! where is thy throne?

It is gone in the wind; Babylon!

Where is thy might?

It is gone in the wind.

“Master Murphy told us Mangan was talking about Ireland, about the great royal enclosures—Tara—gone in the wind. And now all our efforts gone in the wind.”

“Irish poets are certainly great ones for grief. But we won’t mourn now. We’ll wait until we get to Amerikay, Michael. Dig up the pipes. In Chicago you’ll play a long lament, almost a pleasure to cry when your stomach’s full and there’s work.”

Michael nodded and nearly smiled. “True enough,” he said.

“Then you’ll strike up a dance tune. Wait until our Chicago neighbors hear a real Galway piper. I’ll be carrying Granny’s stories in my head. We’ll have great gatherings altogether and soften up that hard old place.”

“I’ll play marches for the Irish Brigade.”

“You will. Faugh-a-Ballagh!” I said.

“All right, Honora,” he said. “I know you’re trying to make me look forward, not back. I’ll try. And Patrick will be there. When do you think he’ll get the letter?”

“Sister Mary Agnes posted it last Thursday. She addressed the outer envelope to the pastor and put our letter inside. It should be safe enough. I wrote that we’d arrive in Chicago by September and would ask at Saint Patrick’s Church for news of him.”

He nodded.

“We’re alive, Michael. You’ve kept us alive,” I said to him. “
You
. You did it.”

He shrugged.

“And now, I wonder, Michael Joseph Kelly, if you’d care to follow me. The children are occupied and we’ll be well settled in Chicago in nine months, so . . .”

“So?”

I led Michael into the shed. When he saw the bed of grass and weeds in the center, surrounded by yellow whin bushes, purple fuchsia, honeysuckle, and buttercups, he smiled at me. I loosened my hair and let it fall around me and stepped close to him.

“I washed it this morning,” I said.

“In the stream near Enda’s well?” he said, and kissed me on the top of my head. “A stór.”

I took his face in my hands. “A ghrá, we will have a son called Michael Joseph Kelly. He’ll be born in Chicago, but conceived here at Knocnacuradh—the Hill of the Champions. Lie down,” I said, and Michael eased himself onto the bed. I held up a handful of grass to him. “From the long meadow.”

Michael inhaled its scent. “It smells sweet,” he said. “Our children never ate grass, Honora. We always fed them something. They never ate grass.”

“They didn’t. Cabbage leaves and turnip tops, snowdrops and sorrel, but never grass.”

“I’ve seen the mouths of children stained green in Galway City.”

“And you gave them a few pence, I hope.”

“I did.”

“You’re an honorable man. Come here to me, my hero from the sea. We’re alive.”

I leaned down and kissed him, then lay down beside him on the grass. He opened his arms to me. We made love in the small close space that still smelled of horses and hay, and I thanked God for my husband, Michael Joseph Kelly.

As we walked to the cottage, he said, “We made something out of nothing at Knocnacuradh.”

“We did, Michael.”

“It’s not the end, Honora. Patrick said in his letter that our people don’t forget their country or the ones left behind.”

“How could they?” I said. “They’re Irish.”

“Patrick remembered us.”

“He did, surely,” I said. We stood looking down at the Bay.

“We’ll have the pipes,” he said.

“We will.”

“I can teach Jamesy the tunes my father taught me.”

“You can.”

“You tell them your granny’s stories.”

“Fadó,” I said. A new story. “You and Patrick could find a piece of land to farm.”

“He’ll never settle. D’Arcy McGee told me Patrick travels one end of America to the other for the Cause. Once he was the one who longed for nothing so much as his own green fields while I yearned to wander.”

We stood watching the sun go down on Galway Bay.

“I wonder where you’d be, Michael, if you hadn’t gone swimming in the Bay that summer morning,” I said.

He put his arm around me. “The fortunate day.”

I reached into the band of my skirt and took out the stone he’d given me three years before, held it out to him on my palm—green and pink flecks of silver caught the last of the light.

He touched it.

“A talisman,” I said.

“A piece of Ireland to bring with us,” he said.

Jamesy came bursting out the cottage door.

“Mam, Paddy’s opened up the sack of meal.”

I turned to Michael. “That’s food for the journey.” I called up to Jamesy, “I’m coming,” then said to Michael, “We’ll bring living, breathing bits of Ireland with us, and they’re hungry.”

I started up to the cottage, but he stood still.

“Are you going to dig up the pipes?”

“In the morning,” he said. “I’m a bit tired.”

And he was asleep before the children that night.

I looked at my sleeping husband. We’ll make another Knocnacuradh, I promised him. You will be happier once we’re on our way. Michael, aren’t you the fellow rode off to who knows where on his big red horse?

A chance to start again—an adventure—Faugh-a-Ballagh!

The next morning, I shook Michael awake at dawn. He usually gets up at first light. Not like him to sleep on.

“Michael, wake up, a stór. Can’t be late on your last day at the forge.”

He opened his eyes, then closed them.

“If I knew making love would wear you out like this, I’d have thought twice,” I said.

He didn’t answer.

“Michael. . . . Michael! Wake up!” I touched his forehead—hot. “Paddy! . . . Paddy!”

“What is it, Mam?” Paddy said.

“Paddy, go get some water for Da—cold water from the stream.”

Paddy came over, looking down on Michael.

“Hurry, Paddy, run.”

Paddy grabbed a tin can left from the soup kitchen and went.

Now Jamesy woke up. “What is it, Mam?”

“Go back to sleep.”

But he sat up. He watched me put my hand on Michael’s forehead.

“Is Da sick, Mam?”

“I’m fine, Jamesy,” Michael said. “Go back to sleep.” Then to me he said, “Take me to the shed, Honora. Now.”

“I won’t. You’ve just a touch of something.”

Paddy ran in with the water. I held it up to Michael’s lips and he drank a bit, then coughed . . . and couldn’t stop coughing.

“Da! What is it?” Paddy said.

“Stay back, Paddy,” Michael said. “Da’s not feeling great. I’ll have a lie-down in the shed. Now, Honora.”

“Michael, I’ll send the children to my mother’s. You’re not—”

“Now, Honora.”

Oh, dear God, please, not this, please!

“You must, Honora, you must. Remember John Joe Foley—three days in the shed and he recovered.”

Michael started to stand up as if he would go by himself.

“Wait, Michael, we’ll help you.”

Paddy and I held him up between us and with slow, uneven steps walked into the shed, then eased him down on the bed of grass where we’d made love only yesterday. Yesterday?

“Paddy, take the others down to Bearna and send Aunt Máire up to me.”

“Go, Honora,” Michael said. “Go with them.”

“I’m not leaving.”

“Give me water and let me sleep. Come back tomorrow.”

“I’m not leaving. Paddy, go. You carry Stephen. Go. Now.”

“Mam, I don’t want to leave Da either!”

“You heard your mother, Paddy.” Michael’s voice cracked as he spoke, but Paddy obeyed him.

A few moments later, they were standing at the door of the shed. Paddy held Stephen. Jamesy and Bridget were crying.

“Da? . . . Da! . . . Da!” they said through their sobbing.

“Go on! Da needs to sleep. Go to Aunt Máire,” I said.

I sat there with Michael, holding the wet edge of my skirt on his forehead while he slept. Such ragged breathing and a bad odor when he exhaled.

Then Máire stood at the door.

“Come out of there, Honora.”

“I won’t.”

“Come out. Think of your children.”

“Go away, Máire.”

Michael must’ve heard, because he spoke, his voice weaker now. “Go, a stór. Go, my love, please.”

“I won’t.” I dipped my skirt into the water and put it on his burning forehead. Was there a yellow color to his skin? I couldn’t tell in the dim light of the shed. Yellow fever kills quicker than the black. Not yellow, please, or cholera. Cholera in Galway City. If it’s cholera . . .

“I’m hungry,” he said.

“Good, Michael. That’s good.”

“A prattie mashed with some onions would do me grand,” he whispered.

“Máire will go. There are onions growing at the side of the marshy field,” I called out to her.