Mending Horses (29 page)

“You mean—do you like doing—well—”

“Do you like digging canals and cellar holes?” She rolled up her sleeves and submerged a pile of dishes in the soapy water.

“It's money in me pocket, food on me table. I don't think about more than doing me job and collecting me wages.”

“Well, then,” she said, “It's the same for me: do my work, collect my wages.”

“It's never the same at all. What I'm doing—there's nothing—nothing personal about it.”

“And you think there is for me?” she asked. “What else is there for me to do when I can't bring in enough with sewing and laundry?”

“Something—anything,” Liam said. “You're clever. I see you reading books that I couldn't hardly make heads nor tails of. Clever with your hands, too—Christ.” He paced the room. “I mean at the needlework and such, not—not—” He closed his eyes and shook his head in his frustration at always putting everything exactly the wrong way. When he dared to look at her, her cheeks were pink, her lower lip twitching. It took him a moment to realize she was trying hard not to laugh at him. “All right, lass. I'm an
ee-jit
. Shall I be going now?”

“What do you want to do?”

Want? God, there were so many things he wanted. Wanted Nuala and Jimmy and Mick back, first of all. Wanted never to fret over every penny that came in and out. Wanted a place to live in that was dry and warm and clean. Wanted to have a full belly
every day and to have some money left over. Wanted to be looked up to instead of down on.

And right now, looking at Augusta's face, her amber eyes that managed to summon a spark even though the skin beneath them was smudged dark with weariness, her mouth that could still manage a smile in spite of all she'd seen and done. . . . Right now, God help him, what he wanted most was to stop wanting what he had absolutely no right to want.

“I want—” Liam began. “I wanted—” he corrected himself. “When they were here—Nuala and the lads—I wanted to give them a life that had more to it than working and eating and sleeping. Now it seems I've no right to be wanting anything.”

“I know,” Augusta said.

“Aye, that you do.” Maybe that was what kept him coming to her door: knowing that there was a hole in her heart that matched the one in his own. An impulse seized him, perhaps born of all this talk of wanting. He stepped closer to her, put a fingertip under her chin, tilted her face up, and kissed her lightly on the forehead.

“I'm no better than all this.” His shrug took in the tumbledown house around them, the slop-strewn streets outside, the boundaries of his world. “But you are, lass. And don't you be believing any different.” And then, because he didn't trust himself not to tell her any more of what he was wanting, he turned and left her there, her amber eyes wide with surprise and her lips trembling with unasked questions.

“Hear that?” Mr. Stocking slammed down the lid on one of the compartments in his wagon. The sound echoed off the walls of the wagon shed. He opened and closed two more bins with the same hollow clatter. “That, my friend, is the sound of success.”

“Empty?” Daniel asked.

The peddler nodded. “Almost all of 'em. I got maybe a dozen pieces of tin left. There's mostly notions and elixirs now, and I can sell 'em in the evenings out of my trunk.”

“No more selling after the show,” Daniel said. Mr. Stocking's smile broadened like that of a smug boy. Daniel grinned back, thinking of all the extra time he and Billy would gain for working with the ponies or practicing their tumbling.

For the peddler, Daniel hoped there might be time for afternoon napping. The added labor of practicing with the band and teaching new songs to Billy, performing with Phizzy, helping Mr. Chamberlain manage the show, and helping Daniel train Ivy and the ponies was wearing on him. Mr. Stocking's vests no longer strained to meet across his belly, and his broadfalls gapped at the waist. His face seemed a bit less round, his eyes a bit more shadowed. Although he had energy enough to fiddle and sing or confer with Mr. Chamberlain long into the evenings, any time he had a quiet moment to sit still, he'd nod off to sleep. Daniel and Billy took turns riding in the peddler's wagon as they traveled from town to town, so he could doze without tumbling off. Aye, a few empty hours in the fellow's day wouldn't come amiss.

“There you are, Jonny!” Mr. Chamberlain crossed from the hotel to the shed in long strides, briskly rubbing his hands together.

“What is it?” Mr. Stocking asked. “You're grinning like a fox who just found the chicken shed door ajar.”

“Saddle up, friend,” Mr. Chamberlain said.

“I got something to show you.” He jutted his chin toward Daniel. “You can come along, if you like.”

“Shall I fetch Billy?” Daniel asked.

“No need,” Mr. Chamberlain said. “Your friend's having a juggling lesson.”

“So what's this phenomenon we're going to see?” Mr. Stocking asked.

The conjurer patted the peddler on the back. “The future, my friend. The future.”

“There.” Mr. Chamberlain made a sweeping arm motion, as if the sight before them were something he'd conjured up rather than something that had likely been there for months.

A scar of broken earth and shattered rock stretched across the landscape, extending east and west as far as Daniel could see. A stream of men gouged the land with pickaxes and shovels, and hauled dirt and stone away from places that were too high or toward those that were too low.

A dozen years ago, Daniel's da had sweated away his days digging alongside scores of dust-caked men just like those down below. They'd laid the foundations for mills in Lowell, Cabotville, Indian Orchard, and Westfield, and dug the canals to hold the water to power them. They'd built row upon row of brick boardinghouses for the Yankee girls who'd worked those mills. But there'd been no brick tenements for the builders, nor any wooden ones either. The Irish had been left to cobble together their own shanties from warped boards and clinker bricks and other construction refuse, and God help them if a Yankee foreman chose not to turn a blind eye to their scavenging.

Daniel had no doubt that the men laboring below were Paddies like himself. There'd be no mills rising from their work, though, but a road of wood and iron. Somewhere there'd be
makeshift Paddy camps, far from town to avoid offending decent Yankee folk.

Mr. Stocking whistled. “Didn't know the railroad was building out here in West Stockbridge yet.” He and Daniel dismounted and dropped their horses' reins.

“You know who I was raising a glass with while you were hawking your scrap metal?” Mr. Chamberlain asked. “A fella by the name of Alexander Birnie, who's an engineer for the Western Rail Road. He wrote this up for me.” He drew a paper from his coat pocket. Flapping it open with a flourish, he laid it on a nearby boulder. The paper was a map showing Massachusetts and part of New York. Someone had written on it with a heavy black pencil: lines and X's and words that were nearly illegible to anyone except the person who'd written them.

“It's a map of our future.” Mr. Chamberlain pointed to a thick black line that squiggled from Springfield to Pittsfield, indicating the railroad's future path.

“Well, I'll be damned,” Mr. Stocking said. “Be a great way to transport your museum, won't it? You won't get any use out of it this year, though. I heard it's only finished as far as Springfield. They still got the Connecticut River to bridge.” He lowered his spectacles with one finger and peered into Mr. Chamberlain's face. “You want to catch a ride on one'a them cars, we'll have to go all the way to Springfield to do it. That's a good fifty, sixty miles from here. Besides, you don't know what sort'a accommodations you'd need for all your peripatetic paraphernalia, never mind how much it'll cost to haul.”

“It's not Springfield we're going to. It's here.” Mr. Chamberlain pointed to the town of Chester. There was a cluster of X's a fair distance from the center of town. X's were also clustered at several other places along the railroad route. “According to Birnie,” Mr. Chamberlain continued, “they've got work crews all the way from here to Springfield.” His eyes gleamed with an excitement that Daniel couldn't fathom.

Apparently Mr. Stocking couldn't, either. “You could'a told us that back at the hotel, 'stead of dragging us out to the hinterlands.”

Mr. Chamberlain made a tsking noise. “Don't you see the possibilities?” He gestured toward the work site. “Look at 'em. Hundreds of men right here, and Birnie says there's thousands more camped out in Chester and Middlefield.” He thumped Daniel on the chest. “Your people, boy. They're hauling 'em in by the boatload.”

Mr. Stocking chortled. “You think those fellas have money to spare for your circus?”

“Museum,” Mr. Chamberlain corrected indignantly. “Those fellas' wages are burning holes right through their pockets. What else have they got to spend 'em on?”

Mr. Stocking's eyes flickered toward Daniel. It wasn't hard for Daniel to guess what he was thinking. Liquor, that was what they'd spend their money on, had they any to spare. He thought about the rowdies in the pit who heckled Mr. Stocking and made lewd comments at Francesca, who'd called Mr. Sharp “darky” and “nigger,” the louts who taunted Mr. Lamb's animals until the teamsters had to throw them out of the menagerie tent. He shuddered at the idea of a pavilion full of such men.

“Birnie says they can't camp near the towns, so they have these shanty villages out in the middle of nowhere,” Mr. Chamberlain said. “Those camps ought'a be as good as a mill town for drumming up an audience. Better, 'cause there won't be any preachers railing against us.”

“Or any constabulary, should things get out of hand,” Mr. Stocking said.

“When has a constable ever been on our side? I'll bet we can fill that tent twice a day for a week if we follow that railroad line.”

“We've already got four weeks of shows booked from here to Vermont and back. You want to cancel all those venues and head east instead?” Mr. Stocking shook his head. “Our advance man'll be apoplectic, trying to redo it all.”

“No, no. We'll tack some more shows onto the end.” Mr. Chamberlain traced the route they were meant to travel for the next month: a loop that ran north into Vermont, then west into New York, then southeasterly back into Massachusetts. “We'll
keep on same as we planned until we hit Pittsfield.” His finger moved from Pittsfield eastward along the railroad line. “We'll add one more week along the railroad and finish with a coupl'a days in Northampton or Springfield. That'll give us another ten days of showing, and we'll wind up in a good-sized town to boot.”

“It'll be mid-November by then,” Mr. Stocking said. “Might be a bit cold for folks to sit in a pavilion to watch a show.”

Mr. Chamberlain shrugged as he folded his map and returned it to his pocket. “If the weather gets bad, we'll cancel.” He gave Mr. Stocking a friendly punch in the shoulder. “Come on, Jonny, where's your sense of adventure?” He slapped Daniel on the back. “You can be your Irish self, boy. Those Paddies hear we got a couple of their own on display, and we won't be able to beat 'em off with a stick.” Before Daniel could respond, the conjurer collected his horse's reins and put one shiny black boot in the stirrup. “You think on it, Jonny,” he said, swinging up into his saddle. “There's got to be two, three hundred right there in front of us, and hundreds more farther down the line. Not bad at two to four bits a head.” He put his heels to his horse and cantered off toward the hotel.

“I don't know, Dan'l,” Mr. Stocking said, shaking his head. “You get that many workingmen in one place with no civilizing influence around 'em and a little liquor in their bellies, there's no telling what could happen.”