In a moment everything was gone. The shelves were bare, and outside the people tore loaves of bread into chunks, fighting over them, trampling each other.
Celia and I backed up against the wall. Patch buried his head in my skirt. And even Sean Red stood there, hands dangling, his eyes wide.
I rubbed my fingers over Patch’s back, feeling the bones, tiny as Biddy the hen’s. “Don’t be afraid,” I whispered, trying not to let him feel my hands shake.
The police came, three of them with clubs and whistles. But there was no one to arrest. They had disappeared up the street and into the alleys.
I turned back to Mr. Brennan. “Our package, please.” I didn’t dare hold out my hand, but I asked in a determined voice, as if I received a package from Brooklyn, New York, America, every day.
But Mr. Brennan shook his head.
“You said it was ours.” What would happen if I reached across the counter, and grabbed it, and ran?
At last he took the box down. I tried to see by the way he handled it … was it heavy enough to be holding diamonds? They could be small ones, tiny ones. I began to smile.
But he showed us the bits of colored paper. “Not enough stamps,” he said. “There’s money due on this.”
I shook my head. “I don’t understand.”
Celia moved forward. “It is for the Ryans,” she said. “For Granda and Nory and me. It’s from Maggie. You know that.”
He raised one shoulder just the slightest bit. “You’ll have to pay what’s owing.”
I shook my head. “We don’t have coins; we have no money.”
And as we said it, he slid the package back across the counter. I reached out and touched it, and the paper slid away under my fingers, the paper and the bits of colored pictures. I almost caught it by the string, but then, in the blink of an eye, it was up on the shelf.
“That is not right.” My voice was quivering and my chin unsteady. How cruel he was. Worse than Devlin. Worse than the English. “That’s ours,” I said. “Ours from Maggie.”
And then I saw his eyes, and I knew he was sorry for us.
“I will hold it for you,” he said, leaning toward us. “I will keep it here on the shelf. As soon as you get some money …”
“It will be forever,” I said.
“I will keep it here for you forever, then,” he said.
We stood looking up at the package, Celia, Sean Red, Patch, and I. Celia was crying. I tried to say something to make her smile. “Tear bag,” I said, but I could hardly get the words out.
“What is inside?” Patch was asking. “Is it something to eat?”
Someone else came into the post office, and Mr. Brennan made motions with his hands, telling us to go.
We walked home slowly. Slowly because I was still trying to think of a way to get the package. Slowly because it had started to rain, a cold fall rain, and the road had turned to mud. Slowly because we were so hungry.
CHAPTER
14
The next day was Sunday. We walked halfway to Ballilee to the church for Mass. It took longer than usual. Now that we had the hunger, we moved slowly. On the altar, Father Harte moved slowly too. When he turned toward us, holding out his arms for the Kyrie, his hands trembled; his face was pale and thin.
We prayed for someone to help, prayed for the English to give up the rents this year, and then we came home. We made ourselves a meal of one poor hen. She was old and tough but we ate every shred of meat and sucked on the bones until they fell apart in our mouths. We made sure Patch had the softest whitest bits we could find. We didn’t dare look at Biddy and the second sister, who scratched around on the floor beside us.
“Do you think they know?” Celia asked.
“I don’t even care.” It was the first time my stomach had been full since the potatoes had failed.
But Granda said, “We can’t do this again.” He looked almost desperate. “We have lost an egg a day that would have kept us alive. We must keep the other two hens carefully, and find seed for them somehow.”
Celia and I nodded, ashamed because we hadn’t even felt sorry for the sister we had just eaten. We had been sorry only that she hadn’t had more meat on her bones.
Granda cleared his throat, looking up the way he always did. “They are building a road around Maidin Bay.”
“A road?” I sucked on the end of a bone, licking my fingers.
“For what reason?” Celia said.
Granda raised a shoulder in the air. “For no reason. The English will have us build roads that go nowhere. They will give us money but in the end they want nothing to be better.”
“We are going to build a road?” How could I ever build a road? I wondered.
“Not you,” Granda said. “Of course not you. How could you break up rocks and carry them?”
“Oh,” I said, relieved.
“Me,” said Granda.
Celia rolled her eyes at me.
“I will start tomorrow morning,” Granda said.
“No.” I swallowed a piece of bone, feeling the sharp edges in my throat.
Granda smoothed down his beard. “It is the only way.”
Celia bit her lips. They were chapped, so dry they were cracked and bleeding. I’d ask Anna what to do about it. She was trying to put every one of her cures into my head. A bit of boiled fish for sores. Garlic for sore throat. Egg white for … I couldn’t remember what. Even warm cow dung for burns. Fuafar.
Granda started again. “The rent will be due again soon.”
I closed my eyes. The rain was so much colder now and the damp seeped through our clothes. We hadn’t paid the last of the old rent, and soon the new one would be on us.
I pictured Da coming along the road, his pack on his shoulders, and felt a pain in my chest. He should have been here by now.
Suppose something had happened to him? How would we know?
“They will give us a little money.” Granda spread his hands wide. “And a meal at the end of the day.”
“The work is too hard for you,” Celia said. She scooped up the bones and put them into the pot for a broth.
Granda leaned forward. “The money will help feed the three of you. It will buy milk or a piece of salmon if there’s any to be had in Ballilee. You won’t have to worry about me.”
Not worry? Granda chopping up rocks, laying them out on a road no one needed?
Celia stood up. She licked one finger and worked at a stain on her skirt.
“Tell Granda he can’t do this,” I said, but Celia was looking at her feet. “I wish I had shoes,” she whispered.
“Celia. What about Granda?”
“I will give them a wash,” she said. “That’s the best I can do.”
I was furious. “Will you pay attention to me!”
“I’m off to see Lord Cunningham,” she said. “I’ll ask for a job in the kitchen. I’m a good cook. I wish I had thought of it sooner.”
“You are a fuafar cook. And that’s a terrible …” I began to say “idea.” But it wasn’t a terrible idea. It was the best idea any of us had had in a long time. I thought of Maggie on the cliff the day she left. Celia is loyal and true.
Celia went to the shelf for her piece of the comb. Broken in half, it hardly smoothed her hair at all. “How do I look?” she asked.
“Like a goat. A little nanny goat.” I took the comb from her and gently ran it through her hair, teasing out the knots.
Celia took a quick look at the closed door. None of us had ever been on the road after dark. We knew the sídhe were out there. She shook herself. “You are not to move from your place at the hearth, Granda. You will stay here, a stór, and I will cook up a mess of food at Cunningham’s, and bring potatoes in buttermilk for you and a sour little limpet for my sour little sister.”
I raised my hand to my mouth. “I forgot them. Here we are starving and the limpets are swimming around in their pail behind the stone wall outside. They must think they’re arrived in a strange wee ocean.”
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Celia and Granda looked at each other, wondering, I guessed, if I had lost my mind.
“The ones I left there.” I waved my hand. “I’ll get them.”
I’d have to go out in the dark too.
“A delicious treat,” I whispered to give myself courage.
I said it to Celia’s back. She stood with both feet in the bowl on the floor, sloshing them up and down, looking at her toes. “I’ll never get the poor things clean,” she said, “not unless I spend a month in this spot.” She shook one foot, spraying dirty water around. “The sídhe will hate this water.” She tried to smile. She stood at the door for a moment, looking back at us. I knew she was afraid too.
I nodded at her to show I thought she was brave, and then she was gone.
“I will go for the limpets,” I said. I didn’t want Granda to know I was just as afraid as Celia. And I didn’t even have that far to go. Across the field and halfway to Anna’s house. I went to the doorway. There was no moon tonight and the fields were dark. I could see a tallow light at Mallons’ house, but none in Anna’s window. I shivered.
“I will go to the road tomorrow even so,” Granda said as if he were arguing with me. “My hands are still strong, and my back. You will see. I will bring money home and we will last, the four of us, until your da comes home.”
I didn’t answer him. I’d wait until Celia came home. The two of us would make sure he did no such thing.
I stepped from the doorway into the dark world. For all I knew ghostly gray men were out there waiting for me. I had heard they made themselves into wisps of fog, ugly and unfriendly to humans. Or maybe I’d see a bean sídhe with her hair flowing, moaning because someone was going to die.
Something moved in the field, and I began to sing Granda’s old war song for courage.
I thought of Patch and pretended I was holding his warm little hand. I imagined we were out to gather stones for his wall, that the sliver of moon was a bit of the sun, and I started to run. Where was that pail? I went the length of the wall, searching, so hungry my mouth was watering for those limpets.
Who would have stolen them?
I almost fell over the pail on its side, water spilled, the limpets hard little lumps.
A voice from so long ago. “You never think. You never finish what you start.”
“Oh, Celia, a stór, you are right,” I said, scooping up the mess that no one could eat.
CHAPTER
15
Celia came back that dark night and slid onto the straw of our bed without stopping to kneel for her prayers. She didn’t say a word to me but twisted and turned, pulling our covers one way and then another. I thought we’d never get to sleep.
Days later she told me Cunningham had laughed at her feet without shoes, and the stain on her dress. “You won’t be here long enough to work,” he had said. “You’ll be out of your house and onto the road because you cannot last, and I will see sheep grazing where your house had been.”
I knew I’d never forget the terrible look in her eyes. “Celia,” I said. “Do you know what Maggie said about you?”
She shook her head.
I put my hand on her thin shoulder. “She said you are loyal and true. And that is what I say. No one could ever ask for more.”
She blinked, trying not to let the tears fall. “I always worried,” she said. “Worried when it rained that the thatch would leak, worried when the sun was hot that the thatch would burn.” She brushed the back of her hand over her face. “But if we live through this, I’ll never worry about things like that again.”
“You might even sing,” I said, trying to change what I saw in her eyes.
“A rusty gate, I am.” And then she patted my hand on her shoulder. “I saw the dog,” she said slowly. “The dog you gave to Anna. She’s penned up in a cage with the other hunting dogs.”
“Anna loves Maeve!” Before I could say anything else, Granda came through the door to tell us the road people had sent him away too. It was only Sean Red who would be working on the road, Sean because he was tall and looked older than he was.
Liam and Michael were leaving Maidin Bay to walk to the port of Galway. They’d leave without a penny between them, with only the clothes on their backs. “We must have a ship to fish,” Michael had told Granda. “Or a ship to sail. We will go wherever it takes us. Our shoulders are broad enough to find work on the way.”
Again we walked to the crossroads. Mrs. Mallon’s face, always red, was blotched and swollen. This time Patch and I were the only Ryans going with them. Granda had started a cough and Celia stayed with him to give him some of the cure I had made with Anna’s garlic. Poor Sean was off on the road, breaking up huge chunks of rock.
We waved at the brothers until they turned the corner; then Devlin came along on his horse.
“We have taken down the shed,” old Granny Mallon told him. “You will see, if you look, that it is gone.”
“You have ruined the property?” he said. “Lord Cunningham’s property, Lord Cunningham’s shed?”
“What?” Old Granny looked dazed.
Mrs. Mallon pulled her away as we looked up at him. How could he be so cruel? We backed up against the edge of the road as he rode past us, the horse’s hooves spewing mud and clay.
We walked slowly. Mrs. Mallon weaved back and forth on the path, trying to hold old Granny up. She looked as old as Granny herself, with sunken cheeks and loose gray flesh.
And Patch couldn’t keep up either. His arms were like sticks and his legs white and bowed where they hung out of his skirt. “Come, Patcheen,” I said. “We have to go home.”
Instead of hurrying, he sank down on the ground and put his arms out to me.
People walked around him. That was another thing, the people. Where had they come from? They wandered along the roads in twos and threes. They were mostly women carrying babies. Little children held on to their skirts.
It was such an effort to walk to Patch, to put my arms around him and pick him up. And when I did, there was nothing to him. All we’d been eating were the few fish we’d managed to poach from Cunningham’s stream and once in a while a wild onion or an old potato. I sank down next to Patch on the wet ground and watched the people. Some of them had circles of green around their mouths.
I wondered what it was.
I wondered how I could get some.
And then I knew. “They are eating grass,” I told Patch.
“Me,” he said. “I will have grass.”
I stood up again and looked at the sea grass that bent itself over the rocky road. I pulled a piece up and put it in my mouth. “Sharp enough to cut your tongue,” I told Patch. I pulled another piece off for him. “Be careful.”
He leaned against a rock, and I leaned back with him. We lay there, sucking on the blades of grass. Clouds rushed against the blue of the sky, changing shapes as we looked. “There,” I said. “That looks like the cat Mallons had once.”
Patch looked up too. “Yes—Lizzie.”
The Lizzie shape turned into a pig. Muc. Muc hadn’t had anything to eat except for the grass around the house. She looked thinner every day. Don’t think about that, I told myself.
“I wonder if these same clouds get to Brooklyn.” I pictured Maggie looking up, seeing the cat in the clouds, and Muc, and maybe even me.
Maggie.
Brooklyn. Horses clopping. Milk in cans. No one hungry.
Liam could build a shed for himself if he got there, and it would be his own.
Across the fields was Anna’s house. Suddenly I realized there was no smoke coming from the roof. I held my face up to feel the wind. The smoke should have been drifting toward me. I pulled myself up and waited until a bit of dizziness passed.
Next to me, Patch was asleep now, his thumb in his mouth.
“Stay then, and rest,” I whispered. “I will come back for you.”
The walk across the field seemed much longer than usual. I stumbled against the potato plants, dry now, stif
f, crumbling underneath me. Then I was at Anna’s door. Her cow was nowhere in sight; neither was her pig. “Anna,” I called, feeling my lips crack. They had been as sore as Celia’s for days now. I ducked inside to see Anna lying in her straw bed, stiff and unmoving.
For a moment I felt as if I couldn’t breathe; then she turned toward me. “Are you all right?” I asked.
“An old woman can lie in her bed if she wishes,” she said. “And there’s milk. I saved it for you.”
My mouth watered. “I didn’t come for milk.” I wanted it so much I felt weak.
“I’ve had so much milk today,” Anna said, “I couldn’t drink another drop.”
“Well then, I will,” I said. “And if you don’t mind, I’ll take a wee drop for Patch.”
I went to the pail in the corner. I was too weak to lift it and pour some into a cup, and there wasn’t that much in the pail anyway. I bent over and tipped until I felt the warmth of it on my tongue. I had to make myself stop. Patch was so hungry on the road, and Anna …
“Did you really have enough to drink?” I asked.
Her eyes were closed but I could see her nod.
“Where is your cow?” I said next, still tasting the milk.
“I sent her away this day.”
I went closer. “Sent your cow away? What do you mean? Sold her?”
“Gave …”
“Gave her to …” I repeated, and then I knew. “Devlin?”
She made a small sound. “I cured his stomachache with a blackberry root, but he forgot that.”
I leaned closer. “Devlin took her for the rent?” I swallowed. All the milk would be gone now. What would Anna eat? “And the pig? Did he take the pig?”
She didn’t answer. She turned again, the straw settling under her. I stood there, heart pounding, remembering the coin. It would have paid the rent.
I took a wooden cup and poured a mouthful into it. I knelt by her bed with it until she turned her head and drank. “You are a good girl,” she said.