Galway Bay (36 page)

“Not now, Paddy,” Michael said. “Time to go to sleep.”

And dream.

A week later, Michael came home very late. “Are the children asleep? Sound asleep?”

“They are,” I said.

He pulled me close to the fire and then down onto the ground. He whispered, “I met a man today knows Patrick, in Amerikay. This fellow, Thomas D’Arcy McGee, edits a newspaper in Boston. He’s come to Galway with another fellow called Terence MacManus to help organize the uprising.”

“And he’s actually seen Patrick?”

“Better than that. He brought a letter.” Michael waved a folded piece of paper at me. “Patrick’s in Chicago.”

Our American letter at last, and I could see there was something pinned to the corner.

“D’Arcy McGee said Patrick’s still wanted and can’t risk the mail, but when he heard McGee was coming to Galway . . .”

“Michael, I’m so glad. He’s alive.”

“Here, Honora—” Michael passed me a piece of paper. “A bank draft for twenty-five pounds.”

I looked at the document—“Pay to Michael Kelly.” Any bank.

“Dear God, a fortune! Is it safe to take it to the bank?”

“Mrs. Carrigan, the agent at Bianconi’s, will change it for me. Honora, we have the rent for certain.”

“The rent?” I said. “But, Michael, now we have enough for our fares, and for Mam and Da’s, too. Máire has money. She wants to go now. So many dying still, Michael—the O’Driscolls and the Connellys out at Tonnybrocky, and the Manions in Minclone . . . What good if we survive and our neighbors don’t? Thank God. Amerikay . . . thank you, Patrick.”

Michael was shaking his head. “We can’t desert our people, Honora. Patrick sent the money so we’d be able to
stay
. He says: ‘We need you in Galway, Michael. A trusted man on the scene.’”

“On the scene?” I repeated.

“The uprising. McGee’s off to meet with the Molly Maguires in Sligo, and—”

“But, Michael, we’ll never have this much money at once again—enough to get to Chicago.” Arguing my case, all my resolutions gone—Amerikay.

“Patrick says Chicago’s no place for women and children. He writes, ‘We’re fighting so Irish people can live in Ireland and not be driven out of their homes.’ There are plans for tenants like us to buy our land, Honora. And we have the lease. If only Owen had waited.”

“Let me see the letter.”

First, an apology for not finding a way to get money to us sooner.

I didn’t learn about the Great Starvation until last year.

Didn’t learn about it? Where had he been? Ah, here:

I wandered deep into the wilds of Amerikay, in a place I have no words to describe. After a year I came to Chicago, a rough place where Irishmen were digging a great canal. Hard, dangerous work that killed many a man. But hardship made the fellows who survived tough and unafraid—a new breed of Irishmen who haven’t forgotten their homeland and are ready to right the wrongs committed against her.

I looked up at Michael.

He took the letter and repeated Patrick’s words: “A new breed of Irishman—
that’s
the army he’s recruiting.”

“He doesn’t say that.”

“How could he? But McGee told me. And I’m to prepare the way in Galway, a trusted man for leaders like D’Arcy McGee to contact, and then when the Irish Brigade lands I’ll have men ready to meet them.”

“Michael, most have barely recovered from the starving, and so many are sick. There’s fever everywhere. . . .”

But Michael wasn’t listening. “D’Arcy McGee says the Irishmen in the British army gather to hear Smith O’Brien and cheer him when he speaks.”

In his mind, Michael was riding with the Irish Brigade, Patrick on one side, Paddy and Jamesy on the other, banners flying, St. Grellan’s crozier held high. Faugh-a-Ballagh! Clear the Way! Kellys Abu!

I said no more.

The fine weather of June became days and days of rain through all of July, keeping the children inside—a good chance to start them studying. The schoolmaster who’d taught my brothers had died. The starvation had destroyed the last of the old hedge schools everywhere, and Miss Lynch, afraid of disease, would never hold classes in the Big House again. But I could teach my sons, strong enough now to concentrate, even though with the last of our pratties gone we were eating meal again. But we’d enough, and soon the early potatoes would be ready and the main crop was growing well.

Using the
Vindicator
as a text, the boys learned to read. Smith O’Brien kept the news interesting. Paddy and Jamesy pounced on every new word they recognized in the newspaper columns. Paddy had filled out into a big eight-year-old, and though Jamesy, six in three months, was slight, his round baby face had come back. They connected their da and the mysterious uncle Patrick with the stories in the newspaper of the growing rebellion and shouted, “Faugh-a- Ballagh!” to each other.

Michael had found pieces of slate for the boys and gave one to Bridget. Paddy and Jamesy drew their letters on it in Irish and English with the edge of a charred stick, while Bridget made jagged lines and asked me, “What does it say, Mam? What does it say?”

Bridget looks more and more like Máire, only with Michael’s eyes. Three now, with an old head on her, I thought, and a little mother to Stephen.

Another drizzly morning. An awful July. Stephen pulled at Bridget’s slate. “Play, Bridget, play!”

“Now, Stephen, let her be. Come to Mam, a rún.” I made a sling for him with my skirt and rocked him back and forth while I sang Mam’s song to him: “
Siúil, siúil, siúil a rún 
. . .” Stephen smiled up at me. Poor fellow—a hard old time of it you’ve had. A year and three months, not a baby anymore. We hardly noticed you growing. And where’d you get that red hair?

“Oh, Mam,” Paddy said. “I smell Stephen.”

“Ugh,” Jamesy said.

I lifted him and checked his diaper—a piece of meal sack. Nothing. The smell came from outside, through the open door. Could the stench of the auxiliary fever hospital reach all the way up here?

“Bridget, take Stephen.” I walked over to the window. Fog covered the Bay. Fog.

“It’s not,” I said. “Not, not, not!” I heard my voice going higher and higher until I was screaming, “Not! Not! Not!”

“Mam? . . . Mam! What’s the matter?” cried Jamesy.

Paddy knew. He took the slate he held and slammed it to the floor. “The pratties,” he said.

I wouldn’t go up to the ridges until Michael came home from the forge.

“Ruin on every hillside, all the way to Galway City,” he said. “Men sitting on the stone walls, heads down, doing nothing . . . not even trying to dig.”

We walked up to the beds—all blasted, stalks bent and rotten, and that smell, wrapping itself around us, choking us in the same way the fungus had strangled the plants.

“Thank God you’re working, Michael. And thank God for our American letter. Life and death now.”

He didn’t answer, but walked away, climbing high up to the topmost ridge. He stood there a long time and then came down to me.

“How much, Honora? How much do you have saved?”

“With Patrick’s money—thirty-five pounds,” I said.

“Will it be enough for an American ship?”

“Michael . . . do you mean it?”

He nodded.

“Mam and Da will come. And Máire. She can sell that jewelry.”

“We’ll write to this church in Chicago called Saint Patrick’s. McGee said the priests there know all the Irish. They’ll pass the word, get to Patrick.”

“Yes. Yes. Sister Mary Agnes will send it for us. But, Michael,” I had to ask him, “what about the uprising?”

“There’ll be no uprising. The blight’s beaten us. A worse enemy than the British army ever could be. People know what’s coming. Starvation. I dread to think of the winter. Martial law and no aid from the government for the rebel Irish, you can be sure of that. I couldn’t ask you to endure that again, Honora, I have to decide what’s best for my family. Patrick will understand. He’ll help us when we arrive. We only have to get there.”

“But food for the journey?”

“There’s meal and corn in Galway City.”

“The price will go up now, Michael, with the failure—they won’t wait to raise it.”

“I’ll get it. Somehow, I’ll get it.”

“The soldiers will be on alert. They’re watching and they might be watching
you
!”

“I’ll be careful.”

“I’ll ask the Lynches. I’ll beg them, I’ll do anything.”

“Beggars,” he said. “They’ve made us beggars. The West awake? What a fool I am.”

“No, Michael! You’ve kept us alive so we can escape, we can go! Amerikay! Say it, Michael, say Amerikay!”

He wouldn’t.

I shook him. “Say it!” I pounded on his chest. “Say Amerikay.”

“Amerikay,” he said.

“Chicago.”

“Chicago,” he repeated.

“I don’t care how hard the life is there—we’ll survive. We’re strong, Michael. Didn’t Patrick say that those who survive hardship there become tough and unafraid? We won’t die, Michael. And we’ll come back here someday—or our children will or
their
children will. They’ll come back to Galway Bay. They will, Michael—riding in the Irish Brigade! Say it again . . . Chicago.”

“Chicago.”

An uprising did occur during the last days of July, but as Michael predicted, the failure of the potatoes ended any hope of a people’s army marching to triumph. Smith O’Brien and a few others had surrounded the police station at Mullinahone, still convinced an early victory would raise the countryside. The police agreed to surrender to Smith O’Brien if he would return with a larger force to save the police the humiliation of being defeated by so few. Smith O’Brien agreed, but the police ran away, raised the alarm. At the nearby town of Ballingarry, forty-six armed police advanced on the Young Ireland men and the two hundred local people who were with them. The rebels threw stones at the police, who then barricaded themselves in a two-story house belonging to the Widow McCormack. Smith O’Brien wouldn’t attack for fear of burning down the poor woman’s home. The police fired on the rebels, who scattered. In the following days Smith O’Brien and Meagher and others were arrested. The government threatened to hang them, but according to the
Vindicator,
the rebels would be transported as Mitchel had been.

“A sad day for Ireland,” Da said to me when I went to see him after the failed rising. I found him walking on the strand.

“Michael said the blight defeated them, Da, not the British,” I said.

“Right enough,” he said.

“We’re going, Da,” I said. “Will you please come with us to Amerikay?”

He shook his head. I waited. He stared at the Bay—high tide, the waves breaking close to us. “I’m too old, a stór. Your mam and I will finish our days here by Galway Bay. If your brothers write, the letter will come to Bearna. Your mam will never leave while there’s that chance.” He turned and started back toward the cottage. He stopped at the door. “When I brought her into this house all those years ago, I promised her that it would always be our home. Níl aon teinteán mar do teinteán féin,” he said.

“There’s no fireside like your own fireside,” I translated aloud.

“It’s only the truth,” he said.

“Oh, Da, I know. . . . How can we leave you? How?”

“You have to go. They’ve left the young no choice. When?”

“As soon as we can, Da.”

“Don’t leave it past August. Autumn storms are bad enough in the Bay, but to cross the ocean during that time of year would be very dangerous.”

“You’re the man knows,” I said.

“I do. This place, Chicago—is it on the sea?”

“It’s not, Da.”

“Too bad. I know how you love Galway Bay, Honora. A comfort for you to find a bit of water to remind you of it.”

Chapter 20

A
UGUST NOW
and no doubt remained. Blight had killed the entire potato crop of 1848. Fields, planted at such sacrifice, were black and blasted. For the third time in four years we’d lost our food, though once again the other crops and livestock left our ports for England. But panic, not protest, made people rush the carts.

Michael had insisted on telling the Bianconi agent, Mrs. Carrigan, that he was going, though I was afraid Jackson would find out and devise some reason to take our money. “I must give her time to find someone else,” Michael said.

“Time to find someone else?” I said. “Twenty or thirty blacksmiths will be on her doorstep the moment you go.”

“Still, she was very good to cash the bank draft from Patrick for us and said nothing. We’ve only two weeks. Mrs. Carrigan will keep our secret.”

Máire was ready. She had sold the diamond necklace for twenty gold sovereigns to the woman who managed Bride’s Hotel. Fifty-five pounds between us. We’d walk to Dublin. Take a boat to Liverpool. Find an American ship. Thank God Máire and her children were going with us.

“I have to,” Máire had said. “Save you and Michael Kelly from being cheated in Amerikay.”

Finally, the two weeks passed. We were leaving the day after tomorrow, on August 15—Our Lady’s Feast—a lucky day.

I was with Máire at her cottage in Bearna. The children were at Mam’s.

“I wish we had a bit more money,” she said.

“We have enough for our fare and food. Michael says that Patrick will meet us.”

“We should ask Miss Lynch for a few pounds,” Máire said.

“But she might tell.”

“She won’t. Besides, we’ll be gone in two days.”

We went to Barna House for the last time.

Máire and I stood outside talking to Miss Lynch through the back door. “My goodness, what is going to happen?” Miss Lynch said to us. “Ireland can expect no help from England, none at all. Shocking, horrible things the English say about the Irish. They think we’re all rebels and beggars and that England should cut off all aid.”

We let her natter on. Her travels had aged her. She’d told us how the capitals of Europe had disappointed her. “Rabble in the streets, destroying the great cathedrals!”

Máire interrupted her. “We’re going, Miss Lynch,” she said.

I was still worried about telling her the truth. “But what harm?” Máire’d said. The Lynches were Mam and Da’s landlords, not ours. Da paid his rent last year and would again, and old Mr. Lynch had always allowed a bit of leeway. “She
is
my godmother,” Máire had said, “and you were her favorite student, so . . .” So. Máire said straight out that we needed her help.