The Walking People (24 page)

After a few days went by, Greta returned to the letters, removed the one addressed to Lily, and stored it with her other things in the tin box under the bed. The next day, she took the one Shannon had written to Johanna as well, envelope and all.

Once she made her decision, she left the letters out on the mantel in the kitchen for Lily to find. She propped them up beside the clock, then walked across the room to where Lily might glance up as she came through the back room. No, not obvious enough. She moved them over to lean on their folds against the rarely used lantern. Then she changed her mind again and left them under the sugar bowl on the table. She stood at the entrance to the kitchen and squinted toward
the table. She changed her mind one final time and brought the letters straight to Lily's room, where she left them on her mother's pillow.

 

"Ay!" Little Tom called into the hay shed. He picked a hayfork off the ground and banged the shed's tin siding with the prongs. He coughed, walked back and forth kicking up the grit. Finally Michael Ward woke up and rolled down to ground level, buttoning his pants on the way.

Little Tom raised his thumb over his shoulder to point back at the cottage. Michael looked over Tom's shoulder at the drawn curtains of the kitchen, the smoke issuing from the chimney.

"She wants to see me?" Michael asked. Tom nodded.

"Are you coming?" Michael asked, trying to read Tom's crooked features for a hint of what waited for him inside.

Tom shook his head, used the same thumb to jab the air in another direction. He clapped Michael on the back and walked away.

In the kitchen, Lily was seated in her usual place. He heard no sound from any other part of the cottage, and he guessed the girls had gone out. Or were sent out. Or were forbidden to enter the kitchen with him there. On the table was a bowl of fresh strawberries picked from behind the cottage and a bowl of heavy cream.

"Might as well," Lily said when she saw Michael looking at the bowl. "They won't stay forever, and I've eaten myself sick of them. I've been boiling them all morning."

Michael nodded his thanks and chose his usual seat. He poured cream over the berries and thought of how often they'd almost killed each other over fresh fruit at camp. If someone managed to get hold of a few oranges, they had to split them so many ways that all he ever got was a section or two. Behind him he heard the creak of Lily's chair as she stood, her shoes scuffing the floor as she took the few steps over to the table.

"I have to talk to you, Michael," she said as she settled herself across from him. She had never sat alone in the kitchen with him before, and she was reminded of the day his mother came with her beady pocket, offering tonics and cures for anything in the world Lily might name.

She pulled Shannon's letters from her berry-stained apron and laid them out flat on the table. Michael looked at them, took in the miniature
American flag in the upper-right corner of the envelope, put down his spoon.

"Mrs. Cahill—" he managed to say before his lungs gave out, and he fought to catch his breath.

"Michael." She held up her hand. "I know my own daughter. Believe me. I'm not saying you've nothing to be guilty for—that I don't know—but as far as the America scheme is concerned, I know who dreamed it up. And she asked you along, did she?"

Michael nodded.

"And you've agreed?"

Michael paused. Lily narrowed her eyes.

"I took you in here, Michael," she said.

Michael nodded.

"And she planned to go off without saying anything, did she?"

Michael stayed perfectly still, stared at the little square of stars inside the slightly larger square of candy cane stripes.

"She wants you because, brave as she is, she doesn't want to go alone. And you've been places. She hasn't. You understand? Once she gets her bearings, she mightn't be so happy to have you around. That might take two years or it might take six months. I love her. She's my child. But I know her."

Michael nodded.

"You're still willing to go?"

Michael opened his mouth to speak but didn't know what to say. He never had any intention of going to America until Johanna had started with all the talk of We. Then he'd listened to her for so long, waiting for the right time to tell the truth, that now that it had arrived, he didn't know what he wanted. All his dreams of settling had looked just like Ballyroan. Every single thing about the place was right, down to the hawthorn trees and the rushes and the river stuffed with salmon. But after just a few months he could see why people had had to leave their lovely cottages behind and let their fields turn to scutch. Anything planted risked being torn up by the heavy salt wind. He had no money to start raising livestock straightaway, and even so, he'd have to get a stableful to make enough to live on. He was a stranger in Conch, suspected of being a tinker, and no shop would give him credit. The Cahills couldn't help him for much longer; he could see that. And he was lonely, a condition it took him a while to figure out. After a short time in Ballyroan he began looking forward all day to the supper meal, the passing of plates, the sound of chewing and tearing meat from bone and the steaming potato skins falling to the center pile. Aside from the time spent with Johanna down at the river, it was the only part of his day when he looked other people in the face and they looked in his. It would be worse after Johanna left. Sometimes he wondered what they'd do if he started a campfire beside the hay shed and invited them to visit him there. It would be their own upturned buckets they'd have to use for seats.

"You're not sure," Lily said. Johanna would run circles around this boy. If he loved her, and she loved him, it might be enough to keep her head on her shoulders, but they weren't in love, that much was obvious. He had sense, yes, but he had no hold on her. It wouldn't be enough.

"If I went..." His voice sounded strange to him, choked off, breathless. He cleared his throat and began again. "If I went, I'd need to get word to my father. I wouldn't like to leave without him knowing. Leave Ireland, I mean."

It was a practical question Lily had never thought of before. "How do you...?"

"They keep letters at the post station, and he picks them up whenever he's near. I've an aunt who's a decent reader, and she sounds all the letters out for him and anyone else who gets one. If he thinks a letter might have something in it he mightn't want the camp to know, he asks the postman to read it to him." Michael paused, let her catch up.

"I see," Lily said as she reached for a strawberry, scooped out a bruise with her fingernail, and put her finger in her mouth. "Well, I could help you with that. Couldn't I? You tell me what to put, and we'll work on it together. And in exchange you'd have to take good care of my girl. You'd have to protect each other and help each other no matter what happens. I don't know how it is in America, but here we help each other because we come from the same place."

For what seemed like the hundredth time, Michael nodded. We come from the same place, he thought, and the space beneath his rib
cage hummed like a tuning fork struck with the iron head of a hammer and then, after the clamor faded away, was pressed down on the boards of the wagon to better hear the lowest sounds, the truest pitch, vibrations so fast they sounded like one continuous purr.

"This conversation is between us for now, Michael, and I ask you not to say a word about it until I've talked to Johanna and done a little thinking," Lily said. "Go on now and catch up with Little Tom."

Michael stood, pushed in his chair. "What about Greta?" he asked. He had not known he was going to ask until he was speaking the words.

Lily leaned back, folded her hands in her lap. "What about her?"

"Well, she mightn't like ... She might be lonely after us, after Johanna. I just wonder..."

"I have to think about that too. Now go on," she said, and waved him out of the room.

Michael rushed from the kitchen, lunged across the short length of the back room, barreled through the back door, ran up the lane to the coast road, where Little Tom's silhouette was still making its way.

 

Since handing over the letters, Greta had steered clear of the cottage. After chores, she spent most of her days up at the sea ledge, lying on her back and thinking that maybe after Lily stopped the plan and Johanna wasn't angry with her anymore, they could take the bus in to Galway and walk around. Maybe they could start doing it on a regular basis, and seeing the city so often might get ideas of America out of Johanna's head. They could catch the van to the Friday dances in Oughterard. Lily would be happy to let them go after coming so close to losing one of them completely.

Greta returned to the cottage every evening braced for an explosion. Two weeks went by, and none came. She began to worry that Lily hadn't found the letters after all. Johanna was still asking Michael boring questions in an overloud voice. Lily still sat in her corner and knitted. Only Michael was different. A few times, when Johanna went to the back room for salt or an extra knife or a rag to wipe up crumbs, Greta noticed him glancing at her, as if he were checking on her, confirming she was still there, asking whether she needed his help.

When Lily finally showed her cards, it was not at supper as Greta had expected. It was far later in the evening, after midnight. Johanna had woken Greta by opening the bedroom window, the damp wood catching and groaning in its grooves, and she had one leg out, her body straddled on the sill, when she let out a shriek that woke Little Tom, woke Michael in the shed, woke all of Conch, if Greta had to guess.

"Jesus Christ," Johanna gasped just before she was yanked by a great strength to the grass outside.

"Johanna?" Greta called, unable to move her body to the window to see was Johanna alive or dead. "Johanna!" she said louder, a demand this time. The cold draft from the wide-open window swept over her face, filled the small room. She lay still, listening for any telltale sound. She heard Johanna yelp, say something in a sharp voice, and then nothing. Greta took a deep breath and on shaking legs crept over to the window. There was Lily, tall in her long, pale nightdress, like a shee fairy, with her gray-streaked hair whipping around in the wind. She had Johanna by the ear and was leading her around to the back door.

Greta shut the window and leaped back to bed, where she made herself small and whispered what she would say to Johanna, as if Johanna were already beside her. She mightn't understand now, but she'd understand later, when they were both grown up, with husbands and their own cottages, and Greta would remind Johanna of the time she almost disappeared to America.

 

"Get up," Johanna said hours later. Greta opened her eyes to daylight and Johanna's face above her, pale, exhausted, and Greta realized she'd never returned to bed. Johanna threw Greta's cardigan across the room. "Come as you are," she said. "Mammy needs to see you." Greta rubbed her eyes, reached for her glasses. "Now," Johanna said, and left the door to the cold hall open when she left.

In the kitchen, Lily was pleasant, fully dressed, her hair twisted up and pinned, no evidence of the scene she'd made the night before. Greta sat down at the table and faced not one but two sets of letters. The originals she already knew word for word: Shannon to Johanna,
Shannon to Lily. Laid out beside these was a new set: a second letter from Shannon to Lily and a first from Shannon to Greta.

"I've big news for you, Greta," Lily said as she reached out to run her fingers through the tangle of Greta's hair. The child had knot upon knot upon knot. "What do you think about going to America?"

"Johanna going?" This was not the way it was supposed to go. Johanna was to be stopped from going, not encouraged.

"Yes, Johanna. And you as well, Greta. What do you think about that?"

Greta repeated the question to herself, thought of Mr. Joyce of all people, how quickly he'd learned not to put questions to her in front of the class. Greta laughed, not her own laugh, but her best impression of a woman's laugh: throaty, full, in on the fun.

"It's a joke, is it?" she asked when neither Lily nor Johanna joined her laughter.

"No, love." Lily stopped picking through Greta's hair. She pressed her hands against Greta's flushed cheeks, ran them down the back of her neck, settled them on her shoulders, where she squeezed so tight that Greta had to lean forward to get away.

O
N A CLEAR OCTOBER
morning in 1963 Lily and Little Tom stood apart on the crowded pier in Galway City as they waved goodbye. There was no dock in Galway for so huge a ship, so the small packet boat made trip after trip carrying luggage and passengers in groups of a dozen. It made for a long goodbye, the ship anchored out in the ocean, the figures on board too far away to recognize but close enough for their mothers and brothers and wives to keep trying. Michael Ward had been one of the first to go over, earning part of his way by unloading the luggage and delivering it to first-class cabins. Johanna and Greta were in one of the last groups, the cash from the sale of the bull in pockets Lily had sewn onto the underside of their skirts.

Johanna had surprised all of them by crying through supper the day before, and she was still sniffling, Lily could see, as the packet moved its passengers away from the pier. Greta hadn't eaten a thing and had spent the night before vomiting into a basin while Lily rubbed her back. "If you hate it," Lily promised the girl, "you can just come home." Greta promised she would hate it, and why go to the bother of going all the way to America just to come back again and be short one bull? And why couldn't she and Johanna just get jobs in Conch? And so what if there were no jobs in Conch? Couldn't they take the bus to Galway and get jobs there? How could there be no jobs in Galway either? It wasn't possible. But Lily had already decided that the girl
would go with her sister, would see a new place, would meet people from all over the world and earn some money for herself. It was like Sister Michaela said that time she cycled all the way to Ballyroan to see for herself whether Greta was ready for school: it was time. She'd given the girl no choice.