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At this rate, they’d have
the field clear by nightfall. Mike stopped his horse at the pony
cart and saw that several people were packing the potato harvest
onto the cart.

Brian was one of them. In
fact, Brian appeared to be the one orchestrating the runners and
the packers.

“Morning, Mike,” Brian called to him as Mike
dismounted.

“Gilhooley,” Mike said.
“Looks like you’ve got things well in hand here.”

“A hunnert percent,” Brian
said, grinning. He ruffled the hair of a boy who walked up carrying
a bag of potatoes. “Couldn’t do it without young Liam,
here.”

Mike saw the boy beam at Brian as if the
man’s praise were all the sustenance he could ever want.

“Mr. Gilhooley’s figured
how we only need so many actual pickers to a row,” Liam said. “This
way we’re not running over on top of each other.”

“And we can actually come away with larger
yields and fewer damaged spuds,” Brian said, patting the boy on the
shoulder. “Off you go, now, Liam. Still daylight left.”

“Right you are, sir.”

“Looks like you’ve taken over,” Mike
observed.

“Well, the potato picking anyway,” Brian
said, his eyes showing no humor as he spoke.

“Brian! You’ll be wanting to come see this,”
a woman yelled from the middle of the potato field.

Mike craned his neck and
squinted at her in the distance. Surely it wasn’t a snake, although
Saint Patrick not withstanding, it wasn’t totally out of the
question.

“What is it, Maggie?” Brian yelled back. He
began to move into the field.

Mike remounted and stood
in the stirrups to see what the woman was hollering about. She
stood with her hands on her hips, wiping the sweat from her brow
from time to time. If it was a snake, she wasn’t too concerned with
getting away from it, Mike thought, frowning.

As he watched, he could see the problem
wasn’t in the field but in what was coming across the field at a
fair clip. He twisted in his saddle and strained to get a better
look, because from what he could see, the thing coming slowly
across the potato field looked to be the closest thing to an actual
ghost as he had ever seen.

7

Conor Murphy was coated
from head to foot in unbleached flour. The boy wasn’t nine years
old, but stood in front of Mike without a tremor, the whites of his
eyes the only tale-tell hint that he was at all concerned with what
was coming.

With the help of a growing
entourage, Conor made his way through the potato field with the
affect of the condemned man. Maggie gave him a healthy swat on his
backside as he passed but he didn’t flinch. Just before he reached
the potato packing clearing where Mike, now dismounted again,
waited, Brian swung around and stopped the boy from
proceeding.

Kneeling down, he grabbed
Conor by his shoulders and gave him a light shake, resulting in a
faint cloud of flour puffing in the air around him. Mike could hear
Gilhooley talking to the boy, but his voice was low, his words
indistinct.

“Let the lad come on,”
Mike said, irritation with Brian’s intervention making his voice
harsher than he’d prefer. He saw the child’s eyes looking at Brian
Brian gave him a comforting pat and released him, allowing him to
go to Mike.

“You’ll be explaining
yourself, Conor Murphy,” Mike said solemnly, his hands on his hips.
The pickers moved in from the field, and while Mike was tempted to
send them back to work he knew there was some merit—both for the
boy and the community—for the group to be present.

The lad cleared his throat. “I’ll take me
whipping. I ain’t scared of it.”

“There’s no doubt you’ll be
taking your whipping, young Conor,” Mike said. “I’m asking
you
what happened
. No blubbing now.”

Conor wiped his face with a grimy fist
leaving streaks of caked white across his cheek and was about to
speak when John Woodson pushed through the gathered crowd.

“Wasn’t all his fault,” he
said. “Me and some of the lads started it.”

Mike looked at John with
surprise. First, because he hadn’t seen him in the crowd, and
second because the boy rarely got in trouble, and he never
started it
.

“Explain.”

John shoved Conor to stand
by his side and Mike saw the flour rising off the lad in puffs of
white. “We were just having some fun on the other side of the
bluff, rolling barrels down into the ravine, like.” He shrugged as
if that was all he needed to say.

“
Rolling barrels down into the ravine
?” Mike knew they were all watching him and he knew he needed
to keep his temper in check. Still, the camp had long complained he
dealt John with a lighter hand than the other children.

John shrugged again, which served to inflame
Mike at his casualness about the crime.

“And what happened,” Mike
asked with exaggerated slowness, “when the barrels hit the bottom
of the ravine if I may ask?”

Conor took a step forward
and made a sound of an explosion. When he did, great clouds of
flour rose around him, causing many in the crowd, adults included,
to titter.

“So, in other words, they
broke,” Mike said to John. “Is that what I’m hearing? You
deliberately smashed perfectly good barrels just to see them
break?”

I swear to God if he shrugs now I’ll knock
their heads together.

“Yes sir,” John said.

“And this?” Mike gestured to Conor. “What’s
this got to do with exploding barrels?”

John glanced at Conor and
seemed to fight to keep a straight face. “Conor just got a little
creative.”

“I put a whole bag of flour in one!” Conor
crowed, “and kapow! Even the bushes and grass is white!”

More snickers from the
crowd made it clear that the two miscreants were well in the lap of
public opinion, Mike thought.
Wonder if
they’ll still be there when nobody has fresh bread tomorrow…or next
week.

“Where’s Dylan Murphy?” Mike asked, trying
to keep his voice even.

“Me da’s working in the
south field,” Conor said, his voice not quite as steady as it was
before.

“Right. Off you go to
inform him of your day’s shenanigans. And mind, Conor, I’ll be
speaking with your da later today to make sure he got the right set
of facts.”

Conor nodded glumly and turned away.

“What about me?” John said.

“Who are the other boys
with you in this vandalism?”

“I forget.”

Mike held John’s stare and
then nodded his head. “Right. You’ll whitewash the camp’s huts,
starting with the one just inside the main gate. Your Aunt Fi can
show you where the paint is.”

“What do you mean? Which huts?”

“All of ‘em. Maybe it’ll
help jog your memory of who helped you destroy the barrels.
Everybody else, back to work, please. We only have other four hours
of light, summer or not.”

“Before everyone leaves,” Brian said, “may I
make a suggestion?”

“This doesn’t concern you, Gilhooley.”

“Well, since I hope to be
a part of this community, I’d beg to differ. And it seems to me
that since both boys have confessed their sins, it would be more
healing for the community if they were allowed to just go on from
here.”

Mike’s posture went rigid.
He turned his back on Brian to address John. “So, will you tell
your mother or shall I?”

***

Sarah felt the exhaustion of the long day
seep into her hips, her arms, her every aching joint. She knew she
wasn’t the only one falling into bed at night so tired she barely
had the energy to pull on a nightgown. But like most of the women
in camp, she still had baths to organize and a meal to get on the
table before then.

She cut into the chicken
potpie and placed a large wedge on John’s plate. Papin had napped
most of the day and was still sleeping.

“Doing this right in the
middle of the harvest was incredibly irresponsible,
John.”

He just shrugged.

“Do you have anything to
say for yourself? I mean, this is so unlike you. And young Conor is
paying the price—”

“He’s old enough to know what he was
doing.”

“You cannot absolve yourself from this,
John! If it weren’t for you, the older boy, egging him on—”

“I did not egg him on!”

“Do I really have to tell
you how this works? Didn’t you get into trouble enough times when
you were younger by following
Gavin’s
lead?”

“Whatever.”

“And now you’ll be taken out of the
workforce, just when the camp could really use your help in the
fields harvesting the potatoes.”

“They might as well have me picking potatoes
‘til we leave. I’m not going to paint any stupid huts.”

Sarah gasped at his
audacity.
Who was this boy pretending to
be her respectful, compliant son?
“You
absolutely
will
paint the huts just as Mike ordered you to.”

“Why should I? This isn’t our home any more.
We’re leaving in ten days.”

“We are still members of this community
until the minute we walk out those gates.”

“That’s bullshit.”

“John! What has come over you?”

“You don’t like it, but it’s the truth.
Everyone’s already mentally said goodbye to us, it’s just our
bodies still hanging around.”

“They needed us for the harvest.”

“And that’s not true either. But
whatever.”

“Look, I can see you’re
upset. After dinner, why don’t you go see if Gavin wants to play
cards or a game of chess?”

“He’s busy. Besides, he’s already signed off
on me. And why wouldn’t he? I’m as good as gone.”

“But you’re
not
gone.”

“I am, as far as anyone’s
concerned. Same as you, Mom.”

Sarah left the boy to his thoughts and the
two ate in silence. When he was finished, he brought his plate to
the sink and went to his room.

There was a time when she would have gotten
a goodnight kiss first.

Or at least a goodnight.

Feeling even more tired than when she began
making the dinner earlier that evening, Sarah brought her own plate
and utensils to the sink and set them in it. She’d deal with them
in the morning.

Out the front window she could see a candle
flickering in Mike’s hut. As she stood in her kitchen, she could
see his shadow moving in the front room.

Was this really how it was going to all end?
After everything?

Without stopping to think what she was
doing, she grabbed her sweater from the chair in the front room and
stepped out the front door, closing it silently behind her.

***

The exhaustion of the day
couldn’t compete with the cacophony of emotions and thoughts
spinning inside Mike’s head as he tried to settle in for the night.
For a change, the gypsies weren’t playing their music around the
fire and it was quieter than he ever remembered it being—even
before they had come.

In the old days, he’d have
the telly on and be pottering about his cottage repairing this net
or that, checking out a possible new purchase on the computer—that
is if Gavin wasn’t hogging it. Now, with the lights out pretty much
as soon as the sun sets, everyone was in a mind to go to sleep.
Unless you had a bed partner to whisper with under the covers there
really wasn’t much else to do in the dark.

But it still didn’t feel right to go to bed
at nine o’clock in the evening.

When the knock on the door
came, his stomach muscles clenched. He knew it was Aideen and his
first thought was,
who’s minding wee
Taffy, then?
With a groan and the full
intention of telling her to go on back to her child, he swung his
feet off the bed and lumbered to the door, not bothering to shrug
on a shirt.

Sarah stood shivering in
the summer evening and pulling her cotton sweater tight around her
shoulders. Mike knew the night wasn’t cool enough to cause her
shivering.

“Is everything ok?” He
stepped back to allow her to enter although they’d long had the
policy—for the sake of the robust gossipers in camp—never to be in
either of their cottages alone. The rule didn’t seem to matter much
any more.

She stepped inside, glancing briefly over
her shoulder as she did. “Yes. Well, except for John today.”

Mike ran a hand through
his hair. He should have expected she’d want to talk about that. As
strange as it was, they were in the habit of co-parenting both John
and Papin, almost like a divorced couple might—a divorced couple
who’d never actually slept with each other.

He picked up a clean shirt from a chair and
shrugged into it. “Well, ‘tis not the end of the world, what he
did.”

“It’s just the fact that he did it.”

“It’s the coming change, most likely.”

Sarah went to sit in the
chair in Mike’s sitting room. “I know. I figured that. So…you moved
Aideen into her place today?”

Ahhh, so that’s what this
is about.
He sat opposite her in a lumpy
chair that had been tossed in the dump in the days before it became
a valuable piece of furniture.

“And how many days is it
before you go?”