Nory Ryan's Song (5 page)

C
HAPTER
8

T
he sun was high now, the dew gone. The stubble of weeds was prickly under my feet. I took the shortcut across Mallons’ field.

Sean Red and the rest of the Mallon family were outside, almost all. Liam was gone, probably fishing at the edge of the bay, but the others were in the back field. Even Granny Mallon in an old woolen nightgown torn up the side was propped up against the stone wall. Mrs. Mallon, her hands on her thick hips, looked grim; she didn’t answer when I called, “Bless all here.”

Sean raised his hand. “Someone is screaming in the next valley.”

I crossed my arms over my chest, beginning to shiver.

“She’s being taken by a
sídhe.”
He was trying to smile. “Pulled down under the earth.”

“Don’t say that.”

“Do you think someone is screaming because of the potatoes?” he asked.

I opened my mouth to tell him about Anna but Mrs. Mallon was moving quickly down the field, her red skirt pulled up around her large legs. She knelt over one of the beds, groaning, digging at one of the plants with her hands. I followed Sean and his brother Michael to see what she was looking at. It hardly seemed like much. It was just the tiniest edge of the leaf that had shriveled and curled under, but it was enough to see that the stem underneath was soft and pulpy.

“Look across,” Mrs. Mallon said in her harsh voice. “There.” She pointed with one thick finger. “And there.”

It was everywhere. A leaf lying back against a stem as if it had no strength to stand up by itself. Another stem seemed to lose color in front of our eyes. I backed away, stepping on one plant, shaking the edge of my skirt where the plant had left a smear of brownish ooze. I tried not to take a deep breath because the smell was stronger now.

I took another step, seeing Granny Mallon, her pipe in one hand. “Without potatoes we will starve to death,” she said, beginning to rock back and forth.

“I have to go home,” I said.

But no one listened. The Mallons were walking across the beds, and Mrs. Mallon began to cry with a hard, deep sound.

“I’m sorry for your trouble.” I bit my lip. I didn’t know why I said it. It was something Da and Maggie whispered at wakes, when someone had died. I picked up my skirt and ran toward home.

My breath came in ragged gulps as I climbed over the stile, looking at our own potato plants. They were too close to the Mallons’ field. If it had been the
sídhe
with their long fingers, they could have reached across the fields and touched and turned everything black.

I stopped to look at one plant, and then another. Green. Firm. Lovely.

Safe?

“Granda,” I called as soon as I saw our roof and the smoke drifting away from it. “Celia.” I ran down the path, ducking my head, as I burst in through the open doorway.

“Granda.”

It was dark inside the cottage, the fire low. Celia sat at the hearth, knitting, her eyes closed, counting the pattern in her mind.

“It’s the potatoes,” I said.

“Anna’s?”

“No. At least not yet.” I shook my head. “It’s Mallons’ field.”

Granda pulled himself to his feet. “Then ours.” He limped to the doorway, pulling the spade off the hook on the wall.

Celia and I followed him outside, Patch’s hand in mine. We walked along between the beds just as the Mallons had done. The spade dug into the earth. We held our breath as Granda lifted up the small potatoes, then patted them under the earth again.

He rubbed his hands against his sides and smiled as he saw us staring at him. But his smile was a terrible one, and his eyes were wild.

Celia walked ahead of us. Inside, she reached into the bin for potatoes. She had to scrape the bottom for them. The last of the old harvest was on us.

I looked at Granda again. He was terrified and trying not to tell us.

“We can gather limpets,” I said, “and mussels on the rocks.”

He smiled a little. “Aye.”

“And Sean and I caught that wonderful fish. We could catch another.”

“Grand.”

“And we could buy bread.” She held up her knitting. “I will walk to Ballilee and sell my shawl. It is almost finished.” She stared at me.

“Lovely,” I said a little grudgingly. My shawl was hanging in its bag on the hook. A shawl with a hole. A splotch of mud. Knots as thick as the wild onions along the river.

“I will finish my own straightaway,” I told her. “And make mittens from the last of the wool.”

“Yes, fine,” Celia said, but I knew she didn’t believe it.

I didn’t believe it either. Much less a pair of mittens. I had never once been able to do the thumb.

“But remember.” Celia leaned forward. “Our potatoes are still healthy. Not a mark. Not a spot.”

We all nodded, looking out the open doorway. She was right. The potatoes were still fine.

C
HAPTER
9

I
was dreaming, rocked in the currach on Maidin Bay, small fingerlets of waves underneath me. There was a pull on Sean Red’s hook. Drops of water ran off the line as it came in, the fish a flash of silver under the surface.

But what was that smell? I opened my eyes. It had been my turn for the hearth side, so there was no need to climb over Celia and Patch. I rolled out of the bed, the straw crackling under me. The glow from the hearth was just bright enough for me to see Granda huddled in the bed on the other side of the room.

I stood there to be sure they were still asleep. But how could they sleep with the smell that was drifting in under the door?

Three steps, then I eased the door open. Outside it was bright as day. The moon was up, full and white, throwing sharp shadows away from me. I heard thunder somewhere, though, and the air was damp and heavy.

Nighttime belonged to the
sídhe
, so I was afraid to take more than a few steps, but it was far enough. The potato stalks leaned against each other, limp and wet, the leaves shapeless and dripping.

I pulled up the edge of my petticoat to cover my nose and backed against the wall of the house. My throat felt thick. In my mind was Granny Mallon’s voice:
“Without potatoes we will starve to death.”

I couldn’t stop shivering. All our food for the next season was gone. The fish we had talked about, the mussels, the limpets. They would not be enough.

I didn’t know how long I’d been standing there when I heard Granda come outside with the loy in his hand. I knew it was morning, though. A pale yellow sun appeared and was hidden again.

“Granda,” I said, reaching out to touch his sleeve.

“I thought you were sleeping,” he said.

I followed him, trying to walk on my toes, trying to keep my petticoat above the ground, out of the ooze of the potatoes.

He began to dig, pulling up a potato that was no bigger than my thumb, and then another.

“Nory,” he said, out of breath. “Wake your sister. We will take up what is here. At least we will have something.”

I started for the door, stopping halfway. If there were no potatoes, not any, how would we plant the eyes next year? It was hard to walk, almost as if I were at the edge of the surf with the water pounding at me, holding me back. I didn’t get to the doorway. Celia was standing there.

She ducked inside for the smaller spade with the broken handle, calling over her shoulder, “It’s all right, Patcheen. Go back to sleep.”

We ran across the field. I didn’t bother now about my skirt or the ooze on my feet. I tied the edge of my shawl over my nose and mouth and began to dig with a small shelf of rock.

A burst of wind came up, driving the smell toward us. Granda’s hair blew as he worked, as Celia bent over, gagging.

Now Patch was at the edge of the field, coming toward us.

I shook my head and turned over the earth. A potato, fist sized, enough for a child’s breakfast. I turned over another, but I could dig my thumb into its soft spots.

We could cut out the spots, cook the rest. I put it aside. “There, Patcheen,” I said. What would happen to him? What would happen to all of us? “We’ll make a pile on top of the wall. We’ll cook the ones that look the best. And then we’ll dig a trench to keep the perfect ones.”

I picked up the next small cluster; they turned to mush in my hands. I threw them away from me, wiping my fingers on my skirt, clamping my lips over my mouth, swallowing hard. My shawl slipped away from my face and I held my arm up across my nose and mouth and breathed in, kept breathing.

I tried not to watch Granda pile up the soil, digging as fast as he could, his shirt soaked, his face filthy. How old he looked!

Celia watched him too. When he saw us, he shook his head. “Let me help while I can,” he said.

I wanted to put my arms around him. I wanted to tell him I loved him. I wanted to tell him to lie in his bed with the door closed against that terrible smell.

He’d never do that.

I stared down at the earth. What would we do if something happened to him?

Patch looked at me, but I just handed him tiny potatoes to put along the wall.

By the time we were finished, there was a small hill of them, enough to last for only a few days. At the other end of the field was the trench. Instead of neat piles to be covered with soft earth and dug up for food all winter, there was one thin row of tiny potatoes, maybe enough for a few weeks, not enough for a winter, not even enough for the fall, and surely not enough to save for planting in the spring.

Granda leaned against the wall at the edge of the field, looking up at the cliffs. He had tears in his eyes, tears like Da’s the day he left us for the ship, and tears like Maggie’s when she set out. Da wouldn’t even know what had happened to us, and neither would Maggie.

Patch was in front of me, his thin clothes caked with grime. “We’ll go to the stream,” I said. “It will be cool and wet and we’ll march ourselves in.”

“And dry ourselves off in the sun.” Celia turned to Granda. “Will you come with us?”

He shook his head slowly. He was bent against the wall, his hands spread out against the rocks.

The stream gurgled as we went across the field, Patch’s hand in mine. “A little string of water, isn’t it,” I said, “that winds down from the cliffs.”

“Cunningham’s stream,” Celia said.

“We are too tired to go to the sea,” I said.

She nodded.

I began to sing,
“… wee melodie man, the rumpty tumpty toddy man …”

Patch looked up at me. “We don’t care about the potatoes, do we?”

I wanted to put my hands over my ears. I didn’t want to think about potatoes, or being hungry, or the pain tapping in back of my eyes.

But I tried to follow it through. No potatoes. No food. But Da would bring money back.

Enough money for food and rent?

I worried it around in my head, back and forth like a cat chasing a mouse in the field.

Lord Cunningham’s house was above us. Still. Silent. I wondered what he thought about all this. Was he glad? Was he thinking of sheep grazing on empty land?

I put one foot into the shallow water. It was icy cold. In a second my toes were numb. I drew in my breath, pulling my foot out.

“That water is too cold for me,” Patch said.

“Yes.” I dipped my petticoat into the stream, then raised it to his face, cleaning his mouth, his nose, seeing his freckles like Maggie’s and his blue eyes like Da’s.

I leaned over and sang to him as I rocked him back and forth.

C
HAPTER
10

W
e went to our beds early. If we had left the door open, we could have seen the sky, still bright, with the sun just beginning to slide away in back of the cliffs.

We didn’t do that, though. We didn’t want to see those poor black potatoes taken by the
sídhe
. We didn’t want to smell what was left of them.

Instead we lay there with only the gleam from the smoored fire, worrying. Overhead the hens were clucking on their rope. They made me think of Maggie. Long ago she had strung that rope across the eaves for them to roost.

“The thing about hens,” she had said, “is that they argue every night, clucking away. They’re trying to decide whether they should fly back to Norway where they first came from.”

I remembered watching as she said, “Be kind to them so they’ll stay one more day and lay another egg or two for us.”

And now Celia was saying we’d be wringing their necks for three meals.

I shuddered. “What about the eggs?”

“We will close the door and go to Maggie in Brooklyn, New York,” Celia said. “We will do that straightaway.”

Horses clopping down the street, milk in pails, froth on top
.

“We will ask Sean Red to write us a letter,” Celia said, “to tell Maggie we’re coming.”

I didn’t say that Sean knew only letters, not words, and not all of the letters anyway. I cleared my throat. “What money will you use to send the letter?” I asked. “And what to get us on a ship?”

She sighed. “We will wait for Da. Yes, all we have to do is find food for each day. Maybe we could do that.”

The hens stopped their clucking. They were going to stay another day with us as well. My eyes wanted to close. “We will have eggs,” I said.

Next to me Patch was almost asleep too. “Eggs, eggs, eggs,” he whispered, and was still.

“And we will eat just one meal, every night,” Celia said. “We can spend our time searching for food.”

I went to sleep at last and dreamed of Anna. I couldn’t remember what it was, but in the morning I awoke suddenly, my heart pounding and a sharp pain in my stomach. Celia dragged herself up across me and opened the door to let the hens out. I pulled the cover up over my nose. “Close the door quickly,” I said. “The smell is …” I couldn’t even think of a word.

“Fuafar,”
Celia said.

Fuafar
. Disgusting. Yes. I had to get up. I had to do something.

“Aha.” Celia reached into Biddy’s basket. “A nice brown egg for Patch.” She smiled at him. “I will cook it for you this minute.”

I rolled out of the straw and onto my knees to say my morning prayers. I prayed that I would look out the door and the smell would be gone and the potatoes would be growing strong in the stony field. But I knew that wouldn’t happen.

“I will go now to Anna’s,” I told them as I stood up.

Celia began to cry. “We just have to hold on, all of us,” she said through her tears.

I turned back to her and put my arms around her. “We will,” I said. “Somehow.”

For a moment she cried even harder. Then she patted my cheeks.

I went across the field, pictures of Da in my head, one after another, his blue eyes, the color of the sky over Maidin Bay, his arms strong, angling for a fish from the cliff top. He’d lean forward as he told stories about his first fishing trip, about meeting Mam with her curls tied back with a piece of string. I wanted him so much I could almost feel his arms around us and I reached out with my own arms.

But instead of Da, Patch had come along in back of me, the bottom of his skirt dragging. He put one hand in mine and pointed with the other. “Sean Red there.”

I saw him too, going over the road, his brothers with him. They carried the currach over their heads so that only their legs showed beneath them. The currach looked like a great black beetle inching itself toward the sea.

“They’re on their way to catch fish.” I wondered if I could go with them someday. Would there be room? I’d work hard, I’d tell them, if they’d give me a place and a bit of the catch to take home.

I wasn’t good with the oars and they all knew it.

“Nory.” Patch tugged on my arm. “I have the hunger.”

“I know it,” I said. “But you will be strong.” I tried to think. “Strong as Cuchulain, the great warrior.”

He shook his head hard. “I just want my nice potato.”

I bent down and rocked him. “Your eyes are leaking tears,” I said.

He tried to smile, looking down, his eyelashes long on his cheeks.

“I am hungry too,” I said. “But we won’t think about it. We’ll go to Anna’s.”

“And she will give us milk from the cow?”

I shook my head. “She needs her own milk.”

“Then why are we going there?”

“I will help her.” I squeezed his hand.

In the distance, the rocks glittered on the hills; it seemed as if a soft green cloth was stretched over them. I saw another world up there, clean and fresh smelling, but with nothing to feed any of us.

Patch pointed at a gannet flying up overhead, its neck reaching. He began the saying:
“One to be sad.”

We waited for a second bird.
“Two to be glad,”
I said.

Patch was smiling.
“Three to get married,”
he said as the third bird caught up with the other two.

And then we were at Anna’s open door. “Do you want me to milk the cow?” I called in.

“I have milked my own cow.” She came outside, shading her eyes against the sun.

“Then what will I do?”

She reached out, pointing to the fields. “They will strip the land,” she said.

“Who?”

“Everyone who is hungry.”

“I am hungry,” Patch said. “I am very hungry.”

She went inside her house and was back a moment later with a small wooden bowl in her hand. It was half filled with milk. “Drink slowly,” she told him.

A tap of pain in back of my eyes. Milk almost yellow with cream.

She tipped the bowl into Patch’s mouth and he drank it all. She stared at me, knowing I wanted a bowl of it too, knowing I wouldn’t ask. “You are stronger than you think,” she said.

I put out my chin. “I am not hungry,” I said. “But thank you for the milk for Patch.”

She nodded. “Come with me now. We will gather nettles and dandelion leaves.” She nodded to herself. “Onions for insect bites, ivy for burns.”

With her cane in one hand and a basket in the other, she didn’t even try to stay away from the clumps of mush on the ground. Bits of black and brown with white spreading across …

Fuafar
.

We followed her to the cemetery first. We didn’t have to tell Patch to stay away from the nettles. “They sting,” he said, and waited at the edge of the small path.

Anna had rags in her basket to wrap around our hands. I looked across at my mam’s grave. She’d know what to do about potatoes and coins.

“My husband is there.” Anna pointed her toe at a bit of ground.

Anna had a husband?

“My son with him,” she said.

A little boy?

I must have said it aloud because Anna shook her head. “A man, grown.”

How had I not known that? Maggie must have known, and Granda. Maybe I had never listened. A husband. A son.

Anna was ahead of me, pulling the nettles carefully so they wouldn’t sting. I followed her slowly and began to pull the nettles with her. I was hungry, so hungry.

I thought about the potatoes we had gathered yesterday.
Just get through this day without food
, I told myself. Tonight Celia would have the potatoes bubbling in the pot and we’d go to bed with our stomachs filled.

I began to sing with Patch. Anna, still bent over the nettles, turned her head. It almost seemed as if she smiled. But that couldn’t be. I had never seen Anna Donnelly smile.