Galway Bay (45 page)

But we were alone in this bleak place.

“Sunday morning,” the farmer said, standing beside me. “Early. Your people probably had a big time last night—sleeping off the whiskey. Well, good luck to you.” And he was gone.

Máire picked up Gracie and walked down the gangplank. The boys stomped after her.

We had eaten all the food we’d brought. We’d landed—alone and hungry, and nowhere to get out of the cold.

Máire pulled her red shawl around her and stared straight at me. “Now what, Honora?”

“I . . . I don’t know.”

“A godforsaken freezing place,” said Máire.

The odor alone would keep God away. The smell seemed to come from the river that curved away from the canal.

A foul wind blew tears into my eyes. I was dizzy and shivering, sharp cramps in my stomach. The baby. Michael, where are you?

And then I was weeping, and the children and Máire along with me—bawling and sobbing.

The Sassenach had not been able to break me. Starvation? Disease? I’d stood up to them. Even when Michael died, I’d held on. I’d keep my promise to escape with our children to Amerikay. But now . . . nothing. I had no sense of Michael’s presence, nor of God’s. Where are You, Lord? I’ve done my part. Máire is right, You have forsaken this place, and us, too.

I want to be home. I want to stand in the sun on the Silver Strand of Galway Bay. I want to be young again. I want my husband, my mother. I want—

“Christ on his cross, what’s all this caterwauling?”

I turned. Ah, shite. Here he comes, Chicago’s version of that New Orleans bullyboy, slapping the same kind of club into his palm.

“Is it against the law for two mothers and eight children to weep when they’ve reached the end of their endurance?” I asked him. “Well, then take us to jail! Please! We’d welcome a cell out of the wind.”

He turned to Máire. “What’s she on about?”

Máire sniffed up her tears. “She’s given up at last, thank God. And now, if you’ll tell us where this boat turns around, we’ll be heading back.”

“To Ireland?” he asked. “I wouldn’t advise it, missus.”

“Not Ireland, you big sliveen! New Orleans!” Máire said.

“Who are you calling a sliveen?” he asked.

“I don’t see anybody else standing around out here in the cold!”

“Máire, please!” I said.

“Don’t you ‘Máire, please’ me! You’re the one so sure we’d find Patrick Kelly. Patrick Kelly? He’s probably dead and buried with his golden staff beside him! Why did I let you talk me into this—”

“Is that Patrick Kelly the Galway man you’re talking about?”

“It is. Do you know him?” I asked.

“And he has a golden staff?”

“He has! Where is he? Thanks be to God! Where is he?”

“He should be in that cell you’re so anxious to get into.”

“What do you mean?”

“He’s wanted,” said Máire. “I knew it! Now can we go back to New Orleans?”

“Máire, please.”

The boys forgot about weeping, listening and watching this big man.

“Patrick Kelly is an agitator,” he said.

“Agitator?” asked Máire. “Is that some stripe of a murderer?”

“Look, girls, there’s some call Patrick Kelly a hero, but the Illinois and Michigan Canal pays me to walk this wharf, to see that the cargo is loaded and unloaded with no bother. Patrick Kelly puts himself between the men and the bosses. Gloves.”

“Gloves?” I said.

“Gloves. A notion that the company should give out gloves to the men. Jesus! What class of Irishman needs gloves? So you lose a finger or two—frozen off or cut off—don’t we have five of them on each hand? I’m from Ballina. Mayo men don’t whine for gloves. Some very weak people from counties like Limerick and Donegal.”

“If you are a true Irishman, you’ll find a place for us to shelter and something to eat,” Máire said. “I am no kin nor connection to Patrick Kelly. My name’s Máire Leahy.” She smiled at him.

“Tim John Tunney, at your service.”

“Isn’t there a saloon somewhere?” Máire asked him.

“A saloon?”

“You know, with carpets and crystal chandeliers? And a chair for a lady to rest on. I was told that Chicago had saloons, and that the Irish owned them.”

“True enough.” He laughed. “Though we call them bars, or taverns. And you’re right—McCormicks and Garveys and Donlons and Keefes own them, but as for crystal chandeliers and carpets—”

“Mr. Tunney,” I said, “I have some money. Please tell us where we can find our children a shelter for the night.” I felt the tears starting up again. I couldn’t hold back. Every breath became a sob. Stop, Honora. If you cry, you die. But I couldn’t control myself.

“Ah now, missus,” the man said to me. “No need to cry. And keep your money. You’ll need it. Let’s see . . . I’ll take you to Mass, that’d be a start. Near time now.”

“Mass? At Saint Patrick’s Church?” I asked. “That was where we’d sent the letter.” Maybe Patrick himself would be there.

“Saint Patrick’s is miles and miles away,” said Tim John. “I’m going to take you to Saint Bridget’s. We’ll kill two birds with one stone, as they say here, because Saint Bridget’s parish holds its Sunday Mass in James McKenna’s Scanlon House—a saloon.”

Chapter 24

M
CKENNA’S TAVERN
,” said Tim John Tunney, “and Saint Bridget’s Church.” Carrying Stephen, he herded us into a narrow wooden building. “Now, up to the fire,” he said.

I staggered, then gripped Paddy’s shoulder to steady myself.

“Come on there, boys, get your mother into this chair.”

Paddy put his arm around my waist and helped me to sit down. “Mam,” Paddy said into my ear, “don’t let this one die.”

I clutched my stomach and closed my eyes.

“Oh, Honora,” Máire said. “The baby?”

“Tim John.” A woman’s voice. “Take these children into the kitchen. I’ll see to her.” She lifted up my legs, set them on a stool. “Here, missus.” Her hand tipped a tin cup against my lips. Cool water. “Straight from Lake Michigan,” she said.

“She’s weary,” Máire said. “We’ve come a long way.”

“You can relax, girls,” the woman said. “You’re among your own.”

She gave me more water. I drank it down, not as dizzy now, and the cramping eased. I opened my eyes.

“Better,” I said. “Thank you.”

“No bother. Glad to help,” the woman said, her small face close to mine. I felt kindness from her. She had gray hair, blue eyes, and was smiling at me. “Rest yourself, dear. I’m Lizzie McKenna, and you’re very welcome to McKenna’s Scanlon House Tavern,” she said.

“Thank you, Mrs. McKenna.”

“Lizzie,” she said.

“I’m Honora. Honora Kelly.”

Máire was kneeling next to me. “You’ve your color back, Honora,” she said, and stood up. “I’m Máire Leahy,” she said to Lizzie McKenna. “We’re sisters.”

“Then I’ll be leaving you in good hands, Honora. Have to finish my cleaning. Father Donohue’s good enough to ignore the smell of drink, but if the bar’s not rubbed down right, the nice linen cloth he brings will stick to the whiskey spills.” She hurried away.

“Are you all right?” Máire asked me.

“I am.”

“Good.” She looked around the dim room, lit only by the fire and a few lanterns. The small windows framed a gray, sunless sky. “A bit different than the church we went to last Sunday,” she said.

“Máire, please.”

“I’m only saying . . . I’d best see to the children.”

More than a hundred people crowded around the tall, middle-aged priest who celebrated the Holy Sacrifice on top of the bar. There were family groups, knots of girls, and a line of men who stood in the back of the tavern. Everyone wore dark clothes—heavy woolen jackets on the men, shawls on the women. Not the place for our bright New Orleans cottons.

Máire had our children sitting on the floor near the fire. Jamesy held on to one of my feet and Paddy the other.

Before communion, Lizzie said to me, “Stay where you are,” then brought Father Donohue over to me.

“
Corpus Christi
,” he said as he placed the host on my tongue. “
Viaticum
, bread of travelers,” he added, then smiled. “Fáilte.”

Well now, this priest’s a human being, and very easy with his people, I saw, when after Mass he stayed on in the tavern, talking, even joking as he went from group to group.

“Here he is, finally,” Lizzie said as she brought the priest to us.

After Lizzie introduced Máire and me to him, he said, “We’re glad to have you at Saint Bridget’s parish.”

“Father Donohue’s a Tipperary man,” Lizzie said. “We used to have only French priests in Chicago, but now even our bishop’s Irish.” She put one hand on her hip and looked up at the priest. “But with a name like Quarter, he could pass for French. Is that why he got the job, do you think, Father?”

“Now, Lizzie,” he said, and winked at her, which made Máire laugh.

“Father’s not devoted to his own dignity like Father Gilley, or that overbearing priest in New Orleans,” she whispered to me.

“Let me know if I can help you in any way,” Father Donohue said. “I come to Saint Bridget’s on Sundays, but I’m assigned to Saint Patrick’s.”

“Saint Patrick’s,” I repeated. “That’s where we sent the letter to my husband’s brother, Patrick Kelly.”

“A lot of Patrick Kellys in Chicago,” Father said. “A lot of letters.”

“It was the Sisters of Mercy in Galway sent the letter to their convent here, to be brought to Saint Patrick’s.”

“Galway, you say? Is it Patrick Kelly who has Saint Grellan’s crozier you want?”

“It is,” I said. “It is.”

“I believe we are holding a letter for Patrick.”

“Holding? So he hasn’t received it?”

“Patrick Kelly’s not been in Chicago since midsummer,” Father Donohue said.

“But you know him?” I asked.

“We all know Patrick Kelly,” Lizzie said, “though as to where he is and when he’ll be back, no one could say, I’d wager.”

“He’ll return sooner or later,” Father Donohue said.

But we need him now, tonight. Where are we to go?

After Father Donahue left, McKenna’s changed back into a tavern. A tall man with a mustache—Lizzie’s husband, I suppose—presided over the bar. I’d never been in a public house or shebeen before, and this fellow’s control of the drinkers impressed me. He responded to raised fingers, nods, and quiet requests but ignored shouts, moving along with the jug, pouring whiskey into small glasses, picking up coins, having a word with each customer—a kind of ritual here, too.

The women stayed around the fire. I stood up to give my chair to a frail old woman just as Lizzie bustled up, followed by two lads carrying a stack of stools that they arranged around the hearth.

“The only day you ladies come into our tavern. May as well be comfortable,” she said, sitting me back down. Lizzie pointed to each of about twenty women, telling us their names and the county each was from in Ireland.

I nodded and smiled. “We’re from Bearna,” I said. “Galway.”

They all shook their heads at that, no Galway people among them, though the woman next to me said she’d heard Galway Bay was lovely.

Máire chatted away to a group across from me, her shawl a flare of red against the dark clothes of the others.

Lizzie and her lads came back, carrying trays of white china mugs of tea. “Sip away, ladies,” she said, and sat beside me.

“The children—” I started.

But Lizzie pointed to the far corner where our bunch had joined a circle of children. “Amusing each other,” she said. “That’s my husband, James McKenna, behind the bar. He’ll keep an eye on them.”

As Sunday morning became afternoon, we stayed tucked up in McKenna’s, out of the wind. The wood fire didn’t burn with flashes of purple and scarlet as bogdeal did, nor give off the steady heat of turf. Lizzie McKenna had to prod the logs to keep the flames licking at them, but the fire managed to warm us while she and the other women, adding their bits and pieces, told me about Bridgeport. It was the canal commissioners, they said, changed the name of their village from Hardscrabble.

“As if the tough times of hardscrabbling have ended, which they haven’t,” a heavyset woman said.

“Not as brutal as when the men were digging the canal,” another one said. “Fellows froze to death sleeping in those raggedy dormitory tents set up along the route. No regular wages, either.”

“The company stopping and starting work,” another told me.

“Lucky for you, though, Lizzie,” said the heavyset woman, Mrs. McCarthy. She turned to me. “James McKenna and his friend Michael Scanlon were two of the earliest laborers. When the canal committee ran out of cash, they paid them with plots of land.”

“Still,” Lizzie said to her, “took us a long time and a lot of odd jobs to earn the money to build the tavern.”

But there was work, all the women agreed. Thank God. The canal boats were loaded and unloaded in Bridgeport, and when the ice closed the I&M Canal, men worked in the quarry, the lime kilns, and the packinghouses.

“Packinghouse?” I asked Lizzie.

“Where the fellows kill and cut up the cattle,” she said. “Hough’s is the biggest. Of course, they operate only in the winter—the meat rots in warm weather.”

“Your boys could get jobs at Hough’s,” one woman said.

“My oldest, Paddy, is only eight,” I said.

“My sons started at six,” the woman—Mrs. Kenny, I think—said. “Had to,” she went on, “after my husband, Dan, was killed in the lumber camp.”

“Your boys have got a good size on them,” Lizzie said. “They can clean the blood from the drains or burn the entrails. And Hough gives his workers the cattle’s stomachs, which are all right to eat, if you stew them long enough. Got us through some hard times, I can tell you that.”

“Hough’s throws the hearts and livers into the river,” another said. “Boys dive for them—handy.”

“Oh,” I said. We’d done worse to survive the Great Starvation, but wasn’t this Amerikay?

Máire hadn’t been listening, laughing with the women on each side of her.

Tim John walked over, carrying a glass of whiskey. He offered it to Máire.

All the women went silent. Every man at the bar watched, some elbowing one another.

“Kind of you,” Máire said, reaching up for the glass. She paused. “I’ll wait until you bring the others.”