Galway Bay (51 page)

“We should cook now,” Máire said, “while the stove’s hot. Have our Christmas dinner right now.”

She’d brought rashers and plenty of pratties. I kissed Stephen’s forehead and gave him to Bridget.

“Quick, the skillet.” Máire and I started frying rashers and sent the two big boys out to fill the pot with snow to boil up the pratties.

“The snow’s burying us!” Paddy said when he and Johnny Og swung the pot onto the stove.

While we cooked, the big boys set the four-foot pine tree onto Molly’s kitchen table, then tied the tiny candles Professor Lang had given them on its branches.

The room smelled of pine and frying bacon. Johnny Og and Paddy lit the candles. The other children clapped their hands.

“Oh, Mam, isn’t it beautiful?” said Jamesy.

“It is, a stór,” I said. And we’ll break it up and burn it before this night’s over, I thought.

We sat, two on each of Molly’s chairs, in a circle close to the stove. The children took strips of bacon in their hands, glad for the heat. Thomas rolled his potato under his feet.

Stephen ate some of the potato I’d mashed with hot water. Máire hadn’t been able to get milk. He was too quiet, his eyes dull, each breath rattling his small chest.

“The wood won’t last through the night,” Máire whispered into my ear.

“I know that.”

“Where can we go to get more in this storm?” Máire said. “McKenna’s is closed.”

Lizzie and James always spent Christmas Eve with Father Donohue at St. Patrick’s, then went to Midnight Mass. They would have to stay over.

“I don’t think we can even get across to O’Neill’s in this,” Máire said.

“We’ll be very careful, use the bark from this last log. . . . And there’s the Christmas tree,” I whispered to her.

Outside, the storm battered the sides of the house.

“We’ll burn Molly’s chairs if we have to,” she whispered back.

“Her chairs from Ireland? Jesus, Máire, we’d have to move out!”

“We’d be alive,” she said.

“We can’t let the children sleep,” I said.

In the blizzard stories, the travelers who lay down in the snow to sleep never woke up again.

Already I could see the children’s eyes were closing. Paddy’s head had dropped down.

“Mam . . .” Jamesy pulled on my hand. “Is Stephen too sick to be in our play?”

“Your play?”

“Teacher did it at school, Mam,” he said. “You know, Mary and Joseph and Jesus, the shepherds and the angels? Daniel and I couldn’t have a part, so we’re doing it ourselves. We’ve practiced.”

It’ll keep them moving. “Go on, then, Jamesy,” I said.

“Jamesy . . .” Daniel was standing next to us. “The big boys won’t be in the play. They want to go to sleep.”

“They can’t,” I said. “Máire, tell the boys they have to be in the play. Everybody up now, move. Do what Jamesy tells you.”

Bridget was Mary; Daniel, Joseph; and Gracie, the Christmas angel. The big boys were reluctant shepherds.

“Kneel down and smile at baby Jesus,” Jamesy ordered them.

Stephen lay across Bridget’s lap, his eyes half-opened. The rest knelt around them as Jamesy played the tin whistle—his own little tune.

“At school they sing things called Christmas carols. Do we know any, Mam?” Jamesy asked me.

“We know dozens,” said Máire, and she sang.

Full many a bird did wake and fly

To the manger bed with a wandering cry

On Christmas day in the morning

Curoo, curoo, curoo . . .

“Oh, that’s lovely, Aunt Máire,” Jamesy said. He’s so like Michael—generous with praise.

“You know this song, Johnny Og—sing!” Máire said.

“So do you, Paddy,” I said. “Sing.” Would he remember it from the before times?

Somehow the words came to the boys:

The shepherds knelt upon the hay

And angels sang the night away

On Christmas day in the morning

Curoo, curoo, curoo . . .

“Wonderful!” I said, clapping. “Wonderful.” Then I told them how in Ireland, in the before times, every family put a lit candle in their window to guide Mary and Joseph to their door.

“And would they come?” Jamesy asked.

Paddy and Thomas laughed.

“They would, Jamesy. Surprised many a scoffing boy.”

Máire brought out boiled sweets, one for each child, but they shivered as they sucked on the candy. Very little heat came from the stove.

“I bought pipes and tobacco,” Máire was saying. “And we have the whiskey.”

“No whiskey,” I said. “We have to keep our wits about us. We’ll break up the Christmas tree.”

“But it’s so pretty, Mam.”

“We have to. Paddy, help me with the tree.”

I walked over to the table, past the window. I looked out. Still snowing. The flakes hit the window. Darkness beyond. But something . . . What? A blur of light out on the prairie—low, moving along close to the ground. I scratched at the frost on the inside of the window.

“What are you doing, Mam?” Paddy asked.

“Here, tell me what you see.”

He stood on his toes, his eyes just above the windowsill. He turned to me. “Mam!” With a face full of wonder, my child of the before times looked up at me. “Is it true? Are Mary and Joseph coming to our door?”

I pressed my face against the window. “A lantern, Paddy,” I said. “A man’s carrying it. He’s leading a horse.”

“So not them, Mam.”

“Some poor traveler, surely, Paddy. Máire!”

She came over to me and looked out. “Now, there’s someone worse off than we are.”

“I’ll step down with a candle to light his way to us.”

“Jesus, Honora! He could be a robber, a murderer. Quick, blow out the Christmas tree candles. He’ll pass us by.”

“He might be lost,” I said. “Paddy, come with Mam. Bring two candles from the tree. Bridget, mind Stephen.”

At the sound of his name, Stephen turned his head to me. A fit of coughing. Croup, please God.

Paddy and I carried two lit candles down the splintery stairs. I opened the front door the smallest crack.

I closed my lips against the cold air. Inhale and my insides will freeze.

“How many inches do you think, Mam?”

“I don’t know, Paddy.”

Inches. Always part of the blizzard story—twelve inches, eighteen inches, thirty inches, fifty inches, burying houses and animals and people.

“There, Mam, there! The light’s closer now.”

“I’ll stand out and hold the candle.”

“Not you, Mam. Me.”

Paddy put his feet into the wet boots he’d left at the door and stepped into the night. He sank into a mound of snow, then climbed out holding the candle high, calling, “Here! Here we are! Here!”

The horse struggled through the deep snow, but the man seemed to be walking on top of the drifts. He lifted his head and waved to Paddy.

“An Indian, Mam,” Paddy shouted back to me, and moved toward the fellow, who had his back to me.

I could see the man pulling on the harness and halter, clumsy, with something tied to his feet. Very close now.

He turned. Long hair, and dressed in leather trousers with fringes, a fur collar on his jacket, but not an Indian, not with that beard. He held the lantern up to his face—hazel eyes, brown and green and yellow. He stepped close to me.

We stared at each other.

“Nollaig Shona Dhuit, Honora,” he said. “Happy Christmas.”

“Patrick Kelly—oh, dear Jesus, Mary, and Holy Saint Joseph!”

“Uncle Patrick?” Paddy said.

“Oh, Patrick, Patrick! We’ve been waiting . . . I didn’t think . . .”

“Let me get unloaded and in first before you shower me with questions. Michael!” he shouted up the stairs. “Michael, come down to me. Help me carry up these yokes. They’re furs,” he said to me.

“We’ll be glad for them this night,” I said. “Ah, Patrick, Michael’s . . . well, he’s . . .”

“Asleep already? I’ll wake him up. Come on, Paddy. Heave. I’ve been trapping up in the North Woods. Lucky I stopped by Saint Patrick’s. Got your letter. Father Donohue told me you were at Molly’s. Good choice.”

As he talked, Patrick carried the huge pack up the stairs, Paddy helping him.

Dear God, he’s read the letter Michael had written and thinks he’s alive. Father Donohue hadn’t told Patrick we were alone. Why would he? He’d assume Patrick knew.

Máire held Stephen, standing in the kitchen doorway, the children gathered around.

“Merry Christmas,” Patrick said to her. “I’m Michael’s brother, Patrick.” Then “Michael! . . . Michael!” he shouted. “Get up, you lazy bollocks!”

Máire only stared as Patrick dumped the pack of furs on the kitchen floor.

“Patrick, Michael’s not here,” I started.

“What? Gone out to lay track for the railroad? We’ll get him back. I know a blacksmith here needs a good man like Michael.”

“Uncle Patrick,” Paddy said, “our da is dead.”

“What? . . . Honora?”

“It’s true, Patrick,” I said. “Michael died.”

“Don’t say that!”

I reached out to touch his arm, but he stepped back.

“It was fever killed him,” I said. “He’d worked so hard and was weak from the hunger. We should have left sooner, gotten out.”

Patrick only stared at me.

“Sit down, Patrick,” I said, and steered him to the chair by the stove.

“Get that whiskey, Thomas,” Máire said.

Thomas brought the cask. I dipped a tin cup into it and gave it to Patrick.

“When?” Patrick asked after he’d drained the cup.

“August.”

I took the cup and started to fill it, but Patrick shook his head. “No more,” he said.

The children stood close to the stove, shoulders hunched, shivering, saying nothing. Did Jamesy remember Patrick?

“The children are cold,” Patrick said.

He opened the grate of the stove—mostly ashes smoldered there. Patrick put the last log from the wood box into the stove, took a stick, and poked the ashes until a flame caught the sticks and the log started burning.

“Open the packs,” he said to me. “Spread out the skins. Cover the children. I’ll be back.”

He walked out the door and down the steps.

“Well,” said Máire, handing Stephen back to me. “That’s an abrupt fellow.

“Lie down in a circle,” she said to the children after we’d covered every inch of floor with the hides. I found a soft white fur—rabbit—and wrapped Stephen up. I held him close as the other children took their places. They made a wheel, their seven little faces the rim, their legs the spokes. The children sank deep into the furs and smiled at us from the soft, warm bed. Máire covered them with the skins of animals I couldn’t name.

The candles on the Christmas tree sputtered out.

“Can we go to sleep now, Mam?”

“You can, Jamesy.”

“I’m roasting under all these covers,” Paddy said.

“Is it Christmas yet?” Daniel asked.

“It will be when you wake up,” Máire told him.

I sat down by the stove, holding Stephen. Máire lifted up a long black pelt of something and put it around me. Stephen slept, sucking in air with little jolts that jerked his body. Máire touched his forehead.

“Still warm,” she said.

I nodded.

She stood looking down at me. “He’s a strong little boy, Honora.”

“He is,” I said.

She leaned over and sniffed his breath. “No foul smell, like . . .”

“Croup. Molly says it’s croup.”

“That Patrick Kelly is—” she started, but I put my fingers to my lips.

“We’ll talk tomorrow,” I said. “Go to sleep, Máire.”

“Well, at least Molly’s chairs survived,” she said as she crawled into the circle of children.

Sometime in the middle of the night, Patrick came in with an armload of split logs. He dumped some into the wood box and put two into the stove. The fire flared up again, real heat coming from it at last.

“Where did you get . . . ,” I stopped. Why ask?

Stephen started a whimpering cry that put the heart across me.

“Sick?” Patrick asked.

I nodded. “Croup. Children don’t die of croup.” No fever, please God, please.

Patrick bent over me and looked closely at Stephen in my arms, then removed a small packet from a pouch at his waist. He dipped his fingers into the packet and held them up to my nose—some kind of ointment, a smell like the Christmas tree. I nodded and unwrapped Stephen. Patrick rubbed the salve on Stephen’s chest and tucked the rabbit skin back around him.

“Thank you,” I said to Patrick as I stroked Stephen’s head.

He said nothing, only stood over me, watching Stephen’s chest rise and fall.

After a long time, Stephen’s shuddery breaths eased. He opened his eyes, looked up at Patrick.

“His eyes,” Patrick said.

“Clearer, I think.”

“The color of my father’s,” he said.

“Like Jamesy’s,” I said. “And your own.”

“He’s better.”

“He is.”

Stephen began to squirm on my lap.

“Quiet now, Stephen. Go to sleep.”

“Water?” said Patrick.

“Please. The bucket’s in the corner and the cup’s next to it.”

Patrick brought the cup to me.

Stephen took a swallow. “Sing, Mam,” he said, and I began Mam’s lullaby.

“Michael’s youngest son,” Patrick said. “What age is he?”

“A year and eight months, and our last child will be born in the spring,” I whispered.

“Jesus Christ, Honora. You traveled all that way with a load of children, in such a condition?”

“We would have died if we stayed at home,” I said. “I promised Michael I’d bring them to you. And I had Máire’s help.”

Patrick nodded. Then, “He was the best brother a man could have,” he said. He took a fur robe to the far corner of the kitchen and rolled himself up into it.

Thank you, Michael. I know it was you sent him. I leaned back in Molly’s chair, held Stephen close to me, and slept.

Chapter 27

I
WOKE BEFORE DAWN.
Sweat covered Stephen, but his forehead felt cool, thank God. He opened his eyes, said, “Mam, Mam,” and touched my face. I dried him off and tucked him between Bridget and Gracie in the wheel of children.

“Go back to sleep.” I sat and stroked his forehead until he slept.