Mending Horses (30 page)

“They've all gone mad,” Hugh said, watching Ferry Street fill with people shoving against each other like sheep driven into a pen. “What's it about, Eamon?”

“Is it the moon you've been living on, that you don't know?” Eamon said.

“If they was all Irish, I'd think the Pope himself was come to town.”

Eamon put an arm around Hugh's shoulders. “ 'Tis a fool I am, Hugh. How would you be thinking of aught but your own troubles, with your lads laid to rest but a few weeks ago?”

Hugh suppressed a shudder. It had been a mistake, seeking Eamon out. Oh, the man meant kindly, that he did, and Eamon's Katie had been the soul of sweetness and consideration, never mind that they'd only two rooms to fit themselves and their four girls, without adding Hugh to the household. But every sympathetic glance and soft word, every kindness they did him was another stone on his chest, a reminder that he was a coward and a liar and no fit man to be taking advantage of their generosity. It was only the drink that kept him from feeling crushed entirely under the weight of their sympathy and his own guilt.

It seemed hard for Eamon to stay in a somber mood today. The crowds packing the street laughed and joked with a festive air. Eamon found their mood infectious, his eyes sparkling like a boy's on holiday. “It's the railroad, man,” he said. “It's opening this very day, and the governor and all here to celebrate.”

“Aye,” Hugh replied. “I've heard.” He'd have needed to be dead himself to have missed the talk. How many of his mates
had traded their jobs digging canals and building mills for the promise of better wages laying track? They said even a Paddy had a chance of working his way up to foreman or higher, if he didn't work himself to death first. “But it's naught to do with me, so I never minded the day it was to be done.”

“Done?” Eamon said, dragging Hugh with him as he wove through the crowd. “Why, it's hardly begun. It's open but from here to Worcester. It's still building through to Albany. The tracks'll be laid out like spiderwebs across the country before long. Some day it'll be but five days from Boston to Saint Louis. Imagine! 'Tis the future, cousin. The future at our very doorstep.” The excitement in Eamon's flushed and grinning face was mirrored in the faces of the men around him, jostling to be the first to the new depot.

The future
, Hugh thought, listening to the talk that swirled about him, words light with curiosity, optimism, hope, talking of this new railroad the way folk back to home had talked of America: the opening of a door to a golden future of prosperity and progress. So he'd felt when he and Margaret had first arrived in Boston with Liam still in nappies. He'd not been such a fool as to expect riches, but he had dreamed of a decent wage for a day's work, a proper home for his family, and no landlords to answer to. He'd expected America to give him everything he'd ever dreamed of, but instead it had taken away everything he'd ever loved.

A brass band played over the noise of the crowd as he and Eamon turned the corner from Ferry Street onto Main. The new depot with its sloping walls and square corner towers rose above them, as imposing as a massive ancient shrine. He shoved his way through the crowd, trying to keep sight of Eamon's threadbare jacket.

The ground shuddered and rumbled, and the crowd's motion shifted, some pushing forward harder, some falling back, not sure they wanted to be quite so close after all. In the shift, Eamon and Hugh found an opening and slipped into the forward rank of people.

The track looked like a gleaming ladder of iron and wood
laid on the ground and stretching forever to the east, and west to the river. Folk packed in on either side of it—more than Hugh imagined Springfield could contain. Although the ground trembled beneath Hugh's brogans, the train was still a small, smoking black coal off in the distance.

An Irish child's shout shrilled over the crowd's rumble. “Mam, Mam, when's it coming?”

A woman on the other side of the track tried to manage two squirmy, grimy-cheeked lads. She clutched their jackets to keep them by her, the way his Margaret used to do with Liam, the way she'd have done with Jimmy and Mick, had she lived to see them into trousers. The way the lads jostled and poked each other minded Hugh so much of his own lads that he almost headed across the track to help the woman. Her face was partly hidden by the brown plaid shawl she'd draped over her head, just the way Margaret had worn hers. The wind tugged a spill of yellow curls across her cheeks, and Hugh's heart lurched. The blood pounded in his ears, crashing against the noise of the crowd and the band and the approaching train, a churning roar that battered and dizzied him.

“Margaret? Is it you, love?” he asked. Had she come back to forgive him or to damn him? He shouted her name, and the woman raised her head, looked at him with eyes blue as flax blossoms. “Margaret,” he said again, this time a groan. But before he could cross the track to take her in his arms, a metallic screech slashed through the roaring in his head, and his vision was filled with black iron and steam.

“Good God, Hugh, is it altogether mad you are? I feared you aimed to walk out in front of the train.” Eamon grasped Hugh by the shoulders, hauling him around to look at him face to face. “You could'a been crushed!”

“It was Margaret. Did you not see her?” Hugh gestured wildly across the track, where the crowd had broken ranks in the wake of the bright yellow coaches clattering behind the engine toward the depot. He tried to pick out the woman's brown plaid shawl, but there was no finding it among the boil of hats and bonnets and coats surging away from him.

“What're you saying, man?” Eamon shouted in Hugh's ear.

“Margaret, by God! She was there, with Jimmy and Mick tugging at her skirts.”

Eamon shook his head slowly. “Hugh, no. Don't be doing this to yourself.” He clutched Hugh's elbow, dragged him away from the press of the crowd.

Hugh rubbed his eyes and forced a laugh as jagged as broken glass. “Just me mind playing tricks is all. A lass with yellow hair, and she put me in mind of me own Margaret. An idiot, I am.”

Eamon draped an arm across Hugh's shoulders. “I know how it is, man. When me own da passed on, didn't I go fancying every bit of wind blowing through the cracks in the walls was himself whistling for me?” He reached in his pocket and drew out his flask. “Still do sometimes, and it's a dozen years gone he is and me across the ocean from his grave.”

Hugh nodded his thanks and uncorked the flask. The empty places inside him welcomed the warmth of the rum.

“Come along,” Eamon said, his arm still around Hugh's shoulders, their heads together so they could hear each other over the crowd's din. “We'll go down to the square and watch the parade, take your mind from your grieving.”

Hugh let Eamon lead him, but he knew that noise and music would not be enough, just as the drink was never enough. Aye, he'd follow Eamon to the parade and festivities, but it'd take more than brass bands and a wondrous new machine to draw his mind from his heart's rue. He needed to leave this place entirely, to start fresh.

That was the railroad's promise, wasn't it?

“It's still building, you say?” he shouted in Eamon's ear and gestured toward the track.

Eamon nodded. “Across the river and west to New York.”

“They're still needing hands to work it, then.”

“Thousands, they say. It's hard work, I'm told, and dangerous.”

That was his answer. He could work hard, and as for danger, well, what did he care, with no one to miss him? He would lose himself in the new work, leave memories and demons behind,
make himself into a new man. He squared his shoulders and hugged Eamon in silent thanks for giving him hope. His heart began to warm to the music and festivity of the day.

But his eyes still searched the crowd for a woman in a brown plaid shawl.

“We've still not given 'em new names,” Billy said.

Daniel gave an absentminded “ummm,” paying more attention to the six ponies cantering around the ring. He and Billy stood back to back in the center, each of them holding a longeing whip, Daniel's pointed toward Gray and Billy's toward Teeth. The idea was to keep the other ponies evenly spaced between Gray and Teeth, with all six cantering at a steady pace. Eventually, Daniel hoped to manage them alone, using Gray to set the pace. But Teeth would break ranks and cut across the ring or run up along the pony in front of him or fall back to visit with the one behind, if Billy didn't keep him focused on the end of her whip.

Daniel gauged the distance between the ponies. They were doing much better today, their steps more evenly matched. “Ready?” he warned Billy. “One, two, three—Now!” Daniel and Billy stopped smartly, drawing their whips straight up by their sides.

First Gray, then the rest of the ponies wheeled on their haunches to face the center of the ring. The maneuver was supposed to be crisp and precise, all six of them moving as one, facing Daniel and Billy like spokes on a wagon wheel. Gray and Brown turned with military precision and stood with shoulders and hindquarters squared, heads up, waiting for the next command. Red stopped slantwise so his nose touched Brown's. Socks turned to the right instead of the left, looking over her shoulders at the others as if wondering why they'd all got it wrong.

“Teeth, no!” Billy said. The piebald gelding put his head down to crop the withered grass. Black looked ready to follow suit.

“Bl-a-a-ack,” Daniel warned. The pony snapped to attention, though nearly shoulder to shoulder with Teeth instead of centered in his segment of the ring. Daniel shook his head, though he was smiling. “Better than last time,” he said. “At least they're all facing in.”

“Stand,” he commanded, raising his empty hand. The ponies fixed their eyes on him, except for Teeth, who munched away obliviously. Daniel sighed. “C'mon, let's set 'em straight.”

“I said, we've not given 'em new names yet. You said we would.”

“I thought you'd'a come up with something by now.” In truth Daniel had so much on his mind that he'd forgotten entirely about the ponies' names.

“They should be something rare and grand.” Billy guided Black into place.

Once Billy's back was turned, Teeth laid his ears back and nipped at Brown. Daniel hissed and flicked the end of the whip in the grass. Startled, Teeth peered at Daniel from under his shaggy forelock with a “Who, me?” expression in his eyes. “Got a good name for the king of mischief?” Daniel asked.

“Kelpie,” Billy replied.

Daniel laughed. Although there was nothing in the legends about the mythical water horses being piebald, Teeth did seem the sort who'd drag children underwater and gobble them up. “All right then. Kelpie he is. I s'pose you'll be wanting to call Gray Liath Macha, and Black will be Dub Sainglend.” Surely Billy could choose no grander names than those of the horses who'd drawn mighty Cúchulainn's chariot.

Billy fixed her eyes on Gray. “No. That'd be too fierce for her.” She went to Gray and rubbed the mare's forehead. “Her name is Pearl.” Not
should be
but
is
, as if the pony had sent her a silent message.

“Aye, Pearl it is,” Daniel agreed. She was definitely the pearl of the lot: steady and calm and quick to learn, the one who tended most to incombustibility. “And Red, shall he be Ruby, then, if you're naming 'em for jewels?”

Billy wrinkled her nose. “That's too girlish. I have to think on
him a bit more. But Black . . . he's wanting to be named after that black jewel on Mr. C.'s turban. Only I don't remember what it is.”

“Glass, most likely,” Daniel said.

Billy rolled her eyes and put out her tongue. “I know that. But what's it s'posed to be?”

“Onyx, I fancy.”

“Onyx. That's him.” She touched his brow as she had with Pearl.

“How are you liking Rinn or Rialta for Red?” Daniel asked as he approached the blood bay gelding. “For this star on his forehead. And isn't he the one for always showing off?”

Billy caressed the white star between the pony's eyes. “Aye, Rinn.”

“What about you?” Daniel asked, walking across to Socks. She'd been the hardest pony to clean because of the tangles of matted hair at her fetlocks. Daniel had been tempted to give up and cut it all away. But he'd persisted, and now feathers of long white hair fell in silky waves about Socks's feet. “Silk” he said.

“Oh, that's lovely,” Billy agreed, giving the pony a christening touch.

“That leaves you then, lass,” Daniel said, turning to Brown, who'd sidled away from Teeth—no, Kelpie, he reminded himself.

Billy crossed her arms and frowned. “She is a puzzle. I'm trying to think of something brown that's precious. At first I thought Mahogany, because Mr. S. once said that's a rare fine wood. But I'm afraid folk'll call her Hog for short.”