The Walking People (10 page)

Every spring, the water bailiff unlocked the little hut on the bank of the river and swept it out. He set up his wireless, turned the old stool right side up, and got a long stick to knock down the cobwebs. He leaned his shotgun against the wall.

According to Big Tom, the Ballyroan portion of the river was the best. The salmon were drawn to the blackwater pools, deepest where the river ran behind the Cahill cottage. Where the river ran near town was too public. Too public for what, Greta didn't know. For fishing, she supposed. So many people talking and walking around on land would scare the fish away. And maybe where the river ran near town there was no good spot to fish at night, when it was quiet enough to trick the fish. She also wasn't sure why, when Big Tom and Jack discovered someone from Conch fishing in the Ballyroan section of the river one night, they'd come home in a panic and discussed it at the table all night.

"When he says the Ballyroan part of the river," Johanna informed Greta in the spring of 1957, "he means Mr. Grady's part."

Greta took this information and added it to all the other bits she'd collected about water and salmon and fishing and rights. She tried to read Lily, but that made her even more confused. Sometimes Lily seemed dead set against taking fish from the river, but once in a while, usually after supper—when there was nothing to do until bed except talk and Big Tom went on about how it was everyone's river and
plenty in it to go around, and no person had the right to own the river no more than they had the right to own the sea or the air—Lily nodded along and made no attempt to stop his talk. Plus, no one was more excited than Lily when Tom and the boys caught a big load. And yet each night when Big Tom fetched the net and the boys readied themselves to leave, she tried to talk them into staying home. She was afraid of something, Greta realized in 1957. It was the first time she knew that her parents could be afraid of things.

In the Grady family, river rights were handed down from generation to generation like the Belleek jug that sat on the Cahills' kitchen mantel. The bailiff's shelter was like a miniature house, so small that if Jack, Little Tom, and Padraic held hands, they could make a circle around it. Just big enough for the bailiff to escape the rain, Big Tom said. The point, after all, was not to be comfortable, but to be on the lookout for poachers. On the nights when the bailiff did not come, Mr. Grady took his shotgun and his electric torch and walked up and down the banks of the river himself. Greta had collected enough information to know that these were the nights when Big Tom and the boys had to be most cautious.

Greta once asked how Mr. Grady expected the bailiff to know what was happening at every point he was supposed to be guarding. No man could see what was happening miles upstream, and in some places the river was very wide.

"It's impossible to know," Johanna said. "That's why they get away with going with the net. And the bailiff is Pop's friend. Don't you remember us delivering to his wife the odd morning?"

"Shut your mouth about the net, girl," Lily said, her eyes wide and serious, her teacup paused between the table and her lips.

In the Cahill house, the punishment for taking salmon from the river without permission was not discussed. Johanna thought it was likely a money fine, and at eleven years old the idea of money had just come into focus. It was one thing, she had recently started to see, to have enough to eat because your own land and animals provided food, but when it came to things that you had to buy in a shop, things you could get only by handing over notes and coins—that was a different story. Greta—who by 1957 had accepted the idea that what her father
did with the net at night was not allowed—thought the punishment must be something more severe. "They'll take him away," she speculated as she and Johanna, awake in bed, listened to their father and the boys get ready in the kitchen. "Lock him up. Not just him, but the boys too. They all do the net, not just Pop."

"Who will lock him up? Mr. Grady?"

"Not Mr. Grady. The authorities."

"What authorities? The
gardai
?"

"I don't know. But it has to be something besides money."

"But isn't money bad enough? Where would they get it?" Johanna lowered her voice. "They don't have any, you know."

Greta considered this. "Maybe it starts with a money punishment; then, when you can't pay, they lock you up."

Johanna turned over this possibility in silence. It was almost midnight. After a few minutes they heard the back door close and Lily moving around the kitchen by herself. It was a cold job, and none of the men bothered with waders. They had a long-established system and worked quickly and quietly. After midnight the four walked through the back field until they reached the river; then they turned and walked upstream to shallow water. Big Tom carried the net. Jack carried the shotgun. Little Tom walked slightly ahead, Padraic slightly behind. Once they reached the shallow stretch, Little Tom and Padraic crossed the river in silence—no splash from their boots, no gasp when the ice-cold water soaked through their pants and touched their skin—and two on one side, two on the other, the four walked downstream. Then, when they reached Big Tom's favorite blackwater pool, Big Tom took hold of one end of the net and threw the other end across. Once the two across the river had hold of the net, they were able to circle the pool of fish, catch them in their beds. Jack's job was to keep his back turned on his father and brothers and stare out into the fields and the dark riverbanks, the shotgun clenched in both hands. Johanna had seen it once. Greta had heard them describe little bits and pieces of the scene so often that she felt she had seen it too.

Greta also wondered if she, Johanna, and Lily would be punished for taking care of the salmon once the men got it back to the house. It was their job to clean and salt the fish. Too much or too little salt and
the fish would go rotten; just the right amount and they could last for weeks. Lily always took a few out of each haul and hung them inside the chimney to soak up the smoke of the fire. These were Big Tom's favorites, but to Greta, the chimney fish always tasted of turf.

During the spring, summer, and autumn they ate fish at every meal. Salmon and eggs, salmon and toast, salmon and potatoes, salmon stew, salmon chopped up and mixed with flour and eggs and fried into little cakes. In addition to stuffing themselves full of it, Johanna and Greta also had the job of delivering the salmon in and around town. It was a somber operation—Johanna as the bearer of the fish, Greta as the companion charged to make conversation, keep everything light, swing her arms alongside her sister and appear to the world as two girls out for a walk. Johanna stowed the fish in the bag she used when she went in to sell eggs, and they went only to the houses Lily trusted. There were two bed-and-breakfasts in town, and one small hotel with a restaurant; the girls delivered salmon to these places as well. Jack and Padraic took the horse and cart to deliver to places farther away, places miles down the coast road, where people from England came in the summer and stayed in the single large hotel in the area or the private bungalows that lined the beach. Greta wondered if people could smell the salmon in their hair and their clothes, just as she had smelled earth and animals on the shawl of dead Julia Ward. Big Tom insisted that fresh fish didn't give off any odor, yet their cottage was swollen with the smell, and each night they cleaned little flecks of pink flesh from under their nails and off their jumpers. Lily put fresh wildflowers in every room. She grated orange peels and boiled cloves. They slept with the windows open and took turns watching out for Mr. Grady on the road.

In town, even the people who didn't buy from the Cahills knew what they were up to. Greta heard it in their voices when people said hello, good morning, what a wonderful day for a walk. Most seemed happy to see them, as if she and Johanna were just after playing a big joke and everyone was on the verge of applauding.

"Them eggs have a strange shape to them, Johanna Cahill," Mr. Doherty said with a wink as they passed one day, and then he laughed
and laughed as they quickened their pace. "You must have very unusual hens at your place."

"If you're interested in buying these unusual eggs," Johanna shouted back, "speak to my mother."

Greta had also noticed that there were one or two who were not amused to see them, who stood at the half doors of their homes, arms folded, to watch them and see whose house they'd visit next. Mr. Cox, whose wife was sick with a disease that made her tremble so much her daughters had to hold her down during Mass, said quietly one morning as they passed, "Tom Cahill is a thief and will go the way of thieves."

Greta felt her legs go weak and her heart begin to beat very fast. "What did he say?" she whispered to Johanna, though she'd heard perfectly well. Without answering, Johanna took her by the wrist, and they ran the rest of the way.

Big Tom said that if people weren't buying from the Cahills, they were buying from someone else. A few had the courage to go out with their own nets, and to these, Big Tom said, he wished best of luck. No one had access to those blackwater pools like Big Tom. The Cahills had been taking fish from the river since before Big Tom was born, before his father was born, and before his father as well.

Each spring, when the bailiff first knocked on the Cahill door, it sounded to Greta as if he and Big Tom were reading from cards, the way they do at school when they put on a performance. The two men had the same conversation every year.

"Now, John," Big Tom said when the bailiff came to the house in the spring of 1957. "I know what you're after and I'm telling you, you won't find what you're looking for here. It's Grady who has the idea in his head."

"Sure, I know it, Tom. And I also know that river is big and full to the brim. There's enough fish in that river to feed all of Ireland. And how are the boys?"

Big Tom shrugged, reached up to pry something from between his teeth. He clamped his hand on the man's shoulder. "Can I get you anything? A drop of
poitin
on this cool night?"

John Hogan looked around, and as Greta listened and Johanna
watched from the cracked kitchen door, the house seemed to hold its fishy breath.

"I would, if it's in it. Mind you, just a drop now, Tom."

Mr. Grady was another story, and when any of the Cahills saw him coming on the road, they were to tell Big Tom or Lily immediately. If someone in the family was out, whoever was home was to tie a handkerchief on the knob of the front door as a warning. Jack and Padraic could handle themselves, and Mr. Grady never bothered with Little Tom. He liked to get the girls, alone if possible, and there was an often-repeated story about Johanna, at four years old, announcing to Mr. Grady what a fine, big fish her Pop had caught the day before—how if the fish had feet and were to stand up, he'd be almost as tall as herself. Big Tom had had to give up the net for weeks.

Lily tried to keep the girls away from him, but they had to go to school, their chores took them far from the house, and there were plenty of opportunities for Mr. Grady to catch them on their own. Lily accepted this and worked on Greta in particular.

"What did you have for supper last night?" Lily asked. Mr. Grady would never start so bluntly, but it was an exercise. First, Lily warned, he might make conversation about what he ate the day before. He might even mention that salmon were in season.

"Rabbit," Greta said.

"And lunch?"

"Only a piece of brown bread."

"And did I see your father and brothers go out the house late last night? No trouble, I hope?"

"Last night? Sure they were asleep in their beds from eight o'clock on."

"Good girl, only don't blink so much. And don't fidget with your hair. And don't you dare put that knuckle in your mouth when he's talking."

 

Greta's sight wasn't perfect, but it had improved tremendously. After only a few weeks she'd stopped feeling nauseous. She'd even stopped putting her hands to her face every few seconds. Despite her improved
eyesight, Lily knew that people still saw something wrong with Greta, as if they'd decided something about her so long ago that a change as simple as glasses could do nothing to alter that opinion. The old goosi-ness had not disappeared. At nine, Greta walked and sat and listened the way she always had, out of habit. The heavy black-rimmed glasses added a kind of last stroke, a final ingredient to the whole concoction. People thought she was slow, simple, and Lily knew this was why, out of all of them, Mr. Grady would want to put his questions to her; like most people, he thought Greta was too innocent to lie.

One morning in late spring, just after dawn, Mr. Grady surprised Greta as she was walking from the henhouse back to the cottage. He came up behind her and wished her good morning. He smiled as she looked around, confused about where he'd emerged from. Coming up behind her that way meant he would have walked through the fields, waded through the stream, marched through the soft and muddy ground between his place and theirs. She looked down at his wellies, which were splattered with fresh mud. He was a small man, not nearly the size of her father, and his shadow barely outstretched hers. The brim of his cap was pulled so low that all Greta could see of his pale face was the ginger-colored stubble on his cheeks and throat.

"Did I scare you, Greta?" he asked, stepping in front of her so she had to stop walking.

"No, Mr. Grady. Fine day." She took a few steps to her left, pretending to look at something on the ground. She hoped her mother would glance out the window and see them there. Lily and Johanna were inside, draining the brine, removing the bones that came away easily and piling them in the pot to save for boiling. "What brings you down our way?" she asked. On several occasions Greta could recall, and even more that she couldn't recall but had heard recounted, he'd been angry enough to walk straight down the Cahills' lane and knock on their front door. He'd shouted at Big Tom, demanded payment for use of his property and for taking away business that rightfully belonged to him, but as far as Greta knew, he'd never sneaked through the fields and popped up in their yard with a smirk like the cat who got the cream.