The Walking People (7 page)

"You goose," Jack or Padraic would say when one of them found her, and then they'd lead her back home by the hand. If it was Little Tom who came, he would give her a little shake before pointing, almost with anger, toward the direction of home. He'd look at her, point, then look back with his eyebrows raised before marching her all the way back. The times when Lily came, she appeared before Greta in the mist like an apparition. "Just what do you think you're doing?" she'd say, and pinch the lobe of Greta's ear as she led her back to the road. A few times, she was kind when she came and only squeezed her daughter's hand. "Greta," she'd say, just once, as if they were at the end of a long conversation.

When Lily had Greta back home, she led her to the chair by the fire and told her to sit down. "When I send you out to the fields," she'd ask, "what do you be thinking of?"

"Of Mother Goose," said Johanna once, listening from the wings. It was a Saturday, and Johanna was mad because she wasn't let ride her bicycle into town to see her friends. "Is that it, Greta? Little Robin
Redbreast sitting on the rail, niddling his head and wiggling his tail? Is that why you niddle-naddle your head and wiggle-waggle your tail?"

"Keep quiet, you," Greta said to Johanna.

"One more word and you'll be sorry," Lily said to Johanna, and turned back to Greta. "What do you be thinking of?"

"Of the men," Greta said. "And how Pop gets if he doesn't have his tea." The tea. The thick slices of molasses-smeared bread, all still in Greta's satchel. Lily knew enough to continue sending food with the men in the morning so they wouldn't go without their midday meal.

After a few weeks, Greta learned a few tricks. She walked along the low stone wall for two hundred and twenty-seven steps, her head cocked to the right to better hear the sound of the ocean; then she was on the bridge, four steps up, four steps down, back to the road and the wall for another thirty-eight steps. When the wall ended, she made a sharp left turn into the field, the sound of the ocean behind her. She walked straight for fifty steps or so until she hit another low wall. She climbed over it, stamping on the nettles as she did, followed that second wall to the right for thirty steps, and then came the final, most difficult part—a walk into the great and shimmering expanse of amber and blue if it was sunny, dull and gray if it was not—until she heard her father and brothers talking or the sound of their forks being plunged into the hay, the hay lifted and tossed to the top of the waiting pile, settling with a sound so soft and light, fainter than any other sound Greta had noticed so far, fainter than the sound of fabric on fabric as Lily tied the belt of her apron and pulled it tight. She heard things other people didn't.

At the end of the hay-making week, Big Tom told Lily that he was afraid Greta would get lost in the bog one day, sink into one of the soft holes like the pig from five hundred years ago. "A girleen like that has to stay close to home," he said. "There are some in every family, aren't there? Ones who can strike out on their own and even go off to England, and then there's ones who never leave and shouldn't leave and that's just the way it is. You should see the cut of her when she comes across the field at us. She's all arms and neck, and why does she stick her neck out like that? And the expression on her face like she's surprised to see us, and then she stands there looking around herself like
she's waiting for instructions. You know what Jack figured out? She's dead tired! Johanna would be up and back twenty times in the time that one takes to come once, and not a bother. I say from now on, keep her close to home."

Lily hushed him. "Keep your voice down."

"I had an aunt once who left our place to live outside Oughterard in a flat. She came every Saint Stephen's Day and would sit at the table with her mouth hanging open so far you'd nearly see what she had for breakfast. Then she'd go laughing at nothing and shushing at nothing, and then she'd close her eyes and nod off for a few minutes before jumping up and announcing that she had presents waiting for her at home. There's a woman who should have been kept at home."

"How many times do I have to hear about this aunt?"

"Well now, Lily, remember that girleen when she first came? So red, and the size of her! No bigger than my fist, and not a peep out of her, only those big eyes looking around at everything. All I'm saying is why go trying to change her and turn her into Johanna? Sending her on errands and sending her to school. She's not Johanna and never will be and that's what God made her and that's the end of it."

"All you're saying and saying and saying and saying. Enough."

 

Going to school, for Greta, was a little like leaving the stone wall that showed her the curves in the road and striding out into the twinkling expanse of field and fog. She and Johanna walked together to and from, but once there, they were separated, Johanna in the back half of the room, Greta in the front. Johanna with her friends, Greta with her head down and her hands folded in her lap, praying that the teacher, Mr. Joyce, wouldn't call on her. Mr. Joyce, Big Tom often said around the house, was from Cork, born and raised in the city, and the smell of manure in the country made him sick. To pass the time on her first day, Greta tried to count how many of her classmates wore shoes and how many did not. She could tell by the sound they made walking up the aisle when they were called up to the board. Johanna said that Deirdre Sullivan's feet were blue and would never be right again. Lily had wrapped and double wrapped Greta's feet in strips of oilcloth and
promised as she tied the strips off, "Before winter, love. Before winter, and you'll be doing a hard shoe across the boards."

During Greta's first week she was terrified by the scratch of the teacher's chalk as he wrote on the board and the turn of his heel as he scanned the room. The letters and numbers he drew were much smaller than the ones Lily had drawn on the side of the stable. Johanna warned her that he wouldn't go long without calling on her, and urged her to start thinking of the answer before he called on anyone. "Greta Cahill," he said finally, his pointer stopping at Greta's desk. She had been in school for three weeks. "Can you step up, please?" Greta turned to look for Johanna's dark head way in the back. The older students were given their own set of problems, and thinking that Johanna might not be listening to what was going on at the front of the classroom, Greta pretended to sneeze.

"Have you been paying attention?" Mr. Joyce asked. Greta turned and took a step toward the board. She gripped the piece of chalk he placed in her palm.

"I have to ask my sister something important," Greta said.

"Ask her later," Mr. Joyce said.

"It has to do with a calf born this morning. You may not understand, sir, about the animals."

"You've three grown brothers at home, Greta. Step up and finish this problem now, please."

With her nose almost touching the board, Greta moved her head along to follow the marks he'd made. Then she made matching marks: a long line, a short line, a curved line, a dash. She slashed this way and that until she'd taken up as much space on the board as he had. Then she put the chalk down on the ledge and went back to her seat.

"Greta," Mr. Joyce said after a moment of silence, "can you explain yourself?" Greta heard the drawer of his desk open.

"She can't help it," a voice called from the back, and Greta turned to find the dark shine of Johanna's head rise up among the lighter heads around her. "She's not being fresh." Another long moment of silence, and Greta felt Mr. Joyce inspecting her all over, the way her hands were folded, the way her legs were crossed at the ankles in the place
where her stockings had fallen and bunched. She turned her head left and right, shifting in her seat to hear what else Johanna would say, but that was the end of it, and the next thing Greta heard was the switch being returned to the desk drawer.

On the way home from school that day, Johanna told Greta that she'd lied to Mr. Joyce and that Greta had to try harder. "How many times does three go into fifteen?" she asked.

Greta counted on her fingers. "Five with none left over."

"How many times does four go into sixteen?"

"Four."

"And how many times does seven go into twenty-one?"

Greta thought for a moment. "Three times."

"That's all the questions were, Greta. Why didn't you just write the answer instead of making all those marks on the board? He thought you were making fun of him."

"Was he very cross?"

"You better cop on, Greta. I won't speak up again."

"But Johanna—"

"Don't but Johanna me," Johanna said, then hugged her bag to her chest and ran ahead.

She'll wait for me at the crossroads, Greta told herself. She'll wait for me at the bridge. It was getting dark fast. Greta moved to the left side of the road and kept close to the wall that would lead her home.

 

In December, just before the school closed for Christmas holidays and almost two months after the tinkers left Ballyroan, a dentist came to the convent school to examine its forty students. By this time it was widely known that Greta smiled and nodded at things that didn't call for smiling or nodding, and that she had a way of walking as if she were leaning into a strong wind. When Mr. Joyce posed questions to the lower levels, he passed over her, calling on students he'd heard from three times already that day.

The dentist came all the way from Galway City in a long blue car that the boys couldn't keep themselves from running their hands over. It was parked outside the gate, and Mr. Joyce had to keep going over to
usher them back onto school grounds. When he had everyone in one place, he asked the students to line up single file, youngest to oldest. Greta was placed toward the middle, and she immediately heard whispers travel up and down the line and an unfamiliar voice commanding them to stand still. Two of the mid-level boys took off running across the yard and launched themselves over the gate, which Mr. Joyce had locked. Before he could say a word, another two followed, sending a brief titter up the line. "Next," the dentist said now and again. "Step up." Greta couldn't hear anything except breathing from the remaining students. Those who'd had their turn were shuttled somewhere else, back to the classroom, perhaps, or told to go home early. Every once in a while she heard a sound she couldn't identify, like a pebble dropped into a wheelbarrow. The closer she got to the front of the line, the quieter everyone became. When she was three people from the front, she saw the tin bucket on the ground next to the stranger. She saw the stranger in his long white jacket lean back and forth between patient and bucket until the line moved again and again, and then it was Greta stepping up.

"Open," he said, pressing his thumb against Greta's chin and pushing his fingers inside her mouth. "Wide." He pushed on each of Greta's teeth, then tapped and scraped them with a metal instrument. He prodded her gums with something sharp. He shone a light into her mouth and pressed on her tongue until she gagged.

"Name," he demanded. Greta told him. Then he did something she hadn't heard him ask anyone else on the line to do.

"Greta, if you wouldn't mind, please walk twenty paces in the direction of the gate and then turn back and face me."

Greta turned and did what she was told. At pace fourteen she turned her head to look for Johanna, but at sixteen she turned back, remembering Johanna's warning that she wouldn't speak up again.

"Now, Greta," the dentist called above the buzz that had ignited up and down the line. "How many fingers am I holding up?"

Greta didn't answer. She could see the line of her classmates, one after another in varying shades of gray and blue cardigans, not a bright spot in the bunch. She could see the whitewash of the schoolhouse behind, the shape of the outhouse, the smudge that was the bell,
but there was no way she could make out how many fingers the dentist was holding up.

"Take ten paces back toward me. Now tell me how many."

Greta took ten steps. She smiled. She pulled at her dress, brushed the hair from her face. "Now come back and stand in front of me, where you were before." Greta walked back to him as quickly as she could. She stood as close to him as she'd been when he was pushing his fingers inside her mouth. She saw the first three fingers of his left hand held up, the other hand behind his back.

"Three," she announced. He took a notebook and pencil out of his pocket. He made a few marks on the page.

"You need glasses, Greta. With a strong prescription. They will help you see things that are far away." He stopped writing and looked up. "Hasn't anyone ever told you that you need glasses?"

Greta didn't say anything, and as she stood there, he put his hands on either side of her head and pressed on her left eye, then her right, with his thumbs. She stumbled as she took a step back, blinking at the bright white feathers now floating all around.

"Is it your mother you have at home? And your father? And do you ever notice either of them writing a letter? Or reading one? Good. Do either of them ever take the bus into Galway, and do you ever go along? Yes or no, please, Greta. No? Well there's a first time for everything. Isn't there? You'll have to see this doctor in person. He's an eye doctor. You understand?"

"The bus to Galway, yes." Where is Johanna? Greta thought.

"Give this to your mother. It's the doctor's address, and at the bottom is my name, so you can tell him I sent you. I also made a few notes." He pressed the paper into Greta's hand. "It won't cost anything. Tell your mother that too. Tell her everything I said."

Greta folded the paper in fourths as she walked away. When she got beyond the front gate of the school, she sat on the road, opened her bag, and tucked the note neatly between the pages of her book. Behind the rushes she could hear the creek flowing over the rocks. Father Mitchell had glasses. Greta got a good look at them every time she received Communion and their faces were mere inches apart.
They seemed yellow in color and always made him look as if he had just stopped crying. Mrs. Norton, who owned one of the two shops in town, also had glasses, but hers were two little half-moons that sat at the tip of her nose. Mrs. Norton's Greta could accept. Father Mitchell's she could not.