The Walking People Read online

  "When did you go?" Greta asked.

  "Michael looked over at her the odd time, but that Maeve—she was talking and laughing, part English, part Irish, and part that language they have, and miming something the others had to guess."

  "I didn't notice you go."

  "Oh, I went early, early. She had you in the back room with the you-know-what. I was back before anyone missed me."

  "Did they see you?"

  "Maeve saw me. She gave me a good long look, but otherwise didn't take any notice."

  Greta tried to imagine the body laid out in the rain, stiff like the animals get when they wander off and die and a few days go by without finding them. She thought of the boy Michael who'd helped carry his mother away, and what it would feel like to have no mother at all. It seemed worse for him who had to sleep out in the cold and the rain than for the children in town who had lost parents. They might be missing their Mammies but at least they missed them from warm houses, tucked inside warm beds. She imagined Johanna crouched in the brush where she could see it all, her bony knees tucked under her chin. "They won't come back after this," Greta said. "They won't want to be reminded."

  "Strange," Johanna said. "I was just thinking the opposite. Now they're tied to this place and they'll come like clockwork. You watch."

  For some reason Greta couldn't think of, she pictured the orange bog grass that stretched from their cottage all the way to Conch, and how it was interrupted here and there by cuts made by slanes and the triangular stacks of damp turf left to dry in the wind. She remembered a story she hadn't heard in a long time. Before she was born, a local man had cut into the bog and found a pig, still pink, still whole, as if she'd sunk into the moist ground only the day before. Men came from Dublin, from Galway, from Cork and decided that pig had been there for hundreds of years. They took it with them to one of the universities, where Jack and Padraic claimed it went on to have a better life than anyone left in Ballyroan.

  It was a miracle, some people still said. A sign from heaven to remind them that they don't know even a quarter of the secrets the universe holds.

  2

  ON THE DAY Julia Ward died in the Cahills' closest field, Greta had been going to school for a little more than two months. There were laws about schooling, Lily knew. Laws that had been in place since she was a girl, but like most laws, they seemed to apply to other places in Ireland, places where the heavy salt wind didn't rattle the houses and cut swaths through the land. Reading and writing, of course, Lily was all for it. The rhymes of Mr. Yeats, the island stories of Mr. O'Flaherty. Those were the things that kept people company their whole lives. The boys had gone until they were twelve, and it had done no harm. Adding, subtracting, multiplication tables. Yes, yes, yes. But Irish? And history? Those things could be taught at the table at home. And there was the added complication of Greta being Greta. She was, Lily had long ago decided, like a new calf who couldn't find her feet. Sometimes Lily wondered if she'd done anything unlucky when she'd carried the child. That Johanna had lived and was so strong was a miracle, and she'd tried to do everything the same with Greta. But maybe she'd made a mistake after Greta was born, laid her on her left side instead of her right, fed her from the same spoon she'd used to feed herself. Foolishness, Lily had always thought, but when she looked at Greta, she worried.

  Lily held Greta at home for two years. The first time, Greta was five going on six, and no one noticed. After Johanna left in the morning, Greta followed Lily around the house, chattered away to Shep, who barked back like he had something on his mind, played mermaid in the swimsuit a distant cousin had sent from England, even when it turned cold and Lily made her wear it with thick wool stockings and a sweater. She hummed, she tried to skip stones on the river like her brothers, she helped Lily chase crows from the yard. Sometimes Lily came upon her whispering to herself, asking questions in one voice and answering in another.

  "Who are you talking to, Greta?"

  "My name is Mrs. Fishburne and I've come all the way from America."

  "Oh, excuse me. What part of America?"

  "The furthest part."

  "And did you come by sea or by air?"

  "Ahhh..." Greta dropped Mrs. Fishburne's expression of exhaustion. "What do you mean by air?" she asked in her own voice.

  "In an airplane. Did Mrs. Fishburne fly in an airplane, or did she come on a ship over the ocean?"

  "Which would make you more..." Greta raised the back of her hand to her forehead and fluttered her eyelashes.

  "Ship, I'd say. Takes a fortnight, and you might be seasick. And the airplane is very dear. Then again, I'd say Mrs. Fishburne is very rich, is she?"

  "She is, of course, but she came by ship anyway. The ocean was rough, and we had one man go overboard."

  "And did anyone save him?"

  "No one noticed but me, and by the time I got to the edge of the ship he'd gone under the water so I thought the best thing was to leave him in peace, poor bugger."

  As Greta played, Lily slipped in lessons. She'd hand Greta two spoons and ask her how many she had given her. Then she'd hand her three more and ask how many she had then. When Greta graduated from spoons, Lily used eggs, of which there always seemed to be a limitless supply. Eventually she just told Greta to figure out the sum in her mind. "If Padraic gives you seven sweets and Jack gives you ten, how many do you have?" Almost always, Greta got the answers right.

  It was more difficult to teach letters and sounds. Sometimes Lily wrote the letters out on a piece of newspaper and they sounded them out at the kitchen table. Greta didn't like doing this, and she pressed her head against the table and closed her eyes. She cried sometimes, and other times she was all affection, throwing her arms around Lily, snuggling against her, doing her Mrs. Fishburne voice and waiting for Lily to laugh. When there was a bit of chalk and the weather was fine, Lily wrote the letters in huge print on the side of the stable. Greta was better at the stable lessons than the inside lessons, but she always did best when they sounded the words out without writing anything down. B as in box, button, bull. D as in duck, dog, door. And what about when the sound is inside the word? Not at the beginning? Stubborn. Handle.

  After the second time Lily kept her at home, Sister Michaela of the convent school rode her bicycle to Ballyroan. It was late June, and the school year was about to end for the other students. It occurred to her recently, Sister Michaela said to Lily, that the youngest Cahill was almost gone eight. She pulled Greta toward her in the kitchen and looked into her face.

  "How's Greta today?" she asked.

  "Grand, Sister. And yourself?"

  Sister Michaela turned to Lily. "This one's as ready as she'll ever be. And"—she released her grasp on Greta's elbow—"it would be a way to show herself in town as independent. You have to consider that part of it as well, don't you? You never know who might be in need of a girl, a live-in to help with the things Greta can help with. Does she understand about cooking and cleaning? Do you trust her with an iron? With so many gone to England now the old ones need looking after. Isn't that where a girleen like Greta would be a great relief to someone? It's an opportunity, really, as long as she's capable."

  "I trust her the same as I trust myself," Lily said, and stood to add more turf to the fire.

  "Well then," said Sister Michaela. "I'll mark her in for September."

  Lily nodded as the nun stood and gathered her things.

  "I might as well take my other business while I'm here. Save the girls from walking it into town."

  "Oh, yes," Lily said, forgetting about Greta as she hurried into the back kitchen, stepped on the stool, reached up to the top shelf, and moved aside two empty jugs, a stack of tin cups, a jar of sugar, three folded tea towels. She removed two whole cured salmon and wrapped them in brown paper.

  The moment the nun left, Lily decided that the lessons she had given Greta were not enough. There had to be more if the girl was going to enter school in a matter of months. Instead of allowing Greta to follo
w her all day, instead of allowing her to chatter away in her collection of voices, Lily decided it was time to give her some responsibility. She waited for Big Tom to announce that it was dry enough to cut and lap the hay, and then she started Greta on delivering tea to the men: bread, crisp salmon skins fried in butter, tea in a thermos with sugar and milk. She gave the girl some warning.

  "Tomorrow you'll have a big job," she told Greta, and spent the rest of the afternoon explaining about men and their stomachs, the hard work they do, how they depend on their sustenance coming across that field at the same time every day, how everything the Cahills had depended on that delivery. After the hay was cut, it had to be dried for three or four days if the weather stayed clear, then a day of shaking it out with the tips of their hayforks, another day turning it over so the air and sunshine could touch the damp underside. Another day of drying, and then it had to be raked, cocked, brought mound by mound down to the hay shed, which had a roof four times the height of the cottage.

  "If they don't eat, they won't have the strength to work. And if they don't get it all done before the next big rain, then what? Can I trust you, Greta?"

  "Yes, Mammy."

  "Can I count on you?"

  "Yes." Greta pushed her hair out of her face and looked at Lily with those big green saucers of eyes. Pretty, yes, when she wasn't twisting her features into a scowl. The nose a bit long, granted, but lovely skin, lovely coloring. The hair, black like Johanna's but wilder, a lot like Big Tom's when he had more of it, hair that defied gravity by curling out of her scalp and straight up into the air.

  "Will you tie it?" Greta asked.

  "What?"

  "My hair," Greta said, pulling the curls straight with her fingers. "I can feel you looking at it. Will you tie it back?"

  "That's another thing you're old enough to do, Greta."

  The next morning, Lily put everything for the men in an old canvas satchel. "You know where Hurney's old field is? The one over and beyond? Well, go on then. They'll be hungry waiting, so off you go."

  It started like this every morning for a week, the men in a slightly different place, Lily giving slightly different instructions. Greta, her face pinched up as if she were working on a puzzle, would nod for her mother and set off. Lily would work around the kitchen for a while, then go stand out at the gable to watch Greta try one direction and then another, her head stuck out ahead of her, the bag of food held out as if at any moment she might place it on a table. She would strike out full speed and then come to a halt, stay frozen for a few moments, then turn a few degrees and strike out again. "Go on!" Lily would shout across the distance. "They'll be waiting." Then she'd return to the kitchen and wait.

  "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 G
reta'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.