The Killing Snows

by Charles Egan

  In the wreckage of the house, there was no drinking water. They found some bread which was still dry. The old dresser had fallen on top of it.

  Luke took a pail and walked into the wind to the well. When he returned with the water, Eleanor washed out the wound on Pat’s leg. It was not a bad gash, though the area around it was bruised.

  ‘You took a while with the water.’

  ‘The well’s all flooded with bog water. I had to go up to Sabina’s.’

  ‘Is she alright?’

  ‘I don’t know. She was asleep beside the fire. I didn’t bother waking her.’

  ‘Was there no one else there?’

  ‘Only Ian McKinnon.’

  Eleanor raised her eyebrows, but said nothing.

  By now Michael had found dry turf and started to kindle a fire. Luke cleared the manure out of the cowshed, and spent the afternoon washing its flagstone floor out with rainwater. Afterwards they found some of their bedding in the house as Eleanor dried out the clothes. All the while, she sang in Irish, quietening the child’s crying, calming her terrors.

  That night they slept on hay under what was left of their bedding, all huddled together for warmth. The wind had died, and the hail and rain had ceased. Eleanor lay on one side, cuddling Alicia. Over the sleeping bodies, she could see through the open gap between the shed’s rough-cut door and the wooden lintel.

  Above the ruins of the house, the cloud cover over the Mountain had separated, and Eleanor could see the stars through the flickering curtains of the aurora.

  The next day, she started the hard task of cleaning the shed. She knew that it would be months before they would be able to rebuild the house and live in it again. But no matter how much she scrubbed the floor and the walls, the old shed never seemed to be clean.

  A week after the storm, the aurora returned. Then Alicia fell ill and refused to eat. Eleanor became apprehensive. The men watched, saying little. Five days later, a rash appeared, covering most of the child’s body. Eleanor knew well what she was seeing, and when the child’s face became bloated and turned dark, there was no remaining doubt.

  Black Fever.

  She isolated the child in one corner of the shed, the rest of the family huddling together at the other end. Often she would rise and mop the child’s face and body in cooling water. During the day, she tried to feed her, but she knew the baby could no longer eat. A few days later, Alicia’s arms and legs started to quiver, and she screamed with pain. Eleanor tried to calm her, but the child was delirious, no longer even aware of her mother. Gangrene appeared, and the shed was filled with the stench of rotting flesh. Eleanor still mopped the child’s brow, singing softly.

  On the fifteenth day, Eleanor’s youngest child was dead. They buried her the same afternoon, outside a church with no roof.

  1846:

  Eleanor shuddered at the memory. But God had given her another girl and a second chance. She walked back into the house and went behind the curtain. She looked down at the sleeping baby. Then she sat beside her, and leaned down to the baby’s ear.

  ‘But there’s no need for you to be afraid, little Brigid,’ she whispered. ‘You’re not going to die. You’re going to live and show the whole world the kind of girl you are. The kind of woman you’ll be. The kind of women we are. They’ll never have the beating of us, Brigid. Never.’

  Through the summer, Luke’s tension increased. He was startled one day when Kitty confessed to meeting his mother and the baby. This only increased the tension.

  He loved Kitty, but there was anger there too. He could not understand how she had started meeting with his own mother, even if it was only to see the baby. He was furious too that she had not told him at first. He wondered why she had told him at all.

  But her fear softened his anger. She was frightened of losing him, and perhaps more frightened of losing Brigid. At times she asked if she might continue seeing Brigid, even after Fergus returned. He did not reply, he was afraid to say no, because he knew the pain it would cause her. Perhaps he half hoped that Brigid would give them an excuse to meet again when it was all over, though he knew he could not look his mother or father in the eyes if Kitty was in the same room.

  And there was Fergus too. She was terrified of what would happen if he found out about them. Luke had found this very hard to believe. He had always thought of Fergus as a roguish character, never as a man of violence. He would console her, assure her that their secret would never come out. He would tell her too that even if Fergus found out he would only be annoyed and that would be the end of it.

  ‘Oh, Luke,’ she said one day, ‘you don’t understand. You really do think he’s like that. A gentle, poor soul. You think he’d just understand and do nothing. But I know him better. He’ll beat me, I know he will. And as for you…’

  ‘As for me, what?’ he asked. But she was crying and could not speak. He held her close into his chest, stroking her long hair.

  The summer progressed, a cold and wet one. There were many days on which they were cold in the old rath, huddling close for warmth. It depressed him further. Achingly he wished they could have a house of their own, a house away from prying eyes with a warm fire in the grate. She wished it too.

  ‘Why don’t we just go away?’ she said one day. ‘Get out of here. Make a life of our own somewhere else.’

  ‘It’s not possible, my love. You know that.’

  ‘But it is. You could get work on the rails, you’re always on about it. The great days you had, the money you made. And I could work too. Work in a mill. I’m good with my hands. We’d make money, buy a house of our own, and be warm at night.’

  ‘It just isn’t possible.’

  ‘But why? Why isn’t it?’

  ‘You know the reasons as well as I do. Fergus would come after us. You’re always telling me about him. He wouldn’t stop in Mayo and let us get away with it.’

  ‘But he wouldn’t find us,’ she answered.

  ‘Maybe not. But there’s other things too. I have to stay with the farm. If I left, we’d be breaking the lease, and they’d all be out.’

  ‘So what? Let Pat take it. He’d be well enough able to run it.’

  ‘But he’s too young for the lease.’

  ‘How would they know? No one else knows how old he is.’

  ‘But it’s my farm. It’s my farm, and I want to run it.’

  ‘And it’s your excuse too,’ she said. ‘All the great stories you’ve told me. All about the railways and England and running away. It was nothing but boasting.’

  ‘Maybe it was what I wanted to believe,’ he said. ‘And anyhow, how would you leave? You’d have to leave Brigid behind, how could you do that?’

  ‘Don’t use Brigid against me,’ she whispered. ‘You know I love her, but I love you the more. You’re the man in my life. I always believed in you, I thought you were the tough one. But it’s Danny’s the tough one, he’s the one who’s going to win.’

  ‘Do you want me to be like Danny?’

  ‘No, I don’t. I just want you to be yourself. And I want you to be mine.’

  He said nothing. She was crying again. He pulled her close in, kissing her forehead, running his fingers through her hair.

  He was working with his father in the cowshed. Michael sat down by the cow, as Luke cleared the manure.

  ‘I want you to stop seeing her,’ his father said, without warning.

  Luke stopped and looked back. Michael started milking the cow, the streams of milk splashing into the pail.

  ‘What, Father?’

  ‘I said you’re to give her up. You’re not to see her anymore.’

  ‘Who?’ His heart was pounding now. He stared open-eyed at the back of his father’s head.

  ‘I am your father,’ Michael said, ignoring the question. ‘You owe me respect. And I will have your respect.’

/>   ‘Yes, Father, but…’

  ‘You will also respect the men who are away working.’

  ‘But Father…’

  ‘And their women.’

  Michael did not face him. The regular splashing continued, like the ticking of a clock.

  ‘But I don’t…’

  ‘If you defy me, you will leave this house.’

  Luke said nothing.

  ‘And this farm.’

  Still he said nothing.

  ‘Do you understand me, Luke?’

  He was confused, trying hard to think. Defy his father? Leave Carrigard? Take her away, far from Mayo? Yes, but it would have to be a long way. If his father knew, who else knew? Who had told him? He might defy his father, but he could not defy everyone, break with all the people he had ever known, and expect her to do the same. He had no time to think, and now his future teetered in the balance.

  ‘Yes, Father,’ he said at last in a quiet whisper. He leaned on the shovel for support, his eyes screwed shut, his throat choking.

  ‘Good. Now you just tell her. Be gentle with her, but firm. It’s over.’

  ‘Yes, Father.’

  Michael still had not looked at him. Luke turned away, and went on shovelling manure.

  She stared at him, disbelieving. ‘But how could he have known? No-one saw us.’

  ‘Someone did.’

  ‘But who?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Go and ask him. Ask him.’

  ‘I can’t. You know that. And even if I did, he’d never tell me. Maybe he saw us himself.’

  For a few moments she was silent. Then she turned to face him, eyes blazing. ‘God, can you never stand up to him. I used to think you were a tough fellow.’

  ‘You still don’t understand. Of course I can stand up to him, but where would that leave us. I’d lose the farm…’

  ‘Didn’t you co-sign for it?’

  ‘Yes, but look, it’s not just that. If we stay together, you and me, we’ll have to leave Mayo.’

  ‘And what of that?’ she asked. ‘Leave a father who never lets you do anything? And me leave a husband who runs after other women. Yes, let’s leave them.’

  ‘And go where?’

  ‘England. Can’t you go back to Farrelly?’

  ‘Farrelly! Go back to the gang with another man’s wife in tow. They wouldn’t even talk to us.’

  ‘Then anywhere, anywhere…’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘and where?

  ‘America.’

  ‘America?’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Why not, indeed,’ he answered. ‘You know as well as I do it won’t work, and it’s not a matter of being tough or standing up to anyone. It’s Mayo or nothing. There’s no other way.’

  ‘So that’s the end,’ she said.

  ‘It is, a ghrá.’

  MEXICO. High on the side of a Mexican valley a peon walked across the terrace to his fields. He was frightened. For some days, he had been watching the stalks blackening. Crossing the fields, he noticed again the sickly sweet smell, but it was stronger now. When he reached his own plot, he started to dig. He saw the potatoes, all putrid, every one of them. He ran down to the middle of the plot and dug again at random. The same. Twice more he moved around the plot, digging and scrabbling. He could not find a single potato that was anything but rotten.

  He stared across the valley to the light glistening off Smoking Mountain. The Heights of the Sun his grandmother had called it. The Home of the Gods the old priests had called it, in a time beyond remembering.

  He fell to his knees and started to pray, but his gods offered no solace, and his fear turned to terror. The gods were dead.

  Chapter Seven

  Telegraph or Connaught Ranger, July 1846:

  Burrishoole Relief Committee. Measures were adopted to select 700 of the most destitute to be employed. This is a task attended with very great difficulty, and will naturally excite much jealousy, as there are, we understand, near 2000 families in abject want, consisting of near 8000 persons. How the committee, or any member of it, can satisfactorily select 700 out of that number, we are at a loss to conjecture.

  For weeks Luke said little to anyone, preferring to remain alone with his thoughts. Working with his father was difficult. Michael was not naturally a talkative man, and Kitty remained a block between them. The one thing that was most important was the one they could not talk about. But they ceased to speak of other matters too. As they worked together, the only words that passed between them were mechanical, only what was necessary for the job in hand.

  Eleanor had sensed at once that there was something wrong, but for a few days neither Michael nor Luke said anything. When Michael finally told her, she was shocked. Then, more than ever, she wanted to reach out to Luke, but he was withdrawn, and she sensed it would do little good.

  Luke felt isolated. It appeared that he had succeeded in hiding any mention of the affair from other family or friends, but at the time he most needed someone to talk to, there was no one there.

  So he stayed alone. As so often before, he climbed to the rath in the evenings. Sometimes too he went there on Saturday mornings, hoping to see the familiar cart passing by. He was not sure if he ever saw it. He thought he did once, but it was too far to be certain. As time passed, he found too that he could no longer picture the face of the woman he had loved the most. Her shawl, her long flowing hair, these he could never forget, but her features had disappeared. There was nothing there.

  What he felt was not pain as he understood it. It was nothing, a deep, empty nothingness. Kitty had not died, he could not grieve for her. She had disappeared; become nothing. Sometimes he would sit on the edge of the rath, staring at the long panorama of mountains all the way from Croagh Patrick, across the Mountain to Nephin, and on to the Ox Mountains on the borders of County Sligo.

  He would ponder this nothingness, but was unable to come to grips with it because it was nothing. He wished it was a solid problem, something he could work on and repair. Sometimes, when he felt like this, he would go to the quarry with his sledgehammer and smash rock for hours on end. Sometimes too Michael, hearing the smashing sound, would walk past the edge of the quarry to watch him working. He knew what Luke was doing. In his life too, he had known the meaning of unphysical pain, the numbness of nothingness. Within himself he wanted to reach out, but Michael was a tough man, and did not have the language to express such feelings. In the end, he found the one means of expression open to him. He fetched his own sledgehammer and joined Luke in the quarry, father and son breaking rock side by side in the companionship of heavy labour.

  From the house Eleanor could hear the loud pounding, day after day. The heavy beating of hammer on stone told of a pain that would not go away. When she could take the noise no longer, she sat at the table, not working, only thinking. Luke and Kitty?

  All across the summer she had suspected that there was someone. She could have asked him, but had decided to wait until he mentioned it to her. She had thought of many girls, but she had never thought of Kitty, in spite of meeting her every week. Or perhaps, she reflected, she might not have wanted to think it.

  Looking back on it all, it was so obvious. She had not been surprised that Kitty would have wanted to see the child. Brigid was Nessa’s daughter, and Nessa had been Kitty’s best friend. And over the months she had been meeting Kitty, the story of Jimmy Corrigan had come out, as well as Kitty’s guilt for having encouraged Nessa. Eleanor had accepted all these things, and with it she had accepted the need for secrecy. Kitty had told her that this was because she felt ridiculous being seen to love another woman’s baby, and Eleanor had believed her.

  The smashing of the hammer went on, echoing through her head.

  ‘Luke. Oh my God, where did we ever get you from? So different, aren’t you? I wonder
do you know it? I think you do. I was so proud when you lived. Yes, when you lived, not just when you were born. My first living child and a son for Michael. That was so important to him, his first son and now his eldest son. Did I say that right? Oh God, I said I’d stop thinking about this, but I can’t. Yes, his first living son. It would surprise you, wouldn’t it? There was another before you, another son called Luke. Your brother. I never told you that. Perhaps I never will. My first born. Can you understand it? All a mother’s love and all a father’s pride. So helpless though. How he sucked! But it was not to be. Six months he lived. And then? He died. His face black, trying so hard to breathe. All the pain, the terrible pain and the terror. But still he died, just the same way as Alicia did later. Maybe that’s why you’re different though. There’s two Lukes in you. Yes, that’s why I named you Luke again, after your baby brother you never knew. Your father told me that I was half mad when my baby died. When you came, I just knew my baby had come back to me. The same life, only a different body. Your father told the priest, and he told me I was mad. But he christened you Luke anyway, I would have it no other way. He said you had a different soul, but for me that only made two souls. Two in one. Why not? God has three. Now I shouldn’t have thought that, should I? It must be a sin. Maybe I am mad. Stop it now. I promised Michael I wouldn’t think of these things. And I swore I wouldn’t think in Irish. But I can’t stop thinking, can I? Fine, I’ll think in English today. That way I’ll only be breaking one promise. Yes, Luke, you’re two in one. That’s why you’re different. But how, you might ask, how are you different? It’s your curiosity, isn’t it? Twice as much as anyone else. No, ten times. Always asking me questions, do you remember? What’s this? Who’s that? When was the other? And why, why, why – always why? You could never stop it, could you? Always coming back from Murty’s classes asking me questions. You thought that grown-ups had all the answers. You never noticed that I couldn’t answer you. We never had schools on the Mountain. But every time I learnt a little from your questions, and the next time I could try an answer, just to keep you talking. How much I learnt from your questions. But it’s not just the curiosity. No, it’s what the curiosity does to you. All this talk of battles and wars and foreign places that you got from Ian. I hope to God there isn’t a war, you’d fight in it, wouldn’t you? But even if there isn’t a war, what about all these places nobody else talks about. Places I’d never heard of. England, I’d heard of that. America too. France from the time they came to Mayo. But Spain? Or Waterloo? I hadn’t heard of them anyway. So where did you get it all from? It wasn’t my family, that’s for sure and certain. No curiosity there, they knew no world beyond the Mountain and Mayo. They’d heard of Castlebar and Westport. England too, but America was beyond them. And your father’s family, what about them? Your father, a good man, tough with it. Told stories about running the farm and paying the rent and selling the cattle after the Rebellion. Yes, a strong man, even as a lad, but he never had your curiosity, and his world never went beyond Mayo. Maybe your grandfather. He could read. And he knew so much once, what he didn’t forget in the gaol. He was just like Murty before that, that’s what the old people thought, they all said Murty takes after him. Maybe he does. And Murty is curious too. That’s what makes him a teacher – a real teacher. But he never went out of Ireland either. That’s his world, for all his talk of everywhere else. And no-one before him went either. You see, my son, you’re going to travel the world, and I know it. You mightn’t know it, and your father surely doesn’t. He thinks you’re going to take over the farm. You might think you will too, but I know better, and I’ll never tell you. You see, it’s Pat who’ll be the farmer. He’ll be a big strong fellow, and he’s got a softer heart. Yes, it’s your brother will be the farmer. But you? You won’t stay. No – you’ll leave us, Luke. You’ll leave us all, and you’ll travel the endless roads.’