On their way out, the letter sealed, stamped, and left on the corner of the bar for the postman, Michael noticed the bicycle again. It leaned against a different wall but was just as clean as it appeared the day before. "Lovely-looking bicycle," he said to Dermot.
"Careful, boy," Dermot said.
"Careful what? I'm just saying."
"Well, now you've said, so get on with it," Dermot said, and with his hands tucked under his arms, he started for camp.
That night, after a supper of oatmeal and currants, Dermot brought up the girl with the motorized camper once more. Michael's cousin's husband, Malachy, was at the same fire, and he said he'd seen the girl a few times. Good-looking, he said. Blond. Good hips. Another cousin at the other side of the fire said he knew the girl too, and what's more he'd seen the camper.
"Will you make an offer?" Malachy asked Dermot.
"We'll see what this lad has to say about that once he meets the girl," Dermot said, winking at Michael. Michael swallowed what was in his mouth and felt the warm spoonful slide down his throat to his belly. Then he stood and scraped the rest of his oatmeal into Malachy's bowl. The night air smelled like rain, and he set to work building his tent.
Later that night, Michael heard rustling outside his tent and lifted the flap to find his father stretched out on the damp ground. "We need turf," Dermot said without moving. Michael raised his eyebrows and thought of the last bog they'd passed, more than twenty miles back. "That place," Dermot said, referring to the house that had earlier turned Bitty and the other women away. "They'll have it somewhere."
"Now?" Michael asked. There was a harvest moon, yellow and close.
In answer, Dermot jumped to his feet and brushed off his backside. He waited in the road as Michael pulled on his boots, stretched his jacket tight over his thick sweater, and just managed to get the button in the hole. The moon made a bright path of the road, and Michael shook the sleep off his limbs to match his father's pace. It was the hour of night when the world always seemed haunted to Michael, their ponies turned to kelpies, their women turned to banshees, and Dermot, paces ahead, collar pulled tight against the back of his neck, was the spirit who spit and hummed and picked his teeth with his longest fingernail.
They found the turf shed just a few yards away from the house, and Dermot reached under the rusted, sagging tin roof that came up to his chest and passed piece after to piece to Michael. From somewhere in the dark hills behind the house a sheep bleated, and another answered. "We have enough," Michael said when he could hold no more, but Dermot untucked his shirt and filled that too. The turf was damp in Michael's arms, and he wondered if it would be dry enough to burn so soon. "Enough," Michael said again when he saw that Dermot was still reaching for more. He thought of the day in Achill when the gardai came to arrest Dermot for stealing eight lobsters from the fishermen's traps. It was before Julia died—how long before, Michael couldn't remember—and they'd all feasted on the lobster with butter and salt. After, her lips still rimmed with butter, Julia had walked circles around the wagons, asking aloud why he hadn't stopped at one or two. Michael had driven his tongue into the gaps between his teeth as he watched her, hoping to find one last piece of fish.
As they walked home, careful to keep close to the ditch in case anyone should pass, the moon so bright above the empty landscape that it was easy to imagine they were alone in the world, Michael decided to ask the question he'd been thinking of asking now for many weeks. Dermot was humming in low tones, and Michael waited until he stopped and then took his chance.
"What if I wanted to settle?" he asked. He felt a piece of turf slide out of his arms to the ground, but he ignored it. He hadn't meant to blurt the question out like that. He meant to bide his time, to raise the subject gradually over several months. But then Dermot had thrown off his plan with talk of a blond girl with a motorized camper, and he felt that the question couldn't wait any longer. Sometimes the dream of settling seemed like an idea that had just come to him, a seed blown in the wind that had landed and taken root. Other times he could look many years back and remember Maeve accusing him of wishing for a bed in the country houses they passed, wishing to go to a settled school, wishing for a barn and a field of his own. After Julia's funeral so many years ago, after all the mourners had left, Michael had crawled into Maeve's tent to tell her about the cottage by the river, the short hall with doors that led to different rooms, the smell of bread coming from behind one of the doors, the windows that allowed a person to look out onto the world from the inside. Even then, Maeve had been offended by his admiration for the cottage and had asked if he thought he was too good to do as his people had always done. And though he'd denied it when accused, as he had denied the same accusation since then, he knew he had wished for those things, or at least wondered about them, felt curious enough to want to try them.
Now that he'd said it, he pushed on. "No, don't say anything. Listen. What if I wanted to get one of those little attached houses and try it? I'm serious."
"Michaeleen," Dermot said. "No more than a country person can become a traveller, a traveller cannot settle. It's been tried! You think you're the first that's liked the look of those government houses? And it's failed over and over and over and over. First, your people have been travellers for a thousand years. Did you hear what I said? Second, you think people won't see you as a traveller just because you live in a house?"
"But why would I care how they see me, as long as I live in the house and earn my living and come home at the end of every day?"
"Michaeleen, you're my son, but you're no more than a newborn sometimes. Worse. You're like the foal who thinks he's a stallion. Now"—he stopped to get a better grip on the tails of his shirt—"I won't hear this again."
Then I won't ask again, Michael thought, and instead listened for the water flowing through the caves carved out of the earth below them and beside them, untouched by sun, untouched by a moon so close it seemed the earth had spun out of position. He imagined the gaping mouths of the caverns, guarded by sharp and craggy teeth. He smelled rain in the air and wondered if the underground rivers ever overflowed their banks.
When morning came, the women decided it was too wet to leave. The rain lashed down like it was blown straight out of the ocean, and when Michael licked his lips, he tasted salt. The rain and wind were blowing from the west, so Michael drove two stakes into the ground and draped their heaviest oilcloth across like a sail. On the east side of the stakes, he moved the stones of the ring closer together and then laid down a grid of sticks, five one way, five the other, the way the women laid the reeds before they wove baskets. When the grid was three layers above the damp ground, he went to the wagon that carried his tools, drew out four short planks he'd been saving, and leaned these planks over the turf and kindling so the rain would slide down and away. Holding a plastic tarp over his head, he crouched in front of the fire until it grew big enough to warm him. Once he was warm enough to get wet and cold again, he set out for a walk.
When he got to the pub, the bicycle was in the same place it had been when he pointed it out to Dermot. After a quick look around, without any real plan, he gently kicked the back tire. He took hold of the handlebars and kicked the front tire. He lifted the bike and bounced it against the ground. He reached down, spun one of the pedals, and listened for a healthy tic-tic-tic as they whizzed around and around. He looked behind him at the door of the pub and then in front of him at the miles of limestone, its weather-polished surface gleaming in the rain. He expected someone to shout at him, ask what he was doing with a bicycle that was not his, but there was no sign of the bartender from the day before, no sign of the man called Ethan who'd written their letter. I'll just test it, he thought, swinging his leg over the crossbar.
The seat was the perfect height for him, and without allowing himself to think, he put his head down and pushed the pedals. After a while the pub disappeared; the Burren became an ocean of hardened rock. He cycled as hard and as fast as his lungs an
d legs would allow. Village after village fell behind him like a curtain that had been yanked aside, and the same for field after field. Uphill, downhill, the smell of seawater came and went as the road bent toward the ocean, then away again. No one stopped him, no one shouted after him, and by the time he slowed down, sweat-soaked and lungs burning, he'd reached Galway.
Outside Galway City, more than forty miles from the pub where he began, he rested under a tree in an empty field. The rain had stopped hours before. He could see the lit-up windows of a house just beyond the field, but it was growing dark, and no one would be out again that evening. He could go back, catch up with the caravan as they were leaving, or take his time and catch up with them in the Midlands in a few weeks' time. He wondered if they'd hear of the stolen bicycle, if the man in the pub would go marching straight up to the camp looking for him. His stomach rumbled, and it dawned on him that he was alone, without money, without food. It rumbled again, and he fell back on the old wisdom: when there's no food to quiet a hungry belly, go to sleep and eat in your dreams.
He woke the next morning to a crick in his neck and a sharp pain in his side. He pissed against the tree he'd slept under, making sure to keep the thick trunk between himself and the house beyond. After buttoning his pants, he raked his fingers through his oily hair. He folded the blackened cuffs of his shirt so that they were hidden beneath the sleeves of his jacket. He put his fingers in his mouth and did his best to clean under his fingernails by biting and licking away the grit. He broke a twig off the tree to finish the job. He ignored the uncomfortable dampness of morning dew in his clothes and walked the bicycle up to the house. Begging was women's work in his clan, but in others, where women were scarce or unwell or too busy, it sometimes fell on the men to go out. He'd watched Maeve long enough to know that the trick was to offer a service—mending, hauling, handiwork—but that was only to show they weren't lazy and if the country person gave them something for free, that was his own choice. He observed the house from a distance and then up close. It was small but well kept, with fresh whitewash, decent curtains in the window. He expected a woman to answer, so when a young man came to the door, a boy, really, younger than Michael, his plan went out the window.
"Howaya," Michael said, friendly, as if they'd met before. The boy raised his eyebrows and waited. It was sneaky, Michael knew, pretending to know the boy, acting familiar. Country people already thought travellers were too sneaky. Honest and straightforward was best. "I'm starving," Michael said, and immediately regretted his choice of words. Travellers also had a reputation for exaggeration. "I cycled all day yesterday, and I've another day of it ahead. Can you spare any bread?"
The boy looked him up and down. "Did ye sleep in the field?"
"It's just myself."
"Is it a tinker, you are? Traveling alone?"
Michael surprised himself. "I'm no tinker," he said, smiling, "but I suppose I have all the markings. I been on the go for so long without a shave or a change of clothes. I'm from up Conch way, from Ballyroan." He stopped, but the boy was still looking at him. "I was robbed. I was lucky to get away with my bicycle."
The boy nodded, held up his hand for Michael to wait where he was standing. Michael heard a low voice from inside the house, also male, and then he saw the boy cross the hall into what must be the kitchen. He left the kitchen door open and Michael could see the boy's elbow and forearm reaching for an empty jar. He saw the boy's knee bend as he dipped the jar into a milk bucket that was out of sight. When the boy came back, he was carrying half a loaf of brown bread and a cut of pork along with the house-warm milk. "The ole one's having an off day," the boy said, passing off the items one by one. "Cancer of the stomach." When he'd handed Michael everything and they stood there looking at each other, he added, "My two brothers are out back. They could be here in half a second if I shouted for them. For the ole one. They keep an ear out. Drink up the milk here if you don't mind. It's the last jar."
Michael bowed his head and thanked him for the food, taking care not to look inside the little house in case the boy saw some kind of want in his expression and misunderstood. He wondered if the boy's brothers really were out back, or if there were any brothers at all.
"And look it," the boy said just as Michael was lifting the jar to his mouth. "If you're trying to pass yourself off as a local, you'd better start talking like the west of Ireland. You tinkers have the strangest way of talking. It's from everyplace, isn't it? All mixed up. Just now I heard Dublin, Cork, Donegal, and a little bit of Connemara, all jammed in together. So eat up your bread and mind what I said. Leave the jar whenever you've finished."
Michael sat on the stone wall at the side of the house and ate every last crumb of what the boy had given him. How old could the boy be? Twelve? Thirteen? Just like a little old man, with his advice and his way of watching. Michael drank all the milk, and after looking around for a place to rinse out the jar, he gave up and left it on the wall, its thin white film clinging to the glass. He walked his bicycle to the road and oriented himself. Behind was the direction he'd just come from, ahead and slightly left was the direction he needed to go if he was really going to go through with it. What was there to go through with? he asked himself as he lifted one leg over the bar of the bike. What was wrong with a son visiting his mother's grave? There was nothing wrong with it, nothing at all, and yet the more he insisted on the rightness of it, the more he feared he'd done—or was about to do—something to his father and to the rest of them that would be unforgivable once he returned. Dermot would tell them, Michael supposed, about what he had said about settling, and they would be disgusted, Maeve in particular, who looked on everything he did as if it were an extension of her own actions.
Back in that desolate landscape, they'd have gathered close around the fire and talked about him all night, how closed he was, how no one ever knew what Michael Ward was thinking, and how he'd probably been preparing himself to leave for many years, planning it, saving little bits of money, and one among them might point out that if this was the case, Michael Ward was far shrewder than they'd ever given credit for. Then they'd think on that for a while, and Dermot would point out that no one knew whether he'd left for good. Dermot would remind them to think back on themselves at eighteen and the foolish things they'd done, the men in particular, and with all the attention Maeve had gotten in the last few years—don't forget things were different with twins.
But Michael hadn't planned anything. The possibility of leaving, of actually, physically, striking out and doing it, had not come to him until that first time he saw the bicycle leaning against the gable. No. In truth, he couldn't really say it had come to him then either. He didn't even understand that he'd left until he'd reached Galway and rested and felt the spikes of hunger in his belly and the dampness the field had left in his clothes. Even now, a day later, headed farther west on the same bicycle, he didn't know whether he was leaving or had left or was just taking a few days out of the routine. I'll catch up with them in the Midlands, he told himself. But like his thoughts on visiting his mother's grave, the more he insisted on one way of looking at the thing, the more false that one way seemed.
To pass the time as he cycled out to Ballyroan, he counted the electricity poles and remembered hearing that those very same poles had once been trees as far away as Norway and Finland. As he closed in on Conch, he expected the poles to fall away, the wires strung through the air to reach their boundary, but they didn't. Where there was one, he could always look into the distance and find the next one, and the next and the next. He skirted Conch village and headed straight for Ballyroan. For the first time in years he thought of those two strange girls who had lived out there the year Julia died, the way they'd watched him, how they'd spied on the camp in the middle of the night, the way the older one asked question after question while the younger one shivered in her thin nightdress and her wet feet before turning and running away. Then seeing them again in Galway just a few months later, the older one greeting him
as if they were relations, dragging him along the quay to say hello to the younger one, who once again seemed frightened by her surroundings, as if the action on the pier had come to her, and not her to it. They were lonely, Michael realized now, and wondered why it had not occurred to him at the time.
The road to the sea was shorter than he remembered it, the curves arriving sooner. The abandoned houses were still abandoned, and a few were slung so low and were so wet and black and grown over that they'd become as much a part of the landscape as the mountains and the bog. He had to look twice and say to himself, That's a house, and there, that's another. The thought of needing to eat again soon was growing stronger by the mile, but he kept going, pressing the pedal with all his weight as the road began to tilt up toward the sea ledge. He dropped the bicycle to the ground just outside the flimsy gate of the cemetery. The ground was so uneven that he had to take hold of a headstone now and again as he negotiated the slope and the wet grass. Unlike the cemeteries in towns or cities, here there were no neat rows, no aisles, and to get to one grave, a person had to walk on many others. Many of the headstones were worn down to stumps.
The first thing he noticed when he reached her grave was the thin green film that covered the light stone. He reached out and touched it, rubbing the slimy matter with his fingertips. It was one of the only headstones without a name stamped across the top, and after looking at it for a while, examining how well the mound of dirt that covered her had leveled out, he wondered what to do next. It crossed his mind that a prayer would be the thing, but he'd never prayed by himself without being told, without joining in with a dozen or more other voices. Then he noticed the fresh dirt just beside his mother and the yawning hole beyond. A new arrival expected. Tomorrow, from the looks of it. His thoughts leaped to the cottage by the river and how they were the only family that would still bury its dead in this place.
The Walking People Page 14