Chapter Thirty Three

 

 

For the next three weeks, Michael, along with more than a dozen men, worked on an abandoned road two miles outside the village. As before, they had been assigned yet another useless task—widening a little-used back road that, unlike the busy road leading to the village, saw little traffic. But the men were glad for the work and didn’t complain.

At the beginning of the second week, Tarpy, the road work supervisor, pulled Da aside to talk to him. Michael didn’t trust the supervisor and joined them.

“This doesn’t concern you, Ranahan. Go back to work.”

“If it concerns my Da, it concerns me. What is it?”

“All right then, I’ll tell you as well. I’m lettin’ your brother go.”

“Oh, Jasus, no,” Da cried out. “Sure we need the money, Mr. Tarpy.”

“And he should be paid for what? Sure the man doesn’t show up for work half the time. If he’s too good for the work, there’s many a man who will gladly do it.”

Michael had seen this coming, but he’d been powerless to stop it. When the Works had reopened, Dermot had gone to work the first three days. Then he disappeared for two. For the next two weeks he was gone more days than he worked. In turn, Michael and Da tried talking to him, but Dermot wouldn’t listen. Even the heartless Tarpy didn’t want to see Dermot lose his job in these desperate times. He’d warned him repeatedly that he’d be sacked if he missed another day.

And now that day had come. Michael studied his father, pale and shaken. He wondered how much more the old man could take. On top of everything else that had befallen him, he had a defiant son who refused to obey him and now there was one less Ranahan to earn money.

“I warned him,” Tarpy growled. “You know I did.”

“Aye, you did,” Michael said. “It’s not your fault.”

 

The following day, Michael and Da went to the worksite together. Dermot had still not come home. The weather was cold, and a light misting rain had begun to fall. Around midmorning, Michael began to feel lightheaded and decided it must be because he had not eaten anything yet. At breakfast, over the objections of Mam, he’d insisted on giving his meager portion of cornmeal to his Da, who looked as though he barely had the strength to walk out to the worksite. It was a measure of the old man’s weakness that he took the food without argument.

Michael bent down to pick up a large stone and everything began to blur. His field of vision narrowed to a tiny circle and all he could see was the stone. The clank and thump of the men attacking the road with picks and shovels was blotted out by a loud whooshing in his ears. He grabbed the stone with his two hands and tried to lift it, but it wouldn’t budge. He stared at it, puzzled. He’d lifted hundreds of stones like this—even bigger—but this one seemed to hold the weight of the world. He tried again, but he was as weak as a child. He gave one last great heave.

Then everything went black.

“Man down,” someone shouted.

Da turned, saw Michael sprawled in the middle of the road, and ran to him. Michael’s face was white and when Da touched his son’s forehead, it was clammy with sweat.

“Give a hand here,” he cried out.

As the men rushed to help, Tarpy took a close look at Michael and backed away. “Jasus, he’s got the fever…”

 

When Da, Pat Doyle and Matt Flanagan carried the unconscious Michael into the cottage, Mam crossed herself and knew her worst fears were realized. Since the start of the troubles, she had prayed every night without fail, asking God to protect her family from disease and death. So far, her prayers had been answered—at least for her husband and two sons—and for that she was most grateful. But when the men brought Michael in, she took one look at her son and knew that her time of grace was over.

Mam stayed at his side day and night. There was nothing to do but bathe his feverish head with rags soaked in water and change the soiled straw bedding almost hourly. Semi-conscious most of the time, he writhed on the straw, muttering and crying out. She couldn’t understand most of what he was saying, but she did understand one word, which he repeated over and over again. Emily...

She tried to get a bit of food into him, but it was no use. He was vomiting constantly and could hold nothing down. After four days, she was exhausted from lack of sleep, but she had no one to spell her. Dermot still hadn’t come home and Da had to go to the worksite. But no matter. She shook off the fatigue, grimly determined that death would not take her first born son. She would die first.

Weakened from lack of sleep and little food, she was nodding off after having just replaced the soiled straw when she heard footsteps outside the cottage. She stiffened. Every day she listened for the sounds of footsteps outside, praying it was Dermot, and yet dreading that it might be someone to tell her that Dermot was dead, or someone carrying her husband home with the fever.

The door swung open and Emily ducked into the cottage.

“Mrs. Ranahan, I’m Emily Somerville.”

“Yes, I know you are,” Mam said, stunned to see Lord Somerville’s daughter actually here in her cottage.

“I just heard Michael was sick and I’ve come to help.”

“Oh, this is not the work for a fine young lady such as yourself.”

Emily knelt down and touched Michael’s feverish forehead. She was shocked at his appearance. He’d been thin for a long time, but now he was positively gaunt. But at least he didn’t have that certain look of death, the kind of look that would have caused Dr. McDonald to send him to the dying room.

“Has he been vomiting?”

“Yes. Constantly.”

“Has he been conscious?”

“Not really.”

Emily could see that the woman was on the verge of collapse. Gently, she helped her to her feet and made her lie down on her own pallet. “You get some rest. Let me tend to things here.” The exhausted woman was asleep before Emily could spread a threadbare blanket over her.

Emily turned her attention to Michael. He was deathly pale and his shirt was soaked through with perspiration. Recalling her experiences in the Fever Hospital, she realized that Michael could have any number of diseases. Typhus—or as the Irish called it, the “Black Fever”—caused the face to swell and the skin to turn a dark congested hue. Fortunately, it was usually not fatal. Then there was “Relapsing Fever,” which caused high temperatures and vomiting. She prayed he didn’t have that. Those afflicted with Relapsing Fever seemed to recover after several days, but there was always a relapse, and the whole cycle of fever and vomiting was repeated again. Emily had seen the cycle repeat itself as much as four times, but most patients, exhausted and debilitated, died well before that. She prayed it was only dysentery, whose symptoms were fever, vomiting, and violent evacuations. If she could keep plenty of fluids in him, he would survive. In the Fever Hospital, Dr. McDonald’s main concern with dysentery was that it often turned into bacillary dysentery. Almost everyone who contracted bacillary dysentery died.

Oh, what’s the difference what he has, she chided herself as she dipped a rag into a bucket of cool water. I’m going to make him well and that’s that.

 

For the next ten days, Emily and Mam took turns tending to Michael and it seemed as though the fever would never break. At the end of the day, an exhausted Da would straggle in from the worksite, gaze at Michael, his brow knitted with worry, and ask how he was doing. He’d stopped asking Mam if Dermot had come home. Looking more haggard and thin with each passing day, he would then go sit by the fire and stare at it in silence until it was time to eat.

Sometime into the third week, Michael’s fever broke. He opened his eyes, saw Emily staring down at him, and thought that he’d died and gone to heaven. Then Da peered over her shoulder. “Well, I guess you didn’t die.”

Michael rubbed his throbbing head. “I think I may be wishin’ I had.”

 

Michael fell into a deep sleep and slept peacefully well into the next evening. When he awoke he was lightheaded and every part of his body ached, but at least the fever was gone.

“Did Emily go?” he asked Mam.

“No, she’s outside.”

Overjoyed that she was still here, Michael pulled on his trousers and a shirt and went outside. She was sitting on the stone wall bordering the potato field.

“Why do you always sit in the dark?” he asked, echoing her question to him.

He could see her smile in the moonlight. “It’s easier to remember the way things used to be.”

He wanted to take her in his arms and bury his face in her sweet-smelling hair and tell her he loved her. Instead, he said, “Thanks for takin’ care of me.”

“I’m glad you’re well again, Michael.”

In the moonlight they studied each other in silence. When Emily had come into the cottage that first day and saw him lying on the bed, pale, feverish, and close to death, she thought she would die. Her only thought was to make him well. To make him live. Now, as she looked at him, she wished that he would say what she, herself, was longing to say. That she loved him. But he stood with his hands thrust into his trouser pockets, silently studying the trees in the distance.

Well, she thought, if he won’t say something, I will. “Michael, I—”

“Hello...”

When Michael turned and saw Dermot coming up the road swaying on his short, bandy legs, a great anger rose in him. He wasn’t sure if was because Dermot’s absence had worried Mam sick or because he had spoiled this wonderful moment alone with Emily.

“Where have you been?” he said, trying, and failing, to keep the anger out of his voice.

“Lookin’ for work.”

“You had work here.”

“Bustin’ rocks for old Tarpy? I wanted somethin’ more than that.”

“And did you get it?” Michael asked, already knowing the answer.

“No.”

Mam and Da heard Dermot’s voice and came of the cottage. Mam rushed to her son and wrapped her arms around him. “Dermot, thank God you’re alive. You’ve worried the life out of me.”

Dermot pushed her away. “Sure I can take care of meself, Mam.”

Da, standing rigidly in the doorway, made no attempt to approach his son. “So, you’re home, is it?” he said in a voice constricted with rage.

“Aye. And I’m ready to go back to work with you and Michael.”

“You’ve been sacked.”

“Old Tarpy sacked me?”

“Don’t act surprised, Dermot,” Michael said. “He warned you. We all warned you.”

Emily stood up. “Well, I think I’ll be going,” she said, not wanting to witness a family fight.

“I’ll walk with you,” Michael said.

“No, you need to rest up and get your strength back. The fever can return if the body is not strong.”

He didn’t protest. He was still feeling lightheaded and weak and wasn’t sure he’d be able to walk her to Nora’s cabin and make it back. “Well, thank you again, Emily. For everything.”

“It’s nuthin’,” she said with a sly smile.

Michael watched her go down the road and it suddenly occurred to him that when she’d said “It’s nuthin’,” she was repeating what he’d said to her when he’d saved her from going into the ditch with Shannon.

When Michael went into the cottage, Da and Dermot were still arguing.

“Well, what am I to do now?” Dermot asked.

“You’ll work in the soup kitchen with Mr. Goodbody and Miss Emily,” Da said. “They need the help. Since the Works opened your brother and me have not been able to help out.”

Dermot stomped out the door and went to sit on the same wall Emily had been sitting on. Work in the soup kitchen. The only thing he hated more than working with the road gang was working in the soup kitchen. He resented washing the endless pile of soup bowls and he detested the pathetic stream of beggars who came every day for their soup and a bite of bread.

After the life he’d been living for the past three weeks, the thought of working in the soup kitchen was unbearable. He, Jerry Fowler, and a few other lads had roamed the countryside near the town of Innismorn, twenty-five miles from Ballyross. At first they only stole from homes and barns. But when that didn’t yield enough money, they moved up to stopping carriages on the road and relieving the wealthy passengers of their money and jewels. The risks were higher, but so were the rewards. In the beginning, he’d been terrified that he’d be shot or arrested, but the fear soon gave way to a surge of great excitement every time they stepped out into the roadway and stopped a carriage.

With more money to spend than he’d ever seen in his life, he and Jerry and the others lived and ate well. But then, two nights ago, something went terribly wrong. Dermot shook his head at the memory of it. They’d followed their usual plan —posting someone to stand across the street from the town’s hotel. As soon as he saw a carriage being loaded with fancy dressed men and women, he’d run off to tell Fowler and the others. Then the whole group would wait two miles down the road for the arrival of the carriage. It was so easy, it was like snatching chickens in a hen house. Until that night.

Dermot couldn’t get the images out of his mind. The carriage came around the bend. Following a prearranged plan, they jumped out into the roadway just as the carriage was upon them. Dermot’s job was to grab the bridle and hold the horses still while Jerry and the others surrounded the carriage and robbed the passengers. As he usually did, Jerry stepped up to the carriage waving a firearm and announced, “I have a pistol. Don’t resist and there’ll be no trouble.”

Usually, the sight of the pistol was enough to start the passengers throwing their valuables into the roadway. But this time, he’d barely gotten the words out of his mouth, when a shot rang out. At first, Dermot thought Fowler had fired the shot, but then one of the lads standing behind Fowler fell backward into the dirt. Frightened and confused by the sudden turn of events, Fowler fired wildly into the air and raced for the trees. “Run lads,” he shouted. “Tis a trap.”

Later, when Dermot met up with Fowler, he found out that one of the passengers had a firearm and had killed young Terry Wall, a sixteen-year-old runaway who had just joined up with them a week earlier. Jerry told Dermot to go home and lay low and promised he’d meet up with him later.

On the long walk home, Dermot comforted himself that at least he still had some money. He put his hand into his pocket and was stunned to discovered there was nothing left. Not a farthing. My God, where did it all go?

Like most men unaccustomed to using currency, he’d spent his ill-gotten gains with reckless abandon on women, drink, and food. He’d just assumed that there would always be more money. But those days were over. At least for now.

As Dermot sat on the wall, staring at the cottage—which to his eye was nothing more than a sorry pile of mud and thatch—the rage in him grew. It was a rage fueled by his knowledge that there was a better life out there than breaking rocks, or washing soup bowls, or farming another man’s land.

In his travels with Jerry Fowler, he’d experienced that better life. And if it meant stealing and robbing to have that life, so be it. Anything was better than this miserable existence.

“All right,” he muttered into the night. “I’ll work in the soup kitchen. But just until Jerry Fowler comes back.”