Hunger, page 2
Da blinked at me. “Don’t act thick. This isn’t the usual hunger. It’s not what we get toward the end of summer every year, when the last year’s crop is all gone and the new year’s isn’t yet harvested and people beg along the roadside for two or three months. That’s all normal. Thruaill—wretched—but normal. This isn’t.” Da shook his head. “Last year’s harvest was ruined. People have been begging along the roadside ever since. Not just a couple of summer months, but all year long. Look at us—farmers. Farmers! And still, we’ve been hungry as the rest of them all year long.”
“Right,” I said quickly. I’d heard him spout those very words so many times, it felt polished, like a sermon in church. “Right, right. So what’s a few more weeks, then?” I slid my eyes toward little Paddy and back to Da. “Think on it, Da! We’ll have spuds this time next month. Lots. Harvest will be good, like it used to be, not like last year. We’ll have spuds everywhere.”
“The very best food in the world,” said Ma in a lilting tone. “It’s cruel how beautiful they are. And there will be enough to make your poteen again this year—something grand to drink in the evening. The treasure from all your spudding.”
“Spuds,” said Da softly. Then, “Spuds,” even softer. His face gradually changed, till he wore that contented look he used to get after he’d been drinking poteen all evening—a look I hadn’t seen for so long now.
“Exactly. That’s what our mouths are watering for.” Ma put a hand on little Paddy’s head. “No berries for the hedgehog, you hear, son? He’s eaten enough of whatever he needs for today, I’m sure. And tomorrow you can follow him about outside, and he’ll eat what he wants just out in the open. That’s the best way with animals.”
“We feed Muc.”
“Muc’s different. Look at Bo Bo, she just grazes all day. That’s what most animals do, and it’s especially true with wild things.”
Da dropped onto his stool at the table with a loud sigh. “I could sure use a mug of poteen right now.” He shut his eyes a second. There hadn’t been enough spuds to make poteen last autumn, so Da had gone without all year. When he opened his eyes again, he didn’t look at us.
We all took our places. We ate the gruel Ma had made from nettles and thickened with yellow cornmeal from America. The meal tasted good enough and sat heavy in the stomach, which was a relief. But, oh, I was sick of nettles. We’d had them all month it seemed . . . all summer, even. Still, they had a nice zingy taste and they didn’t make us gassy like thistles did. Burdock was the best of the wild greens, though—tangy and crunchy. I reminded myself to go on a burdock hunt soon.
In any case, the buttermilk that followed the gruel was thick and just the right amount of sour to go with the sweet berries.
Little Paddy held the hedgehog in his lap with one hand while he ate. The animal was silent. I hoped it wasn’t hurt. “What’ll we call him?”
“No name,” said Da.
Ma put her hand on Da’s arm, but she kept her eyes on little Paddy. “Not yet, son. Like Da says. Wait till you know him better and can choose a name that fits.”
When Da put his spoon down, he started his telling. Little Paddy and I settled onto our grass-and-straw mat on the floor. Almost instantly, my stomach rebelled. I had expected that, of course; that’s what happened after eating nettles. Ma said they were hard to digest. I flopped around a long while, trying to get comfortable, then I got up and dragged our sleeping mat over near Muc. The night was growing frigid fast, and our pig was a grand source of heat as well as distraction from the pain in my belly. Besides, she smelled good. She was just like people—her waste stank, but her body gave off a lulling sweetness.
Muc wriggled around in her sleep till her snout was facing our mat. She had always preferred to sleep head-to-head with us. I didn’t know why, but I liked it. It felt friendly. Her trotters moved as though she was running. I hoped her dream was fun.
Ma came with the old willow basket that Granny used to keep her unspun wool in. She took the no-name hedgehog from little Paddy and plopped it into the basket quick with a cloth over the top opening. She put her finger to her mouth to hush the boy, keep him from protesting in the middle of Da’s telling. Then she tucked the basket into the crook of little Paddy’s arm, and glanced quickly at Da and right back to us. We knew what that meant: Pay attention to the telling.
It was hard at first to ignore the hedgehog grunts that came from the basket. But Da’s telling was grand tonight—and soon it filled my head. It was the story of the piper who knew only one tune and played that one badly. Terribly, in fact. But then he met a magic puca who gave him the gift of playing grand, like a master. The puca only had to name a tune and the piper found himself playing it marvelously.
I closed my eyes. I could imagine that stunned piper listening to the glory that came out of his own lungs. Oh, how I wished I could have the gift of music. The two best things in life were listening to music and listening to tellings. I loved to sing, but I had the voice of a sick frog.
Da’s voice was rhythmic, like a drum; he was telling the best part now. The bewitched piper played for rich folk in a home as grand as the castle that the owner of our land lived in. But the food was served by the strangest fellow—a big white gander. And the piper recognized that gander as the same one he’d stolen from the priest, old Father William, on the Martinmas before. He’d eaten that very gander’s wing.
Now that was a good trick—being eaten and coming back to life again. The best trick. I loved the whole idea. All you’d need was one goose, and you could eat him over and over. Even the poorest of the poor wouldn’t go hungry. I hugged myself and smiled into the dark.
But no! What if the gander remembered being eaten? Teeth sinking into his flesh. I shivered.
Still, he wouldn’t. That didn’t make a good story—so he just wouldn’t.
I listened more closely to Da.
After that meal, the piper played terribly again. The noise he made was the screech of squabbling ganders. But then he went to old Father William and confessed all, and when the piper played next . . . oh, glory! His music was melodious beyond measure. He was the best piper of all the land.
I heard Da blow out the candle, then settle onto the big mat with Ma. She sang the wordless melody she sang every night. Soon Da was snoring—muffley-wuffley sounds that usually gave me comfort. Beside me little Paddy lay asleep as well—each breath a sweet sigh. And from the basket came the occasional scritch-scratch of that lovey little hedgehog.
But there was something wrong tonight. I listened close. There was an extra plunk plunk behind Da’s snores. And then there were lots of plunks between the snores too. It was raining. Harder and harder. Bucketing, in fact. In autumn or winter, I’d have thought nothing of it. But now? In August?
I chewed on the side of my thumb. My last thought was of a puca, smiling with a mouth that looked suspiciously like Ma’s, and offering to pluck the frog from my throat.
CHAPTER THREE
Black
Da’s shout woke me. He slopped through the mud, up and down the furrows between the hilled rows of plants, shouting, “No!” Just that one word. Over and over.
“Brutal,” said Ma in a dead voice. She stood just outside our doorway, squinting into the low white fog.
I came to stand beside her.
“One night. The work of a single night.” She shifted closer to me. “How could it happen? Last year wasn’t this way. It wasn’t. I remember everything. It’s impossible to forget. The news from some island in England. Then from Belgium and France. Then, finally, here. But slow. Day by day. We watched everything wither day by day. Last year was awful . . . but this is worse. There’s been no news from anywhere else. And there’s nothing day by day about it. This is like a snap of some giant dragon’s jaws.” She shook her head slowly. “And it’s the spuds again. The only crop we can’t live without. Brutal.”
The stalks of all those plants were still green—a taunting green, in fact, because the leaves dangled loosely, black as though scorched. Ruined. All in one night. Impossible. And Ma was right. The cabbages were still light green, the kale still dark green. Only the spuds had been ruined. The heart of every meal—or what used to be the heart.
Diabolical rain.
I hugged myself against the cold. Last year the plants had stayed green till almost harvesttime. We had listened to the news about other places and we thought we’d been spared. Then over the space of a month, our plants withered. And in October we dug up a mess—ruined spuds. Everything was different this time around; everything bad was happening earlier and faster.
“Grab a tool, Lorraine.” Ma already held a spud digger, as though she’d woken prescient. “We must dig fast and save what we can.”
I looked around. “What about Bo Bo?” The cow was usually standing at the door by this time of morning. If we ever overslept, her pained lowing woke us.
Ma looked around too. “The downpour last night must have confused her. Go find her and milk her. Then come dig. Fast.”
I rushed inside and grabbed the milking bucket, then looked over at little Paddy. He stared at me, both hands around the hedgehog clutched to his chest. His eyes bore into me. Pointy, he mouthed silently. We have to save Pointy. So he had named the hedgehog even though Da had told him not to. And, worse, he knew what Da had intended last night, he knew after all. He’d just pretended not to—as though by pretending, he could make it not be true. I swallowed a lump of pain. Little Paddy was five. He shouldn’t understand harsh things yet. I didn’t think I did at his age.
I went and knelt beside my brother and turned the basket on its side. I whispered in his ear, “They’ll think he escaped. Run out back and relieve yourself. No one will know.”
“Ma will see.”
“Not if Muc runs with you.”
A tear welled in one eye, but he nodded.
I kicked Muc hard in the rump. The pig scrambled to her feet. She gave me a hurt look with her deep-set, squinty eyes and pressed her snout against my belly. But there was no way to explain to her. I rubbed her ears the way she liked, in the hopes that she’d remember that later and forgive me. Then I did the only thing I could think of: I kicked her again. Harder. She ran out the door with little Paddy behind her, him bent over as though his belly ached, hiding that sweet ball of love. Ma didn’t give either of them a second glance.
I clumped out after them and walked randomly here and there, looking for Bo Bo. I didn’t have to search long. As soon as that cow heard me singing, she came lumbering from a low hill and bashed me in the chest with her wide forehead. I wondered if she had learned that behavior from Muc, or if Muc had learned it from her, or if it was just natural to all pigs and cows. Bo Bo pushed insistently. A cow that needs milking isn’t shy. At this rate, she’d knock me over. I rubbed her under the neck so she’d lift her chin. Then I set to work.
I squirted myself a hot, sweet mouthful and wished we had four cows, and I sang as I milked her right there in the grass, just to save time. After all, she walked far slower than me—so this way I could get the milk home faster. When her udder was empty and slack again, Bo Bo went down on her front knees, one then the other. She folded her rear legs, then, plop, she dropped to the ground with a groan. She looked so shattered, I wondered if she’d been awake all night, frightened by the deluge. Had she climbed that hill to get away from a flood? Did she catch a glimpse of the distant mountains of Connemara all purple in the night and wish she could climb to the top of them? Did she know that much? I doubted it; I couldn’t remember her ever doing anything that seemed cunning. I scratched her under the neck again. Bo Bo never showed the slightest sign of affection, not like Muc, but at least it was clear she enjoyed being scratched. And she didn’t give out at my singing—never a complaint; I liked her for that. A lot. I walked back to our cottage, careful not to spill a drop. After all, we shared with the cottier families these days, which meant there would be barely enough.
The cottage was empty; everyone else was working already. I put the milk inside and grabbed a spud digger.
We dug spuds all morning, the four of us, under a sun that turned hot and hotter. Every overturned lump of mud polluted the air worse. The stench turned my stomach. Most of the spuds were small, the size Da called haws, and some were even smaller, the size of thimbles—far from ready to be taken from the ground. In the old days we would have saved spuds this size as seed for the planting the next spring. But Da and Ma were right to dig now because many spuds were black already. They must have been turning black under the dirt for days before—and we hadn’t even guessed. The rot had started from below, as though it had been lurking there since last year.
Still, many others were green and brown. I couldn’t check their smell because my nose was so full of the smell of the putrid black ones. But their color mattered; green and brown—that had to be good.
Toward midday a man came riding up on a horse. He worked for the landlord, but I didn’t know his name. Da glanced at him, then kept digging spuds, in ground that had gone from sloppy to almost rocky under the baking sun. The man rode all the way up to Da, stopped, and dismounted.
“You’re supposed to be in the grain fields with your cottiers. This is harvesting season for grain, not potatoes.”
Though he said it in English, not Irish, I understood perfectly. We lived on English land—and Da insisted that we practice English among ourselves so that when the landlord or his men barked at us, we could answer all polite-like in their language. It was easy to practice. Da had grown up speaking only Irish, but Ma grew up speaking English more than Irish and she was a good model for us all. Little Paddy and I spoke it well, far better than Da. Two of the cottier mas and one of the das grew up with English too, so all the kids on this farm spoke it at least a little.
Da straightened to full height. He was taller than this Englishman. Ma liked to say all Irish grew taller than English, but even I knew that wasn’t true. Da looked down his nose at the man. “Spuds that stay in this earth will turn rotten, unfit to feed a family. Unfit even as food for swine.”
“These potatoes are lumpers—I can’t understand why all of you grow the same variety. Lumper potatoes don’t even taste good. You don’t need them. Eat your turnips and cabbage.”
“And just how long do those sustain a body?” said Da. “A lumper fills the belly.”
“Bah! You grow wheat and oats, too. Eat them.”
Da shook his head. “If we’re forced to eat the grains we grow, we’ll have nothing to sell to pay the rent.”
“You’re in the middle of the grain harvest. The very middle. The morning sun has dried them well now. Who knows if the rain is going to start up again any minute. Best to make use of the sun. If you lose this grain harvest . . .”
Da dropped his spud digger and stomped back and forth up the furrow. Then he stopped and nodded at the man. The man rode off.
Da looked at us. “The steward’s right. You have to finish without me. I’m fetching the cottiers. Go talk to their wives. See if you can get them to help you.”
Ma didn’t even answer. She had never stopped digging. Little Paddy and I went back to work. I listened to him chanting under his breath, “Dig dig dig.”
We rested in late afternoon and Ma roasted us a big spud each, right in the hearth ashes. The three biggest ones we’d dug up so far. There were brownish and purplish spots under the skin of mine, but inside most of it was white—and all of it tasted good. Better than good; it was the best food ever. We gobbled them fast, me fastest of all, and I thought at first my stomach might rebel and spill it all out again. But it behaved. We hadn’t had spuds since December, when we ran out of those we’d salvaged from the wasted harvest last autumn. Ma had managed to make them last that long only by rationing them severely. The murrain—the deadly illness—had stolen more than half our harvest. Lots more. This year wasn’t so bad. No, I was sure it wasn’t. It couldn’t be. We were digging them up fast. The cull pile—unfit for anyone but Muc—was huge, but the pile of good ones was already as tall as little Paddy. They were smaller, they were, but there were lots of them.
“We have plenty more spuds this time around, Ma,” I said. When she didn’t look at me, I added, “They’ll last longer this time . . . longer than last year . . . well into winter . . . maybe all the way till spring. You’re good at making them last.”
She looked at me now, and her face was so shattered, I flinched. It was as though she’d become an old lady in just the space of a day. She nodded. “Finish up. You’ll never plow a field by turning it over in your mind.” She licked her fingers, and I knew they were burnt from handling the roasted spuds when they were so hot. She grabbed her tool and went back to digging.
Little Paddy whispered in my ear, “You think she’s gone in the head? Like Granny was?”
“What?”
“You know. Maybe she got it passed down from Granny.”
“Granny was Da’s ma, not Ma’s.”
“I don’t know how, but somehow she’s gone in the head.”
“Why do you say that, Paddy?”
“We’re not plowing. She said we had to go plow.”
“It’s just a way of talking,” I whispered back. “Memorize it. Use it when you need to.”
“Why doesn’t she call the cottier wives, like Da said? They’d get this all done a lot faster.”
“And if they came to help us, just who do you think would be digging up the spuds in their own gardens? Who’d save their families?”
“Huh?”
“Get to work.” I pinched his arm.
Sometimes little Paddy seemed to know things—like this morning with the hedgehog. Other times he seemed to know nothing. The digging had to be done now—no time to lose. Whatever didn’t get pulled out of the ground today would be that much more rotted by tomorrow. And the day after that, the ground might hold only mush. That’s what happened last year. . . . When it was finally clear the crop was really failing, we’d had to work fast. Plus, the ground was already baked hard now. If the sun stayed, the ground would grow harder each day, and it would be that much more work to dig spuds.
