The Killing Snows

by Charles Egan

  He was shocked to see that many of the workers were dressed no different than they had been before. Most of the children had no shoes, they had wrapped rags around their feet, but their shins still showed bare, and sometimes purple and black. Many of the women wore only shifts.

  That afternoon two of the workers died, a woman and a young boy. He examined both bodies. Neither had any signs of fever. They had been killed by hunger and cold. At the end of the day, he counted the workers. Eighty-seven alive and two corpses.

  ‘We’re missing eleven more, Tim.’

  ‘I know, I’d noticed. The ones I know, they’re all from higher up the mountain. Must be that the snow is deeper there.’

  He had all the workers called together before they left.

  ‘I’ve decided to close…’

  ‘You can’t do that,’ a woman screamed.

  ‘Do you want to kill us all?’ a man shouted. ‘No money, no corn.’

  Luke looked across to Durcan, who shook his head. He relented.

  The two men walked back down towards Knocklenagh, leading the donkey and horse, each with a corpse slung over the saddle.

  ‘There must be some other way,’ Luke said.

  ‘You heard what he said. No money, no corn.’

  ‘And I don’t suppose the merchants would give credit?’

  ‘Would they, hell?’

  They left the bodies inside the graveyard gates, and Durcan organised four village men for grave digging in the morning. That night they both rode around Knocklenagh and the lower parts of Lisnadee. Luke paid out wages to the families of those who had died, and wrote out thirteen more work tickets. By midnight it was snowing again.

  Thursday. In spite of the new tickets, there were only eighty on the Works. The snow had stopped, but the cold went on. This time one of the women carried three blankets with her, and wore another. Each of them had a hole slit in the centre. She gave the others to one of the women and two of the fox-children. Luke could see the lice and fleas defying the cold. That day, two more workers died. Again the two men trudged back towards Knocklenagh, leading their animals and corpses. Again that night he paid out wages. Again he wrote out new tickets for the Works.

  Friday. A light wind had sprung up, and the snow was starting to drift. It filled the road between the hedges, and they had to lead the horse and donkey into the fields. As they approached Lisnadee, it became easier to ride, since there were no hedges, and the wind swept the powdery snow away. But the cold was worse in the freshening wind. He reckoned there were less than sixty workers, he no longer bothered to count. The workers were shivering and trembling in the bitter cold.

  That day, four workers died – a man, a woman and two young boys. Durcan had each of the bodies carried to an abandoned cottage, where they slowly froze. They didn’t attempt to bring the bodies back. The snow was already deep, and it would be difficult enough for the donkey and horse as it was. Nor did they try to find any more to work and die on the Works.

  In the evening, they sat around the table, eating Winnie’s bread, and what little Durcan’s wife could provide.

  ‘We can’t go on like this,’ Luke said. ‘This is madness.’

  ‘What can I say?’ Durcan answered. ‘They need the money for food. Do they freeze or starve?’

  The wind had died, but it snowed for most of the night.

  Saturday. The snow lay deep and undisturbed. Many of the features of the landscape had disappeared under gentle curves of snow. The two men fought their way back to the Works without their animals. After the hedges gave out, it was almost impossible to follow the line of the road. When they arrived, there were less than twenty people there, and no fires. One man lay in the snow, face down.

  Durcan went over, and examined him. He shook his head.

  ‘It’s no use.’

  ‘I know. We’ll just have to close it down. Can you get the gangers to do a roll call?’

  ‘We only have one ganger. Thady Conlon’s not here. Mike Murtagh neither.’

  ‘Where’re they gone?’

  Durcan shook his head, saying nothing.

  The roll call showed one ganger, eleven men, four women, two children and a corpse. Luke spoke to them.

  ‘We can all see there’s no point in staying here today. There’s no chance of working – we’d only freeze to death.’

  ‘And what about our wages?’ asked one of the women.

  ‘Seeing as you’re here I’ll pay you the base wage for this morning.’

  ‘It’s not our fault we can’t work. And the base wage is nothing.’

  ‘I know. And even that I’m not supposed to give you.’

  ‘When will you pay us?’

  ‘Tuesday.’

  An old man stepped forward. He gestured at the endless ocean of snow drifts around them. ‘You won’t pay us on Tuesday,’ he said, half-whispering. ‘You can’t pay us without money, and the money man won’t come through this snow.’

  ‘We’ll pay you when we can,’ Luke said. ‘I promise you that.’

  He carried the body with Durcan, and they brought it back to join the other four. There was very little weight in it. They stayed on in the freezing cottage for an hour. Two dead men, a dead woman and two dead children stared at the rotting rafters, eyes unseeing. Luke tried to close the eyelids, but those from the previous day were already frozen to the eyes.

  Six more workers turned up. Their names were noted, and they were sent home. When they judged no more would come, the two men struggled back to Durcan’s cabin through deep drifts of snow.

  The priest was there.

  ‘How did you get up here this morning?’ Durcan asked, surprised.

  ‘I didn’t come this morning, Timothy. I came up last night.’

  ‘But why…?’

  ‘Too many sick calls. It’s worse than Brockagh ‘round here.’

  ‘You should have told us you were here. You could have stayed with us.’

  ‘No need. I was at Gill’s. Eileen didn’t want me leaving, so I stayed over.’

  ‘What! Gill’s? Who…?’

  ‘Tommy. Him and the son. Son’s dead.’

  ‘Dead?’

  ‘Dead.’

  ‘And Tommy?’

  ‘He’s got fever, but he’s over the worst. He’ll live.’

  ‘Well, thank God for that.’

  ‘Thank God is right,’ the priest replied. ‘But it’s not Gills I’m worried about. Eileen told me about people dying on the Works at Lisnadee. Says they’ve buried four in two days. She showed me the graves, but there were no names.’

  ‘They were the ones we got down,’ Luke said. ‘And I’ve got the names.’

  ‘The ones you got down!’

  ‘There’s another five up there now.’

  ‘Five!’

  ‘Yes, Father. We had to leave them there, we won’t be able to get them down till the snow melts.’

  ‘Can we get up to them?’

  Luke stared at the priest in surprise.

  ‘Could we not wait a few days, Father?’

  ‘No,’ the priest said. ‘I’ve been waiting all my life. It’s time to stop waiting.’

  ‘I’ll go with you, Father,’ Durcan said.

  ‘No, Tim, you’ll stay here,’ Luke said. ‘You’ve got your family to be thinking of. Come on, Father, I’ll go.’

  ‘It’d be as well for ye to go at once, so,’ Durcan said. ‘There’ll be more snow this evening.’

  A few minutes later, they were trudging back through the snow to Lisnadee. Luke limped, staring at the snow underfoot, concentrating on following the prints he and Durcan had made on the way down. It was easier to walk that way. Once he glanced across at the mountains.

  Benstreeva. Teenashilla. Burrenabawn. Croghancoe.

  Now they frightened him. He di
d not know why.

  ‘I don’t want worrying you further,’ the priest said, ‘but Ian McKinnon came by two days back, and he had two messages for you. I was going to leave word with Mrs. Durcan.’

  ‘What messages, Father?’

  ‘One is that you’re to return to Knockanure on Thursday. Morton wants to see you again. You’re to make a report to him and the Guardians.’

  ‘God damn him to hell, can’t he stop interfering.’

  ‘Don’t be like that, it’ll only be for a day or two.’

  Luke shook his head. ‘And what was the other message?’

  ‘Your father has fever.’

  When they reached the old cottage, the priest knelt, giving out the last rites to each of five corpses. ‘Per istam sanctam Unctionem…’

  As the blessing was repeated and repeated, Luke tried to follow the words in Latin, but there were too many that he did not understand, and his mind was drifting, half conscious, half horrified. Father? Father dying? Dead already? Who knows? And Mother? How would she take it? What will she do? Maybe she has the fever too. Dead too? No, no. That could never happen. Father can’t die. He’s too strong. He’s had the fever before. He didn’t die then, why should he die now? And why should Mother get it? She didn’t get it when Alicia died. If she didn’t get it then, she won’t get it now. But how do I know? Amn’t I like a damned fool, only telling myself what I want to believe? But I’ll have to get down there. But when, when? Oh God, this bloody snow.

  ‘We’ll have to move them soon,’ the priest said. Luke started, surprised.

  ‘I know,’ he said at last. ‘I’ve been keeping a watch for foxes. If they’re frozen though, the foxes mightn’t find them.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘No smell.’

  ‘Maybe you’re right, I don’t know. Either way I won’t be happy until I see them in consecrated ground in Knocklenagh.’

  ‘Let’s leave them here, Father.’

  They started back through a desolate landscape. Luke was cold, his feet wet, his hands and face almost numb. Around him he could see little but grey sky, white earth and tiny plumes of smoke coming from the sceilps and mud cabins of Croghancoe. The smoke came together in a thin rising veil over the top of the white mountain.

  It was still and silent.

  He stopped and stared at the mountain. He sensed a vast endless power behind it, and felt a deep unreasoning terror.

  He went rigid in cold shock.

  ‘Easy, Luke!’

  He turned around, startled. He was trembling violently now. The priest was gripping his arm.

  ‘Easy, easy. I’m here, Luke. Easy now.’

  Luke stared at him. He looked around. Everything seemed normal again. He could see white fields, cabins and mountains, but the power had gone. Slowly the fear drained away, and the trembling eased.

  ‘I’m fine,’ he said. ‘It’s only the cold.’

  ‘Of course,’ the priest replied. ‘Sure ‘tis bitter cold.’

  He never forgot the long ghastly journey down to Knocklenagh. Many times they rested, leaning up against stone walls, desperately cold as they gasped freezing air into their lungs. When they arrived at Durcan’s, it was already dark. A freshening breeze had sprung up from the north east, and it had begun to snow.

  They stood at the fire as Mrs Durcan prepared the meal. Afterwards they sat at the table, sipping poitín and talking quietly. They had little heart for it though, and they lapsed into silence and retired early.

  CREDO. Luke woke just before dawn and went outside. It had been snowing without cease during the night, driven by a high wind, but now both the wind and snow had stopped. For ten feet in front of the house there was no snow at all. Beyond that there was only a wall of white. Half asleep, he could not understand what it was. It brought back images of the mountains, but high above he could see the stars. Slowly he realised that he was looking at a giant snowdrift, sculpted away from the house by the barrelling effect of the wind along the wall. He reckoned it at twice his own height. He relieved himself on the half-hidden manure heap, and went back inside.

  As he returned to his straw and blanket, he saw the priest getting up.

  ‘Go back to sleep, Father.’

  ‘I can’t. I have to get down to Brockagh for the early Mass.’

  ‘You won’t get near Brockagh today. The snow is twelve feet deep.’

  ‘But…’

  ‘No ‘buts’. It’s impossible.’

  ‘What about Brockagh? There’ll be people turning up for Mass.’

  ‘I doubt there’ll be many. Have a look outside.’

  The priest walked to the door and looked out. He shook his head and came back in. He lay on the straw again.

  ‘Luke.’

  ‘Yes, Father.’

  ‘You gave me a terrible fright yesterday.’

  ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to.’

  ‘I thought you were going to die. I couldn’t have taken that.’

  ‘I told you it was the cold. It was enough for any man to shake.’

  ‘It was more than that.’

  Luke shook his head. ‘Why should it worry you anyhow? One more dying wouldn’t change much.’

  ‘Don’t say that. We need you for the others, and well you know it. And I didn’t know what was happening to you.’

  ‘I don’t know what happened either,’ Luke said. ‘I don’t even know how to explain it. There was something behind the mountain. Whatever it was, it scared the hell out of me.’

  ‘I don’t know what you saw there neither. All I know is that it was something I’ve never seen. But I’m only a priest.’

  ‘Don’t say that, Father. There’s no ‘only’ about it.’

  For twenty minutes neither said anything. Luke thought the priest was asleep. But then he started to speak, almost whispering so as not to be overheard by the family.

  ‘Yes, Luke, I’m only a priest. Nothing more. It was all I ever wanted, you know, right from the time I could first understand it. Maybe it was because of my mother. I was the last of her sons, the last chance of a priest in the family. My father – he thought we were foolish, the both of us. He was a man of the world. County Meath. Good land, and he owned it all himself. Landlords you could have called us, nothing like Lucan or Clanowen though, we only farmed our own. Our house wasn’t too far from the seminary at Maynooth. My mother wanted me to study there, and my father had to accept it. Not that he liked it. But he had the money, so I was sent. But an education wasn’t what I was looking for, and even in a seminary I couldn’t find what I wanted. Isn’t that strange? They taught us everything they knew. They taught us Canon Law and Theology. Latin and Greek. The Gospels and the rest of the New Testament. Acts and Revelations. And the Old Testament, they taught us that too. They taught us to recite the Mass, to baptise and to hear confessions, to give out the Eucharist, to marry people and give them Extreme Unction when they were dying. They taught us the history of the Church too. They taught us about Paul’s conversion and Peter’s martyrdom. ‘Tu es Petrus, et super hanc Petram…,’ but no one told Peter that Paul had broken the Rock. They didn’t tell us either. But still we had to learn the names of all the popes, the successors of Peter and Caesar, right up to today, and all about the Curia and the Sacred Congregation and Propaganda Fidei. They taught us about all the old heresies, Arians and Donatists and Albigensians and all the others no one ever heard of in Brockagh, I’ll tell you. And the new ones too, the ones we had to fight. The Protestants, and how we’d have to stop them converting all of Connaught. Nangle and his Achill Mission, that was the enemy, right here in Mayo. They told us all the great things McHale was supposed to be doing to fight Nangle and the forces of evil, and how all the schools should be Catholic, and the Protestants and Presbyterians could teach their own, we didn’t want them. But through it all, there was only one thing t
hey never taught us. They never told us how to find God. And do you know why they didn’t? It was because they didn’t know, they just did not know. But they made me a priest anyhow – a priest of the order of Melchisedech. And they sent me to Dublin, these godless men, to say the Mass to rich Catholics. They thought it was better for me. I was a rich farmer’s son, I couldn’t handle anything else. And I said the Mass in their big churches and their colleges and their private oratories, but I couldn’t find Christ there. So I asked the Bishop for another parish – I asked for Donegal or Mayo or Galway or Kerry. He told me I was a lunatic. He said I’d never get anywhere in the Church, never make the Hierarchy. He said it would break me. But I insisted. So he gave in, the Bishop gave in. He wrote to McHale, and they tried me in a village near Tuam. But it wasn’t enough for me. I could see what they were doing with the schools, the way they were driving people apart, driving away other Christians who were just like ourselves, and all in the name of Christ. So I asked for another parish again, and they told me they’d send me to Achonry Diocese, to a little place called Brockagh. They couldn’t find anyone else who wanted to go. They were going to demand obedience of some poor young fellow, but with me there was no need. They thought that would cure me, but it didn’t. Brockagh! For the first time I felt I was coming closer to Christ. Saying Mass in a church that was no more than a cowshed. We can’t even fit everyone in it, but I knew when I first saw it, it was the kind of church that Christ would have wanted, the kind he would have known in Galilee. And I was happy there at first. We didn’t even have a school, nor any Protestants nor Presbyterians to keep out. It was only when Jim Voisey came here back in the famine of ’40, then I saw that there were other Christians too, real Christians who understood the message. And he wasn’t one of ours. He wasn’t Catholic, he wasn’t a priest, not even a parson. But he knew, yes he knew. And we worked hard, Jim and me. People died, but we did everything we could. Relief supplies, fever sheds, consoling the dying. And giving them Extreme Unction like they taught us in Maynooth. Again and again and again and again, I thought it’d never end. But it did end, even the worst things end. But then I slipped back. When it was over, I thought I’d done my penance. I thought one hunger was enough. After that I did my duty, that was all. I said the Mass and gave out Communion and married people in my little church. I only went to their houses when they were dying or dead. But it was when the hunger came again that I began to understand. It was when we started to ride around the mountains that I saw how people suffered and died. We went into so many houses, Luke, you and me. All of them, I knew where they were, but I hadn’t been in them for years, or even not at all. But you brought the message, though you never knew it. But I did. I knew that Christ had sent you – no, don’t argue. So I began to understand Christ’s message again, and I swore I’d never forget it. ‘Love your neighbour,’ at least I can do that now. But ‘Love God,’ that’s harder. Much harder. Do you know, for three Sundays now, we’ve had no Communion at Mass. They had no wheat, they couldn’t send us white bread wafers, and they wouldn’t let us use brown. I wrote to Killala and I wrote to Achonry. ‘What does it matter if it’s consecrated bread?’ I asked them, but they wouldn’t see it that way. They told me it was a terrible thought, that I would have to confess to the Bishop when the time came. The Body of Christ is white – the rich man’s bread. The people in cabins, their bread won’t be let used. It’s not worthy of Christ they tell me. They don’t understand. They don’t understand, and they never will. Maybe it’s unchristian of me to think like that, but like I said, I’m no saint, I’m only a man. I’m only just learning how to love my neighbour, but loving God – I’m still trying to do that.’