The Killing Snows

by Charles Egan

  ‘True enough, but there’s many that can’t. I reckon half the landlords in Mayo are bankrupt already.’

  Luke walked back past the line of carts and wagons towards where his father was waiting. They brought their own convoy forward, and joined the line. As they came closer, the clerk came out.

  ‘I was looking for you. We want you to witness the weighing.’

  Luke followed the clerk back inside. A bare pallet was weighed, and then each pallet load was weighed separately and brought down to their allocated loading bay. All through the loading, groups of emigrants passed alongside the carts, heading for the end of the docks.

  ‘How many militia men are coming with us?’ Luke asked the clerk.

  The clerk looked at him in astonishment. ‘Militia men? Where the devil do you think we’d get militia men.’

  ‘We had militia before, up in Brockagh.’

  ‘Ah yes,’ the clerk said. ‘But that was then. With this amount of corn coming in, there’s no chance. They only go with the big convoys – Castlebar, Claremorris and the like. Can’t be wasting militia men on small loads.’

  When Luke had signed for everything, and the carts were loaded, Michael started to turn the convoy around and led the carts back towards Castlebar and Kilduff. It was getting dark. Luke kept thinking of what the clerk had told him of food leaving Mayo. For a long time, he could not shake the lines of cattle and barrels of butter out of his mind. Nor could he stop thinking of the gangs of emigrants walking past and the increasing crowds at the end of the pier. Food out, food in. People out, but sure as hell, none coming in.

  Michael interrupted his thoughts. ‘We’re not going to make Kilduff tonight. And you know what, I don’t think we should even try. We should stay this side of Castlebar for the night. If we’ve no militia men, we’d be risking everything trying to run through the town. ‘

  ‘We could just as easy be attacked out here, Father.’

  ‘We could, but there’d be less of them. We’d be better able to protect ourselves. Then we can make our way through Castlebar early in the morning when everyone is asleep.’

  An hour later, they stopped beside a high wall.

  ‘That would be the side of Lord Sligo’s estate,’ Michael said.

  ‘I’d guess you’re right, Father.’

  ‘The wall will protect us. We’ll stay here.’

  With much cursing and swearing, they backed the horses and donkeys off the road so as to push the end of the carts up against the wall, axle to axle beside each other. Then they released the donkeys, tying them under a few trees beside the carts. It was drizzling. Some of the men crept under their carts to shelter. Luke stood with Michael at one end of the line of carts.

  ‘What do you think, Father? Will we get through?’

  ‘I think we will. Though if I thought we’d have no soldiers, I’d have brought another dozen or twenty men with us. We might have need for them.’

  ‘You think we’ll have to fight?’

  ‘We might, and if we do, we’ll fight like hell. Castlebar town has already got its own supplies. We’ve no need to feel sorry for anyone. These are our supplies, and we’ve got every right to them.’

  They stood under a tree for another hour, rain dripping from the branches.

  ‘It’s quiet enough now,’ Michael said. ‘No one’s going to come tonight. You go to sleep.’

  ‘No Father, I’ll stay on watch.’

  ‘No, you sleep for now. I’ll wake you in a few hours, and you can take over the watch.’

  Luke crept under the cart. Again he started thinking of cattle and butter going out of Westport. At last he decided to stop worrying about it and think of his own immediate duties. And Winnie.

  He was asleep when the shouting woke him. Through the noise, he heard his father’s voice – ‘Get up, get up. We’re being attacked.’

  He came out, rubbing his eyes in the half light of early dawn. The other men were already crawling out from under the carts. There was a crowd of twenty or thirty men and women trying to surround the carts at the back of the convoy.

  Already two men were on top of the last wagon, passing out sacks of corn. The women were throwing stones and rocks at the Kilduff men, who had little to defend themselves apart from a few whips and the long sticks they used for the donkeys. The animals were braying in fright.

  They were outnumbered, but he saw that half the crowd were women. While the men fought, the women were grabbing sacks of corn from the carts and trying to run away, staggering under the weight. Some had children, screaming with fright as they grasped their mothers’ skirts. On the edge he saw a woman holding a baby, standing and watching the scene, directing the women to where the carts were least defended.

  Luke raced to where the sacks were being passed down, and lashed a woman across her arms. She screamed in pain and fell back. Two other women attacked him, but his father lashed one of them with his whip, and Luke lashed the second one across the mouth, drawing blood. Two men came at them in fury, one swung out at him with his fist, but Luke seized his fist, twisted his arm around, and dropped him heavily on the ground. His father was down, but again Luke grasped the assailant by one arm, jerked it behind his back, and twisted hard. The man screamed in pain, and rolled off Michael.

  Another attacker rushed at Michael, who was still on the ground. He was brandishing a rock over Michael’s head. Luke grabbed a stone, and smashed it into the man’s head. He stared at Luke with a look of childish surprise. Then he dropped silently to the ground.

  The fight became more bloody, as both sides used stones and rocks. The tide of the battle was turning, as the advantage of the stronger Kilduff men started to tell against the half-starved mob. A few more minutes, and some of them started to fall back, dragging their injured with them. They were pursued by the Kilduff men until Michael called them off.

  Luke returned from the chase. The man he had hit was still lying where he had fallen, a shallow bloodied depression in the side of his forehead. Luke knelt beside him. Carefully he felt through his protruding ribs for breathing or heartbeat.

  There was none.

  ‘Luke, what are you doing? Come on.’

  Impatiently, he waved his hand at his father, still watching for any movement in the man’s chest. None. He leant over the man, holding his ear over the man’s mouth, listening for breathing and the feel of it on his ear.

  None.

  He stood up. There were bags on the road, including some that had burst.

  ‘Leave the burst ones,’ Michael shouted. ‘We’ve no time.’

  They loaded the rest into the carts, together with four injured men. Then the convoy started off towards Castlebar, Luke and Michael each leading two carts. Already the starving people were creeping back to pick up the corn lying on the ground. In the convoy, the injured men groaned as the carts jolted along. The rain had stopped.

  The sun was rising as they reached Castlebar, but as Michael had anticipated, there was no one in the streets, and they passed through unscathed. For the rest of the journey they were watched from cottages and fields by skeletal men and women, but no one attacked them.

  Late that afternoon they arrived in Kilduff. The carts were unloaded, and the sacks were carried into one of the houses on the main street. Four men were put on guard, two on the front and two on the back.

  ‘Ye’re both very quiet,’ Eleanor said.

  ‘You tell her, Luke.’

  ‘We were attacked coming out of Westport.’

  ‘Attacked? But who attacked ye?’

  ‘A crowd of hungry people, that’s who,’ Luke replied. ‘They wanted our corn, and we wouldn’t give it to them.’

  ‘Damned right, we wouldn’t,’ Michael said. ‘And by God, we had a hell of a fight to keep it. One fellow, he was going to kill me with a rock when I was down. I’d be dead now if it wasn’t for Luke.
Gave him a belt of a stone, that sorted him out.’

  ‘He was going to kill you?’ Eleanor exclaimed. ‘But why…?’

  ‘They’re desperate, that’s why,’ Luke said. ‘There’s other places around where the Works closed early. Most of the loads going from Westport have militia men going with them, but they’re only taking them to the big towns first. It’s a terrible thing, taking corn past starving people.’

  ‘Aye,’ Michael said, ‘and taking cattle and butter the other way too.’

  ‘The other way?’

  ‘That’s right,’ Luke said. ‘They’re sending cattle and butter to England to pay for corn from everywhere else.’

  ‘But why?’ Winnie asked. ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘Corn’s cheaper, so we get more of it. At least that’s what the fellow told me.’

  ‘But that’s mad,’ Eleanor said.

  ‘I don’t know if it is or it isn’t. But I’ll tell you this, Mother, Westport is like nothing on earth. The ships are lining up to come in. The warehouses are stuffed with corn and all sorts of things. Flour, wheat, rice, beans – you can’t imagine it. It’s getting enough of it out of Westport, that’s the thing.’

  He found it impossible to sleep that night. Gaunt scarecrows, walking skeletons. He had not started working with Gaffney to be fighting desperate men and starving women. But if they hadn’t fought, the supplies would never have got through to Kilduff. The rest of Mayo would have their corn soon enough.

  But it was worse than that. He had killed a man. No matter which way he looked at it, no matter how much they were protecting their own corn and their own people, there was a man dead, and he had done it. But if he hadn’t, Michael would be dead. Maybe, maybe not.

  He could not get away from the corpse lying on the ground. Feeling for any sign of life through the man’s ribs, no flesh between them. Perhaps there was a heartbeat, perhaps he just hadn’t felt it. Maybe the man was still alive. Did he believe that? No.

  What now? He had told no one, not even his father, and it was not that Michael would ever talk. Winnie neither. But if the secret ever got out, he would hang for it.

  Did their attackers know where they were from, though? Probably not. And even if they did, no one could identify who had killed the man. The battle had been savage and confused. No one would be able to trace it back to him.

  But still, however it had happened, however good the reason for it, he had killed a starving man. He kept trying to sleep, but his dreams were troubled, and he awoke again and again.

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘Nothing. I just can’t sleep.’

  ‘Was it the fight?’

  ‘Yes, yes. It was a desperate thing.’

  ‘Tell me about it.’

  ‘Not now, pet. Some other time. Go back to sleep.’

  He slept a little, but when he woke he was still tired. Winnie was asleep, and he did not disturb her. He dressed, ate a little bread with buttermilk, and left the house.

  When he arrived in the office, Gaffney was already there.

  ‘You’re in early.’

  ‘I couldn’t sleep,’ Luke said.

  ‘Wasn’t it worth it?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘What?’ Gaffney repeated, eyebrows raised. ‘You brought the corn back from Westport, you did the impossible, and you say ‘what?’’

  ‘Oh sorry, I wasn’t thinking about that. We had to fight for it, you heard about that?’

  ‘Heard about it! Everyone has heard about it. I knew I could depend on you. Come hell or high water, I knew you’d bring the corn home.’

  Over the next few weeks, he stayed in Gaffney’s office, going through the lists of people on the Works and deciding who should have food tickets for the Kitchens. Then he sent a message to Father Reilly, who joined him, filling in the blanks – the families who had never been on the Works and perhaps needed food even more. In the evenings, he would go down to the house they were using as a warehouse to check the allocation of sacks of corn and rice for each of the Kitchens and decide which men from the Works would accompany the carts up to the feeding points. He continued working on the worksheets too, calculating daily rates and piecework for each of the workers. Often he took papers home at night and worked till late in the light of a candle that he had taken from the office.

  ‘Will it be enough, George?’ he asked Gaffney one night.

  ‘What? The Kitchens?’

  ‘Yes. Can they feed them all?’

  ‘Damned if I know,’ Gaffney said, ‘but I’ll tell you, Luke, Ireland has never seen anything like this. You know, the last time I was over with Andy Irvine he told me they were feeding hundreds of thousands of people in Mayo alone.’

  ‘Hundreds of thousands?’

  ‘One, two, three hundred thousand, he had no idea. But whatever it is, it’s a very big number, and if they’re doing this in one county, can you think what it’s like right across the country.’

  Luke shook his head. ‘Sure don’t I know? Didn’t I see it in Westport myself? Ships lining up, bringing the corn in. But will it be enough? That’s the question, isn’t it?’

  ‘God only knows the answer to that,’ Gaffney said. ‘But I just hope to God they keep the Kitchens running. If they close them early, there’ll be a famine the likes of which this country has never seen.’

  As Gaffney had promised, he was not asked to involve himself in the day to day operation of the Kitchens. In spite of the worst famine in memory, the people still felt humiliated to have to queue for food. Michael refused to join any queue, paying or otherwise. Instead, Eleanor visited the corn merchant every week and bought the corn. Sometimes Luke would accompany her, and was amazed to note that his mother was a very good negotiator. The price of corn was dropping, and Eleanor was always the first to know about it.

  Still he could not sleep. Always he saw the look of surprise on his victim’s face as the stone smashed the side of his skull, turning into a look of emptiness as he slumped to the ground. No-one else seemed to be worried though. Stories of the battle by Lord Sligo’s wall had circulated in the entire district, and all the men involved were proud of their role in it. The more he thought of it though, the worse he felt. Fighting hungry women, killing a hungry man. Pride never came into it.

  Once again, he was torn both ways. He discussed everything with Winnie. The daily evidence of fever still horrified him, but they had potatoes again, even if many did not. In addition, he had his work, and he felt he could not abandon it. Perhaps things would improve across the summer. Perhaps the harvest in autumn would be a good one, and his responsibilities would be less. In any case, this would give him time to consider where he should go and what he should do.

  Gaffney had fever sheds constructed in all the townlands around Kilduff. On Luke’s advice, these were built a distance from the villages, and in many areas they used abandoned cottages. For fever-ridden people, there was no shame in accepting food, and Luke organised the feeding of the patients. Not that they could eat very much. In the final stages of fever, they ate nothing at all.

  Winnie wanted to work in the fever sheds on the Carrigard side of Kilduff, but this time, Luke forbade it. She protested, but this was one point on which he would not be moved.

  Gaffney kept his word. He waited until the Soup Kitchens were fully working before the Relief Works were closed.

  Luke knew the day on which the Works would be closed. It was a Saturday, and he made sure to stay in Gaffney’s office that day, working through the final calculations on the worksheets. He had no desire to see what was happening on the Works – he had seen it enough already. He prepared the calculations and the cash for the final payments. The gangers came to his office to collect the cash, but he did not accompany them back to the Works, nor on their journeys around Kilduff and the Mountain the next week, paying the dying and the dead.


  But he still had to supply food to the fever sheds. As he accompanied the carts, he saw the results of the Works closures. Some roads were complete. The New Line from Carrigard running out to the Knockanure road had been finished some weeks before, as the last stones were laid on the bridge. But up the Mountain, some roads were incomplete. He saw abandoned quarries and water-logged trenches where roads had been cut through the turf, but never reached anywhere.

  He had avoided the worst. He had kept far distant from the Kitchens; avoided seeing the humiliation in his own people. But the fever sheds brought him back to the horror. One night he twisted and turned until Winnie woke, and held him tight.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ she whispered. ‘It’ll be over soon. All bad things come to an end.’

  Late one night, Eleanor answered a knock on the door. One of the constables from Kilduff Barracks was outside. He lived close by Carrigard.

  He held one finger to his lips. ‘There’s evictions tomorrow.’

  She stared at him.

  ‘Over at Clanowen’s land at Gort na Móna. They’re sending a crowbar brigade down from Claremorris. They’re intent on levelling forty houses.’ He held his finger to his lips again. ‘I’m not telling anyone else. And you never saw me here tonight.’

  ‘I never heard anything,’ Eleanor replied. ‘I never saw anyone.’

  Then he was gone. She walked back into the room.

  ‘Who was there?’ asked Michael.

  ‘No-one important,’ Eleanor said.

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘He said there’s evictions tomorrow at Gort na Móna. Seems Clanowen is sending in a crowbar gang. They’re levelling forty houses.’

  ‘Who was it though?’ Luke asked.

  ‘Never you mind.’

  ‘We’ll have to tell them,’ Winnie said.

  ‘It’ll cause a riot if we tell them,’ Michael said.

  ‘But we can’t not tell them,’ Eleanor said. ‘It’ll be terrible if they’re taken by surprise. What’s the worse? Do we tell them or not?’