Free Mink River: A Novel by Brian Doyle Page B

It came one night in late summer. When the family went to bed the potato plants were healthy and in the morning the plants were black and withered. The people went from field to field amazed. They dug up the potatoes but the potatoes were black and withered too.
    That was how an Gorta began, the Hunger.
    Soon there was no food at all and people stole from each other and knocked each other down when a cauldron for gruel and broth was set up in the town. Bhi an t-ocras comh mor sin agus nach rabh trocaire in aon duine leis a-duine eile , my grandfather would say, no one had mercy for anyone else.
    With the Hunger came the fever and very many people died. Old people and babies died first, then children, then men, and finally women. They always died that way when the Hunger came to a town.
    In my greatgrandfather’s family there was a mother, a father, three girls, and himself. They suffered but lived because they would gather grains from stooks of rye and wheat and boil them, and they kept a few turnips in their garden, and my greatgrandfather caught what fish he could in the sea, and also he stole four sheep from a neighbor.
    He regretted those four thefts all the rest of his days he said even though they maybe kept his sisters alive.
    Finally his sister Cait died of the fever that howled after the Hunger came. She was ten when the Hunger began and fifteen when she died. She loved to dance and had hair as black as the inside of a dog. She could leap and spin like a bird. She was the fastest runner of anyone. She could remember any story that was told to her and many was the cold wet night when around the fire she would tell stories, saying the voices of the characters in the stories so eerily perfectly that you’d swear the characters were in the room and the stories utterly alive, and people came from miles around to hear her tell her stories, children especially. When she finished telling her stories there would be a roar of laughter you could hear far away. Sometimes then when the mood was upon her she would dance by the fire, her hair whipping and flying, and such a sight you never saw, a girl so slight and light whirling faster than the eye could see, whirling so fast that you thought it entirely possible that if you blinked your eye she would vanish utterly and never be seen again on this grand grim green earth.
    Mharbh an gorta achan rud , the Hunger killed everything, my greatgrandfather said.
    42.
    Cedar leans his head back to pop a salmonberry into his mouth as he walks down the dark road wondering
    where is old Billy he should have come home by now the old goat out there smelling pain in town a good thing he does that because the fact is that he smells out half the work of the department without his nose we’d be out of a job ho ho so really his nose is the most important piece of equipment we have I’ll have to get it insured can you imagine Billy noseless I mean what kind of public works department would go noseless not us that’s for sure we are up to the minute with the latest nasal and otolaryngological technology I wonder how much we can insure it for we’ll have to get a doctor’s statement I can’t wait to pitch this to the doctor this’ll be hilarious and o the look on May’s face o this will be delicious
    when suddenly Moses’ shadow flickers across his face
    and from the crow’s sheer speed and arrowing flight Cedar immediately smells bad trouble
    and he spins on his heel to keep Moses in view against the dense dark sky and just as he does
    a woman runs by him so fast that he feels her tailwind rather than actually sees her
    but he immediately recognizes her hair flowing behind her a river of black against the dense dark sky as she sprints away
    and he begins to run after her but after one leaping step
    he slams on the brakes and stands there quivering like a wire thinking
    shit. shit. okay. all right. shit. don’t run. think. moses must be leading her. nora’s fast. she’ll get there fast.