Free May the Road Rise Up to Meet You: A Novel by Peter Troy Page B

play
.
    They’re mostly around his age, it seems, and there are about a dozen in all. The game involves a ball, a long stick and running around in the field, and everything that’s happened that day and over the past weeks gets put away somewhere inside him now, until all he can think of is being a part of the game.
    They call dat
Base
, Da tells him with a smile.
    He stares at the game goin’ on as they walk the final steps to the small shanty house his Da says is their home. It’s no bigger than Aunt Emily’s cottage back in Ireland and is made entirely of wood, without a stone or thatch to be seen. His Da has him put his satchel up in the loft that’ll be all his now that Seanny’s found an important job over in New York.
    Seanny’s tendin’ streetlamps in da Foive Points, an’ it pays a dollar a day, he tells him, so he found anudder place in dere insteada th’long walk an’ th’ferry back an’ fort’ every day.
    When they go outside to see the skiff, Da talks about how he’s planning on
bringin’ over Mam an’ yer Aunt Em, an’ someday buyin’ one o’ dem big brick houses we passed up in Brooklyn Heights
. But Ethan’s attention quickly focuses on the nearby field again, and the game the boys are playing.
    Supper’s in an hour, Da says, smilin’. Why doncha play wit’ da lads ’til den.
    Ethan smiles back at him and doesn’t have to be told twice as he trots off, amazed to feel himself running for the first time in weeks.
    Is Mr. McOwen yer Da? the boy with the stick asks when Ethan approaches them.
    Ethan nods.
    He told us you was comin’. I’m Terrance Harrison, but the lads call me Harry, he says, extending his hand, talking and acting just like the grown men do. Then he points to the boy standing just a few feet away. This is Finny Caldwell. What’s
yer
name?
    Ethan, he replies, shaking the other two boys’ hands as if they’re about to discuss important matters.
    So you wanna play Base, Ethan? Finny asks.
    I don’t know how.
    It’s easy, Harry says. Ya hit th’ball wit’ this bat, an’ run to the tree over there an’ th’one over there an’ back home if you can. Don’t worry—you’ll be knockin’ th’ball into the bay in no time at all.
    Ethan has little idea of what Harry’s just explained, and doesn’t care very much either. All that matters is that they play until the sun disappears behind the tall buildings of New York across the river, all the while him thinkin’ just one thing, thinkin’ it’s good to be a
boy
again, if only for these few moments.
    And then there’s that night, after they’d gone to sleep. Da’s got to wake up before the sun for the fishing, but not Ethan, not tomorrow at least,
maybe in a day or two lad
, Da said to him. So Ethan slips down the steps of the loft while Da snores like Aunt Em and Mam put together on their worst nights. And it’s nothin’ to slide the latch across the door and push it open, and then step into the late summer air, hot like Ireland never was or he imagined it ever could be. Still, in the air that feels wet without rain
—humid
as Da called it—there’s something mysterious, like Odysseus arriving on a new island, still searching. And Ethan walks out toward the water, as if it’ll bring him closer to his Mam and Aunt Em and Aislinn and everything he’s known. He stands close to the edge of the bay, feeling like Odysseus now more than ever, safe from the ravages of the sea, but somehow … not
home
.
    Still, thinking she can hear him, that maybe the Ever After makes such a thing possible, he talks to her, partly in his mind, but partly aloud too, so as to let her know not to worry about him and not to think he’s forgotten about her.
    Aislinn
, he whispers … 
I made it, Ais’
.

M ICAH, A SLAVE
    CHARLESTON COUNTY, SOUTH CAROLINA
    MARCH 21, 1853
    It’s a birthday ritual that dates back to before Micah can remember. Every March 21, brought out to this same insignificant field. Told the same story by