Free Galway Bay by Mary Pat Kelly Page A

her for the race. In return, Michael would weed Owen’s fields and give him something from the winnings.
    “Only two weeks until the race,” Owen said. “Hard work ahead. We’ll start tomorrow.”
    “Champion’s able for it, and we are, too,” Michael said.
    Michael and Owen laid a course in a pasture enclosed within stone walls built by Owen Mulloy’s great-great-grandfather. They rolled whin bushes into bales, piled up rocks, balanced Joseph’s hurley on two boulders, and made the walls themselves into jumps.
    They worked with Champion through long summer evenings when the sun never thought of setting until ten or eleven. During the day, Michael weeded Owen’s barley and oats, and in return Owen gave Michael an old shed to keep Champion in and to bed down himself. He’d been staying with Máire and Johnny, and she was ready for him to leave.
    “Enough is enough, Honora,” Máire said to me the day Michael left. “Johnny and I have waited too long for our own bed to want to be overheard by Michael in the loft.”
    Máire liked to hint to me about the joys of marriage. “Now I know why there are so many children running around Bearna,” she said to me, “though I sometimes find it hard to believe Mam and Da actually do the same thing Johnny and I do.”
    “I wouldn’t ask them, Máire.”
    “You’ll see, Honora.”
    “Do you think I’ll learn as easily as you did?”
    “Has Michael Kelly kissed you yet?”
    “He hasn’t.”
    “Do you want him to?”
    “I do. From the first moment I saw him coming out of the sea—smiling, tall, with those blue eyes and the male part of him standing so straight and proud . . .”
    Máire started laughing. “You’ll be fine,” she said. “Always a good student.” She gave me a quick hug, something she hardly ever did.
    “Michael said he’s going to buy me some books when he wins the Galway Races, and he says it will give him great pleasure to watch me reading by the fire.”
    “He’s looking forward to watching you read by the fire? Ah, well, to each his own.”
    A week into the training, I brought Granny up with me. We sat on one wall of the homemade steeplechase course. She was worried.
    “I wish Michael Kelly didn’t get sick at sea,” she said. “Not good to draw attention to himself. What’s to keep some red-coated soldier from saying, ‘I want that Catholic horse; here’s five pounds’?”
    “That’s not the law anymore, Granny.”
    “The Sassenach don’t let the law get in the way of what they want. Couldn’t he find a Connemara pony to ride? They are the smartest animals in the country, and no landlord ever took one off a man.”
    “Can’t run a pony in the Galway Races. And look at Champion! She’s mighty, isn’t she, Granny?”
    Thrilling to watch Michael stretch himself along Champion’s neck. How quickly she had lifted herself up and over, then galloped straight at the next obstacle. A well-matched pair.
    After a while Champion and Michael trotted up to us. “What do you think of her, Granny?” Michael asked, patting Champion.
    “She’s a champion, a curadh, surely,” she said.
    “Curadh,” Michael said. “I don’t know that word.”
    “Curadh is the old word for champion, and the right name for her,” Granny said.
    Owen Mulloy came up. He’d heard Granny. “Champion suits her.”
    “Curadh,” said Granny.
    “Best to use English. Easier for the bettors.”
    Granny looked Owen Mulloy up and down. He stared right back at her. Da said Owen Mulloy was one of those “boys in the know,” with inside information about everything, from a parliamentary election to a marriage agreement—always predicting and analyzing.
    Granny had no use for such talk. “Men like to think they put order on things,” she’d say. “Control what happens. Women know better.” But she only nodded as Michael walked Champion back and forth and Owen outlined his strategy for the race based on his own special knowledge.
    “Major