Free Men of No Property by Dorothy Salisbury Davis Page B

posts looked to have been chosen in their time one to top the elegance of its neighbor. Dennis noticed a boot shop, a grocery, a grog shop, a candle and soap maker, and across the way a livery stable giving off a strong odor of dung.
    “’Tis a good smell,” Kevin said. “It freshens the stink from the soap maker. We damn near run him out when he opened.”
    “There’s but one smell in my head now,” Dennis said, “the stew Mary promised us. She’s a fine, big woman, Kevin.”
    “Ah, she’s gallus,” he said. “We’ll stow your trunk and all this stuff in the shop for now and get up to our supper. I’m fearful for the boy’s father, you know that.”
    “Aye,” Dennis said. “From what I can collect he was home once to Ireland and off again after plantin’ the seed for the wee ’un.”
    “That’s worse, him home and the discontent takin’ hold on him again.”
    “Well, there’s not much in Ireland today to content a man,” Dennis said, carting the trunk into the shop. He marveled at the stacks of boards of all sizes, and noticed a boy at a bench by the window.
    “Jamie, came and meet your uncle from Ireland.”
    Dennis tried to measure his age. There were men not so tall, but he hadn’t a hair on his face. He’d be near the age of Vinnie, with half his cunning and twice his growth, God love America. Here was the foundation of a family fortune and Kevin none the worse for gaining it but a few gray hairs. Jamie shook his hand and returned to the bench.
    “Which of the girls do you fancy?” Kevin asked at the bottom of the steps.
    Dennis paused. “I’ve fancy for neither,” he said after a moment. There was no sense in giving Kevin the rigmarole of his unhappy crossing. “The one’s too sweet and the other’s too sour. And what ’ud I be puttin’ myself into bondage for and my foot not steady on free land?”
    “Don’t be riling up at me. ’Twas a natural question.”
    “’Twas an unnatural alliance altogether,” Dennis said.
    His brother looked at him. “Then you are committed?”
    “I’m committed to the boy only!”
    Kevin shook his head. “And the boy’s committed to his sister, and she’s committed to the one and the one to the other.”
    “Oh, the devil worry it,” Dennis said. “We’ll be shed o’ the whole of them as soon as the childer’ are settled.”
    “And if we don’t find the boy’s father?”
    “I’ll keep the boy wi’ me and put the girl in an orphanage. They have the like over here, don’t they?”
    “They do,” Kevin said sadly, “full and runnin’ over. Well, we’ll go round to Father Shea after our supper. He’s promised to find out what he can for us.”
    It was a meal none of them would forget, great chunks of beef browned and in gravy swimming with leeks, carrots, a great variety of vegetables including tomatoes. When the girls wondered at them, Mary bounced into the kitchen and brought a dish of them raw. She ran them through with the knife, the juice spurting out, and eased the slices onto each of their plates.
    “You eat them with a bit of salt,” she explained.
    “They’ve the taste of sun in them,” Norah said after trying one. She wiped the juice from her lips.
    “It’s near the last for the season,” Mary said. “My Kevin could eat a meal of them. They do say they’re tryin’ to pickle them now to preserve them. I can tell you, I’d as soon eat them out of a slop bucket.” She thought about it further. “I dare say too many tomatoes ’ud be bad for a person. What the good Lord wants us to eat, he gives us in season.”
    “He may give us the season,” Kevin said, “but I’ve never had the tomatoes yet without payin’ for them. You’ll all stay the night in whatever Mary can hatch in the way of beds….”
    “I’ve it all calculated in my head,” Mary said, and Dennis saw Vinnie look up at her great turret of hair as though he wondered if she planned nesting some of them there.
    “The boys will go down to