May the Road Rise Up to Meet You: A Novel Read Online Free PDF

she says. She’s not mad, not with the water in her eyes either, but still not her usual self, and Ethan realizes she’s lived here for more than twenty years. This was the church she was married in and the churchyard where her husband, who Ethan doesn’t remember knowing, was buried ten years ago. So she’s got to say goodbye to him as well as Aislinn. And then he remembers that he forgot to say goodbye to his Uncle Michael, Aunt Em’s husband who he doesn’t remember, and is sad for the omission.
    Yer Mam is back makin’ something t’eat before we go, Aunt Em says. She’ll be comin’ t’say her goodbyes before we’re off.
    And she slides her hand across his hair, smilin’ through her eyes squinted in the morning sun, then pats his cheek. Yer as foine a brudder as anyone could ever ask fer, she says.
    Sorry, Aunt Em, he answers.
    Fer what now?
    I fergot t’say goodbye to Uncle Moike.
    And she brushes her hand across his cheek again, smilin’ broader than before and saying, I’ll give’m yer best, love. And then she’s off, back the way he’d just come.
    The journey to Newry is nearly fifty miles, so they carry just a few pounds of raw potatoes and bits of bread with them, hoping to arrive by the end of the third day, where they can maybe take a room for the night and have a proper meal. The four pounds, three shillings they have is a fortune that could’ve fed them for three months, but they can’t afford to buy some salted pork or even a few more potatoes for the voyage. A full three pounds of that money, the amount Da and Sean sent over, is for Ethan’s passage to America. The remaining shillings’ll take them on the ferry from Newry to Liverpool, then take Mam and Aunt Em as far as the textile mills of Manchester, to work and wait, maybe, for their own turn.
    They leave an hour after first light, with Ethan and Aunt Em meeting Mam at the churchyard, waitin’ some more for her to finish saying goodbye to Aislinn. They walk for a long while without sayin’ a word, take a short rest, then get a ride on the back of a hay wagon for nearly two miles. Then it’s walk and walk and walk some more, with only little rests in between. When darkness sets in, they make a small fire beside the road and cook a few potatoes, certain that they’ve covered twenty miles that day. But the next day they’re slowed a little by a steady rain, slowed a great deal more by the soreness each of them feels in their feet and legs, and The Hunger that eats at their spirits. They cover slightly more than half as much ground as the first day, and by the time they scrounge up enough relatively dry wood to build a tiny fire, it’s already dark. Watchin’ three small potatoes boil while sipping water from a nearby well, each of them stares into the fire as if lookin’ at it will somehow warm their aching bodies, but before long the rain returns and they’re left to nibble on their dinner beneath woolen blankets that soon become heavy and wet.
    On the mornin’ of the third day, they twist the water from their blankets and eat the last of the potatoes. The plan was to spend that night in Newry, where Aunt Em swore she’d
eat da Protestant soup or even kiss de Archbishop of Canterb’ry square on th’lips, if it meant a decent meal an’ a bed
. Ethan’d often heard people talk about the Protestant soup like it was some sort of evil witch’s brew, but Mr. Hanratty told him it was regular food the same as any other,
just that the Prods’re no better’n the Priests or the bleedin’ English, what with how all of ’em want to grab holda yer soul b’fore they’ll thinka feedin’ ya
. Whatever it is, Ethan figures he could go for some of that Protestant soup just then, or English soup if there’s any, or even a handful of the hosts the Father gave out at Communion, God save his immortal soul for thinkin’ such a thing. And while he’s full of such sinful thoughts, Ethan watches his Aunt unwrap the six ceramic plates her