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the packed dirt of the road, and the high voices of the children in the distance. It was a mild, clammy day, and the rain wasn’t falling, but it was hanging in the air so you had to walk through it nonetheless. The ends of Ginny’s hair were damp when she tucked them in under her bonnet. She looked out from under its brim at the fields on the sides of the road, usually a heavy, bloated green at this time of year, just ready for harvest. Now they were a cankerous, weeping brown, and the stink of blight was so strong you could nearly see it hovering over the land. The farms they passed felt abandoned of their food and people, the fields empty of living things. On a stile in the distance, a lone figure sat up, curled over himself, with his head in his hands. Ginny called the children back to her, and they turned and skipped toward their parents, till they all approached the sitting figure together. It wasn’t until they were upon him that they recognized him.
    “Well.” Ray stepped out away from his family, extending his hand. “James Madigan. How’re you keeping?”
    The man lifted his head from his knees and looked up wild-eyed at Ray. They knew him well—he was a young enough fella, with a family of his own, but the way his scraggly hair stood out from his head put the weight of years on him. His knee breeches were worn soft, and patched. His coat was frayed about the cuffs and collar. He was unshaved, and he kneaded the knuckles of one hand with the other. Ray’s hand was just hovering there in the air, until finally James took it in his own.
    “Sorry, sorry there, Ray, I nearly didn’t see you there,” he said.
    Maire snapped a look at her mother, but said nothing.
    “Are you right there, James? You look awful shook,” Ray said to him.
    James’s eyes fled from Ray’s face to Ginny’s, and then, in turns, to the children. He opened his mouth, but made no reply. He rocked himself a small bit, turned then to look back over his shoulder, to his own decimated field. And then his hands were in against his scalp, pulling at his hair, and the tears stood in his eyes as plain as day. Ginny looked down at her feet, to give him a moment. Poppy was pawing at Maire’s skirt, and Maggie and Michael were inspecting a grasshopper who’d emerged from a gap in the wall.
    “It’s all gone.” James’s voice was a choked whisper.
    “Ah, here,” Ray said, but James was shaking his head, still kneading his knuckles with his fingers. His eyes were pink and rheumy.
    “No,” he said. “There’s nothing for it. When gale day comes, we’ll have nothing to give Packet. He’ll throw us out.”
    “Ah, James,” Ray said. “Surely there’s something, something you could sell? Or maybe Packet will give you credit until the spring rents?”
    “Ha!” James spat into the road. “You’d sooner get credit from the devil himself.”
    Ray drew up his hand and scratched his chin. “Things being what they are now, surely the landlords might compromise. They can’t drive the whole population into destitution. They have to see reason.”
    But despite these hopeful words, a look of desperate resignation passed between the two men. They knew the absentee landlords over in London didn’t care about the natives, so long as their plum Irish land continued to yield hearty profits, so long as the grains and cattle they extorted from Ireland continued to fetch their English fortunes.
    “He’ll take my house.” James Madigan’s miserable voice climbed in pitch while he talked. “That blaggard Packet will turn my family out into the roads. We will starve. My hand to God, my children will starve!”
    Maire drew in a sharp breath, and Ginny turned to her, steered her over toward Maggie and the grasshopper.
    “Never worry, love,” she said to her daughter.
    “Never worry?” Maire looked at her mother like she was mad. “We’re well past that, Mammy.” Maire lifted her chin, just enough to remind Ginny that there was no baby fat