“I guess it is,” I say.

“To Flanagan and O’Toole. Wheel makers to the pioneers.”

“Flanagan and Taylor, it’ll have to be,” I say. “Henry Taylor’s what I go by now.”

He sets his drink down and pulls his face into a frown. “What’s wrong with O’Toole? Are you ashamed to be Irish?”

I look into my glass, at the clear brown whiskey sloshing at the bottom. I drink it down and wait out the burn running through my throat and chest. “I saw one sign too many telling me not to apply,” I say. “I didn’t leave the hunger in Ireland to come here and starve for being Irish.”

“But your name. Your father’s name.”

“My father’d rather see me use a borrowed name than follow him to an early grave.”

Chapter 46

Sarah

It’s been two weeks since Thomas got sick, which means it’s been two weeks since Henry left. Every day feels like a month.

Thomas can’t keep the medicine down that the doctor gives him. Seems to me the man should know better than giving him something to swallow when he throws up everything he puts in his mouth. After the third time he comes back giving the same no-use medicine, I can’t stand it no more. I go dig up a yam and cut a snatch of red cedar. I boil up the yam with the cedar to make a mash that I spread in homespun.

When I come in his room, he don’t even lift his head from the pillow. He’s gray and wet through with bed sweat, and when he breathes it’s only wheezing.

“I made something for you,” I tell him.

He opens his mouth to say something, but a coughing fit takes him and, when it’s over, he collapses back against his pillows.

I wrap his chest with the warm yam.

“You smell that?” I say, when the crisp scent of the cedar coming out of the yam cloth starts to fill the air. “That’s going to help you breathe better. It has to be good and warm to ease your chest with all your coughing. When it cools off, I’ll get you a new one.”

I soak two cloths in cold water and put them on his calves, wrapping dry cloths around them, holding them in place. That gets a moan out of him.

“That’s for the fever,” I tell him. “We got to bring it down. You been burning up for too long.”

A while later, when his momma comes in to check on him, she gets right up close to the bed and starts working her nose.

“What’s that smell?”

“It’s just some cedar from outside,” I tell her. “He rests better with it.”

She bunches up her high forehead and at first I think she’s going to tell me to get rid of it, but then she sees that he’s laying quieter than he has for a long time. She leans over and kisses him. “It’s good to see him sleeping.” She picks up the bottle from the doctor. “Are you giving him the medicine?”