Father Michael says our blessings are coming, and that it’s easier for a camel to get through a needle than for a rich man to get to Heaven. But no matter how much Bible he throws at us, I want to be rich. I want a warm house with glass in the windows, and a door with a knocker on it. And I want to eat my fill every day and never again feel this gnawing in my belly. People say it’s the disease and the hunger that’s killing us, but I say it’s the being poor.

Father Michael leads Mary and her children into the church.

“I’m sorry,” I say to her retreating back.

When I walk home through the valley where whirling fog clings to the land, I pass eight more tumbled homes scattered among the grasses and the heather. I knew every single tenant. If this keeps up, none of us will be left.

Coming up the path to our hut, I pass our potato patch, mercifully full of green stalks and leaves. Beth’s perched on the gray rock wall waiting for me.

“What’s for supper?” I ask.

“Roast lamb,” she says with a smile.

It’s a game we play. The Indian corn they shipped in for us to buy with our work-gang wages is bland and hard as rocks, no matter how long you boil it. Beth and I pretend we’re eating lamb or beef or some other impossible food. We tell each other our stomachs ache from overstuffing. It’s childish, for sure, but somehow it helps.

We eat our gruel around the rough plank table Da made years ago. Then we push the table aside and Ma, Da, me, Maggie and Beth all stretch out on the dirt floor waiting for sleep and morning.

We smell it when we wake. The stench of rot has climbed up out of the ground overnight and shoved its unwelcome way into our hut. Da looks at me. There’s a panic in his eyes that shoots right through me. We hurry outside, already knowing. The smell in the air is worse as we rush, panting, to the rim of our plot, sucking in stinking lungfuls.

Every leaf that was lush and green yesterday is spotted brown. Every stalk, wilting and blackening.

I sink to the ground and dig. Scratching at the dark soil, my thumb plunges into a potato, easily breaking through the skin to the sludge inside, so rotten it’s liquid. The foul stench catches in my nose, making me gag. I pull my thumb back, wiping it clean in the dirt. Da is gray as the fog. The pain clenching my gut is more than hunger. It’s fear for the days and months to come. It’s knowing we have to leave, or we’ll all be starved dead by winter’s end.

October 1848

Chapter 2

Sarah

Most of the afternoon, the slaver’s got us in the yard for showing. Singing, dancing, playing cards. Mister Maddox is as sly as they come. He’s got the white folks thinking we’re the cheerfullest bunch of slaves money can buy. Even shaved a man bald to hide his gray hair and sell him for younger.