Orphan Train

and brought
     out a hardback book of poems, blue with gold trim. Francis Fahy was a Kinvara poet
     born into a family of seventeen children. At fifteen he became an assistant teacher
     at the local boys’ school before heading off to England (like every other Irish poet,
     Mam said), where he mingled with the likes of Yeats and Shaw. She would turn the pages
     carefully, running her finger over the black lines on flimsy paper, mouthing the words
     to herself, until she found the one she wanted.
    “‘Galway Bay,’” she would say. “My favorite. Read it to me.”
    And so I did:
              Had I youth’s blood and hopeful mood and heart of fire once more,
              For all the gold the world might hold I’d never quit your shore,
              I’d live content whate’er God sent with neighbours old and gray,
              And lay my bones ’neath churchyard stones, beside you, Galway Bay.
    Once I looked up from a halting and botched rendition to see two lines of tears rivuleting
     Mam’s cheeks. “Jesus Mary and Joseph,” she said. “We should never have left that place.”
    Sometimes, on the train, we sing. Mr. Curran taught us a song before we left that
     he stands to lead us in at least once a day:
    From the city’s gloom to the country’s bloom
    Where the fragrant breezes sigh
    From the city’s blight to the greenwood bright
    Like the birds of summer fly
    O Children, dear Children
    Young, happy, pure . . .
    We stop at a depot for sandwich fixings and fresh fruit and milk, but only Mr. Curran
     gets off. I can see him outside my window in his white wingtips, talking to farmers
     on the platform. One holds a basket of apples, one a sack full of bread. A man in
     a black apron reaches into a box and unwraps a package of brown paper to reveal a
     thick yellow slab of cheese, and my stomach rumbles. They haven’t fed us much, some
     crusts of bread and milk and an apple each in the past twenty-four hours, and I don’t
     know if it’s because they’re afraid of running out or if they think it’s for our moral
     good.
    Mrs. Scatcherd strides up and down the aisle, letting two groups of children at a
     time get up to stretch while the train is still. “Shake each leg,” she instructs.
     “Good for the circulation.” The younger children are restless, and the older boys
     stir up trouble in small ways, wherever they can find it. I want nothing to do with
     these boys, who seem as feral as a pack of dogs. Our landlord, Mr. Kaminski, called
     boys like these “street Arabs,” lawless vagrants who travel in gangs, pickpockets
     and worse.
    When the train pulls out of the station, one of these boys lights a match, invoking
     the wrath of Mr. Curran, who boxes him about the head and shouts, for the whole car
     to hear, that he’s a worthless good-for-nothing clod of dirt on God’s green earth
     and will never amount to anything. This outburst does little but boost the boy’s status
     in the eyes of his friends, who take to devising ingenious ways to irritate Mr. Curran
     without giving themselves away. Paper airplanes, loud belches, high-pitched, ghostly
     moans followed by stifled giggles—it drives Mr. Curran mad that he cannot pick out
     one boy to punish for all this. But what can he do, short of kicking them all out
     at the next stop? Which he actually threatens, finally, looming in the aisle above
     the seats of two particularly rowdy boys, only to prompt the bigger one’s retort that
     he’ll be happy to make his way on his own, has done it for years with no great harm,
     you can shine shoes in any city in America, he’ll wager, and it’s probably a hell
     of a lot better than being sent to live in a barn with animals, eating only pig slops,
     or getting carried off by Indians.
    Children murmur in their seats. What’d he say?
    Mr. Curran looks around uneasily. “You’re scaring a whole car full of kids. Happy
     now?” he says.
    “It’s true, ain’t it?”
    “Of course it ain’t—isn’t—true. Kids, settle down.”
    “I hear we’ll be sold at auction to the highest bidder,” another boy stage-whispers.
    The car grows silent. Mrs. Scatcherd stands up, wearing her usual thin-lipped scowl
     and broad-brimmed bonnet. She is far more imposing, in her heavy black cloak and flashing
     steel-rimmed glasses, than Mr. Curran could ever be. “I have heard enough,” she says
     in a shrill voice. “I am tempted to throw the whole lot of you off