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

progress today, no roof over their heads, no proper supper or even the Protestant soup. But Ethan feels a sense of pride as he sets the large wooden match to the kindlin’ he’s gathered in bare feet, then begins putting in the larger sticks to make a nice fire to warm their spirits. With his Mam and Aunt stretched out on their blankets, admirin’ his handiwork, he unfolds his blanket and stacks his Aunt’s plates neatly alongside him. She leans toward him and smiles a little while examining them.
    Dey look wonderful, thank you Ethan, she says, and kisses him on the forehead.
    He nods and smiles back, but then she looks at the rest of his things and a worried expression comes over her face.
    Where are th’resta da books ya brought? she asks.
    Ethan says nothing.
    Ethan, you had what … six of ’em when we left? she asks, lookin’ over at his Mam for a second and then back at him. Don’t tell me … 
awwww
Ethan, why’d ya go and do that? Just fer some silly plates …
    She shakes her head and the water’s in her eyes and down her cheeks, and he can’t help but feel like he’s done something wrong.
    Et’an, his Mam asks tenderly. Where’d ya leave ’em?
    He shrugs his shoulders at first, then figures it isn’t much of a
man’s
response. After all, it’d been
his
decision to carry the plates, what with Aunt Em doin’ so much for them, taking them in when Da and Seanny left. It was the
least
he could do to carry her wedding plates.
    Two of ’em I left behind right off, he says matter-of-factly. Den Chaucer somewhere ’round midday, an’ Milton beside th’tree where we stopped about a mile back. I didn’t know we were dis close to stoppin’ fer th’night. But dat’s it, Aunt Em—an’ I’d do it again soon as I got da chance.
    He stretches out his blanket, still a little wet from the night before, then folds his arms and lies down on it. After a final glance over at his Aunt and Mam, he closes his eyes, placing the cap Mr. Hanratty’d given him over his face, as if declaring the matter resolved. Neither of the women says anything, but he can hear Aunt Emily sniffling for a few minutes before the tiredness overtakes him and he gives in to sleep.
JULY 22, 1847
    The Hunger wakes Ethan a few hours later, and he opens his eyes to the faint light of the quarter-moon. His exhaustion is gone, it seems, chased off by the sound of his stomach. Aislinn used to tell him to think of the noises their stomachs’d make as a cat’s purring, softening it into something nice, the way she did with most difficult things. But this is more like the sound of some kind of African lion who’s mad as hell, Ethan thinks, and he worries it’ll wake Mam and Aunt Em, whose silhouettes he can see in the shadows just a few feet away.
    In the morning they’ll insist that
they
carry the plates, or that he leave them behind, and he’ll have to refuse with the kind of force he’d summoned the mornin’ before. But he knows that it’ll be difficult to do with The Hunger eatin’ at him this way. They won’t have anything to eat until they reach Newry, and he isn’t sure he’ll be able to carry the plates that far, weak as he feels now. So without thinkin’ much about it, he reaches one hand out across his blanket, grazing it over the grassan arm’s length away. Then he pulls off the tops of a few dew-covered blades, placing them quickly into his mouth. The bitterness explodes over his tongue, and it’s like tryin’ to chew and swallow little bits of string. But after the third or fourth handful, he doesn’t notice as much. One handful after the other he stuffs into his mouth, chewing as little as possible, until it’s like a battle between the angry lion and the bits of string travelin’ down his gullet to take him on. The lion almost wins as Ethan gags two or three times, feeling like the green string is all comin’ back up. But then he sits up, slouching over at the shoulders and pulling his knees into his