Song of the Silent Harp by BJ Hoff Page B

pedestrians out of his way as he went. Some scowled or cursed at him, and one dark-skinned Arab spit in his direction.
    A crowd had gathered to watch the assault on the sandwich-board man, and the press of their bodies kept the thugs from seeing Michael until he was nearly on top of them.
    â€œLeave off, scum!” he roared at the largest of the four. This one waswhipping a knife dangerously close to the sandwich-board man’s horror-stricken face.
    â€œCopper!” The warning shout was from one of the punks, a small, ferret-faced boy with freckles.
    Michael lunged for the big brute first, clubbing him with a fist as he waved off the other thugs with his stick. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the other three take off and go darting down the street. There was nothing to do but to let them go and concentrate on this one.
    The crowd was cheering vigorously, and Michael wasn’t surprised to realize that the cheers weren’t for him: they were rooting for the tough with the knife. A piercing flash of hot rage surged through him as he hurled himself at the wild-eyed thug and knocked the knife from his hand.
    Pressing his stick across the throat of the pimply-faced youth, glaring into his defiant eyes, Michael was tempted to inflict a well-deserved blow. Instead, he fought for control. “It will require no effort at all on my part to snap your scrawny neck if you’ve a mind to resist arrest,” he grated out in a tightly controlled voice. “It’s your decision entirely, punk.”
    At that moment Denny Price, another policeman, parted the crowd, approaching Michael and his captive. “Thought you might need some help, Sergeant, but I can see you don’t. I’ll tend to the sandwich-board man.”
    The sandwich-board man seemed shaken, but otherwise unharmed. Price helped the man to his feet, straightened his signs, and turned back to Michael.
    â€œSure, and your watch is over, Sergeant. Why don’t you go along home and let me take this worthless pup in for you? I can manage him without a bit of help at all.”
    Too tired to argue, Michael gladly took Price’s suggestion. As he resumed his trek homeward, he wondered, not for the first time, whatever had possessed him to take on this thankless job.
    The answer, of course, was the same as always: It was one of the few decent jobs available to an Irishman in New York City.

5
Do You See Your Children Weeping, Lord?
    Pale mothers, wherefore weeping?
Would to God that we were dead—
Our children swoon before us,
And we cannot give them bread!
    L ADY W ILDE [S PERANZA ] (1820-1896)
    Killala
    T he road to the Fitzgerald cabin was a highway of the dead and dying. Frozen corpses lay heaped in ditches on either side. Some, Daniel knew, had died of starvation and the cold; others of fever. Meanwhile, the livingcontinued their death march, limping silently down the snow-pitted road. Few expected to escape their inevitable doom, but simply wandered in a bewildered haze of aimlessness and dejection.
    They fell when least expected, one by one or at times as an entire family. Many died on their way into the village in search of food or shelter. Others died as they left Killala to seek survival elsewhere.
    Encountering former friends and neighbors dead along the road was almost past the bearing, and yet there was no escaping the evidence of the famine’s unyielding hand. Daniel’s heart was laden with feelings so heavy he thought the weight of them would stop him in his tracks. He always seemed to carry with him a bitter mixture of fear, confusion, and anger.
    He did stop now, standing off to the side of the road, his gaze falling for a moment on the round tower on Steeple Hill. Its dark silhouette thrust into the late afternoon sky filled him as always with a mixture of wonder and yearning. Again he found himself questioning how long it had stood there, this monument to a past no man could date. What battles had it seen