The Hunger(36)

But then: Halloran’s breathing eased, the sweats dried up. By the end of the first day of his recovery, he could walk around without help, though not for too long. His coughing went away. The next night he fiddled for over an hour after supper. Previously, on his good days, everyone loved to hear him fiddle. People would crowd around and for a few moments, everyone would forget their grudges and disagreements. No one fought, no one bickered. Most people preferred lively tunes, jigs and reels, something they could dance to, but Tamsen liked the sad songs; melancholy was better suited to the land around them.

But that night he played a reel so fast that his bow was a blur and dancers dropped to the ground, exhausted trying to keep up.

“If this goes on, I’ll be able to move my things out of your wagon and go back to my mule,” Halloran said. “I won’t have to be a burden on your family no more.”

“But don’t rush things,” Tamsen said. She was happy for his health—of course she was. But frightened, too, for reasons she couldn’t say. It was as if he had not just gotten his life back but a new life altogether; he was more talkative, feverishly happy, newly optimistic. “You want to make sure that you’re good and strong first.”

The truth was, too, she’d gotten used to having Halloran around, either in the wagon, tucked in behind the backboard, or propped up with quilts near the campfire at night, keeping an eye on the cooking. George had thought she’d lost her mind when she had insisted they make a place for him in their wagon, but Halloran turned out to be uncommonly easy to care for. He was effusively grateful for every kindness, played with the little ones for as long as his strength would allow, and, when his energy was spent, would listen to Tamsen talk about her early days as a schoolteacher in the Carolinas. Those hadn’t been her happiest days—she had been a young childless widow, trying to make her own way—but so different from her life with George that she sometimes marveled that it had happened at all.

At twenty-five, he reminded her, a little, of her Jory. He’d always been a kind of compass for her. She hadn’t seen her brother in years now, though, and sometimes she thought her mind made any sort of excuse to look for him in others.

There were even times when Halloran felt like the most courteous of lovers, with a shy smile and gentle ways, though she supposed she was imagining this, too.

His hands were beautiful and graceful—fiddling to thank for that, she supposed. Sometimes, sometimes, she imagined what it would feel like to have those hands on her body.

Did she seek them out or did they find her, these dark brooding men with their secrets? They never stayed, but their effect on her remained, leaving a need for more, like certain addictive herbs that can cause trembling and dizziness when a dose is removed too quickly.

And Halloran’s sweetness only seemed to stir up that addiction, served to rejuvenate her hatred of George, the way the gaze of her own husband left her feeling itchy and stuck. She had the familiar urge to do something rash, to lash out, to free herself.

Almost as soon as he was better, however, Halloran removed his things from the Donners’ wagon. Of course there was talk about his miraculous recovery. She should have known there would be. That Tamsen had witched him, that she had cast a spell on him. Betsy Donner reported it all, pretending to be shy about it, while obviously relishing the opportunity to lord it over Tamsen.

Tamsen, however, had been called far worse before.

Few people survived consumption when it had gotten as bad as it had with Halloran. Yet he was often the first to step out at the call to chain up and the last to bed down in the evening. He fetched water and firewood for his neighbors after he’d taken care of his own needs, as though he had energy to burn.

Tamsen should have been happy, but she was afraid.

Halloran was different. She couldn’t say how, but she knew that he was.

One morning, he started bundling his things for the pack mule, intent of being back to his own, and when she advised him to wait another day or two, he told her brusquely that he knew what he was doing. Halloran had never snapped at her before, no matter how badly he’d felt. She was so surprised that she said nothing to him the rest of the day, only watched as he buzzed about madly, like an insect caught in glass, hitting hard for an exit.

Since then, it had only gotten worse. Halloran argued with one of the Reeds’ teamsters when he took his mule through a narrow pass before the Reeds’ big wagon, insisting that the oversized vehicle was going to get stuck in the soft ground (he was right, however; they had double-teamed the oxen and managed to pull it out).

Worst of all, the next evening, he had smashed his fiddle against a rock when someone asked if he wouldn’t give them a tune after supper. He was sick to death, he said, of being pestered to play for them.

Everyone was shocked into a long silence, but Tamsen had, unaccountably, felt tears burn her eyes. Luke Halloran loved that fiddle like a child. Again the idea came to her that this was not Halloran, that Halloran had died and this was somebody else.

But that was insane, obviously. Far more likely that the weeks of illness had changed him in some way. Or perhaps he’d always been this way, and the illness had obscured it.

When she had imagined the journey, she had imagined hardship, and hunger, and dirt that clung everywhere, like another skin, and could never be sloughed off. But she hadn’t imagined this—the people, that she would be surrounded by so many other people, unable to escape their strange, inexplicable prejudices and their sudden, violent changes of mood.