The overseer’s not abiding any slowdowns. He dropped his eyes even as he dropped his voice. His family seldom spoke of home or the Hunger that had driven them to this foreign place. You’d’ve gone hungry back in Ireland, if you’d survived at all. And thank the heavens we had the means of feeding you. He’s seventeen years old, Da continued as though Patrick hadn’t spoken. I am sitting right here, you looby, Patrick said between generous spoonfuls of soup. The lad eats as though he has a hole in his stomach. We could all of us skip this meal, and there’d still not be enough to satisfy Patrick. A man had to be allowed some secrets, even when sharing a tiny flat with six people. Ian didn’t intend to lay his thoughts bare for all of them. Little Finbarr grinned, his gap-toothed grin in full evidence, though he likely didn’t actually know why the situation was funny, he being only five years old.
They all watched him, laughter in their eyes. Those of his family who worked the earlier shift, as he did, were gathered for the early evening meal. If you go on as you are, Ian, you’ll leave far and plenty enough food for even Patrick here. Into his whirl of thoughts came his da’s voice, half-laughing, half-scolding. The memory, rather than settling in his mind as it ought, had wrapped itself around his very heart, expanding in his chest in a way somehow both painful and pleasant. It had been but an instant that passed as swiftly as a summer’s breeze. Yet the moment had seized hold of his mind and heart. She hadn’t spoken, hadn’t even looked at him.
The unnamed woman had simply walked past. That moment replayed in his thoughts again and again long after he’d returned home to the cramped tenement his large family called home. Something in her expression- a mixture of uncertainty and determination- tugged at him. She passed a narrow window, and the fiber-filled light illuminated her face. His gaze caught on one woman in particular, keeping a bit apart from the others, her gaze on nothing in particular, her thoughts apparently wandering. A group of workers passed him going the other direction, chatting and interacting. More machines had needed attention, and he’d rushed down the corridor to see to them. He’d finished maintenance on a parawind ring spinner with only moments to spare before the arrival of the first shift of workers. He saw her for only a moment, a chance encounter. Yet on an autumn day, as he walked the length of a nearly windowless stretch of hallway, Ian crossed paths with an angel. Within the dark confines of their daily prison, they worked and collected their pay with no expectation of joy. The factory offered the poor an income but precious little else. The thick air rang with the aggressive crash of machinery and the unending din of voices. Ian O’Connor spent his days in the corridors of purgatory itself.
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