Emboldened by a sense of duty to his father, Michael chose to bring up a topic that was heavy on everyone’s mind. “I heard there are wholesale evictions going on up at Brittas since you left Father. Some of them went straight into that workhouse in Mountmellick.” “I know,” said Mr. Dunne, “the General himself laid the cornerstone for that building. Prophesy. He could read the writing on the wall.”“It’s not fair you’ve been blamed and banished when it was the General that drove the place into rack and ruin, not you!” Michael protested.“Son, he did the best he could. I did the best I could. It’s a marvel we kept up the trick as long as we did,” Mr. Dunne muttered as he slowly spread butter throughout the corners and crevices of his bread, dragging the knife repeatedly over the same spots. Bridget fed a daughter with one hand and wiped her son’s mouth with the other. She would take a bite for herself now and then but she wasn’t feeling hungry. She was worried. The father she knew, the one who radiated energy, the one in constant motion, the one who lamented that there weren’t enough hours to the day would never spend that much time buttering his bread.Within a fortnight he would be motionless under the graveyard at Timahoe.For more from the novel The Dunnes of Brittas, follow: https://www.facebook.com/The-Dunnes-of-Brittas…
