Meat
THE BOG BOYS FOLLOWED LUKE across unkempt pastures under the moon. Fergus had never crossed country so wide. There were scars where hedges had been burned and uprooted, leaving white fingers of dead root exposed. The boys chattered like birds. The youngest ones stumbled along half asleep.
Luke dropped back from the head of the column to walk beside Fergus. “We are glad to take you home with us.”
“Where is that?”
“The bog, Fergus, the bog.”
Luke called back to the soldier. “Shamie dear! You were very cool!”
“I didn’t mind it, so. I was very little scared.”
“Bold, you were. Thought you was going to kill the fucker.”
“I’d have shot him had he tried any business. Shot your hopper as well.”
Fergus heard wind tugging through gorse. The sky green with dawn.
“If you hadn’t stopped me, Luke,” the soldier went on, “I’d have shot the juice right out of him.”
“Don’t mind Shamie,” Luke said. “He is nervous.”
“Nervous but not shy!” the soldier called.
* * *
THEY CAME through an oak grove, branches stark against the moon, and searched for acorns, but these had all been gleaned.
They crossed rough, wet meadow, then a piece of limestone ground divided into plots and beds where the ruined, blackened potato plants had fused on the soil, the stink of rot lingering faintly like a scar. At dawn the sky was gray. Mist floated over the country.
Luke led the Bog Boys through a deserted baile, a collection of wrecked cabins. In silence, in single file, they passed the ruins. Fergus thought of his family.
No graves for them. Tumbled walls and heaps of rubble stinking of moldy straw.
A memory is a hole, it would swallow you.
Breathe calm, breathe calm. Never a night like this.
You have broke out of everything.
THE GROUND was softer, and he could smell the astringent bog smell. They passed banks that had been cut into, the turf excised. Luke was leading them along a trench where turf had been cut from a fragrant black seam of peat.
Light-headed from hunger, Fergus stared at his feet plodding along the spongy ground, brown water squeezing out with every step.
The sun arose and cut their faces as they were climbing out of a trench. The wind stiffened and the bog plain sprawled as far as he could see, dotted with limestone islands that were striped with lazy-beds, for raising potatoes.
No roads on the bog. The sun was bright, not warm.
Luke halted so abruptly that Fergus walked into him.
Luke was pointing downwind at a hare crouched in front of a trembling gorse bush.
Fergus looked about for a stone to throw but Shamie had already swung the musket off his shoulder. Taking a paper cartridge from his pouch, he ripped it open with his teeth, spilling a few grains of powder into the pan and dumping the rest down the barrel. The bullet rattled when he dropped it in, but the hare didn’t move. After ramming the bullet softly, Shamie stuck his ramrod in the ground, brought the musket to his shoulder, took aim, and pulled the trigger.
The powder flashed. The shot cracked. White smoke wreathed the soldier.
Two Bog Boys went racing across the ground, yipping. Shamie lowered his weapon. “Meat for the kettle,“ he said casually, wiping powder from his lips.
One boy was holding up the hare by its ears.
“You’re the great man, Shamie,” Luke said warmly.
They were all awake now after their long night march, excited with hunger. Luke ordered two boys to hurry ahead to get a fire started. “Chop the nettles fine, and get a broth boiling, but not so hard it spits.”
Luke led the way across the bog plain. After a while Fergus could smell smoke, then see a curl of smoke rising over the plain, but he didn’t see the camp until they were upon it, because the Bog Boys were living below the level of the plain in a maze of trenches and cutbanks worked into the peat bog by generations of turf cutters.
Turnip tops and herbs were already seething in an iron kettle. Shamie sat on a lump of bog oak cleaning his musket while Luke skinned the hare with his fingers.
After warming humself by the fire Fergus climbed up out of the trench and walked across spongy heather and bracken on the flat plain of the bog. From a distance the Bog Boys’ camp was quite hidden, except for the smoke rising.
Luke’s head appeared. “Come, I’ll show you your quarters.”
He followed Luke along a trench lined with scalpeens made of mud and sticks. Each Bog Boy had his own scalpeen. The little shelters reminded him of swallows’ nests.
“You might take this one next to mine, there’s no one in it,” Luke said, pointing. “That next is Shamie’s. Good day to you, Mary,” Luke said to a little girl who was kneeling in front of Shamie’s scalpeen, picking lice from a piece of linen.
“I smell meat,” she said. “Has Shamie killed us a sheep?”
“Only a hare, but a large one. Fergus, this is Mary Cooley. Fergus here has joined up with us.”
“Well, I was hoping it was a sheep,” the little girl said. “Mutton for spoileen.”
A spoileen was a feast, a dish of meat eaten at a fair.
“No spoileen, but still a taste of meat, thanks to Shamie.”
“I shall congratulate him.” The little girl trotted off, heading for the fire.
Fergus crawled into his scalpeen. It smelled of earth inside. There was a pad of soft bracken to lie down upon. His feet stuck out the opening.
“What do you think?” Luke asked.
“It’s a long way from the roads.” He was exhausted and knew that if he shut his eyes, he would sleep and the stirabout would be eaten without him.
“Shamie hates roads. He says you never know when you might meet dragoons. Come on, rations ought to be ready enough now.”
LUKE SERVED out the stirabout into their wooden noggins. The scent of simmering meat had drawn all the Bog Boys from their scalpeens. They ate with spoons and with their fingers. It was mostly a broth of wild herbs with a handful of yellow meal and a bit of butter, but the scraps of meat gave it beautiful flavor.
“That’s a good kill, Shamie,” said Luke. “All our honor to you.”
“Our sergeant used to say a soldier’s first duty is obedience, his second is to fire low.”
“A beautiful shot it was, and a joy to go venturing with you. I look forward to another.”
“I don’t mind,” said the deserter. “We might pick off another dray sometime, on a quiet road, safe at night. Perhaps the next will be carrying stores.”
Afterward Luke, Shamie, and Fergus sat about the fire, smoking coltsfoot in clay pipes, Fergus enjoying the warmth of the pipe’s bowl in his hand. The Bog Boys had crept back into their burrows, though it was the middle of the day. The little girl, Mary Cooley, lay with her head on Shamie’s lap, her thumb in her mouth.
“You did well by us, Shamie,” Luke said.
“You might have let us keep the hare for ourselves, Luke. There weren’t enough for all. We are the leaders, after all.”
“No, we must all feed together, same rations, one and all.”
“Well, what did it amount to? Hardly a taste for anyone,” Shamie grumbled. “A soldier gets meat every day.”
“Do you wish you was soldiering still, Shamie dear?”
“A soldier has proper rations. Bully beef, mutton, and beer money besides. Clothes and boots and smalls. Wish I’d never left off the life.”
“Shamie was tumbling cabins and chasing whiteboys,” Luke told Fergus.
“Only he never caught any, but saw some cruel things. Then his regiment was marked for India. He heard it was Hell on the passage — half the soldiers dying of fever and getting dropped into the sea. So he bolted.”
“I would still go back if I could,” the soldier grumbled. “I’d go to India in a minute.”
“No you wouldn’t, dear.”
“We had
rations!”
“You’ve rations here.”
“We had mutton! The farmers used to feed us! We’d stand guard as they was tumbling, and they’d present us whiskey and a sheep.”
“If the dragoons capture you, they’ll brand you, you said so yourself, and flog you. Two hundred lashes. You said yourself.”
Shamie’s face had gone white. He stared at Luke, mouth opening and shutting, with no words coming out.
“They flogged Shamie once,” Luke told Fergus. “Very cruel.”
“For parade,” Shamie croaked.
“A fly buzzed his nose when the regiment was on parade. The colonel seen him swat it, and for that he was served twenty lashes.”
“On the triangles,” Shamie whispered. “Fetched me on the triangles, twenty lashes, and burst my back.”
“Have you seen a flogging, Fergus? I had a friend, a gentleman, he painted such a picture of it, I can’t get it out of my sight.”
“It is the drum major whose duty it is, a flogging,” Shamie said. “He cares for it. His name was O’Rourke.”
“They have the soldiers shape up on parade,” Luke said. “It is very gay and musical. They form a square, facing in. The drum beats while they march the prisoner in. They strip off his clothes. The drum major — O’Rourke — binds Shamie on a triangle made from pikes, so he is stretched out, so his toes barely touch the ground, and the officer reads the charge —”
“Twenty lashes they served me! Do you know what that tastes like?”
“Poor Shamie.” Luke shook his head.
“After six, they have your back like jelly!”
“We won’t let nothing happen to you, Shamie,” Luke reassured. “You’re safe. Don’t think about it. We’ll never let the dragoons near you.”
Shamie began weeping. Mary Cooley awoke and sat up staring at him, still sucking her thumb.
Luke looked across the fire at Fergus. “He is very nervous, but he’s getting better.”
Looking into the redness of the fire, Fergus could see his parents in their flaming bed, limbs rising up.
Life burns hot.
What do you do with the dead?
Try to forget them?
Are you supposed to live backward or forward?
He stood up, feeling very heavy, like something was trying to pull him down into the ground. “Thanks for the feed.”
“You mustn’t thank us, Fergus, you’re one of us now.”
Luke
FERGUS SLEPT THE REST of the day and through the night.
In the morning when he crawled out of his scalp and came to the fire, he found Luke alone, stirring the kettle.
“No meat today. Turnip tops and nettles, Fergus. Wish we had a bit of yellow meal, to thicken. But this will do. Help yourself.”
The stirabout tasted of grass.
“Will you come scouting today, Fergus?” Luke was holding out small hands to warm at the fire.
“If you like. Ourselves alone it must be,” Fergus warned. “Not Shamie nor the others.”
Perhaps they would find something. Perhaps a badger hole. If they met another dray, perhaps he’d hop aboard.
Luke tucked his hands into his armpits and smiled. “It does me good to look at you, Fergus.”
Yes, he understood — he felt more alive, looking at Luke.
Strange that a companion’s bright face might keep you going.
“We’ll go out for the day, the pair of us. Show you the country. You are the man for the country. I’ve been waiting on a fellow like you.”
* * *
SHAMIE AND the others protested at being left behind. “The Bog Boys must stay all together! What if dragoons come a-hunting for us, Luke? What then?”
“Fergus and I can slip around the country quite easily, and get the lay of the land, and scout what there is. And we’re more likely to meet dragoons out there on the roads than here in the bog.”
At the mention of dragoons on the road, Shamie’s face went yellow and he went to lie down in his scalp.
The others stood disconsolate by the fire, waving sadly as Luke and Fergus set off across the bog plain.
Brown, astringent water squeezing from the turf stung his feet, and he hoped it was burning his sores clean. The workhouse jacket chafed his neck but cut the edge off the wind. They passed through the wrecked village again, Luke leading the way, then traversed one field after another, crossing empty roads, climbing stone walls.
“The little ones, all they think of is their mouths. Poor Shamie is no good. But you and me, Fergus, we’ll organize beautifully.”
“I don’t feel so.”
“You and me, together, we might have a bold notion, make a plan, and hold to it — don’t you think so?”
“I don’t know.”
“Shamie, he lives very small. Perhaps he was never much of a soldier. You’re the one, Fergus — I seen it in you right away. Now things will go much better for the Bog Boys.”
THEY CAME upon an old horse, lying on its side, in an enclosed field where all the grass had been cropped. The horse’s hide barely covered its bones. The knobs of joints had broken through and insects were working in the wounds.
Kneeling, Fergus touched the old horse’s neck. The eye swiveled at him wildly.
Black lips drawn over yellow teeth.
“Nothing here for us,” Luke said. “No meat left on him, poor old man.”
Going to the nearest section of wall, Fergus started working loose a stone while Luke stayed with the horse, stroking its neck and singing a song about warriors and cattle.
Dislodging one grainy boulder from the wall, Fergus lugged it over. Luke stood back, still singing, his voice thin and clear. Fergus raised the stone and looked at the horse’s wild eye before dropping it on the skull, which broke with a noise like ice snapping.
Luke sang one more verse, then walked away and climbed over the wall. Fergus looked down at the smashed head. The teeth. There was no blood he could see. No eye.
“Come away, Fergus.”
The heavy soil in the next field clumped at their feet and accumulated; it was like wearing heavy, muddy boots. They began chasing each other, slipping and sliding in the mud, screaming with laughter.
A TURNIP field was being gleaned by a crowd of women and children pecking at the soil. After filling their pockets with turnip tops, Fergus and Luke kept striking across the fields, avoiding the roads.
They were crossing a field of oat stubble when he looked up and suddenly recognized the shape of the mountain in the distance. The country untangled itself in one shake, and he identified a distant line of trees, the pattern of his father’s stonework in the field wall, even an iron gate, painted bright red.
They were on Carmichael’s farm.
Overcome, he squatted down. Was Luke a siog, one of the spirits? Was this walking in a dream?
“What is it, Fergus?”
He brushed Luke’s hand away and forced himself to stand, turning his back to the mountain and facing the wind with his eyes shut, feeling it blast and chisel his face. He could feel fever coming on, a relapse. If he gave in it would kill him.
Perhaps it was fever that had brought him back to die in front of the farmer.
He opened his eyes and grabbed Luke’s wrist. “Where are you taking me?” he demanded. “Where are we going?”
“First to the river,” Luke said, looking at him closely. “Are you sure you’re all right?”
He hated thinking it was a spell that brought him back here.
* * *
THEY STOOD by the little river. He wanted to dare his fever, shock it, do something violent to break the dream, if he was in dreaming.
“What I have to show you is on the other side. We can go along to the bridge, but someone might see us, don’t you think? So I reckon we had better swim it. Are you game? Can you do it?”
Yes, he wished to blast himself alive, or drown. The river would be cold and he wasn’t much of a swimmer, though he usually could keep his h
ead up. Turning his back to Luke, he undressed quickly, dropping his clothes on the grass.
He turned around, and saw Luke standing in the white body of a girl.
“There it is, there it is,” Luke said softly.
Fergus was too tired to feel anything except bewilderment, as though an owl had spoken.
“Do you think you’ve seen a siog? Touch me if you don’t believe your eyes.”
White breasts and red nipples, curved belly, dark patch of sexual hair.
Her little cut.
He didn’t move. Reaching out, Luke took his hand and held it to her breast, watching him.
“I’m no siog, Fergus. I’m the real.”
Through the softness he could feel her heart beating.
“Are you torn down? Is it disgraceful to be following a girl?” She let go of his hand. “Shall you resign? Do you wish to go home now?”
He had no words.
“I’ve lived hard and wild as any, Fergus. I’m strong, and will be stronger.”
Yes. As a girl, she already seemed more formidable, possessing power he hadn’t recognized before. “Do the others know?”
“They do. Only I suppose some have forgotten. The little ones, all they think of is their mouths. And poor Shamie is no good. But we’ll organize beautifully, you and me — I know we will. You are a good, stiff one.”
“I don’t feel so.”
“It scares me to look at you,” she said, “for I suppose I am as thin as you.”
“Am I so thin?”
“You are, very. I could count your bones. I used to be plump, a little. But those days are gone.”
Without another word, she waded in through the yellow rushes, gasping at the cold. Wading steadily deeper, she suddenly plunged, coming up a few seconds later, her dark hair slicked back like an otter, screaming and kicking. “Whoo, whoo! Fergus, it burns like Hell! It is very cold! Oh my dear!” She laughed and began splashing for the opposite bank.
He stepped in tentatively. The cold was numbing. The bottom was sloped and muddy and he wished he hadn’t agreed to swim but couldn’t let her go across alone, his pride wouldn’t stand it. He tottered a few more steps and then, about to lose his balance, plunged headfirst into the shiny current. The shock was like a steel spade smacking his chest. It hurt to breathe; he felt his lungs withering with cold. She was already climbing up on the bank. He could see her white body against the grass. As the current tugged him downstream, he started thrashing. After swallowing mouthfuls of water, he felt his toes touching mud.
The Law of Dreams Page 7