The Law of Dreams

by Peter Behrens

  “Yes.”

  “The work ain’t so bad if you don’t lose your legs. Most of the fellows spill every penny of wages on drink, and jackets, and Liverpool girls.” She gave him enough tobacco to fill his pipe, then filled her own. “He may knock you around at first —”

  “Who?”

  “— but if you can stand it, why, the wages is good.”

  “Who will knock me around?”

  “Muldoon. Muldoon is ganger for the horse boys.”

  “Does he knock them around?”

  “I suppose he does.”

  “Does he knock you around?”

  “Sometimes he does. Ain’t that fine backer?”

  “It is.”

  “If you are still here tomorrow, I shall advance you sixpenny worth.” She puffed her pipe. “This is fine smoke, ain’t it? Don’t buy backer at the tommy. They will skin you, give you three ounces for four, and it’s rotten old meal besides. A fellow told me they mixes ground old bones with their backer. My stuff is quite pure. Do you like playing cards?”

  He had seen the boothmen and horse dealers at fairs playing brightly colored cards, and gentlemen at Shea’s with their cards, cigars, and brandies.

  “I never have, myself. It’s a con, isn’t it?”

  “It is, and it isn’t. Myself, I deal a pretty straight game. Only for amusement really. And a penny here and there.” She grinned. “Won’t you like to play sometimes? You can always play on tick. I trust my fellows.”

  “Perhaps I shall.”

  Drawing smoke, she held it, then let it sidle between her lips. She was looking at the table, where she had already set out supper plates. “I used to deal the fellows cards on that table — do you know the game Pharaoh?”

  “I don’t.”

  “It’s common. They deal it at the fairs. Me and my old mother, we’ve lived on the cards. All over Ireland. Working fairs, you must keep moving. You don’t like ’em to know you. Poor old Kelly, he liked a hand or two. I ain’t played since they brought him down. I scrubbed the table, but it don’t go away. He wasn’t rough, Kelly, not really.”

  He heard noises outside.

  “Oh, here we are,” she said, “I hear the mighty fellows!” She jumped to her feet and was lifting mutton from the seething kettle when the door opened and a small, wiry man wearing a leather coat stepped inside. He stopped and stared at Fergus.

  “New lodger, Muldoon,” Molly said quickly. “Fergus the name. This is Muldoon.”

  Muldoon glared at him with black eyes. Fergus nodded.

  Two others, a thin young man and an old man, came in behind the ganger, bringing a smell of cold soil in with them, faces windburned.

  “Sit down, Muldoon, you mollusk.”

  The girl helped the ganger taking off his coat, and Fergus saw her lift a pistol from a pocket and set it on a shelf. Muldoon sat down in the armchair while she knelt and began untying his boots.

  “Get his sub?”

  “I did.”

  “Give it over.”

  She handed him Fergus’s ticket.

  “God, you are the fucking queen,” said Muldoon, sitting back.

  “Oh yes I am. The supper’s ready of course.”

  The two lodgers shook hands shyly, muttering their names. McCarty was a horse boy, tall and thin. The other was an old navvy, Peadar. They set their muddy boots in front of the fire then took their places on the bench while the girl began dishing out the spoileen.

  The men ate using knives and fingers, silent, as though the cold wind had bowled all words out of them.

  AFTER SUPPER, while the men smoked pipes by the fire, he watched Molly chip mud off their boots, working grease into the leather with her hands.

  “You’re a horse boy,” Muldoon suddenly said, “but McCarty there’s a boy horse.” While the ganger smirked at his joke, the tall thin boy — McCarty — looked up from his pipe. “Have you come from the south?”

  “Liverpool.”

  “Any news of London? Are they hiring for the tunnels?”

  “Why do you care about London?” said Molly. “Ain’t I good to you?”

  “Heard they was paying well on the tunnels.” McCarty shrugged. “Like to see London town.”

  They continued puffing their pipes, staring into the fire.

  He felt loneliness crushing — the unyielding, metallic otherness of the world.

  Unable to withstand the weight any longer, he went outside to stand in the cold darkness, pissing and staring up at the sky of stars. The air buzzed with coal smoke. The sting raked the back of his throat and tears lubricated his eyes and dripped down his cheeks while he shook off his prick.

  Self-pity. Wet face. Disgusting.

  Should have stayed back there, let them bang you.

  The world’s an empty barrel, full of black air, scent, and nothing.

  You’re nothing brave. You’re nothing.

  Where do you go from here?

  No answer in the darkness. He felt nothing near. Even the dead were gone.

  He was about to go back inside when he encountered the girl stepping out.

  “Ate a good supper, did you?”

  “I did.”

  She studied him. “Look, boy, it’s hard when you’re fresh, always.”

  “Oh yes. I know.”

  She walked off into the dark until he could no longer see her.

  “I never did like a new place,” she called to him. “New always feels wicked at first.”

  A moment later he heard the sound of her pee zinging in the mud.

  “Are you Muldoon’s wife, then?”

  “Railway wife — they won’t have girls in camp unless you must be fixed to someone. My old ma was transported, for stealing tools. They put us both on a ship for Van Diemen’s Land — only at the very last, when the she-lags was all wailing, and the soldiers was knocking them about, I slipped down the cable and got ashore. Derry Quay — that’s where Muck Muldoon found me. I am a rough chicken, Fergus. Hungry enough to scrap and fight. A rough chicken will get her share and more. A rough chicken don’t mind a little blood.” Suddenly reappearing out of the darkness she gave him a push. “Let’s go inside, man. Fucking cold it is! You’re lucky to be off the road.”

  MULDOON WAS standing in front of the coals, slowly swinging a gold watch on a chain.

  “You must warm a watch before winding,” Molly explained. “Show him, Muldoon.”

  Cracking open the watch case, Muldoon displayed the white face with its black numerals and slender hands.

  “It’s French,” said McCarty. “Muldoon won it at Rouen, when we were digging Mr. Brassey’s contract, and he knocked a horse down.”

  “Tell us the time, Muldoon,” Molly said.

  Muldoon studied the watch face intently.

  “Go on,” she coaxed.

  “Quarter past the eight o’clock.” Muldoon looked around, daring anyone to contradict him.

  There was something wild in Muldoon, like an animal, a ferret; handsome in a dark disjointed way, with his chipped skin, wide mouth, and thin lips. Eyes pale and lit.

  Snapping the case shut, the ganger began carefully winding the pea-sized golden knob.

  “What do you like best, Muldoon — the watch or me?” Molly asked.

  Muldoon kept winding.

  “Trade me on a pair of good boots,” Molly said. Kneeling, she began to smoor the fire.

  “Never let you go,” said Muldoon.

  MULDOON AND the lodgers retired, leaving Fergus and Molly alone. He liked the warmth and stillness with the two of them in it. She was kneeling in front of the coals, greasing boots, while he smoked his pipe. “Here, give me a puff,” she said, suddenly reaching out. He passed her the clay pipe and she took a draw, letting the smoke curl out between her lips. “I suppose you had a randy up in Liverpool and spent all your wages?”

  He didn’t feel like telling her about his crossing from Ireland on the boat of sheep. He nodded.

  “Did you spend lot of money?”<
br />
  “Molly!”

  Muldoon’s shout came from their bedroom. She concentrated on the boot she was rubbing.

  “Come to bed!”

  She grimaced. “Yes, yes, only I must get done the boots, mustn’t I?” Taking up the next, she started rubbing the warm, pliable leather with a lump of fat.

  Fergus could hear the lodgers snoring.

  “Come to bed.”

  Looked around, Fergus saw Muldoon in the curtained doorway of the bedroom, wearing a yellowed undershirt that hung almost to his knees.

  She kept on rubbing grease. “I must finish your blessed boots, mustn’t I, Muck? And set out the breakfast iron. You go down, Muck, I’ll be in by and by.”

  Muldoon stood glowering, small and wiry, bowlegged. “What are you looking at?” he said to Fergus.

  Fergus shrugged and gazed at the fire. A few moments later he heard Muldoon retreat back to his bedroom. She finished the boot she was rubbing and picked up another. “Old Muck’s a little sore. Pay was made last week and he went off on a randy. They found him in a hedge. He’d spent every farthing, or the Welsh cats robbed him. Sold his hat, for drink. Sold his best waistcoat.” Her hands, shiny with grease, were flying over the leather. “He’ll fight, and slag, and pour beer down his gully — die in a hole one day, Muck will.”

  Finishing the boot, she set it alongside the others at the grate where the warmth would keep the leather open and the grease would soak in.

  “I don’t like night anymore,” she said firmly.

  She began banking the coals with a poker. “Old Kelly, I can’t hardly recall his face. See him dead on that table better than alive, and we knew each other pretty well, Kelly and me. He always said he was going for Indiana. Do you know where it is?”

  He shook his head.

  “It’s America.”

  “I used to think Liverpool was America.”

  “Indiana is in America, somewhere near enough Quebec. Last year it was three pounds passage for Quebec. New York fare is twice that or more, on the Black Balls. Kelly’s brother had a stone house, and a great many sheep, according to letters. I never seen the letters. It could have all been a story. Kelly was always going on about how he was to buy a farm and grow Indian corn, raise pigs, and keep bees as well. However. He’s dead.”

  “Molly! Come to bed!”

  She arose quickly and moved into the shadows. Fergus heard the curtain rustle-as she disappeared.

  * * *

  HE LAY awake in his crib unable to push the girl — her quality of tension, anger, suspense — out of his head.

  Old Peadar’s snoring rattled the dark.

  Thinking of her in bed with Muldoon was troubling.

  He tried not to see Luke moving along the edge of his thinking.

  It took a long time to sleep.

  The Tip

  “GET UP, YOU BEARS, get up.”

  He had been involved in a dream but all he could remember was wind blowing through a sea of grass, and horses, seen from miles away, moving across open country.

  Molly stood in the doorway holding a candle. McCarty and the old navvy were groaning and hacking.

  Molly left with her candle and the room went black.

  Might be anywhere. Might be dead.

  LATER, BY the fire, while the men ate porridge, he watched her slicing bread and cold mutton, wrapping the food in their clean handkerchiefs.

  He consumed his breakfast, trying to let go of everything he remembered. Porridge with milk was luxury. His boots, cleaned and greased, were placed along with the others in front of the fire. That was good enough.

  The boots felt supple and warm when he pulled them on. Molly stood by the door with their dinners.

  You were safer without some girl leading you into the wild.

  Putting the pistol in his pocket, Muldoon accepted his bundle. Placing a finger under Molly’s chin, he tilted her face and kissed her on the mouth.

  “Go on, leave.” She was impatiently pushing Muldoon away. The ganger grabbed a fistful of thick hair and gave it a tug.

  “Like kissing a fish!”

  “Let go of me, Muck! Don’t be a beast.”

  “You want some better manners I think,” Muldoon said, grinning at the other men.

  “Oh go away, Muck.”

  Fergus could see her cheeks flaming with what — anger?

  Humiliation.

  The worst is to have someone own you. His father had once owned him, but as soon as he was old enough to resist, he did. Carmichael, it turned out, had owned them all. The farmer would have preferred they were cattle, not souls. He would have fed his cattle.

  Muldoon gave Molly’s braid another sharp tug then walked out the door. “We’ll see you tonight, though,” he called back at the girl.

  As the lodgers followed Muldoon outside, she handed them each their dinners.

  “Spare the horses,” she told Fergus, handing him his bundle. He nodded. He wanted to say something consoling, but before he could produce the words she was shutting the door.

  The gray morning, raddled with coal smoke. Weak sun licking the rim of the world. Men were silently streaming down the hillside, heading for the works, every man carrying his dinner tied up in a handkerchief.

  MCCARTY TOOK him through the camp and out to the pasture to collect a horse.

  “You want to catch the strongest nag you can, though none are any good.”

  Forty or fifty animals stood in the barren, muddy field, ice on their backs, looking bewildered.

  “Don’t let Muldoon catch you standing about. You must always be pulling. Twenty tips a day. Fast is how they like it.”

  “Poor horses.”

  “They’re poor, yes — they’re cheap old nags. They don’t last long neither. A railway contract is founded on the murder of horses. Come now, let’s choose our pullers — catch the best as you can, and lead him into the stable for oats, then I’ll show you how to hitch him to a string of trucks. You watch me, Fergus, you’ll see how it’s done.”

  They joined a line of tip boys slowly advancing across the field. There was a fluff of snow on the crisp mud. The horses stumbled before them, wary of capture, then crowded nervously along the fence as the boys closed in, calling softly in Irish, holding out handfuls of hay, rubbing it between their palms to release its scent.

  Fixing on a gaunt black horse, less famished looking than the others, Fergus began slowly working the animal into a corner of the field.

  “There you are, good man. I ain’t seen a one like you. No I haven’t.”

  It doesn’t matter what you say; they must hear softness and flexibility in your voice. Also power of will, firmness. To capture a horse, you feel what he is feeling, anticipate his thoughts. Distance must be respected, negotiated. A horse doesn’t hate a voice that is steady. Shrieks and yells frighten them.

  “That’s all right. You’re a rugged old fellow. I shall treat you well.”

  The horse snorted and flared, then abruptly relinquished, extending his neck to bite at the poor, silvery hay. The brief show of spirit seemed to have exhausted him. He was docile as Fergus knotted his fingers into the mane and led him into a big, noisy, gloomy barn where the farrier had a red fire pumping in a small hearth and was banging ferociously on horseshoes. Dozens of horses stood at a tin trough noisily munching oats while the tip boys buckled on leather harness collars and pried stones out of their horses’ feet, using sharpened sticks. Muldoon prowled impatiently.

  The horses all looked thin, wretched. Coats were dull. Manes were wild, feet shaggy, backs glazed with ice.

  Using his fingers, Fergus curried and scraped the ice off the horse’s back and flanks. McCarty showed him where the harness sets were kept, hanging on iron spikes driven into barn beams, then helped him fit the harness collar over the horse’s neck and showed him how to arrange the buckles, straps, and cinches.

  The horses shivered as they munched, their hides steaming.

  “That fellow of yours is new,” McCar
ty said, eyeing the horse. “Ain’t seen him before. The gypsies drive old cart horses out from Chester, and Mr. Murdoch buys twenty, thirty at a go.”

  “His feet are good. He’s strong enough.”

  “He won’t last.”

  “Come on, come on! It isn’t a tea party!” Muldoon yelled.

  “I’m showing the new man the ropes, Muck,” McCarty protested.

  “Get those nags cracking.”

  MCCARTY SHOWED him how to hitch to a string of empty trucks. The trucks ran on iron wheels along flimsy, temporary rails that had been laid along the half-finished railway grade.

  “Drag your trucks up just below where navvies are excavating. They like to undercut to make an overhang. You pull your trucks underneath, then they can chop at the overhang until it breaks off and slumps and fills your trucks in one go — that’s called knocking the legs out. That way they fill trucks fast, without having to shovel any.

  “Soon as your trucks are filled, you pull them down the line to the tip. Don’t spare the horse; don’t even try. Everything fast, remember. Tons of ground we shift — tons! My God, Fergus, when I think of the ground in Ireland, how we sucked and paid rent, all for a little plot of limestone soil, to raise a few spuds. It makes you wonder. I’ve tipped more ground than there ever was in bloody Ireland, I’ll wager.”

  THE NAVVIES worked fast, men driven to atone for something. If a slump broke off and filled a truck successfully they cheered, having saved themselves the labor of shoveling. But slumps often came down bigger than expected — he saw boulders bouncing like apples down the slopes of the cut, while navvies and tips ran for their lives, shouting and laughing.

  There was always a moment of silence and limpid, perfect calm after each big slump. It was shattered by the screaming of horses, just as the cloud of dust started to rise, billowing up the slope. Horses were always caught in the slumps. Hitched to the trucks, they couldn’t get out of the way fast enough.

  Before the dust settled, the navvies had scrambled back to their stations, and the rattle of picks and shovels started up again.