by Paul Lynch
The four of them are soon held in the gleam of small-fire. Soundpost seems agitated, stamps among his animals. They can hear him sighing to himself, over and over like some lamenting old woman, until Clackton mutters, would you listen to Deirdre of the Sorrows. Threesome laughter like that of conspirators but then her laughter is met with a strange feeling. How she wants to laugh at the silly sighing man and yet she wants to console him.
The air is soon thick with the burning of Clackton’s mealcakes. Soundpost is poking at the fire. Wilson serenading the animals in the dark with some made-up song, a doleful air, she thinks. She wishes it would drown out the yammering of Colly. Watches Soundpost take off his hat and squint at the music as if his eyes could become his hearing. Mercy me, he says. He really knows how to strangle that melodeon.
Clackton tests a finger in the water pot then stands and rubs his knees. He nods in Wilson’s direction.
He says, that fellow claims them cattle are trainable to music. Wants to turn us into some kind of traveling circus.
One of the collies lets out a yowl and they slide into laughter.
She says, it’s not even music but the rumor of a bad song.
Colly says, tis the tune the old cow died of.
They fall into the quiet of eating and drinking and then each sits back in completion. The fire throwing myriad faces to the wind. She pulls a piece of flaming wood to her pipe.
Colly says, let me have a hold of Soundpost’s blunderbuss. I want to see how it works.
Would you ever give my head some peace?
Go on and ask him, would you.
Wilson says, listen.
She can hear the far sound of church bells.
Clackton says, like I said, we’re only a few mile from Pettigo. Who wants to take first watch?
She can feel Soundpost studying her though the beams of his eyes are dark. What’s that you’re asking? he says.
She bolds up her voice. Give us a look at your blunderbuss.
He says, mercy, mercy! That gun belongs to my brother.
Clackton says, let me guess. The eminent doctor of Newtownbutler.
Soundpost studies her a long moment and then reaches for the gun but Clackton leans over and stops him.
He says, that gun is loaded and won’t be straying into the arms of some hobbledehoy. Don’t want no stupid accidents. Don’t want no fools falling over a gun.
In the flicker-light it is possible to see him smiling in the direction of Soundpost.
The weapon and its sudden weight are dropped in her lap. Soundpost seems pleased with himself. Clackton mutters something and resumes scratching himself.
Colly says, do you reckon I can take the gun apart—I’ll bet I—
Soundpost takes the gun off her. Wilson groans into standing and rubs at his knees. He walks quietly to a cow and cradles the animal’s head in his arm, rubs the cheek with his fingers. It is like magic what happens, she thinks, the way the head dips as if brought to an instant sleep. The cow sighs and lies down.
Soundpost stands to his feet. Mercy! Mercy! How did you do that?
Wilson stands half obscured and edged by firelight. When he speaks she hears darkness in his voice. He says, it is a trick that can’t be taught to the likes of you.
She has taken first watch but wishes she hasn’t. If the night had eyes what would it see? The outline of her sitting figure. A lamp put to dark. Her eyes like the blind staring into what cannot be seen. She thinks, if the night had ears could it hear the sounds of my heart? Her ears still sounding with Clackton’s talk of bog bodies. The murdered, he had said. Those fallen into death, the drunkards and fools stumbled into bog ruts and never getting out, the pagans drowned in tarns, the young girls ritually killed by throat-cut and left out for the gods, the women stolen from their loved ones by bandits taken up here to be raped, the great warriors who fell forgotten, the chieftains assassinated, the children born with the wrong hand or a bad arm or born to the wrong woman or born too early without the blessing of God, or born with the wrong twin, the crippled and disabled stoned to death behind a bush, the lost and forgotten in the whole of history lying out there in that dark. These boglands are full of such dead, they are resting, waiting with their long brown fingers, their twisty fingernails that keep growing over the thousands of years, waiting to climb out.
Just Clackton’s eyes she could see in the flicker-light. And then his mouth wide open—a rictus laugh as if he were not laughing at all but signaling some threat of violence, or as if he had become one with those slack-jawed long-dead. Wilson beside him bent with laughter.
Colly says, they were only winding you up—it is just jest, that’s all, a story he was telling—if it was the Samhain it might be different, but you know the rules, no air demon is allowed out on an ordinary night like this.
The three of them are all stupid, she says. Even Soundpost. Proud and stupid like a silly hen the way he goes on. I’m glad he lost his pen. And I know there’s nothing out here but this bog. There is only the cattle. Most of them aren’t sleeping yet. It’s the same dark as Blackmountain. Think of it, all those years of silence on the hill and we were never bothered then.
Colly says, but what if there were raiders coming to steal the cattle, isn’t that what this protection is all about?
Nobody knows we’re out here.
Then why are we keeping guard, Clackton lying with that rifle by his chest—we hardly went unseen up the backs of them hills, you could have heard the cattle bawling from miles off.
We’re here to stop the cattle from wandering. That’s all there is to it. Now give my head peace.
Later she thinks, perhaps he is right. The boglands are as vast as the sea in this dark. What was it the old man Charlie said? Be sure to see the sea and when you can’t see it get off it. She imagines what cattle raiders might look like. Bodies footing quietly over the bog, a gang of men with faces hidden behind crepe. Just their eye whites peering out. They would travel with a lamp, surely. Even if it were a mile away, you would see them twinkling like stars. She stares again at the dark. Anyhow, she whispers. How would they ever find us in all this black?
I’ll tell you how—just listen to all that shuffling and sighing of the cattle.
The lids of her eyes are like stones she is so tired. And yet it is a wonder the others can sleep, what with Clackton’s scratching and snoring. You must stay alert. You must stay wide awake. You must be ready in case something should happen. She imagines the pooka in the shape of that Donkeyface Boyd fella roaming across the bog in the dark. His wicked laughter. Planning tricks to play on them. If it was the pooka coming they wouldn’t need a lamp. The pooka would puff out the candle of moon just to confuse the hell out of us. She recalls again what Clackton was saying, those dead pagans sacrificed to the gods. Fights the mind’s slide into sleep. Begins to imagine herself as some young woman and what it would be like being left out on the bog as an offering. Imagines herself bog-bodied—dead—the way you are not able to speak anymore or move any part of yourself, a tongue of trickle-water in your mouth, the earth’s silence in the gone-place of your heart—the taste of turf, the taste of rain, the taste of snail, even, the taste of ten thousand days and nights and the sound of the rill in your hair keeping it washed—sleep-sliding-sleep—and then she is singing to the birds, the wagtails and the wheatears, the blackbirds and the crows—and then she hears it, a sound faint as thought itself, hears it louder—the sound of other voices, of women calling out—and she calls out a song to them that sounds like screaming and it is then that she hears the voice of the woman nearest to her, a woman calling her name—Grace, she sings, Grace—and the woman begins to tell her the story of a girl lost for seven years, seven years in the wilderness and seven years with the dead, where you will grow into an old woman and when you return nobody will know who you are—and she knows the voice of this woman, this woman who is asking her to make a promise—stay with me now for seven days and seven nights, stay with me like this, and I will re
ward you, I will save you from your seven years in hell’s prison, where you will grow into an old woman, I will return you to Blackmountain as if no time had passed—and she is trying to answer, to tell the woman that she will, but the words go unspoken and cannot leave the cave of her mouth, and she screams mute over the earth’s silence, over the mountains and bog fields, for nobody can hear for there is nobody to listen, and then the woman is behind her with a hand on her shoulder, the woman speaking in whisper, and she can hear her now, the hand shaking her shoulder and the voice speaking out—you awake there, young fella? Are you asleep on the job? And she sees a cat-headed woman. Sees a man with twelve fingers. Sees the pooka sitting down beside her breathing hard. It is Clackton and his odor of gin and sweat and oiled hair.
She blinks her eyes at him.
Course I’m awake. I’m just thinking is all.
After her watch she falls exhausted to sleep and then deeper still, beyond sleep into a cancellation of self so that what is of the night cannot enter. When she wakes dreamless in first light she is like wood unturned in the place of its falling. It is Wilson’s boot stamps that stir her. She gruffs at him to fuck off. He kneels down and whispers. Something happened during the night. Soundpost is acting crazy. He’s mad with suspicion. Says we’re being followed.
She blinks at where the sun should be and sees the fire gone out. Clackton is talking to Soundpost while coughing into his fist. She stands up, bangs her arms off herself for warmth. Says, if something is wrong why weren’t we woken?
She watches Soundpost counting his cattle.
Wilson says, I don’t know nothing. Clackton told me when I woke up. Says he heard something strange during the night when it was his watch, he will not say what, though—he never explains nothin. But he cocked his rifle and soon as he did Soundpost was up beside him, oiling the backside of his breeches. Soundpost wanted to wake us all up and light the lamps but Clackton said if you are fearing for the security of your herd right now that is the last thing you should do. So they waited until the dawn like that and now the pair of them are exhausted and I asked Clackton what did he see when the sun came up and he said they saw nothing, that there was nothing at all to see but the pair of us asleep and that a few of the cattle had wandered off a small way but not very far and—
Soundpost is stomping in their direction. His face crinkled with rage and he is sucking hard on his teeth. Mercy! Mercy! he says. I just knew it. We’ve been robbed. There is an animal missing.
Wilson stands up and frowns and does a quick count with his finger. You’ve made a mistake, Mr. Soundpost, he says. I count thirty-four cows and that is the number we had last night.
No, I tell you, it’s not. There’s one animal missing.
Colly says, what’s up with these fools, can’t they count a head of cows or what?
She says, I’ve counted thirty-three cows.
Wilson looks over at her. That’s what I said.
No you didn’t, she says.
Soundpost scratches furiously at his nose with his fist. Mercy! We started out with thirty-four cows. Look here. He shows them his notebook and she has to squint to read his compact handwriting. His finger taps the page. Thirty-four. See. I have it written down.
Perhaps there were raiders after all, Colly says. And they just snuck off the one animal.
She says, it is as if the bog opened its mouth and swallowed it.
They are all looking at Clackton but he is slow to speak. He stands very still watching the expanse of bog, his eyes red and heavy from lack of sleep. Finally, he says, there are bog holes big enough to swallow a man. Perhaps we should take a look around again.
Of a sudden Soundpost turns and points a finger in the face of Clackton. The net worth of that animal, he says. It was your responsibility. You were the one got us lost. That is what I am paying you for. There will have to be deductions.
Clackton takes a step forward closer to Soundpost’s face. He says, the net worth of that animal or the criminal price you paid for it?
Something crawls all over her skin. Like the tickle of an insect that shifts when you scratch. She thinks she might have what Clackton has, but knows it is dried-in dirt and sweat. You’re a stinky wee bitch, Colly says. When was the last time you washed, you’re starting to smell like the back end of a cow—if Mam were here she’d throw you in a river, you and all your dangleberries.
She knows this is true, but what is she supposed to do about it? She has watched Clackton and Soundpost strip out of their shirts to clean themselves with stream water because these are the class of people that wash. Soundpost smooth and shining to the gills until the splash sends him howling with pimples. Clackton standing there like some shape-shifter, half the creature he becomes in sleep. His shoulders hairy as a brush, his chest like a rug, his skin rashed red all over. A low hum as he douses his nape. A wet hand reaching down his trousers to wash his manplace with vigor. Neither of them seems to notice that she does not wash. Wilson does not wash either.
Just as well, she thinks. And thank goodness these clothes are hanging off her. The way the shirt hangs like a bunched sack. For there have been changes to her body these last few months that please and trouble her. The budding on her chest has gotten worse, or better, depending on what view you make of it. She would like to take off the shirt and examine herself but how can you do that? Instead she finds her hand wandering under her shirt as if the hand were another’s. The way her hand roams now under her shirt morning till night. A strange tenderness like pain. Wilson has taken notice, laughs and says to the others, Tim’s got the itch same as Clackton! How she pretends to scratch but really what she is doing is cupping the place where she is becoming woman. I am becoming like Mam, she thinks.
What in the hell are you doing? Colly says. You’re supposed to be Tim, a boy called Tim—what kind of Tim goes around with big diddies?
How the world colors as they leave the bog. Ruptures of evergreen like signals of spring. Trees lording as if life were the only province. She looks at the creamy sky and sees a cloud like a torn dress. Clackton leads them to a narrow road that stretches the booley into an eel. It is then the rain falls. She curls her shoulders against it. This bastarding rain, Colly says. The way it trickles cold down your neck.
She watches Wilson walk in front alongside Clackton while she takes the rear with Soundpost. If you put weight to his resentment it would weigh the same as a cow, she thinks. Or if you were to put a price on it, his resentment would be twenty shillings. Sixty shillings if the times were better.
They pass a farmhouse where nothing stirs but flags of ivy slow-crawling a gable. And then a woman steps out of a byre, her face rain-squinted, the bright in her smile when she sees they are herders. She waves at them holding a hen to her chest. Two children heedless of the rain run to the gate and watch.
A bend in the road and she becomes aware of a feeling that gnaws her. It’s not the rain but as if something is held in the rain. It is the feeling you get when you’re being watched. A bally of mud cabins laid out in no particular fashion and yet the place seems lifeless—thin smoke from only half the cabins and a silence that is the absence of animals. Soundpost glaring at these cabins as if he suspects each one could hide his missing cow. She kicks a stone that caroms off the track, looks up to see the sudden emergence of people from their huts, the way they advance upon them with strange carriage. From a distance it seems each one is decrepit and yet she sees these people are all ages, their rag clothing upon them as if it were the wind that dressed them. The winnowing of these people comes as a shock. She knows people are hungry but has not yet seen any like this. Everybody is carrying something. The rising up of their voices into some tuneless air as the booley becomes encircled. They are enmeshed by sweet-talking voices and prayers. Everything is for sale, it seems—chairs and creepies, dressers, tables, bed ticks, straw, rag items of clothing, a mottled iron crucifix, two discolored Brigid’s crosses that could have been made twenty springs ago, a pair of bent spec
tacles, a torn Bible, a fiddle half strung, an old melodeon with the song torn out of it. Why aren’t they selling any animals? Colly says.
The ghost weight of an old man pulling at her elbow. She shakes him off but the old man keeps up at a goat-clip beside her. She cannot bear to look at his shriveled mouth. Three people around Soundpost charming and cajoling him, one touching his elbow. Sure aren’t you a strong-looking fellow, Mr. Booleyman, the fine head on you, look at this coat of mine, sir, would you not buy it? What a fine price I can put on it.
She sees what the man sells is hardly a coat and that he is wearing only a ribboned shirt that reveals the sunken cage of his chest. Soundpost is ignoring the man, shouts at the booley to keep onwards, shouts at Clackton as if this were his fault, which no doubt he believes, she thinks. Some woman takes firm hold of his elbow. Mr. Booleyman, would you take a look at my son, a fine strong boy, so he is, and good with the cattle, would you take him with you, he’ll work morning till night just for a handful of meal, knows cattle, so he does. And she sees the boy being talked about, a figure not fit to scare crows. The old man keeps at his goat-clip, the way he smiles with watery rotten eyes. She hates the sight of him for the revulsion he rises in her. She finds herself wishing he would die and is ashamed at the thought.
The old man’s voice is tough and whispered. So you found Sircog. Nobody has found Sircog in the longest while. If I were you I’d get out as fast as those thriving legs can carry you because it is curst. There’s nothing to be had here but rocks and cíb grass and we’ll end up eating that yet and some of them do. We lived off the cow’s elder for a while but that’s come to a stop. Look at my teeth. They’re done in from sucking rocks. Nothing’s grown since summer’s end. So keep moving on unless you want to be damned like us rock eaters. May God give you long life. You’ll give me a coin, won’t you?