by Paul Lynch
This wait now for what is to happen but Soundpost utters not one word. Her insides trampled as if by wild animals let storm at such stupidity to reveal herself. She watches Soundpost without watching as he chews his mealcake. His face lambent by firelight and yet his eyes darkly withholding. She thinks, he is buttoned-up and smarting. He will think the others are in on it, that my being a girl is some conspiracy against him.
Wilson prattling on again about marking the cattle.
She thinks of the pain in her feet, how her boots chew at her skin.
Wilson says, they are neither marked nor branded. I cannot fathom it. There is a way it should be done that will not hurt the animal. You’ve got to touch the iron briefly to the hide and then wait a moment before you scald it again. It numbs the pain out. I can fix this up for you, Soundpost, in Newtownbutler. I’ll go to the smith. Your initials or something more fancy? The name of your woman, perhaps?
She takes off her right boot and holds her foot to the fire, begins to nurse her clean toes.
A groaning Clackton brings his stink to the fire. He says, I’m frozen stiff.
Wilson says, it’s the dried-in shit in your breeches that’s stiff.
Then he leans over and points. Look at Tim with his wee girl’s feet.
Her breath clumps like dry mealcake in her mouth. Soundpost quickly stands up, steps away into the darkness. She gruffs her voice down and sends it towards Wilson. What about your wee boy’s cock?
Of a sudden, Wilson is unbuttoning his trousers. You mean this? He holds his appendage in his hand and begins to wag it but of a sudden Soundpost is upon him, spins him around, pushes him away from her.
Mercy! Mercy! Have you no decency or decorum? This place is not your private commode.
When Clackton speaks he sounds like his old self again. Like I said, he says, bunch of small-cocks.
You do not sleep, for how can you? You lie awake seeing the unfolding of what comes next, all outcomes imagined to their inevitable conclusions. The moment, perhaps, when Soundpost puts it to Clackton and Wilson. For he has to say something, does he not? If only to let them know he knows. What, then, when the others find out? The lies you have told Wilson, making him believe you are his second cousin or what have you. Those red hands turned to fists.
She lies awake listening with her ear cocked. Listening to the full scape of night noises. Breathing as absence and swell. It issues from the cattle, from the mouths of the men she has to figure on. Clackton asleep now, surely—those are his snores. Wilson is utterly quiet. She spends a long minute moving soundlessly into sit, another minute to standing, another reaching out her ears. Then she moves soft-foot, steps forward past Wilson and Clackton, sees the outline of Soundpost asleep under his hides. Closer and she can see he is flat on his back. A minute, it seems, getting down on her knees, time expanding as wide as the dark. Then she is upon him, her hand stealing slowly for her knife. In ember light she can see his eyes are open, that he is staring at her with terror. His eyes blink twice. She brings the knife to his throat, rests the blade to the apple, cups her mouth to his ear.
Listen up. Not one word to the others, you hear? Not one word or I will sink my blade into your daft heart. Blink once for yes.
She watches him blink. His apple bobs as though he were swallowing fear.
He whispers. What are you?
It is some unknown self who leans down and kisses his lips.
Have no fear of me, Embury. Now shush.
Two men like slow-flighted arrows come diagonal through a field. Clackton is leading the group again, his trousers river-washed and how he sat bottomless in good spirits watching them dry by the fire. Said aloud, there weren’t cows in America until 1611, when they were first brought by an Irishman. Any of you know his name? He walks with his pockets hanging out to dry. Watches the men approach but does not seem bothered. Soundpost’s walk stiffens and he raises the blunderbuss in his arms. The same pussed face that crawled like some sly animal from under his hides this morning. The strangers step through a gate and wait by the side of the track. Both the same height, laborers, by the look of them. Closer still and she sees they are lean elderly men, two brothers. Like two dying dogs, Colly says.
They walk alongside the booley. One says, we’re the two finest men you’ve ever seen in this land with cattle. Been working ’em sixty year.
The other says, had to sell them all off. Any chance of some work? A bird never flew on one wing.
Soundpost points his gun at them and Clackton tells him to cool it.
The rest of the day in an icy sun Soundpost utters no word. She thinks, he is the most distressed man I have ever encountered.
When they rest up for water it is Clackton who notices. He says to Soundpost, keep your finger off that trigger. You’ll take the head off someone.
When Soundpost does not respond Clackton reaches and points the gun down. Soundpost’s eyes are black to him.
As she walks within the booley’s encircling clamor there are times she hears it as music. Hoof thuds forming suddenly into a single beat. The mule’s pack-weight that squeaks a march step. Sometimes she claps or hums the intuition of a wordless song. Sometimes she thinks Wilson hears it too, the way he starts scratching something on his two-string fiddle, seems to find the same rhythm, or swings the melodeon onto his shoulders, squeezes out some strange air. Colly joining in with more of his silly word games. Then he starts to sing.
Grace and Embury under a tree.
K. I. S. S. I. N. G.
First comes cattle. Then comes marriage—
Fuck up, would ye.
She thinks of Embury walking behind her, touches the lips that kissed him. The faintly remembered taste of what was on his lips like tea mixed with sweat or perhaps the taste of consternation.
The cold morning bites her awake. She sits up among the sleeping others and it is then she remembers. What happened during the night. Or didn’t happen. It lies in the gulf of some dream and the real and she cannot decide the difference. She stares at the ground and wonders why dream and memory sometimes conspire so that you do not know the difference.
Waking in the middle of night to hear the presence of another beside her. Her own tub-thumping heart. Thinking of Soundpost with a knife to kill her. Knowing for sure it is him from the signature of his breathing. A quarter moon casting light like milk-water upon the flanks of the cattle, upon the hard earth, upon the body of Soundpost naked from the waist with his breeches at his ankles. The sight of him in full arousal. Standing over her empty-handed as if awaiting some invitation. And how she lay there with one eye half open, her hand slowly taking hold of the knife. Lying with her eyes closed pretending to sleep and perhaps she was asleep, for when next she looked he was gone into dark as if she had dreamt him and who is ever to know in the middle of the night what is real and not real?
But still, she thinks, do not even look at him, and then she does and he sits there chewing his mealcake. He is chatting to Wilson, who is going on about some route they must take.
Clackton knuckling with two hands at the necks of both collies. Says to Wilson, what do you know of this country?
Wilson insisting on a particular route.
Then Soundpost swings around and stares at her with a smileless smile that sees into the all that is no longer hidden.
Soft-bump of cattle as she tokes on the pipe, the river-unison of their walking. They have entered a deep glen, the road narrowing onto yellowed scrub and a track worn through. Trees grab at the light on each side and she has forgotten her sore toes, tells Colly to stop annoying her. Some song he sings over and over.
A piss when I wake in the morning.
A piss before I bed.
I’ll piss on your bloody finger.
I’ll piss all over your—
Wilson walking fast up the side of the booley and there is something strange in his carriage and quickstep, the downwards lean of his head and his shoulders hunched as if this were the gait of another. She watche
s him come up behind Clackton, draw alongside him as if he is set to deliver some urgent message or point quietly to some problem with the animals. Colly starting to sing again, his voice mighty, Wilson for some water, Wilson at a well— there is an odd soft-sounding clop that seems to break upon the air and echo thinly towards the trees. She stands on tiptoe to see over the rippling cattle slowing to a stop, sees Wilson turning—Clackton, Colly says, where has Clackton gone to?—for where there were two men there is now only one and she sees a small plume of smoke rising. Wilson beginning to march back down the booley’s flank with his head lowered—where is Clackton?—and she sees Wilson clearer now, sees in his left hand a blanket folded thick and smoke rising off it, sees him dump the blanket, sees him throwing to the ground the pistol and producing another from his pocket, cocks it as he walks, and what comes to her is the dark of knowledge that brings to light the world turned inverse, this dark of knowing that sends her into a run shouting Clackton’s name, sees first through the spindled legs of cattle the skywards point of his boots, pushes a cow out of her way to get to him—the man flat to the earth and how she will not forget the eyes, the eyes not of a man but of a grappling child, staring with incomprehension into what cannot be fathomed, his hands painted with blood, his hands quaking and trying to shovel in what has unspooled from his body. She becomes pure motion in the same unthinking as what bends the grass and treetops, is bent in aid to him when Colly alerts her with a shout—Soundpost! He is going for Soundpost!—and she realizes she has been holding Clackton’s innards in her hands, her own hands painted with his blood, trying to place the innards back into the man because his hands have stopped moving and his eyes have rolled to whiteness.
What she does is scream, a lung scream no boy could muster. She sends it shrill towards Soundpost in arrowhead. Can see through the scrum of loosening cattle the quick walk of Wilson towards Soundpost. She watches Soundpost bring up his blunderbuss. Wilson bringing up the pistol. A fat-bellied gunshot heard upon the sound of another and the cattle as if kicked begin to scatter in all directions. She is struck by a cow and falls to the ground and it is then that she sees them, shadows in the trees that become men stepping forward. Then she is up and running she does not know where, sees Wilson being struck by a cow, sees that Soundpost is alive and running for the trees, the young man’s arms like the slackening of some half-strung marionette, his weapon abandoned, Clackton lying in stillness. Colly is shouting, get away to the trees! She sees three others at the far side of the glen and their carriage tells her they are weaponed. She turns and runs through the confusion of cattle and what pictures in her mind is the manner of one of them, a certain walk and the shape of a hat on his head.
The face of that Donkeyface Boyd fella.
She lies in the trembling of herself. All time thrown. It is Colly who had suggested it—to crawl under the rotting trunk of fir. Amid her screaming head, his was the voice of reason. It is a Colly she has not heard before. A Colly that sounded more grown-up. How he directed her to gouge with bloody hands a cranny to lie in. Suggested she blanket herself with leaf-rot. Just her eyes peering out like a frightened animal. Counting the breaths. Counting the bellows breaths to silence. Counting what moves on the air. The clack clack clack of some bird. The scurry and patter of some creature, Colly says. That’s all it is. Just a creature. This clack clack clacking—
It’s not them, he says. Listen to them shouts—that’s them rounding up the cattle. That’s what they came for.
She tries to listen and hears it is true, wonders if the cattle understand what has happened. If now they are horning true sorrow. She hears Wilson’s dogs bark, some bird clack clack clacking, thinks of the dogs coming to find her—thinks of Clackton. Shuts her eyes to see his face watching her, his hair oiled with blood.
She says, that Boyd was the pooka all along, I knew it. He had put the evil eye on Wilson. It was a spell he was put under—
Colly says, keep quiet—that boy is nothing but evil, he was in on it all along.
Footfall nearby in the wood. An echoing cough and men talking. The hand that slides over her mouth is Colly’s. Voices weave dimly through the trees and then nothing. She imagines Soundpost running for his life. Running out past the glen to what lies beyond. Realizes she has been waiting for the sound of gunshot to go off. The sound of Soundpost being—
Of a sudden she hears Wilson and then another talking. Cannot make out their words. She closes her eyes, thinks of the wood lice that scurry all over her. Insects bedding down between clothing and skin. How the unseen of them looms large in her mind like the shadow of something small held to a candle. The voices grow distant and fall away.
She wakes shivering and shook by dream. There was night and now daylight and Colly is whispering. They’re long gone, he says.
She has spent most of the night crying in her sleep.
Get up, Colly says. Get up, they’re definitely gone, so they are.
What if they left someone to watch for me?
They’d go after Soundpost, not you—why would they hang around here with the cattle?
She climbs like some wood-stiff creature birthed from the tree, her walk hobbled. She is covered in wood-dirt, shakes off what scuttles in her hair. She is sorrowed through. Steps slowly through the wood until she stands at the tree-edge watching the glen. There is nothing there now but a breeze upon the yellow sedge. She walks into the center of the glen and with every step imagines being shot at. She sees hoofprints, Clackton’s blood brown on the grass but no body.
She says, do you think they killed Soundpost?
Colly says, they were Donegal men, I’m sure of it—were probably following us and planned it all along, Wilson in on it—they’ll take those cattle back with them or do a quick sell for money, would have gotten to us earlier, I reckon, if Clackton had not gotten us lost on the bog.
She stands squeezing her hands open and shut.
Colly says, the bunch of small-cocks.
A long day just walking. A slub of great anger building inside her. She finds seat hidden amid a snarl of tree shadow that twists outwards upon the ground in lightning shapes, the same shapes as those inward feelings that bolt their darkness through her. The sudden illumine and burn of memory. The face of poor dead Clackton emptied of himself. Soundpost fleeing. His legs and arms in some kind of star shape, running, running, and then she imagines him tripping over some tree root, turning around into the snort of a gun. Or just tiring out from being chased, giving up, turning around to plead with them. Mercy! Mercy! Take my money.
Colly says, he had a good chance.
She would boil their bones. She would eat their cadavers. She would gouge out their eyes with a knife nice and slow. Hex all of them with the evil eye if she had the powers. How does one become an air demon, Colly? That is, if they exist at all. I’d torment them all their lives before slowly killing them and stopping just before the end to torment them some more again.
Then she says, my head is done in. Tell me a story, Colly.
He says, do you remember that one about the legend of Bran—how Mam used to tell it, that he went sailing for hundreds of years through all sorts of wild weather, had all the salmon he could eat and plenty of seals, for they enjoyed clubbing the bastarding heads off them—it was quite the adventure and seemed to them they were only away for one year but then one day they reached land and one of them oared in and soon as he put foot on the sod his body turned to ashes.
Why always so grim, Colly? Can you not tell me a happy story?
Where would be the truth in it—isn’t life just insult and woe?—sometimes you are better off facing up to misery and having a good laugh at it, there is no use pretending it doesn’t exist—do you remember what happened to Ossian, how he had this great white horse and used to ride about thinking his adventure was only the length of three years but really it was three hundred years—hee!—the stupid fucker, found that out, so he did, when he went showing off, leaned over his horse trying to roll som
e great boulder, only to fall off his horse, turned there and then into an old man—but what I want to know is, if he never got down off that horse, how did he sleep, did he sleep sitting up on it or lying down holding on to the withers, and how did he do his business—you can imagine doing your number ones standing up on the horse but your number twos would no doubt cause the horse some bother, the horse almost certainly would object, buck you off, plain and simple—the very thought of it, how come nobody ever puts that into the story—I think if you are going to make up a legend it should at least be plausible—
Stop with it, Colly! Stop with it. My head is done in.
She sits for a long moment watching the wind harry the low branches. Then she says, I see what you mean, though. That’s what I am. An Ossian or a Bran. If I go home to Blackmountain it will turn out that hundreds of years have passed. I’ll go in the door and turn into an old woman and fall dead on my feet. Nobody will ever have heard of me.
III
The Wonder of Days
Her fingers root through moldy straw for the oval-hard of an egg. Her ears hang by the door. Colly won’t stop yammering. Did you ever think about the wonder of days? he says.