Grace

by Paul Lynch

  Shush, Colly. I think he can hear us.

  Time—hee!—how it is arranged mechanically in such perfect fashion, how the hours number twenty-four and not a moment more of it, how there’s not, like, twenty-five hours in a day, for example, unless you’ve got your head in a twist, isn’t it a wonder, Grace, that no matter how many days go by the hours don’t ever stretch past it?

  Fuck up for just one minute.

  She can hear the padding of a dog near the door. She has found an egg, puts her thumb over the sucky hole.

  Imagine, Colly says, you can live your whole life and a day will never fall short of its hours, it would make your head fall off, how perfect the great minds have it worked out to the minute and the second, with the leap year and all, the celestial motions, the movements around the sun, that the hours keep perfect so that even when you wake from sleep it is always the right hour when you stir up, that’s what I found when I had a loan of Nealy’s watch that time, and yet if you ask me—

  Shush up! I can hear that dog.

  —dreaming is a tricky business because all dreams are timeless, aren’t they, them learned men might have figured out time but they haven’t yet figured out what kind of time happens in dreams, and memories also, you never hear people talking about that, do you—I don’t think there’s one kind of time at all, I think there’s many, I’ll bet that—

  Colly!

  What has come by the door is a hound large enough to wolf off her head. The inward dark of the barn keeps her hidden but she will be betrayed by her smell, she knows it. The hound enters and she backs away slowly until she touches the wall, waits for some gobbling woof. But all the dog does is judge her. It is the saddest of looks, as if the dog can say, I can see you in the dark, I know what you are up to, stealing eggs, but I can also see that things are not going so well for you right now and anyhow, you smell like a nice person.

  She watches the dog with one sullen eye and sucks the last of the egg. How it is, she thinks, that some dogs can remind you of a person. She steps towards the dog and rubs its meaty head.

  Colly says, that hound was only curious—do you think, Grace, that if the sun were to move backwards or forwards in position that it would change time, that the days would grow longer or shorter—that if something were to suddenly happen to the sun and it moved farther away that I would grow less, that I would be stuck at this height for longer?

  She has walked deeper into the deep of the world, spent nameless days on these nameless roads that twist and turn with no ending. There is such weight in this sky, she thinks, clouds of ashes as if the heavens burnt out. In the west she can see far-off lakes that look like mealcakes if you see them in a certain manner, some great river slowing through them.

  Colly says, that would be the river Shannon.

  She says, and how would you know?

  He says, because it is a fact.

  She dreams her old self. Thinks, I am sliding out of my life, sliding into the life of another. And yet you must walk on because there will be something better and there is nothing but trouble waiting for you back home. She has dreamt of Boggs and Mam and that Donkeyface Boyd fella in angry colloquy. She dreams of Clackton. Sees him on the road, his little appearances, turning up in the faces of others. She has seen the back of Clackton in the shape of a stranger curling and uncurling his hands. Seen Clackton’s slumping mouth in the wrinkled infant face of an elder. At night he haunts her with gibberish talk, sits her on his lap, runs blood hands through her hair.

  Colly reckons them cattle-thieving bastards are long gone back to Donegal. She can see them walking the northwards roads with their hands dripping blood. But still, she says. We must go south. Keep pushing on, just in case.

  In every ditch she sees shadows that might leap to kill, cuts at shadow-men in sleep with her knife.

  Colly says, keep your eyes open for forage. But the cottier fields are cabbaged clean and every ditch is stripped of its nettles. Even the chickweed that Mam used to soothe the rashed botties of the youngers is being sold in handfuls. Women calling to strangers waving fistfuls of the herb. For your soup, they say. She counts the months that have passed since the failed harvest. Can see that the wintering has only deepened in spring. So many fields now along these roads lie unbroken by harrow. They are returning to an ancient wilderness, she thinks, as if nature were weeding the workingmen from her fields. Such men now walk the roads following the devil’s footsteps. In their slump-walk you can see them coming slowly undone. How they look like they are losing both their inwardness and outwardness. Or those too weak to work sit about watching the road. How they always ask first for work before getting to what they really want. Have you the kindness of an offering? Can you spare a coin? She is growing indurate to what is held in the eye of such men. Men stood with that dead-staring of donkeys. Their faces eaten in. How they watch you from the moment you rise from the road to the moment you disappear past them. You can tell a wild lot from the far-off of a walk. The rise of a foot. The slump of a shoulder. The hold of a head.

  Who is and who isn’t.

  This year, every fool, it seems, is making Brigid’s crosses, though the saint’s day has passed. They sell them on the roads, some holding a single cross aloft, others hipped with baskets. They wave them at walkers, wave them at the drivers of gigs and coaches as if they expect them to stop, each hand movement unique to its waver and yet she reads each movement the same as every other—sees in it the gesturing of want or a person gone past want to a point that is longing narrowed down to the forgetting of all else. One fright-of-a-face young woman in a faded blue shawl steps alongside her, waves under her nose the musty smell of a cross. A younger on her arm with curled fists, just six months old, she guesses. The child’s cheek pressed to her mother and drool-lipped, the outward face hot with bother. And yet the child seems oddly peaceful, more sunken than sleep. The woman’s breath is rank, her voice tired. She says, it will bring you protection. Bring blessings upon your house. It will bring help to your people. How much will you offer for it?

  The way this woman looks at her and for a moment she sees Mam in the look. She wants to speak as a girl plain and simple and yet she grunts at the woman to leave her alone. She looks at the basket as the woman walks away from her, sees that all the crosses are made not of rushes but of straw that should have been used to feed animals, and why didn’t she sell the straw to somebody else who would need it?

  Colly says, what protection could them crosses bring if they don’t work for her neither, the state of her, she must have made them with her left hand.

  The heat of shame she feels for the way she talked to that woman is like the heat of that child’s cheek.

  She sleeps a few nights in a broken-down church. The figures of five frightening faces carved in stone above the doorway. She dreams of hungering faces. Wind sounds coming out their mouths. Wakes to see the moon candling the stonework. Sometimes she lies thinking of what she has seen, the road now so full of trouble you can hardly look at it. She thinks, what is happening to the country? She has seen an entire family hilled together with their belongings on a passing cart, rooted together in silence like some old tree gone to wither. Or the sight of a man under a faltering sun dragging two youngers on a sack, the children sloped like sleepers. How Colly went on about the man’s devil chin, that he was one of Satan’s helpers taking the youngers off to drink their blood and eat them whole to the toenails. How she had to shout at Colly that the children were being taken for burial.

  That same day she met a woman drawing water from a roadside well, the woman warning her to be careful. What she said—many’s the time I lived on the road, took shelter along it, was given a bed of straw for the night. Took the hen’s share of whatever was being offered. But not anymore. The doors are all closed. The customs are dying out because the people are frightened.

  How she walked with the woman a little, caught the woman’s hand sneaking into her satchel, pulled the knife on her. The woman giving her a defi
ant look then laughing high and strange at her. What she said—sure wasn’t I only warming my hand?

  Sometimes she wakes and hears whispering voices and cannot be sure if she has dreamt them or not. She has grown tired of waking with the knife in her hand, begins to imagine herself as a druid wielding magical powers, casting spells for safety. Colly making lists of the spells he has heard of.

  What we need right now, he says, is some string, a candle, and a trinket—we can make a spell for bringing good fortune, only I canny remember the words to the spell, only what we need for it.

  We’ve got string and a candle, she says, but where are we going to get a trinket at this hour?

  What about the matchbox with your hair in it, do you still have it—didn’t you wear it once?

  What I could do with is a charm for beauty.

  She hears Colly whispering some strange incantation.

  She says, you’re making it all up.

  No I amn’t, I can feel it shaking my arms, it’s coming into power.

  Colly’s prattling is as long as the day. She watches the sky snapping shut. A great dog in the far-off growls but there will be no rain for a while yet. So into a town, a long street that busies into a diamond. Colly says, see these fellas, let me do all the talking.

  She steps into a huddle of men and proffers an open palm among them. Says, I’ll trade you this fresh-air mealcake for a pinch of tobacco, you would not believe how good it is—fresh as the morning’s dew, go on, have a taste.

  There are tough stares and a silence so long she wonders if trouble will come at the end of it. Then a man laughs and another shouts, I’ll take a bite of your mealcake. He reaches for it and chews it laboriously, eyes the others and rubs his gut. Boysoboys, yez missed out. That was the tastiest treat I’ve had in a long while. The same man brings her pipe to life. Gives her a good pinch of tobacco. Says, what ways things, wee man? Welcome to Clones, County Monaghan.

  She finds a wooden crate and drags it in front of the church and begins to holler at a half-empty street. I have a great new corrector for the hunger! It is called, ladies and gents, the fresh-air mealcake! It is quite the comforter. Would you like to try one? You, sir! Don’t be wary, now, it is most moist and delicious! It is economical and not lumpen to the teeth! She watches the town give up some ghosts who gather around, faces that scowl judgment or gape without expression. Colly says, try that man there with the black lips and teeth. Hey, sir! Try one. Now give me a few pennies for it, it is so pure it will not rot your mouth like that baccy. The man stares with ill humor but another chuckles beside him and then others begin to laugh. One man begins to clap. That’s right, he says. That’s right. She says, I’ll bet none of you has ever thought about the difference between time in the real world and time in your dreams, let me tell you—

  Faces begin to frown and then the crowd breaks away leaving one woman standing, her face half hidden under a hooded cloak midnight in its color. The woman eyes her up and down, steps forward with long fingers and tests with a squeeze the strength of Grace’s shoulder, peers at her hair.

  She says, you’ve not got nits, have you? I can’t have some boy working for me if he’s going to give nits to my dog. Let me hear you cough.

  Then the woman says, and don’t think I don’t know you are a stranger in this town. I have no time for a blatherskite. Here, carry this and follow along.

  She thinks, there are all sorts of reasons why a woman might pick a boy for work without knowing him. And who cares if it happens this way or that, all that matters is that the woman has flesh on her jowls and that she stands soft to the light not sharp like most others and that there will be some scrapings to feed on.

  She whispers, Colly, that spell of yours is working a charm.

  He says, if things go to cac you can always rob her.

  The woman calls herself Mrs. Gregor. She walks with an ashy hand on her hip. She is stoopy and loud-breathing and sighs little complaints to nobody in particular and perhaps not even to herself. Colly reckons she is a rich miser, that she has a disease, that her cloak is so low her feet might not touch the ground, that she might be the pooka.

  This walking going on now for at least an hour, the sun past its height staring down at a plate of hot food while the young hills in the far-off look like baking bread. They walk past a mill with its wheel stilled to the grabbing water and she feels a sudden thirst.

  Colly says, did you see the big black spider on her cheek?

  It looked like a mole.

  It’s a big black spider, I tell you, whispering to her instructions on how to eat us.

  They begin up a hillock path that cuts through an idle pasture field and she can see between trees the off-white of a small farmhouse. Colly says, is that all it is? I was hoping for better. She hears herself sigh and hears the woman sigh also and perhaps this is the way of things, she thinks, that everything in life is disappointment and that even at this woman’s advanced age you never get used it and you must be careful of having too many dreams.

  The woman pushes open a crabby gate and the farmhouse stands gray and bereft in its own expression, the roof sunken and a cart wheel lying to the wall like some ruined drunkard missing half its limbs. An old dog taps its tail and rises with yawning slowness. Grace looks away in disgust, for the creature is lumpen with tumors. The woman turns and drops her hood and her face hangs bloodless like wax and perhaps a little younger than she has imagined and that thing on her cheek, Colly says, I’ll bet her insides are full of spiders that come out at night.

  The woman points for her to wait in the yard and she stands unsure what to do with herself, begins to play with her hands, watches the woman put a key to the door.

  Colly whispers, I’ve changed my mind, I don’t like the look of this place, let’s turn around now before it’s too—

  But her nose is reaching towards the house, is reaching under the door, is reaching towards the smell of food.

  In the creeping half-light she hurries water from the pump, hatchets wood into flitches. Now she stands sucking at a splinter. The woman watching, it seems, always from the window. Colly says, if you don’t look at her you won’t know she’s looking. And yet she cannot help but turn around and look.

  Everywhere on this farm is the absence of a man. Tools gathering dust and a pair of scuffed boots beneath the hollow arms of a man’s coat hung by the latch door. A few trees have been axed on the hill and left coined in the yard and she wonders if it was the same man did the work and where he is now. She takes the splinter between her teeth and pulls it out, senses the woman behind her, reels around to that bloodless face.

  Mrs. Gregor—Spiderwoman! Colly calls her—hands her nettle soap and points across the yard to the pump. Take off your clothes and wash, she says.

  She can feel the watchy eyes upon her as she stands awkward at the pump, keeps her clothes on, begins to run the cold in bitter bursts. She holds her breath and douses, brings her head up to see Spiderwoman come abruptly behind her. She grabs Grace’s wrist and takes the soap. Grace stands blinking water, can hear Spiderwoman scouring the soap into lather. She says, nothing I hate worse than nits. Work that pump, will you. The woman cat-grabs her neck and dunks her head under the water, pulls her back out, puts two hands to her head. Grace gasps then relaxes, for there is surprise in the touch, hands supple-soft that melt the skull like butter. Such soothe brings her eyes to swim and something comes undone. She feels that first feeling as old as herself. Through a dark she is a child again tubbed with her mother.

  She is fed a quart of milk and stirabout with peelings and the smell is enough for heaven never mind the taste. She watches Spiderwoman boil hawkweed in a pot then strain it and leave it cool. This is for your cough, she says. She thinks, this Spiderwoman is some kind of herbalist, for there are jars of dried herbs and leafery on a shelf. She thinks of Colly’s good-luck charm in that broken-stone church, thinks there might be something in it after all. For this food is better than scrapings. This food is the c
at’s comfort. This food is—

  A man’s low coughing can be heard behind a door. She turns in surprise, the coughing coming not from the bedroom she has seen Spiderwoman step into but a second room. She looks to Spiderwoman’s face for an answer—a brother, a husband, a son, and why has he been hiding in the room all along?

  Spiderwoman grabs Grace by the arm and pulls her towards her as if to shake such thought out of her head. Are those nits gone? she says. She produces a comb and begins to examine her. Why would you not undress and wash properly? A boy like you has nothing to be ashamed of. You are a bad boy but you are a good worker. Badness and goodness always mix.

  So there is a man here after all, she thinks. She cannot help but sneak a look towards the door. Imagines someone scrawny and sick.

  Colly whispers, I told you she was up to no good—she’s keeping some old fellow locked up, lets her spiders feed on him at night.

  She watches Spiderwoman light a tin lamp and follows the woman out into the yard the way that dogs do, upon the woman’s heel awaiting some command to lift or move or haul, whatever you are asked, Spiderwoman walking towards the barn but of a sudden she stops and her arm comes up like some clock pulled askew. She whispers something that sounds like fright and she turns and grabs hold of Grace’s wrist, begins to point down the darkening slope. Grace squints at the dusk, can just about see a man walking the far edge of a field as if he has been walking downhill from this house and then he is a shadow and then he is ditch and in the far-off she can make out a cluttering of mud cabins, three or four close together.

  Spiderwoman begins to shake Grace’s wrist as if it were Grace who was caught in some act of intrusion. She whispers, the first time I was nearly murdered it was by them below.

  She turns and stares at Grace and her face has gathered into its expression the growing dark. Do you know what it is to wake in the night and think you are soon to be dead? To be tormented like that? To be living in fear on your own hill?