by Paul Lynch
The knife, she thinks. Where did I leave the knife?
Big-man says, he’s a bit thin but neat-looking. Born to the work, though. Needs a good scrub but don’t they all.
She can see that Big-man’s face in the half-light is lopsided, cankered by old illness, hears the bellows of a great chest, the other man by the door coughs into a handkerchief. Big-man pulling and prodding at her as if he were a doctor and perhaps he is, she thinks, and she eyes the sill where the knife sits. Big-man stands up and goes to the small window as if he has heard her thought. He wipes at the glass with his elbow.
Where are all the others, gasúr? An bhfuil clann ar bith leat? Cá bhfuil do mhamaí agus daidí?
Her tongue tangles in the sudden rush of thought. She hears herself think, if he was going to drag me out, he would have done so by now. The man begins nosing around the room and he picks up the pot and stares into it. What kind of bird is this? It looks like a—
She waits to be asked the question—what happened to the old woman? It will take two seconds at most to reach the knife.
Big-man turns towards the door. What’s wrong with you, Mr. Wallace? Are you afraid to step in?
She watches Mr. Wallace wave his handkerchief. The saints and all their mercies, Dr. Charles. That is a huge deal of a smell. It’s like something—
Come on, now. It’s hardly worse than what we met this morning.
She hears herself say, they’re all gone out, master. Gleaning in the woods. Just the mam, sir, and the youngers. I’m minding the cabin.
She watches this Mr. Wallace writing into his ledger. How many of you are there?
Five, sir.
What did you say your name was?
Tim Coyle, sir.
That is strange, I have another name on the list. It must be another cabin.
She hears herself giving to him the individual names of her family.
Big-man says, this man by the door is from the relief committee. Why aren’t you out at the public works? You are of age, are you not? The best thing you can do for your family in these straitened times is to be out earning coin. It will see you right. Report there tomorrow—nine pence a day for a full man, but seven pence for you, isn’t that right, Mr. Wallace? Out past Cavan town near Felt. They are digging a road.
The other man peers in the door holding the handkerchief to his face, brings her to a suddening of anger.
She says, is there something wrong with the cabin, sir?
Big-man stares at her and then booms into laughter, turns to the man at the door. We’ll get you into a cabin yet, Mr. Wallace.
For two days she is smarting with Colly. On and on he prods, his voice a stick in the ribs. You are the most stubborn wee bitch I have ever encountered, a thick pig’s neck on you, the backside of a mule has nothing on—
Oh shut up or I’ll have you sent out of the cabin.
What’s the word Mam used to say, intractable—hee!—that’s
what—
She shuts out his voice, thinks to herself, is that what I am? Intractable? How Colly’s words twist with the same knife-tongue as her mother. Sarah always scolding at her—chiseling on and on, most of it pointless when all she was ever doing was being herself. This heavy yoke from her mother as if it were she who asked to be born. Mam’s badgering growing worse each year like some tree twisting towards the hedgerow it is meant to protect. Why can’t Colly see how unfair he is?
She will not speak another word to him, lies in the dark caressing her grief. Searches for the right word and finds it—unjustness, that’s what all this is—feels it sitting on her chest, a different pain from the dullness of hunger.
Colly says, but you’ll be able to buy meal with the money, you’ll be able to buy bread.
She thinks, why should I go out and pretend to be a man again? Don’t I have my freedom?
In the morning she stands upon the threshold of the door. Coldbite and the slow of night’s unsleeving into twilight, what is unknown finding sureness, everything to the true of itself. She does her toilet in the wood, can hear Colly behind a bush. Imagine, he says, what it must be like to be a spirit or the pooka ghosting about, how strange it must be for them, you think you are hidden doing your business and they are sitting there watching—
Of a sudden, she has made up her mind. How this dawn paints a promise of other worlds. Cloud shapes in the far-off like reflections of gold. She hopes while she is gone nobody will steal the cabin.
She binds down her breasts with old rags.
Colly says, hee! I knew you’d give in.
She sets off up the path watching the sky, thinks of her mother telling the old stories of Mag Mell. Wonders what it must be like to live in a kingdom full of song and laughter and great eating and no dying whatsoever. The sky unfolding now like some great river yawning blue and extravagant. There is a great change coming in the weather, you can feel it. It is a sky to trick the heart to hope again.
So there is a town after all, she thinks. Cavan town is what Dr. Charles called it. And just a few miles beyond the cabin.
Colly says, what were we at, you silly muc, staying so close to the wood when all this time we were short of baccy?
She asks some foul rag-boy for directions and the look he gives her up and down. Fuck off with your look, she tells him. The cabin path has led to a low road and then a high road and now this drowsy town, rags of rain-silver in the scars of the street and a reaching smell of bread. She watches a gentleman step down off his jarvey and offers to mind his horse but the man does not even look at her.
It might be spring but the wintering is here, all right, she thinks. There are people chinning their knees on the doorsteps and cadging at every corner. Two bony boy-beggars seem to follow her and she turns with a grin and waves her knife. What follows instead is the lingering bread smell. Such smell has the power of a ghost, she thinks. How it haunts the air and follows you about and even the commotion of a passing carriage does not disturb it. She sees her own specter in the bakery window, peers at the stacked loaves and how the bread rolls are arranged like defiant fists. Watches a servant girl step out of the shop, a festoon of hair past her shoulders, the smell of a loaf hidden under a check cloth in her basket, the girl stepping past without even a look. Colly grunts some pig noise and the girl quickens her walk. What it would be like to rob her, she thinks, to follow her down some laneway and hit her over the head.
Colly says, it’s a wonder this shop has not been broken into—I mean, I’m hardly here a minute and I’ve had the thought in my head three times—that smell of bread is an evil upon us, that bakey, crispy, buttery-licky smell has some power over you, don’t you think—to do this to ordinary people is criminal.
The hidden road is revealed to her first with sounds of knocking. She hears it disperse into the sky, a thud-piercing sound that rises and becomes brittle. It sounds like distant gunshot or somebody smashing rocks. Do you hear it, Colly says, it sounds like the work of a giant—hee!—you remember the one who done in the head of a bullock with his fist, what’s his name—
She cocks an ear and looks towards a stand of evergreens on her left. Cannot be sure where the banging comes from. No cabin-smoke to sign the sky with life. This lonely road rising into bogland and a kind of sadness when you stare at the length of the road. How southwards out of the town she has noticed that same deepening silence.
She looks to the sky now as if the hammering sound were issuing from it. Colly says, that’s definitely the work of a giant, sitting there behind them trees splitting skulls, or maybe it’s a hippogriff having his dinner, half horse and half griffin, except the griffin part is made up, for it is really a half eagle and half lion, that’s what teacher said, which means it is quarter lion and quarter eagle and half griffin and half horse at the same time which means it is half-half—
She knuckles her head and winces. Says, that thud-clatter is coming from behind them trees. She has hardly pointed when two men step along a bosky path snorting pipe smoke.
Would you look at that, Colly says, a pair of hippogriffs just as I said it.
She walks through the trees and meets a vision of men cutting some kind of road into the half-bog. Walks past men breaking rocks with lump hammers and meets a long line of men trenching a road. There must be a hundred people here, she thinks. Most of them ragged, some of them like twists of bogwood gathering the wet and mud in their hollows. She looks to see if there are any women, sees one leaning into a barrow with an infant bundled to her back.
Some of the men are dressed loosely in flannel or sackcloth. In their long looks she sees donkey faces, horse faces, dog faces, not many human faces at all, most standing in an expression of abandonment, their laughter or their sorrow or their worry or their anger gone missing and you won’t find it digging here. She can feel the air packed with stares, though when she looks no one is looking at her.She walks head-down towards a wooden hut, knows the two boss men from the heavy pure wool and cut of their waistcoats, a greyhound beside them yarding its tongue. She isn’t sure which man to talk to. One of them is holding a glass of water to the sky.
—this water’s brown, so it is, it tastes brown.
The man stops and turns to look at her. He says, what color does this look like to you?
She says, some kind of brown color, master.
The second man says, tis a trick of the light.
The first man says, you taste it, then. It tastes like— it tastes like brownness.
How can brownness have a taste?
It just does. Here, try it.
I’m not going to taste your piss water.
The second speaker slowly swivels his nourished gray head towards her and hangs his thumbs from his waistcoat. The first man puts the glass upon a card table. She can see a woman step out of a ditch carrying a pickax on her shoulder, her hair a swinging curtain.
She says, I was told to come here for the work.
The first man says, don’t ask me, I’m only the pay clerk. You need to ask the gaffer.
Where can I find the gaffer?
The second man speaks. I am the gaffer. Who are you?
Tim Coyle, master.
With a sigh he pulls a sheet from his jacket pocket and unfolds it.
You’re not on the list, he says.
I am so. They told me to come.
Who told you?
The committee man.
What committee man?
Mr. Wallace.
You’re too late to start the day.
I walked here since dark. I didn’t know how many mile it was.
This site starts at eight and not a minute past it and any man not here for roll call can go home.
She gathers her rage as the gaffer turns his back, can hear the man muttering something about filth and the pay clerk laughing and her arm is moving before she can will it still and she takes hold of the glass of ditch water and she drinks it down with one eye watching the men. She wipes her mouth and says, were you laughing at me, sir?
The men stare at her without expression.
She walks away from the site cursing herself.
Colly says, that fucking water tasted brown.
Such a long walk back to the cabin. Her head ringing all night with the sound of their laughter but in the dawn she returns. The gaffer putting her to work at a wheelbarrow. Hunching into the weight of rocks. Her fingers strips of ribbons, her shoulders like screaming birds. A gaunt-faced rock breaker says, I suppose they’ll let all types take the work now. Another rock breaker says, first the women and now children.
She finds a fresh tobacco pipe on the ground and quickly pockets it. Some old fellow pulls her by the arm and says, slow down there, youngster. Just count the hours and don’t worry about the work. That man over there is watching out for the gaffer. He’ll shout soon as he comes.
As the man talks, she eyes the others at work, sees their shovels half full, shoulders swinging like lazy clocks. A good many men just standing about.
That old fellow is right, she thinks. Half the men, when you really look at them, are too weak for the work. One man and the way he stands is the broken wing of a bird. She eyes the old fellow for clues of his life. He tamps his pipe with a finger and licks the top of it.
Colly says, ask him for a pinch, why don’t you, go on.
I will not.
Ask him, ask him, ask him, ask—
She stares into a long blink for a moment. Says, won’t you ever shut up? Opens her eyes to see the man looking at her, his face puzzled over his pipe. What’s that? he says.
She looks about. What’s what?
You just told me to shut up.
What I said was, won’t you ever light up? She smiles, produces the pipe from her pocket. Could you share a pinch, mister?
Later, he says, the name’s Darkey. And let me tell you, this bog road is nothing but folly. We’re only digging it so they can give us work. He tells her the road site is called the Harrow. Says nobody knows where it will end. They haven’t figured that bit out yet. And the gaffer here doesn’t know what he’s doing or where he comes from and he’s never called work on a road, that’s for sure, but he’s happy enough taking his money from the Crown. Some say this road will go over the mountains and cross the channel into England and head onwards I suppose towards China, where it will meet with the Great Wall and then it will keep on going to hell because that is what roads do and because men were made for digging them and nothing else. And while you’re at the doss, do enough to make yourself look busy but no more. Save up your energy, son, and give your pennies to the devil.
She thinks, this is easy enough work, rolling splinter-rock up and down in the barrow. She has learned to guard her strength, to dally with the barrow, stares back when anybody looks at her. The lazy hours thought out in portions of bread. She watches those who are not able for the work, how they are wintered out yet work beyond the last of their strength. She wonders why Darkey does not go up and tell them to slow down or not work at all. Keeps an eye on the few women who do the work same as the men. She watches the woman with the infant tied to her back and wants to talk with her but if you talk with her, she thinks, they’ll think you’re a woman. Then comes a moment when the woman walks past her and she hears herself saying, is the child much bother for you? The woman stares at her strangely and Colly laughs. Fucking eejit, he says, what kind of boy asks questions like that?
She hears the names of all the townlands these people are from. Some of them are a walk away as long as a day. Northwood. Drumryan. Stragelliff. Indigo. Shannow. Corrakane. A place called Kilnarvar if you can trip it off the tongue. She tells them she is from a place called Rush. A man says, which one? Each day Darkey refers to her as his little laughling, though she thinks he has not seen her laugh once. He pinches her cheek, gives her a pinch of his quarter plug. Points to the women workers. Says, them bitches should be home with their young ones not out here stealing a man’s work. They should be home foraging dinner. Which one would you ride first?
The drop-weight clink of coinage. The queen’s head in the palm of your hand. Now she can let the fire go out if she has to, for she has bought matches and hankers all day for the smell of the bread shop. That first full loaf she devours before she can get it home. Says to Colly, I need a drink of water, I’m after giving myself awful dry brains.
Colly says, what has no beginning and never ends, is there to stop hunger, and yet the more you do the hungrier you get?
Sleeping each night in the cabin like a dead person.
She looks up to see two men laughing at some fallen rock carrier. How one of them stands over him, his laugh all teeth. The air that smells of ancient earth smells suddenly of trouble, men turning to watch and others walking over. She watches the fallen man pick himself up and the laughing man says something to him and his hands threaten to become fists.
Colly says, I heard it—he called that man a citóg.
She cannot explain to herself what she feels when she sees the fallen
man come to standing. His face. Some passing shadow of knowledge or recognition, for she feels she knows him but cannot explain it. He is young, hardly a man at all, she thinks, and yet he wears the mustache of an older fellow that horseshoes his mouth, how it is the look of a youngster trying to look older than he is. His neckerchief is vivid red. Then a chill passes through her. He has turned fully into her vision and she sees his right arm and how it sits shriveled into some half arm as if caught at his birth, his hand having only two fingers graced in their ugliness to take the neck shape of a bird.
A man shouts, come on, Bart, don’t stand for it.
She looks at the huge rock on the ground, wonders how this Bart fellow got it up on his back. His strange self-possession as he stares into the face of the man who felled him. He dusts himself with his good hand, sleeves the sweat off his mustache. For a long moment nothing passes on his face. Then he says, I’m only turning a coin but you want to see me kilt. I never done nothing to you.
She watches the way the other man’s body seems to swell with the prospect of violence. He says, what are you going to do about it, you kitter-fisted cunt?
The air tightens all mouths to short breathing. Colly whispers, he is going to kill the cripple. She wonders why nobody shouts for the gaffer. It is then the cripple answers for himself. He is so fast she does not see that he holds a knife drawn from his right flank, a knife held in reverse so that it does not gather the sun but gathers the other man instead. He takes the man to the ground and the knife does quick work. Men begin laughing when he stands up. Someone says, good man, Bart. The other man slowly lifts himself like some hapless fool, his mouth agape and then he bends and picks up a piece of his ear off the ground. He pushes away through the crowd and a trio gathers around this cripple called Bart, hands clapping his back. And then the gaffer is among them, pulling on the brim of his hat, rubbing his hands together. Boysoboys, you might give me some notice next time so’s I can put some money down.
All day she watches with odd fascination the comings and goings of the knife fighter. The way he walks with each rock balanced in the sockets of his back. The dangling useless hand. Darkey leaning in with his tickling laugh, shakes his head in wonder. That fellow John Bart, he says. They put upon him a bad spell at birth.