by Paul Lynch
Bart gets up wordless, sighs like a young man who wakes to find himself in the body of some old man weary to the task of living his last days, goes to the door and takes a long look out. He returns and sits his strange squat, continues to observe her. She meets the full of his look and sees it is nothing but coldness. She thinks, it is the look on a stone loach you’d pull from a river, the look on the face of a cat toying with a mouse. This fellow so satisfied with himself. He is so— she cannot think of it. Eyes him back with as much ill will as she can muster. She thinks, what—he must be no more than eighteen years old and already so Mr. Conceited Breeches in his manner, going about with his full man’s mustache, he must have fallen under the farrier, had that horseshoe shod to his face. She studies his stubbled cheeks and the red neckerchief and some sort of beaded string on his wrist. Those eyes again. They are eyes that permit no watcher to see into them but see through you instead.
Colly whispers, I’ll bet he doesn’t know a single fact, all he knows is that knife and there’s no way he can do a headstand against the wall with that one arm, go on and ask him.
She eyes for the peep of his scabbard. He eyes her bundle.
She says, I was better off by myself.
He says, your attitude astonishes me. Have you a hole in your head?
What is it you have got that I haven’t?
His face tightens. What do you mean by that?
She does not know herself.
He says, I’ve got my wits about me, which is more than I can say for you, acting the blithe fool around dangerous people and pulling me into your trouble.
She says, you can take your wits away off with you. I was doing just fine. She nods to his knife but quickly wishes she hadn’t, for it looks like she has nodded to his bad arm. Quickly she says, that knife of yours is nothing but trouble.
All movement holds in his face and then his eyes drill past her eyes, past bone into the place that holds her weakness and guilt.
He says, well so, let us see what you’ve got.
She grabs hold of her belongings.
Colly says, don’t show him nothin.
She says, why would I show you any—
He moves so fast she cannot respond, the bundle grabbed off her and then he opens it onto the floor. A blanket holding rags and a pipe. A ball of string rolls loose and the useless shard of looking glass as it falls brings light to itself. The knife Sarah gave her. Bart picks up the blade and laughs and she shivers as he runs it harmless across the palm of his bad hand.
He snorts, ties everything back together and throws it at her.
Well, he says. That’s that settled, then.
What’s what settled?
That. You have nothing, not even a knife.
This pounding walk southwards all day and she is growing to hate the back of him, dawdles to make him wait, and how when he waits his face darkens. They argue over which direction to walk. They argue when she wants to stop by a well—he would argue over the time of day, she thinks, argue the color of the sun, the wetness of rain, the color of a dog’s look.
Colly says, why are you always letting him win, him with his stupid twig arm, half man, half tree, he’s only an auld willow, which if you ask me is the stupidest of trees—what is the use of it, it’s not even a tree but a shrub, who was it put him in charge of our journey?
She walks with her arms folded better to bosom her anger. Says over and over, he’s not in charge, never mind him, he’s only just a so-and-so.
Everywhere she sees the betiming of summer—a con man’s trick, she thinks, for it seems as if the world can only know glory though perhaps that is the case, perhaps everything can be fixed. And yet stamping through one frail village after another she sees how each is held in the same quiet, a calm without chatter or the clamor of animals, for the fowl and pigs are long gone and whatever dogs you might see are rawboned and silent. They do not bark, Bart says, because they are losing their voices. He speaks as if he has heard the thought in her head and she wants to say, who asked you? They pass one dog that throws them a hoarse look that says, not so long ago I would have been up and at you with my bark, the loudest in this village of all the dogs, but now I am too tired, I do not even chase cats, not that there are any, it is such a long while since I have eaten, please throw me a morsel of food if you have some.
The big houses along the road do not trouble a look but the mud huts and stone houses are all eyes that watch and wonder at these passing strangers. She thinks, they are eyes that empty your pockets and pinch the flesh on your hips.
They walk through a village built entirely on a hill and there is a farrier at work who turns to look at them and says something and spits at the road. She does not know why Bart grows tense, his good hand hovering near his knife. She comes alongside him and whispers, what did he say to you? He does not answer and she looks over her shoulder but the road is clear and when she asks him again, without looking he says, it’s nothing, we have a follower. She turns and sees the hoarse-talking dog is following along, poking the air with its bones.
She begins to see it is the poorest who act the strangest towards them. If she were alone on these roads she would be bothered by beggars at every corner, joint eaters, Colly calls them, people who would break your shoulder leaning over you to tear at your food. Always the same type of fellow with the hand held out. One or two that look like Auld Benny, the man whose lungs rattled and collapsed. And yet for now, even the beggars leave them alone. What she sees are people muttering at Bart as they walk past. Some begin to incant aloud and bless themselves. One fellow steps into the rough and turns as if looking for something lost from his pocket. She knows they look at Bart’s arm as a curse. She thinks, he must have been getting this all his life. Tries to imagine a childhood full of such and what that must be like. She has known the kind of these others who treat Bart with such contempt. She thinks, well worshippers, Mam would call them, the sort who worship made-up saints. They are people who think if you are born with a missing instrument, you will bring evil upon them. She knows what they think, all right. That if they meet Bart first thing in the morning they will think themselves unlucky the rest of the day. That if he looks at anything with fixity they will see doom in the glance. And heaven help them if he so much as looks at a child. That child’s arm will wither, or worse, his head grow afflicted and he will die of it.
John Bart walking through all this like a horse perfectly blinkered.
Or a horse too proud to look.
She builds up the courage to ask him. So anyway, she says, what happened to that arm of yours?
He is silent much too long and she thinks he is offended, thinks, what did you go and ask him that for, you don’t need to know. People will see the way we are walking together and think we are courting. I will say I am his sister.
Then Bart says, my mother told me I shared the womb with a wolf. The wolf grew starved and chewed at my arm. Then I was born and the wolf ran out and now it roams the countryside and I’ve been chasing it all over Ireland ever since. That’s why I became a wanderer. Of a sudden, he laughs and she has not heard his laugh before, how it is open to the world and infectious. Can you believe I believed that muck for years? he says. How is anyone supposed to know what happened to it? Didn’t it happen before I was born?
Of a sudden he stops and props a boot upon a fence, ties his bootlaces with thumb and forefinger.
Colly says, how in the fuck—that is some trick, do you think he can teach it?
She thinks, whatever you can say about him, people are leaving us in peace on the road. If people see him as a curse then he must be some sort of protection.
Her foot is plagued by an itch but Bart will not stop. Without word she stops and twigs at the itch, hears Bart cursing. The road passes through a village and she thinks, there is no wintering here. Good houses painted a bold color. One or two yards echoing with pigs. Dogs in full throat—three of them barking not at these strangers but at ghosts, wind stirrings, nothi
ng in particular. Then Bart stops and signals for her to wait beside a tethered donkey staring into patience.
Colly says, you again, wonkey!
She turns towards Bart, says, don’t be telling me what to do, what are we stopping here for?
But Bart has already stepped through a latch door and shut it behind him. She gapes at the shut door, anger tightening her teeth. She sees it is a shop.
Colly says, that ballock-handed bastard hasn’t got a penny on him.
She bends to wiggle a finger down her boot.
She is being eyed by two goosey women by a doorway who fold their arms as they watch her. Pair of beef eaters, Colly says. What is expressed in their look makes her aware of her body and she tries to stand in a different shape, straightens up as if Sarah were chiseling, stop slouching like that, straighten your back, people will think we’re spalpeens.
Rags of children idle in silence by a bridge at the village limit. She shows them the tongue of each empty pocket. So the wintering is here, she thinks. It is just not allowed to enter the village.
Colly says, tell me, muc, let’s say I have a rooster and you have a donkey and your donkey eats my rooster, what is it you would have?
What?
You’d have one foot of cock up your ass. Hee!
The donkey stands impassive. She reaches to tickle its ear fur.
Colly says, why is it donkeys don’t laugh, or animals, for that matter—I knew a fella who says his dog laughed all the time like a hyena but I was not convinced of it, I’ll bet if you were to cut that animal open you would find something missing, some kind of humor box in the brain, my particular theory of laughter is that—
She says, how do you know animals don’t laugh? He could be laughing at you on the inside, you would never know. You are not attuned to their thinking.
I wouldn’t want to be tuned to their thinking, or his thinking either, that one-horse-handed bastard John Bart, I tell you, I don’t like him one bit, he thinks he’s smarter than everyone else, he doesn’t listen, you’d find more humor in a stone, he snores way too much, he speaks with a stupid west-of-Ireland accent, and he lacks a pair of fighter’s fists, he—
She puts her fingers in her ears but still she can hear him.
—and have you seen the size of that thumbnail on his sick hand, it’s like something off an animal.
Would you ever give my head a rest.
Do you think he will teach me the knife?
The shop door swings open and Bart emerges all quick-step. He drops into her arms a pan and a pound bag of oats and pulls her by the sleeve.
Quick, he says, put them in your bundle.
She says, quit pulling at me.
Then she says, how did you get all this?
He says, all I had to do was touch it.
A sudden ill-feeling as she marches past the children. She decides not to look because if you look at them you will have to do something for them, share some of what you have.
Colly says, look!
She turns and sees some oldster coming at a hobbling half run while carrying some sort of firearm.
She prods Bart’s back. Do you think that man there is after us?
There is peace to be had bellied by firelight. She is heavy with eating, licks porridge from her teeth watching the fire tongue at the night. How two worlds touch where she lies, the cold upon the breeze and the heat of the fire and wouldn’t it be nice to be warm all the time though you can’t have one without the other. Bart is whittling a stick and then he laughs. That bog road, he says. Nine pennies a day—what could a man do with that? Put a few nails to your boots, perhaps. Like why would you be bothered?
Why did you do it so?
I fell into it by accident—took a walk up to that part of the country just to see it. I didn’t intend staying long.
Where did you say you’re from, then?
She stares at him when he does not answer and thinks, so what anyhow. Better the dark and she closes her eyes and slides into a near sleep that conjures strange and looming faces but she comes alert again when John Bart takes a sudden leap out of his sit.
Right, he says. He motions with his hand. Up with you.
She turns her head, moves sullen onto her elbow.
He is standing over her with the knife, his body silhouetted to the fire so that he is made different now, she thinks, some twist-shape of John Bart, his face near masked and his eyes pooled into withholding so that he has become John Bart black-souled, twinned out of dark into madness or worse. She studies the way he holds the knife, climbs up slowly, wary, takes one step back from him. He holds out the knife. Take it, he says. Her reach is slow but then she grabs it and pulls it quick to herself. He seems to be smiling, it is hard to tell.
Look at it, he says. See? Come closer to the light. It must be a knife like this one—fixed, with a double edge. Do you see the difference? That one you have is no use but for peeling things. We’ll have to get you one in the next town.
He takes the knife back off her, blades it at the dark. Says, you must have the knife always within reach. See here where I put it. You never know you’ll need it until the moment you do. You’ll want to lead with the hand not carrying the knife, it gives you range and confuses them, though that technique won’t work for me.
She wants to slide back into that easy near sleep but again he presses the knife into her hand.
He says, another thing—you must be able to hold the knife with a sweaty or a cold hand. He takes her by the wrist. Have a go.
She says, don’t be a nuisance, I’m no good at it.
He says, it’s easy to learn.
He shows her first how to stand, how to protect herself, how to read the eye of another, to watch the stance of an opponent. He shows her how to step sidewards and parry an attack. She says, I cannot imagine doing any of this with a real person.
See, he says. You can direct the other knife back towards its owner.
He shows her how to thrust when the person has been brought open.
She says, I don’t want to do that to anyone, not never.
He says, you may not have a choice in it.
Colly says, cut him in the ball sack, take his head for a trophy!
She stands eyeing Bart’s dark and uncertain shape.
Colly says, if he were any good he’d be able to throw that knife right into the heart of the other person.
She says, how can you fight well with one hand?
She wishes she had not said it.
Bart starts to laugh and his good strong teeth are showing and she thinks, how can a man like this have teeth like that when everybody else’s teeth are rotting?
He says, with a knife, everyone is equal.
Colly says, knives are so old-fashioned. I want a firearm.
Bart says, if another person comes at you with a knife you will always get cut. But you can use this knowledge as strength.
He rolls up a cuff with his teeth and shows her his wrist. In the flicker-light she sees his wrist run with scars. She gasps, brings a hand to his skin, and at the touch withdraws it. Bart does not seem to notice, continues talking, but she does not listen, watches him instead. Wonders at what kind of life he has led, how he has been brought to here, this moment with her, moving now pure as spirit in front of the fire, like a dancer, shadow and knife.
They hear it first before it comes upon them. The earth drummed by hooves. A great bellow disembodied of its driver. Then they see it coming over the hill, a closed coach of some kind drawn by a team of galloping horses. She steps into the ditch and watches it come, counts six horses, turns and sees Bart standing on the road. He spits and says, typical. She studies the advancing coach and studies Bart and looks at the coach again, how each horse is becoming visible, their ankles socked whitely and the coachman in black with his mouth at full roar and his hand cutting Xs with the lash. Then she sees there is a second man in the off-seat leaning out as if to see better the who of this fellow standing on the road.
> She shouts, get out of the way!
Bart does not move. He shouts, they think they own the place. Expect us to climb the hedgerow.
She knows the horses will not be brought to a stop, shouts again at Bart but he stands defiant. How this hoof-thunder and their bawling beast-mouths like despair drum her heart. She can see now the horses’ musculature ripple in the chill sun like light flecks on rolling river water, begins to imagine worse than what is—sees in her mind that what is advancing is hell opened onto the world, the driver some devil and his demon in the off-seat, pounding towards them as if from a breach in the spirit realm—that what is advancing upon John Bart is the full incarnation of evil. The devil and his henchman shouting and Bart not budging an inch and she wants to close her eyes to this thing that will happen, the killing of Bart, but in the very instant the horses are upon him, Bart steps lightly off the road, and in that same moment the man in the off-seat hangs off the carriage and kicks Bart in the head.
Torn air pulls after the carriage and dust coils the road.
She sees Bart lying dead in the thicket.
She sees Bart slowly moving.
Then he is sitting up like a man after sleep. She runs to him shouting, are you dead? John Bart squints at her with one eye open, holds his hand to his head.
What is wrong with you? she says. Why didn’t you get off the road? Why are you so stupid?
He stares at her with eyes that sudden her to think of some black pebble you might pull from a river glazed in its slip-coat of water, its mystery of origin held within, and then his eyes leap at her with anger.