Grace

by Paul Lynch

  The empty meal bag sits like a crumpled mouth. Colly won’t shut up either with his ideas—contraptions to be built, giant holes in the ground. He says, we should gather wild dogs and unleash them. She knuckles her eyes, wishes he would stop. McNutt says, what do the newspapers say of such matters? How is it the others get caught in the assizes?

  She takes cautious walks down the mountainside. Just to get away from the hut, McNutt’s big feet nearly as big as his mouth. In the lowlands it seems all eyes are wishing the autumn to come quick. Even the dogs sit watching the fields, thumping the earth impatiently with their tails. The waving green that brightens the day, glitters a million eyes in the rain, gathers the ripening moon at night. All thought reaching around what fattens beneath, what cannot be rushed or harvested just yet.

  There have been nights when they heard the sky echo with gunshot. Now she sees the gaters in the fields put there to scare the hungry like crows. How the crops whisper among themselves about those who dare crawl in the scrawn-light of the moon with hands eager to pull the unripe lumpers. She kicks her anger on a loose stone. Can picture the rich farmers gobbling at food with their ruddy red cheeks. Thinks, in times like this, you must be both eel and wolf.

  She watches McNutt lean into firelight, straighten a ruck in his breeches. When he leans back there is just the song of his voice. He says, one time, Bart, I was in Kilroghter. Went drinking with this fellow I knew by the name of Horsebox. He got into a fistfight with some fellow his own height and strength and came back later with a blackthorn stick and came up behind the man who was sitting at a bench and broke his head in like butter. The man never the same again. The next time I seen Horsebox I says to him, what in the hell did you do that for? And Horsebox answers only one thing and this is what he says. He says, that fucker rode my sister. Now, the thing is, Horsebox never had a sister.

  She cannot think, feels her mind closing in with all this chatter, Colly trying to get a word in and she shouts at him to shut up. McNutt quits sucking on his teeth and leans forward, holds his eyes on her. He says, what are you?

  She looks at him and sees the eyes not of McNutt but of someone dreamed in this dark hut with only the yellow of his fire-caught teeth, such teeth that have emptied their meal bag.

  She says, why can’t you be quiet? I’m trying to think.

  She lights her pipe and speaks. If you meet head-on a power that is greater than you, you will be devoured. But power is useless when met by what is formless—like rain, weaving itself in and out.

  There is a listening look on the face of Bart.

  McNutt leans forward, opening and closing his hands. He says, no one can ever understand what the fuck it is you are on about.

  It must begin in willow light like this, the everything-falling of dusk. She watches the sun throw last light on a hillock and squints at the far-off. How they have watched this high road through the blue hour of yesterday. This gloomy corner of road far from any settlement. The world shut out by sycamores great and tumored with rookeries. Now Bart is hunkered sentry by a hawthorn at the road’s turn. McNutt is in the trees. Nothing has passed by but an hour or so.

  Colly says, do you think, this time, McGob can keep shut?

  She thinks, and what about you? You’ve been rattling on since birth.

  Of a sudden, Bart signals with a whistle. Through a bush she watches two figures dally into view—foot passengers, Colly says—the build of two men rounding the corner and she can see their tatty suits, can hear the echoing crows in the trees, can feel the sky’s silence, and for a moment she feels she has seen all this before. The men blow pipe smoke but do not talk. The larger of the men holds a carry-case.

  She says, a draper and his assistant.

  Colly says, a tinsmith and a tyke, a sailor and his cabin boy.

  To know that you are the watcher and the watched know not.

  Her ears are tuned to the far-off for wheels and horses. These two men are not what they are waiting for. When the men have passed their pipe smoke still lingers.

  Colly says, oh, for the comfort of that—go on, light up, give me the blast of a smoke—

  He starts wheedling and cajoling, sings in a high-pitched voice that is the voice of a crone.

  The bee loves the flowers, the small birds the bowers,

  Fair meadows look gay when the sunlight they see,

  But ah, more sincerely, my heart prizes dearly the bloom of thy pipe,

  My sweet smoked tobaccy—

  A short, sharp whistling signal from Bart and everything is thrown alive. She squints, feels dizzy, sees a light blurred and solitary. Could be anything, she thinks. A stranger with a lantern on foot. A fairy light, even, though she has never seen such a thing. Sound and sight gathering in the near-dark into the single eye of some darkened animal—clawing at the earth towards us, she thinks, waiting to gobble us up. Then the far-off light blinks through trees and is gone, though the night continues to gather its sound, releasing it, rolling it forward until in her mind it becomes all things. Then she is movement, her arms weighted down, and there is McNutt standing center of the road with the torches placed and then he has one lit and then another, the road taking on the color of fire. And then McNutt turns and though his face is lit it is dark with mud and on his back sit the antlers roped and the weight of them, she does not understand how he is able to carry them, the light shaping him so that he looks like some animal from the past—one of them three-headed things, Colly whispers, one of them creatures that—

  Stop! she says. Settle your breath. She leans into the sound and then the light of a lamp becomes visible at the corner giving shape to a closed coach of some kind. The driver standing up and then sitting down in the single motion of alarm. He shouts at the horses brought to fright by the fire, the animals snouting upwards as if to see a path above the flames where they might alight for the sky and beyond it. And then the coach suddens to a stop and the jangle of harness music rings the air and the horses snort their fear or derision. McNutt says aloud, not a fucking bother. She feels dizzy, shaky, sick. Another moment, another moment, and they stand their ground watching the shaft horse shake its head as if letting loose all its thoughts, letting the light gather upon their pointed weapons.

  She climbs the footrest and grabs the handle and shouts but the handle does not budge. A muffled man’s voice says from inside, that door is broken, you’ll have to step around. She stands still a moment and thinks, they might just have locked it, climbs back down and goes around the back. Scarce light and still she can see the harnesses are worn, the horses pinched, the coach in want of paint like some disheartened old cockerel called to account without feathers. The door opens from the inside and she orders whoever it is to come out. She can see the coachman leaning dangerously to one side, a growling look aimed at Bart, who stands pointing the pistol at the coachman’s head.

  She thinks, we should have waited, let this one ride past.

  Blunderpuss! Colly shouts. Keep the gun up.

  She shouts, I said get out.

  She looks about for McNutt, who is supposed to be beside her. The sagging weight of her gun and she moves into wide stance, sees from the open door a man step wary onto the footrest, slowly, slowly stepping down onto the road, his hand reaching to help a woman step down, the man closing the door behind them. She notices the narrowness of the woman’s ankles. Colly shouts, where is McNutt? She takes a quick look over her shoulder. He is supposed to be here pointing his gun while she searches their belongings, and then she sees that McNutt has climbed upon the roof of the carriage, sees how he has become something demonic, winged of skeleton, ready to fly death upon them. Now she is judge over this couple and she sees the moment as if she were watching it through the eyes of another, her stick-of-a-self holding the rifle, the woman with half a small foot slid out of her slipper, the man rooted in military boots. He squints one eye as if he were seeing himself through the metal sight of her weapon, then he juts his jaw upwards and shouts at the coachman. I can�
��t believe eight pence was paid for this ride.

  She finds herself watching the woman, how her meekness pulls every part of her body tight together. Neither rich nor poor, these people. Neither nothing, Colly says, this is not what we were after, they’ll have nothing to give us. She hears herself shouting at them again to give over their belongings. The man does not blink but stares at her instead, stares at the fowling gun, then he takes a step towards her, says softly, look at you, you are not even holding it right, a pair of girl’s hands on you. A shadow slips from the woman’s shoulders. It is her blanket. Grace feels her heart drop through her hips. She wonders if he is an expert, can tell she has not fired a gun before. The man taking another step forward and she thinks, he must be over six feet tall. Then the man says very quietly, you’re only some stupid little bitch, aren’t you? She shakes her weapon up and down and shouts, stay where you are, I said. Hears Bart shouting at the coachman to keep still.

  The woman surprises with her voice. She says, we have a pound of tobacco and a bag of feathers that we kept to sell. It’s in the coach if you want it but we have nothing in the way of money or belongings. A great wolf howl comes from the sky and she looks up to see McNutt bellowing on the top of the coach. A strange sound escapes from the woman’s mouth. It is then it happens, the man cat-quick is upon Grace—Colly roaring out, shoot him! shoot him!—Bart roaring at McNutt to fire, her mind trying to shout against this man’s strength, how he has shaken the gun out of her grasp and what comes in the midst of all this is an awareness that she would like to disappear, for the night to close in, that this man is right about her, you are only some stupid little bitch—flash-smoke and then she is on the ground and it is dark and then it is half bright and her ears are ringing and she sees McNutt flying on skeletal wings out of the night sky.

  The moment has opened wider than the dark. There is the sound of a woman running up the road. There is the sound of a man drinking his own blood. She finds herself following the woman into the dark but does not know why she is following. The woman no longer a meager thing but something animal and hell-bent in its running, Colly shouting, let her go, let her go, but she wants to stop this woman, to say something to her, though she does not know what, to convey some thought half formed, that this is not what she wanted at all, that this has become what it was not. The thud and ring of gunshot behind her and of a sudden the woman falls to the ground, McNutt panting like some bone-winged dog as he pounds past her.

  McNutt says, I’m not doing it, you do it. Bart says, there’s no way I’m doing it. Grace, you do it. They stand eyeing the carriage and a horse snickers as if to say, look what you’ve done now. Inside the closed coach is the sound of a ghoul, a wailing that would wake the world’s dead. She cannot move, her heart has stopped, her flesh and blood bone-rigid. She watches as Bart steps onto the footrest and how the carriage leans towards his weight as if to whisper its secret, but no whispers are needed, she thinks, for you know what is in it. She remembers the dead man closing the same carriage door and stepping down when he was alive only a moment ago and now he is dead and you did it. Bart pausing, his hand before the door. She thinks, there is always a time before and a time afterwards and there must be some line that separates the two and this is that line.

  Bart opens the door and climbs into the carriage, emerges slowly carrying in his good arm an infant bundled, screaming, orphaned. And her stomach twists a tightening knot and she colors the ground with sick. McNutt wrestling the horns off his back and then he throws them into the ditch. Fuck, he shouts. Why didn’t she take the baby outside with her? We would have seen it then.

  She is bent and heaving again, can hear McNutt saying, they only killed themselves, that’s what it was, they were told what to do and didn’t do it.

  She turns upon McNutt. It was you who did it—you were told what to do but you had to climb up on the coach like some thick-as-fuck showing off. It was you that killed them.

  She turns and goes to Bart and takes the infant off him, shushes it to her face, climbs into the carriage and pulls the door closed.

  Hush, now, baby, hush.

  Bart shouts, what are you doing?

  She refuses to answer.

  The carriage enclosure smells of sweat and tobacco smoke. She holds the baby to her chest. Can hear Bart stepping towards the door. He stands a moment in silence. She thinks, he is thinking of something good to say but there is nothing he can say that can change any of this, the road can only go one way and not another.

  When Bart speaks his voice is softly smothered by wood. He says, I missed the coachman with the shot. He will come back with the constabulary, perhaps within an hour or two. The baby will be found and looked after. It will be got.

  She holds the infant tighter to her chest and its cries are the same cries as were Bran’s and Finbar’s, this crying that is becoming louder, that is filling up the coach, filling up her ears, filling the sky, a song asking to be heard by the dead and even the dead would not refuse an answer.

  Bart says, think upon this for a moment. How can you look after it? How can you give it what it wants and needs? Leave the baby here and it will be found. I promise you. It will be safe and better off for it.

  Colly whispering, riddle me this, you silly bitch, what is both dead and alive at the same time?

  She turns her back from the door when it opens, steps down off the coach with empty arms and closes the door without looking.

  Bart’s voice is very quiet.

  Come. If they find you here they will hang you.

  What is summer but the nagging of flies, midges in their swirl-clouds, horseflies and their sneaky bites, McNutt’s wagging mouth. Three weeks of July she counts hushed in this hut. Their great gale broken. Their food run out. They are watching the hills and tracks. They are watching each other. They have waited for the hounds to come—the constabulary, the troopers on horseback with their huntsman’s grins, the horses straining to breaking, their eyes popping out. McNutt has said, they’re hardly going to be creeping up. You’ll hear the sound of the hunt long before it comes. And she wondered why he laughed at this. What she sees now when McNutt laughs is the face of death, McNutt winging down, all eyes and teeth. Bart teaching her how to listen to the night. There’s no point jumping at the sound of every fox pawing about. You must lie still for a while and listen. Map all the different sounds with your mind. Then when you hear a new sound you can relate it to all the other sounds. That way you can rest up. You’ll know trouble when you hear it. An old soldier taught me that.

  She lies very still listening to the night.

  That is a bird upon a bush.

  That is an animal rustling about.

  That is a baby crying.

  There are times when even Colly knows to mind his own business. She leaves him in the hut with the others, McNutt snoring with his boots spread out, Bart in sleep curled like a sickle. She follows the rain-soft shepherd’s path until she meets the rushing stream. It is here under the almost-sun that she watches the water run with this blood come upon her, washes the rag clean. She watches the water wash the stones, the water wash the mind, the water wash away time until the world is clean and light. It is then she turns and startles at the sight of another, some woman upstream bent in a cloak, tasting the water with her hand. The woman comes away from the stream with her face hidden under a hood. Too late to hide in a bush, she thinks. Too late to run down the track. She stares at the water as if by staring at it the woman will not see her. When she turns around again the hooded woman is beside her.

  The woman says, this water is so lovely. I had forgotten what it was like to taste water.

  She hears her own voice awkward in her mouth. How can you forget what it is like to taste water?

  One eventually forgets everything, isn’t that so?

  There is a note in the woman’s voice that disturbs her. She turns to look. Sunlight upon the woman’s white hand rising to lower the hood and then Grace’s mouth goes dry. She is talking
to the dead woman from the coach.

  The dead woman says, what is wrong with you? You would think you had seen a ghost.

  Are you trying to be funny or what?

  I don’t know what you are talking about.

  The dead woman looks at the rag. She says, I see I have disturbed you in a private matter. It is the woman’s time you are having.

  I cannot get the bleeding to stop.

  There is no need to be upset or afraid of it. Every woman has it.

  She finds herself studying the woman’s unslippered feet, the grass curling with affection around her porcelain toes. They are a real woman’s feet, not like her own pig’s trotters, and such lovely ankles for a dead woman.

  She says, who are you?

  My name is Mary Bresher, but you can call me Hilly.

  What are you doing here? It is not the Samhain just yet. You cannot roam about just as you please.

  What a strange thing to say to someone. I can come and go as I like. I wanted a taste of water. Why shouldn’t I have some?

  Grace is silent for a while. Mary Bresher sighs and pulls up her hood. She says, I must be off now.

  She turns to go and stops. Says, they took my baby from me while I slept. Have you seen it?

  Her body moves involuntary along the shepherd path, kicks at loosened scree, her mind meeting images unbidden of woman and man and child and blood mingled into a family of death and this is what happens, she thinks, you get what you ask for. It is one thing for the living to track you down to your hillside hideout but the dead always know where you live.