by Paul Lynch
Faller began to lean forward, hunched his shoulders.
The man let the words hang in the air and silence walled between them and then the man spoke. Yer a pretty strange fella to be in the kind of business that yer in. But you know I spend a lot of time on my own thinking betwixt me and the saddle and I ain’t come up with much but I did come up with this—the difference between man and beast is we’re able to imagine the future and they’re not. But what makes us no better than em is we cain’t predict it. That’s there where the problem lies. And just in case yer wondering, you can run for your gun, but this flintlock here fires in triplicate.
Faller looked up at the man, fixed his eyes on him and smiled. Yes indeed.
He put his hands on the side of the tub and stood slowly his immense frame upon it, slabs of water sluicing off the white flanks of his flesh and he stood there smiling and naked, the orbs of his eyes huge upon the man, began to climb slowly out of the tub, the gunman taking a step back, I warned you now, not another step further, Faller continuing with his eyes fixed upon the man, stepping out of the bath like something colossal that moved outside the confines of measured time, a primeval heaving, wetly, slowly, and then he was upon his gun.
SHE HEARD THE SHOTS—one-two—and she waited and heard three and she put down her broom and traveled light-footed to the door, peered through a small crack into the gloom. She saw the man out back and watched his movement, the way he dragged backbent the body of a man that looked too heavy, his hands yanked into armpits that socketed loosened limbs, a mass being heaved against the idle intentions of dead weight. The friction of dragging feet and the man came to a stop at the chicken wire fence. The man dropped the body to the ground and he went to a fence post and kicked it loose and he lifted it out of the ground. He disinterred two more posts until the earth was hollowed like a mouth untoothed and she saw the man bend down again and seize the body under the arms. He dragged it further and then he stopped and he began to roll the corpse, resplendent in its selenic and soaking nakedness, towards the torpid pigs.
MIDNIGHT WAS LONG PAST when the horseman ghosted into the camp. The animal noiseless as if it knew the needs of its rider who dismounted in the dark by a spidery tree. He slipped like shadow about the place till he found them in two pairs sleeping, saw the indigo whites of their habits, and he nursed them awake and told them with a growl to shush. Your work here is done, he said, and he made them get up and made his intentions clear with the rib-prodding barreled steel of his gun.
THE MEN AWOKE in the gloom of dawn, each man glad he was still physical. They sat blurred at the firepit and they were low on supplies and the whiskey was near all gone and they looked at what was left and some of them pitched into it. The rest scratched about or huddled in groups and looked expectant towards the mouth of the valley for sign of Duffy though each one knew in the reaches of his being the contractor would not come back. No one wanted to say it but they as good as did when it was discovered the nuns had quit too. They took the news like men inured to surprise and sat back down with what they were doing, which was not much at all.
They stood idle or sat about gambling but their hearts were not in it, for each man secretly was wondering if he too would get sick and then one of them stood and nodded towards the mouth of the valley. There’s a man coming on a horse, he said. They turned and watched the rider approach, a cloud of dust hoofed behind the animal. The horseman wore a neckerchief over his face and his hat over his eyes and they saw the horse was dragging something. The rider neared the swale where the shanty sat and he pulled up short at the perimeter. They watched him unhitch a rope and throw it to the ground and he turned and rode away. The men stood up and walked over to where he had stopped and they saw he had left a body. It lay face down in the dirt noosed about the neck and Chalky turned it over with his toe. The man’s complexion was scratched raw and teeth were broken and gums were bleeding and they saw it was the body of Maurice. Beneath the blood his lips were gray and his eyelids brown and his extremities dark with his own fecal matter. The men stood stunned and the blacksmith wandered slowly over and he looked at the body. He sighed, rubbing his moustache with the back of his hand, and walked away and he returned nursing an old mule and cart. He loaded the body upon it and Coyle watched him and walked over. What in the hell? he said.
Again the blacksmith sighed. There’s people about who’d like you lot to keep to your own, he said. That’s just the way it is. And he turned and led the mule away.
COYLE WENT TO THE SICK tent and tended to The Cutter, noticed how the man had weakened. His body strung out and his eyes far-flung like the eyes of a man watching from someplace remote, his breath a mere supplement to his being. He looked at the other sick men shrunken and dry like wizened wood sea-shored and then The Cutter turned to him and whispered. Coyle leaned in to hear.
Talk to me, The Cutter said.
Tell ye what?
Anything.
Coyle looked at him puzzled and then he spoke.
I remember something of a dream from the night. Been thinking about it all day. It was so real it was like I was there you know? Like I took a piece of it with me.
The Cutter looked at him. Where were you? he said.
Coyle smiled. It was a morning bursting bright so it was and I was in the forest, the axe in my hand and the wood all coined thickly about me. And in the dream I knew I had come home.
The Cutter whispered again, his voice near inaudible. My pocket.
Coyle leaned over him and reached a hand into the man’s pocket and took a hold of something his fingers recognized immediately for what it was by touch alone and he took it out. The ribbon.
The Cutter whispered. On the road. Never got time.
Coyle just staring at it and then his fist closed around it.
Go on, The Cutter said. Go home.
Coyle opened his fist and folded the ribbon and put it in his pocket and he took a hold of The Cutter’s hand and he squeezed it tightly. Ye bollox ye.
HE STRODE THROUGH the dig, past the men sitting slumped and he gave them nothing of a farewell, told them nothing of his intentions, that he was going to escape the figure of death on his trail, that he was going to get home, that he had a wife and daughter to behold and he would do so, but as he walked up the red-rubbled hill his thoughts began to weigh upon him and as he neared the top he had to sit on a jut of rock to think.
He thought of his wife broken on the bed and the early morning light of the cottage and the smallness of his child. No bigger almost than his hand, mucus filmed about her body and the eyes of her not yet opened. A beauty. The midwife spoke that he wasn’t to be allowed in but he took no heed and watched her take a knife to the cord on the child’s belly, cut it to give the child life independent, joy like light bursting to escape his body. He thought too of his father and when he was a child and the calm encouragement from the man to burrow an arm inside the animal, the grasp of shank and then a yank till life tunneled outwards towards him, life viscid and blue-gasping and his father breathing life into it with his own mouth and he stood there watching, his pride swelling.
He saw below him the valley torn raw while men sat like stones in loose circles and the thought then came upon him. I canny leave a dying man. Canny do it. And he looked at the sky as if he could learn something from it but what he saw had nothing to say and he took the ribbon out of his pocket and he looked at it, and he saw the face of his wee girl and he made a promise to himself, brought the ribbon to his lips, and he put it then in his pocket, stood up and began to walk back down.
YOUS BOYS, HE SAID. There’s help needed here for these men. They can’t be left on their own. We got to get them out.
He watched his voice wash over them, the men wearing a look that spoke silent of their indifference and he turned and he picked up two pails. He went to the culvert spanning the stream beneath the fill and doused both till brimming. Each sick man who could drink he gave a sup of water to and with a cloth he dampened their heads.
When he was done he walked to a barrow and he tipped the earth out of it and wheeled it back to the tent.
The sky so cloudless it seemed the lids of the earth were peeled for the sun to hammer the air. The men watched him struggle, the weight of The Cutter unbalancing him on his heels, and he dragged the invalid by the underarms. He got him to the barrow and he pitched him into it and began wheeling and wobbling towards them. He came abreast of them and stopped.
Don’t yous realize we’re done for if we stay here?
The men responded with blank dark faces, their mouths dumb and their eyes fixed awkward to someplace else.
There’s four more sick yesterday and that brings the number to near half the group, forgetting the eight now that passed. Load these boys up and we’ll go back to Duffy’s house and help get these boys fixed and get paid for ourselves because we’re not going to get our worth sitting here. You’re no good to nobody like this.
The men looked at Coyle and at The Cutter draped near-dead in the barrow.
One man stood and spoke. It was Thompson. The man’s right. But we should leave them ones here and go ourselves. We’ll only get a dose of it.
You can leave but yous will be no better than the others that did, Coyle said.
I ain’t said I was any better than anyone.
Chalky stood up stiff and leaned his gray old eyes on Thompson’s tight-lipped face and then turned and pointed down the site.
We can carry them in those.
He began walking with his arms sticking out like some kind of scarecrow and Coyle turned and went after him. Some of the men stood and others reluctantly followed. The men who stayed as they were watched sullen, some of them with their arms folded while others pretended not to be looking. They untied a dozing mule and marshaled a worn-out dappled horse and hitched them to a pair of carts and they ignored the wondering stare of the blacksmith. Coyle about-turned the mule and led it to the sick tent.
The men went inside and began to carry out the sick men. Their faces contorting out of fear and disgust but they lifted them up onto the trucks anyway and they shut their ears to the sound of the groaning. They were carrying one man when somebody said to put him down and they did so and leaned over him.
The man who spoke bent down and he rested the back of his hand upon the fellow’s mouth, lips like dry paper.
This one here’s dead boys.
They stood and looked at the body. His lips a bluey brown and they were drawn back over his gums leaving him in death with a crooked smile.
Somebody go an close his eyes.
The man on his haunches leaned forward and smothered them shut.
We canny go nowhere till we bury him.
For sure.
Some of the men left the sick men in the carts and they carried the dead man dangling four-square till they reached the fill. It leaned up from them some ten feet and the earth was scarred where the blacksmith had dug graves. He loped over to them sad-faced with a shovel in his hand and began to pitch in. When the hole was dug he leaned back on his tool and began to rub his horseshoe moustache.
No more wood. Just put him straight in.
The body laughed at them with its rictus grin and they spaded the earth on top of it, the clay clumping about the corpse and crumbs falling into the dead man’s mouth. Dust rose hotly from the pit and it glittered as it stirred skywards and the men covered their eyes against it. When they were done the blacksmith sleeved sweat from his brow and he nodded down to the shanty.
How many of ye are standing? he said.
Less than half, said Coyle.
Yez are gathering about to leave then?
Most of us.
You be careful now with that. And then he looked over his shoulder. I got the dinner waitin on me.
UP TOWARDS THE NECK of the ravine they traveled like a procession of ragged penitents stumbling under the weight of their sins. Dust danced and spilled off the shaking carts that became to them an ensemble of limbs while a man blood-wild with whiskey danced knees high and demented. The land leaned up towards the sun while the heat came down upon them and smothered the air on their breath.
The carts complained to the dull music of the animals’ hitching and the men kept their silence till one looked upwards the valley where out of the gleam of sun he saw someone move. There’s men awaiting up there, he said. Before them loomed the shapes of others, men on strong horses with guns lap leaning and the minds of the workers puzzled over what kind of trouble this was. They continued up the slope till they came near the top and a horse was stepped forward, the rider gray-haired with pitted cheeks, and he put his hand flat into the air and hollered at them.
You boys ain’t going nowheres.
Hesitance in their heels but the procession nudged on till the man called out to them again. You hear me you sons of bitches? You ain’t moving another step.
The men at the front brought the animals to a halt and they studied the assembly before them. The countenance of clean men with neckties about their faces and Coyle saw that one of them was the farmer from before.
Not another step I tell you, the leader said. Take yer sickness back down with you where you belong and not a damn sight near the good folk from round here families and all. You lot are staying put in the valley and if you think you aren’t hell will come paying. You hear me? I tell you. A pack of diseased dogs.
Two riders beside him edged forward. One of them hawked phlegm and lowered his neck scarf and spat down towards them. The animals strained on the hill to contain the weight of their load and some of the men figured the man for bluffing. They looked at each other for answers till one man started forward, the others unsure but for the man leading the mule who watched and began to follow. The two horsemen brought their guns into the air and one of them fired a shot over the workers’ heads and the animals startled at the sound. The men ducked low but for the walker who eyed the men straight and he kept walking till a horseman in plaid on top of a chestnut gelding raised his gun from his lap and fired. He had taken aim at the man’s head and the shot took the man’s ear clean off. A single drop of blood blotched the man’s shirt and he stared at it incredulous. He put his hand to his ear and pulled it back sodden and puce and he fell to the ground with shock and in the space after the shot as it ringed the air the pack animals took to revolting. Coyle pulled tight the reins of the horse, whispered to it, nursed it steady, but the mule nearby startled so badly it turned as if to leave, the cartload locked deadly to its body, and it tipped itself over and the cart with its cargo of men. The man who was shot climbed crimson from the ground, a ragged slab for where his ear once was, and he crabbed down the valley, others around him scuttling backbent while those that were left surrendered their hands to the air.
The gunmen above said nothing, just watched as they allowed the men to recover the sprawl of bodies from under the wreckage of the neckbroken mule, each man lifted up and put on the remaining cart though some of them saw they were dead.
THEY TOOK BODIES of those that were living and those that were dead and they laid them on the ground, who was alive now it was difficult to tell. Afterwards they did not know what to do but sit so they sat together and watched the sky, the great blue permanence winged high with white, and they looked upon the silent banks of the valley wondering upon the nature of their horror. They wanted nothing to do with the others who had chosen to stay and who sat mute nearby, stunned at the earlier spectacle and too ashamed to talk. When they grew hungry some of the men stood and went to the fire, the outcasts sitting about, and no sooner were they there than they began throwing their fists.
The man with the ribboned ear sat on his own supping whiskey with sackcloth folded to his head and they watched him get up and worry about and sit back down again and they were not sure if he was laughing or crying for the air was taut with madness.
Coyle went looking for The Cutter and he found him laid out between two others and he saw that he was dead. He bent down to him and felt the skin of his c
heek cooling despite the heat of the ground and he closed the man’s eyelids.
He heaved the body up till it was bent over his shoulder and he carried it through the valley. He placed it down by a poplar tree and he walked towards the work sheds. He found a sledgehammer and swung it at a building till the wood blistered then burst and when it was taken apart he took a hammer and punched the wood clean of its nails. He cut and hammered the timber into the shape of a box and when it was built he stood it and hugged his arms around it. He walked it towards the valley fill and placed it down on the rubbled land and he went back and lifted the body and heaved it over his shoulder.
Over the west wall of the valley the day was fading and he took a shovel and began to dig. The land heedless, dense with loam and stone, teeth of rock snarling out of the dust, and he dug a hollow three foot deep. He put the body of The Cutter in the box and worked it down into the hole and then he stood above it. The earth corrupt before him and filled with violence.
IT WAS STRAIGHT AFTER talkin to Wee Paddy Doherty that I went looking for Bridie, went to her family home in Ballyliffen, and they told me she’d gone. She’d left to get work in Tyrone they said and I asked about and got a lift to Strabane from a kindly man who was going all the way to Monaghan from Derry. I had her address and found where she was workin—a big farmer’s house about ten miles out past the town.
A white two-storey building so it was and it had a dog guarding it that nearly chewed the leg off me but I kept on walkin. Nearly chewed the leg off me so it did. I wasna sure what she looked like but when I saw her I remembered her face from about. A wee quiet woman so she was with shining blue eyes and a tiny chin like she was hunching into herself and she’d tell you everything in a whisper. When I told her where I’d come from she said she didn’t want to talk about it at all and she gave a sad smile and closed the door in my face.