by Paul Lynch
He turned and began to walk towards the byre and the old man stood a moment quaking. When he spoke his voice had found a higher register of anger.
Them houses belong to our tradition, Barnabas. Yer making a mockery of the Lord. They were not yer stones to take. They belong to our people, people round here who were starved by the famine. The bounties of this land are not here to be used indiscriminately by local strangers like you.
As he spoke he was wagging his finger and then he stopped himself, seemed to find control and his voice dropped down. I know ye are a reasonable man, Barnabas. I know ye are doing what ye think is right by your family. Look. I hear you’ve no longer a cart of yer own. I’ll help ye take the stones back so I will.
Barnabas’s eyes began to widen and he curled his mouth and walked back from the byre to the old man, stood right up to him. Nobody owns them rocks, Goat, but the dead and the dead have forfeited all rights to them. There’s a life to be lived here first. Nobody takes nothing to the grave. Not even you.
The old man met his glare. The earth bears all things freely when no one demands it, he said.
Barnabas leaned in to the heat of the man’s breath. Tell me, he said. Who the fuck consecrated you priest?
The old man stepped back. He shook his head with fury and his eyes began to bubble and burst. Ye are sowing division, Barnabas Kane. Ye are turning yer back upon our fellowship. Cutting yerself off from this community. Ye should listen to what people are saying about ye. Ye have no animals, Barnabas, yet ye are building this byre. What kind of foolish thing is that? Ye should sell up and support your family. I’ll help ye take back the stones. Those stones are our bones, Barnabas. Ye don’t want to isolate yerself from this entire community now do ye?
As he spoke Barnabas saw Billy and Eskra come through the gate, saw Eskra stop when she heard the old man’s raised voice. She directed Billy to go in through the front door of the house. Barnabas felt his fist begin to boulder and he held it in a way that would have been fit to fell the man had it not been that Eskra appeared then from the back door. She stood with her arms folded but said nothing to alert the old man and he leaned in towards Goat.
You ever tell me again how to look after my family and I’ll rip that great beard of yours right out of your head. This byre will be rebuilt with your help or not and when I asked you for it you wouldn’t give it to me. Now give me head peace and clear the fuck off.
The old man thumped a foot, turned and saw Eskra, and his voice dropped low.
Ye think me a hard man but I just want for ye to do what’s right.
Get off my land, Goat.
It’s a good thing for ye none of my boys are witness to this.
You can send any of your boys over to see me any time they like, Goat. They’ll get a great welcome. I’ve got a twelve-gauge Browning behind the backdoor for trespassers and I’d just love so I would to take off a foot.
Goat eyed Barnabas with a look that would break an ordinary man apart. Barnabas stared the old man back, stared so hard that the old man’s features began to dissolve into a mush of skin and hair and bones. The spell was broken by one of the black dogs that began to giddy about the old man’s feet. He turned and made two sharp whistles to the other two dogs and they snapped their heads to their master, followed the old man out the gate.
Barnabas pulled a chair out from the table and let out a long sigh as he sat down. He began to cut the black bread on the board in front of him, leaned towards the butter and knifed at it. Do you remember that one time years ago, Eskra, when we came here, what Fran Glacken said to me? He said to me I was a local stranger. The cheek of him. The big smiling face on him and I nearly hit him. Do you know what he meant by that? Did I ever explain it to you? It meant that I was not the same because I was gone out of here. Because I had emigrated. As if I had a choice in it. This fucking place. I never treated anyone any different when I came back and I never lorded it over nobody. I’m the same as them but I’m different because I went away and that’s the way they see it.
He chewed on the bread and sent his tongue to lick at butter on his beard.
Maybe them cunts are right calling me a local stranger. I can still see this land in a way that they aren’t able. And for all the time spent here I still canny get a handle on the place names–every nook and cranny with a bloody name on it. You know something–Matthew Peoples knew it fine rightly too. The old bastard was always taking a hand of me because of it.
She saw as Barnabas spoke he began to make a face, pulled a mocking impression of Matthew Peoples. One time I was asking him about the best place for trout and he starts putting on this expression and I knew he was pulling my leg. Oh, that would be down by the whin pool, he says, now you know where that is, don’t you? You’d have to cross the seven bloody magic stones near Cloontagh but not go as far as it, naw. Go past the bloody potato field of James Duffy. Not the big one but the wee one. And you’ll find it then by Altashane. He says all this to me with barely a straight face. Just a yonder beyond the fairy circle that’s near the fir trees.
When he stopped talking he leaned slow over the table towards the teapot and poured himself tea that dribbled from the spout onto the tablecloth. He slapped it down, took a drink. Damn it, he said. This tea would freeze a man’s balls off.
It’s made only a while ago, Barnabas.
He turned and began looking out the window and all that was turning to dusk.
Being of the land, but not of it, he said. That’s why we can expect nothing but difficulty from them. Nothing at all.
When he turned in his chair he saw Eskra trying to smile at him but what lit her eyes was sadness.
Anyhow, he said. We’ll fucking show them. I showed them once before. I’ll fucking show them again. It won’t be a bother.
He rose under a great dark each day to work upon the byre and as he worked he would look at the sky and wonder. Dawns that came like the aftermath of slaughter, a battleground of the gods during the night. Or some mornings it seemed there was no dawn at all, just a pale light that sent forth a day stunted, slung down upon him its cold. He would work regardless, work with his sleeves rolled soon to make a sweat while the weather tensed and threatened but kept favour. He began to work up a cadence, an old rhythm that his hands knew, his feet in lockstep, a meeting of mind and stone that spoke to him of fundamental things. His hands upon the stones as if he had delivered each one from the earth. The stones loosening memories as if they had within them shamanic powers, memories that came like drifts of clouds from over some blind horizon of mind. Saw himself aged twenty, a strange and fearless creature who would not know the man he was now. Hanging off a corner without a harness nearly sixty floors up. The sally and slap of the wind and Manhattan beneath him like some epic ruin. The fearlessness of that kid. It scared him now to think about it because he had learned the taste of fear. He saw in snatches the faces of men he had worked with, could remember most of their names–Patch Barry and Matty O’Brien and Sonny Bracken–and one by one they left the work and fell forgotten into America. Sonny the best friend of Patch and both of them Mayo men and everywhere you saw one you saw the other and the high talk out of them. He recalled, too, the times he spent with the Mohawks up in the Gowanus. Jim Deer inviting him up to the streets of Brooklyn they had turned native. That dim, smoke-thickened room called the Spar Bar and Grill where he would drink and listen to their speech like strange music. The Mohawks did not look like Indians at all, wore their hair short. Jim Deer with his hair greased and the way he laid out his long hands and big moon fingernails upon the table or wrapped them both around his beer, his silent way of looking into the deepest parts of you. Deer’s sweet baritone voice explaining how his father died from a fall off the skeleton of a railroad bridge over the St Lawrence, and the man’s eyes like stones in the telling. They all had such stories yet worked the skyscrapers anyway, drank till they could stand no more and when the time was right retreated to their home at Caughnawaga, a reservation on the St Lawr
ence River. Deer said, in the river’s silence you are in the company of your dead. Barnabas had learned to forget the dead, had put Donegal out of his mind, but the way the Mohawks returned home so easily awakened in him something dormant. That aching place of his childhood. The death of his parents stirring sorrow in him as if from the grave they would not let him forget. The last time he drank with Deer he asked him why they were so fearless. Deer answered, death is an invisible presence all around us. We just pass through. None of us know how close we stand to it.
He saw himself standing outside the byre beside Matthew Peoples.
So long ago now the life lived like a dream and yet he never forgot the Mohawk saying it.
He smoked as he worked, stood up when the fags were all smoked and he would straighten his back and roll himself five more, stow them in his shirt pocket. He worked with each fag hanging from his mouth, smoked in near-circular breathing. When the horse woke from sleep she would stick her head out the stable half-door and watch. A strange creature she saw back-bent and heaving over rocks, a monster with the body of a man and the mind of a bull and smoke blasting from its head in the half light like a dragon, if the horse knew of such things. As each day rose the shape of Eskra would appear made spectral by the kitchen window and she would come outside to Barnabas in her dressing gown and place beside him a cup of tea, ask him how he was getting on. He would smile at her and work on. The tea going cold until he would remember about it and he would slosh it down with a wince in one drink. Nothing worse than cold tea. Soon enough the byre rose up all four walls to meet its maker and it began to lend some of its appearance, dusting his hair and face and thickening like stone the skin on his fingers. What he felt in his mind as he worked was the deep humming flow of a river. Working each day until his shadowed self became lost in the bluing dark and then he would stand back and look at it, the byre turning silhouette to the merging of night sky and hills.
That same day Billy and Eskra went to the beach the dog did not return and by evening Billy had grown desperate. In the yard he saw one of Cyclop’s bones freshly dug out of the earth and he stood over the bone and kicked it, called out at the top of his voice for the dog. The bone skittered hollow on the flagstones and the dog did not come and an awareness then came over him. He chased after the bone and kicked it towards the new barn shouting the dog’s name. He met the back gate that dipped rickety when opened as if it had grown tired of holding itself, and he walked out towards the edge of the back field. The grass came to his ankles and he shouted again for the dog. In the sky a fresh-hung moon like a pill to stay the night’s pain and his voice reached out into the grand silence but did not hold there. He looked towards the darkening scrim of the fields and he thought of The Masher and his strange bird-like whistle and he stopped shouting, turned back for the house. When he stood in the yard he called out again but the sound of his voice fell lonely.
He saw his father in the range chair with his shoes kicked off and his legs stretched out towards the table. Toe-white poking through a hole in his sock. Some kind of grandness to him now with his belt undone and a hand upon his belly as if he were pregnant with satisfaction, while Eskra sat quiet and focused, bent over herself stitching a button to a shirt. When Billy spoke his father pointed to the radio with a jabbing quick finger. Billy stood awkward for a moment and then he stamped his foot. Jesus, will ye listen to me? he said.
Barnabas stared at him. Would you ever shut up. I’m trying to hear. The Russians are nearing Berlin. Could there be anything more important?
Eskra turned around. Let the boy speak, she said. You’ve heard the news today already, Barnabas. Nothing’s changed in the last hour. She turned to Billy. What’s wrong with you, love?
Cyclop’s still gone, he said. He never came back after yesterday. I’ve been out looking for him so I have, but there’s no sign of him.
Barnabas groaned and Eskra dropped her voice into a whisper. He’ll come back tonight wait till you see, Billy. Cyclop lives his own life.
Barnabas rolled his legs in towards him with dramatic fashion and he stood up. For fuck sake, he said. A heavy blink as he walked across the room and dialled up the volume, sat down again with a humph and stretched out his legs. That damn dog does only as it pleases, he said. Now would the pair of yez shush. That boy Hitler is on his way out.
He saw Billy running up the road from school, his bag bouncing eager on his back, watched him reach the yard and stand staring over the dog’s food and water bowls. The boy turned around with a tight look on his face and he dropped his head when Barnabas called him over, walked towards the byre slapping his hands by his sides. Barnabas stood up off his haunches. Go in and change into your work clothes. I need help out here. As Barnabas bent back down, Billy’s face hardened into a look of hate that went unseen by his father. He walked wordless towards the house and soon after Eskra came out. She went towards Barnabas with her arms folded and when he saw her he stood up agitated. What is it now with that boy of ours? he said. He saw she had tied her hair up different that made lonely the full shell of her ears. Whitely they stood out and a new tightness to her mouth he did not like the look of.
Can you not see he’s worried sick about that dog.
I didn’t think of it.
I’m worried about Cyclop as well, Barnabas. I was going to say when you came in that we should go and search for him.
Barnabas leaned back and began to light a cigarette. Why doesn’t he go out looking for him then?
He says he wants you to go with him.
Arrah, Jesus.
Barnabas took off his workboots and put on his wellies and he shouted for Billy to come downstairs, that they were going now in a minute. He put on his coat and stood by the door and waited. Billy came running down the stairs. Put on your welly boots, Eskra said. The boy kicked off his shoes and stepped his bare legs into puddling boots while his father’s old coat hung on him like a pair of huge wings. They were walking up the yard when Eskra called behind them. Take this, she said. Barnabas turned and saw she held an unlit lamp.
No need, he said.
It’s going to get dark in an hour. Just in case. He might be injured or something. She waved it at him as if he did not have a choice in the matter.
They set out through northerly fields calling out for Cyclop. The dog a wary beast at the best of times and in his mind Barnabas saw the animal sitting somewhere covert between trees, his tongue lolling in amusement. They trudged towards the perimeter of Fran Glacken’s fields and began to veer west down the slope of tapering pasture until they met impenetrable whin that held its yellow to itself like stilled flames. They swung around and came by a stream and crossed it and in the trees birds began to make their last calls and blend into the deeper darkness. Billy stood in the middle of the stream until his father summoned him onwards. Through trees and the sloping fields and they came upon a view of Pat the Masher’s house distant and dark with no light in the windows. Billy looked at the house and in his coat his hand began to tighten around the haft of a knife.
They walked a wide circle, all the while calling out to the dog as the dark crept slowly around them. Barnabas turned to the boy. C’mon, he said. It’s growing dark. We can finish this tomorrow.
Just a wee while more.
Barnabas sighed but kept walking.
Their shadows began to fuse into one and passed into that wider dark that claimed them man and boy the same, the stars too dimmed by cloud and a moon that lay hid so the night became but one dimension. Barnabas stopped and lit a low moon from the lamp and held it up before them, saw a moth wing itself at the lamp’s glass.
I mind when that dog was a pup he went about the place like a dog with two dicks, peeing all over the place. You’d be carrying him in your hands and next thing he’d let go on you. On your trousers and everything. He’d piss in your eye, so he would. The great piddler of his age. Cyclop was the wrong name for him. Should have called him Piddlin’ Pete.
Who was it gave him to you?<
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Oh, some auld fella from up Glebe. He wasn’t fit for looking after him. Had a heap of them. The dog seemed glad of the change. If only we knew what we were getting ourselves in for.
They came upon a narrow lane guarded over by trees that stood feather to the night, followed it, Barnabas’s voice bellowing into that dark as if he had some kind of authority over its province. He listened to the way sound travelled, the whump of wing-beat, a small animal’s rustle and scuttle, walked wide-eyed to pick out like bruising fruit the colours of the dark. At the end of the lane they began to close a wide circle, came upon the main road. Smell of moss and muck and damp and then through trees they heard a dog’s barking. They stopped and held their breaths and Billy called out and ran. Barnabas calling after him. Walked quickly. Heard a creature on the road and ran towards it with the lamp, the shape of a dog, and what was held before them when they saw it was another. A skinny mongrel standing slantways and suspicious before it skittered off. Billy’s head dropped low.
McDaid’s house loomed and Barnabas went to the door and knocked. The door opened and lamplight made a sight of McDaid in yellowing long-johns with his fly wide open and his cock on show. His feet planted in wellies. Barnabas nodded towards the man’s crotch. Jesus Christ, Peter. The electric eel is making a run for the river.
McDaid looked down and laughed and he fixed at his long-johns. Jeez, boys, you caught me nappin.
They stepped in and Barnabas told him about the dog and he eyed them back with the odd alignment of his gaze. How old is he now? McDaid said. Maybe he’s sick and gone off to die in one of the fields the way that dogs do.
Billy shot the man a look of hurt and Barnabas saw it, reached out to his son and rubbed his head. Naw, he said. He’s too young for that carry on.