For the Love of Yolanda
Garnet Tock wades from the sheltering line of firs out into the centre of a field and stops to listen, but dawn breaks without a sound across the valley. There is nothing to be heard, not the whine of a breeze, no screaming birds, not the scrabbling of rodents or small animals, and certainly not a despairing bark. The sky presses low, gleaming even in this hinted light, layer upon layer of cloud bruised opaque with menace, the next onslaught of snow feeling little more than a gasp away.
When he can bear the inaction no longer, he trudges forward, afraid both of what he might find and of what might elude him. The rifle in his gloved hands has killed often and well, but never has he needed it more than now, and for the comfort of its rage as much as for its ability to bring down whatever settles in its sights. Animals, yes, necessary for his survival, but men too, twice over the past few years and several more back when he had been in Vietnam. This morning he will kill if he is forced to do so, and peace of mind will lie no further than a prayer of contrition away. Out here the ferocious survive and the weak grow hungry, so killing is like taking breakfast or cutting wood: just a part of the day. And out here the rifle is his friend and confidant, granting assurance that he will be able to do whatever needs doing.
As he cleaves a furrow through the snow the land folds away from him in a spreading vista. Patchwork shades of grey are broken apart only by the black mesh of briars but there is no movement anywhere. His breath seeps from his mouth, forced audible with effort, spinning thin grey spools that hang in the bitter air, then vanish slowly. When he laps at his chapped lips he tastes the salt of his own blood. This year he has developed a wheeze, just a tenor-touch to the most extreme edge of every exhalation, but he knows without wanting to that it represents the little pinched discomfort that has become an ever-present feature down his right side, that lung weakened ever since a bout of childhood pneumonia and now inching towards something even worse.
‘Yolanda!’ His voice is desperate with pleading whenever he shouts her name, a worn stub of a voice that echoes in flapping waves out across the land. But he receives no reply, and has mostly given up expecting one.
It would have been difficult for anybody or anything to survive a night exposed to these elements, and impossible surely for a wolfhound bitch used to the shelter of a log cabin, to eating what is put before her and to curling up before a well-set fire. Maybe she had enough about her to take shelter that first night after they were separated by the quick tumble of darkness, but this is now the sixth day since she’d strayed and gotten herself lost. There are other men out in this country, not settled close, but they could have hooked themselves on a trail while hunting deer or even quail and easily crossed into this valley. A blaze of heat spouts up in Garnet’s chest, a stew of anger, fear and frustration.
Yolanda is five-years-old now, and the companion of his life, having been hand-raised from a raw pup. He chose the name in memory of a girl he had known in his youth, a fair sort who had once teased him to a frenzy but who damaged him nearly fatally when, while laughing and making eyes at someone else, she dropped him from a height. There are always some wounds that feel as though they will never heal, but then time takes hold and turns its tricks. His cuts were deep but with the right kind of nursing he found a way through, and he can finally holler the name now without fearing the ache of memory. There is only one Yolanda for him, he tells himself often, only one that matters.
Hours pass. He trudges along through fields he knows, and then, less sure of himself, onto land that looks the same as all the rest but is new to him, and he stops only when the pain slashes harder into his side. He surveys the landscape then, bites off a nip of cheap corn whiskey from a dented tin hipflask and savours the crawling tendrils of heat that bloom in his chest. The sun climbs in a slow arc but never shows as anything more than a pale smear through the shellac screed of cloud. What snow has fallen crunches underfoot, fine white motes densely packed from months of falling. Occasional flurries continue to slake the air, cautious smatterings that hint of worse to come. He understands, though, that he has no choice but to ignore the warning.
Noon slips by. He has walked for miles and the day is reaching that point where he will have to turn back soon or else risk the darkness and the possibility of getting lost. He is hungry and tired, and his side is hurting, his breath reduced down to stuttering gasps by the cold and the strain of this hunt. One more day is all that he can allow, and then he will have to give Yolanda up as lost. Tomorrow it will have been a week since she strayed. His mind plays the usual tricks, drawing visions of her tall sleek shape cantering towards him, the dark gleam of her eyes fixed on his and yearning for some show of affection, her lean haunches matted in wild tufts of dirty copper-red hair, that great tongue lolling from the right of her yawning mouth and heaving with joyous ropes of froth from too much running. There is a second image too, the image of her lying hurt, and though he tries to keep this to the periphery it remains a nagging presence amongst his thoughts. The idea of her lovely shape ruined by some claw trap or a hateful bullet, waiting for the peace of death while dark geysers of her blood spout and then trickle from the hole in her neck to pollute the snow, fills him with terror.
The dash of something fast and grey flickers along the very fringe of his vision and is just as quickly lost. He studies the land to his left, focusing on the jagged bucktooth poke of rocks that lie perhaps a thousand yards away. His heart is pounding, but he only allows himself a second of doubt because the best of the day is already gone and there is no time for hesitation. He grips the rifle across his chest and stumbles out to investigate, this direction as good as any other. There are wolves here in this valley, the sort of huge grey beasts that even a rifle’s bullet cannot be counted on to stop.
Up around the blue granite outcroppings, the terrain is rough and broken, and the snow has been unable to bank with enough mass to hold tracks. Garnet struggles over a cleft of rock to find a small creek lying in wait. A thread of water chases in ribbons through the coloured stones of the riverbed, just a few determined inches at its widest point and penned in by frozen walls but using the incline to keep from fully icing over. Glassy spumes of fog hang above, the pervading cold brutalising the disturbed air. He finds a sheltered hollow in the rocks and settles down to wait. Something else is here.
A scrabble of dirt snaps him awake. He is shocked to discover that night has almost fallen, and now there can be no attempt at making it back to the cabin. Snow is falling again, chill wisps drifting like feathers through the twilit air. They nestle on his shoulders and in his hair and hold their shapes. The sound of movement comes from the far side of the creek, but the jut of the rocks conceal whatever it is that begins to lap at the chasing stream’s ice water. He listens, hoping that he will be able to tell by the weight of the footfall whether it is Yolanda or something he will have to gun down, but after a few seconds it becomes clear to him that no such simple identity is possible. Shifting as silently as his stiff muscles and frozen bones will allow, he raises his rifle and then crawls towards a crevice in the rock.
Wolf. That is his first thought, but then the creature raises its head from the ripple of the stream and even through the tumble of first darkness Garnet sees that it isn’t a wolf at all but a dog. He watches as it stretches its back and raises its head, smelling at the cold air, catching perhaps some hint of danger even through the searing cold. It is large in size, its thick coat mottled with dabs of dark grey over a pale underlining.
He can’t determine the breed type and decides that it is not strictly a breed at all but some mix of nature and circumstance that has somehow found a way of surviving out here, foraging for food and battling the cold. Then a second movement stirs the dark bank and Yolanda moves with graceful caution to the water. The pair are clearly comfortable together. While Yolanda drinks, the dog looms protectively beside her and then she rises and nuzzles against him, sharing warmth and maybe love too.
Garn
et raises the rifle and draws the big dog’s shoulder into his sights. The cold has shut down his mind; he uses his teeth to draw the glove from his right hand and feels nothing at all as he squeezes the trigger. A flare of light sparks in the darkness and the dog crumbles on the stony bank, and for just a moment the air swims thickly with the tarrying bark and peppering gunpowder stench of the shot. It is instinct that causes Yolanda to charge for cover, but it is something else that makes her stop just a few yards away and then nervously return to where her mate lies twitching. When Garnet rises from his hiding place she turns to look at him, and when he calls her and she doesn’t respond he tells himself that she is just afraid. He climbs down and traces a way across the stream. Yolanda lowers her head and backs away just a step. He smiles at her then drops into a crouch beside the shot dog and strokes the animal’s wiry coat until the slow efforts at breathing subsides to nothing.
‘You look hungry,’ he says, when the silence becomes uncomfortable. From his pocket his pulls a strand of deer jerky, considers splitting it and then tosses it towards her. She stares at him, then snaps it up and begins to chew. When she finishes he smiles again. Night has fallen and they really need to find some shelter, but suddenly he feels as though he can make it back to the cabin.
‘Come on, Yolanda,’ he says. ‘Let’s get you home.’
She hesitates for just an instant, and then surrenders.
Acknowledgements
Many of the stories in this collection first appeared in various magazines, journals and newspapers around the world. I wish to extend my gratitude to:
Absinthe: New European Writing; Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine; The Bellevue Literary Review; Birmingham Arts Journal; Carillon Magazine; Crimespree; The Evening Echo; First City Review; Great Mystery & Suspense; The Holly Bough; Ireland’s Own; Lunch Hour Stories; The Mayo News; Out West; Southword; That’s Life: Fast Fiction; Versal; War Journal; Yuan Yang: A Journal Of Hong Kong and International Writing.
– ‘Ghosts’ was short-listed for the inaugural Seán Ó Faoláin Short Story Competition, 2003.
– ‘War Song’ was short-listed for the 2004 Francis MacManus Short Story Award and was broadcast on RTÉ Radio 1 on 24 August 2005.
– ‘Put Down’ won the 2005 George A. Birmingham Short Story Award.
– ‘In Exile’ was a finalist for the 2006 Faulkner/Wisdom Short Story Award.
– ‘Deliver Us From Evil’ won the 2006 Lunch Hour Stories Contest and has been nominated for the 2009 Pushcart Prize.
– ‘The Wedding Day’ won the 2007 Molly Keane Memorial Creative Writing Award.
About the Author
Billy O'Callaghan is from Cork. He has won: The 2005 George A. Birmingham Short Story Award, The 2006 Lunch Hour Stories Prize, and The 2007 Molly Keane Creative Writing Award. His short stories have also been shortlisted for a number of Awards, including: The 2003 Seán O'Faolain Short Story Award, The 2004 RTE Radio 1 Francis MacManus Short Story Award, The 2005 Pencil Short Story Prize, and The 2006 Faulkner/Wisdom Award. His short stories have appeared in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine (USA), The Bellevue Literary Review (USA), Ireland's Issues (Ireland), Elysian Fields Quarterly (USA), The Evening Echo (Ireland), Great Mystery & Suspense (USA), The Holly Bough (Ireland), Ireland's Own (Ireland), Lunch Hour Stories (USA), New Fiction (United Kingdom), Southword (Ireland), Versal (Holland), and others.
Also by Billy O'Callaghan
A collection of short stories from the pen of one of Ireland’s most-talented emerging writers, Billy O’Callaghan. With its stories of lost love and shared secrets, tender moments and little victories, In Too Deep is a wonderful follow-up to Billy’s collection In Exile.
‘O’Callaghan is an award winner and … he will win many more.’ The Sunday Tribune
‘at once lyrical and economical, [In Exile] presents a cast of characters, rich and poor, passive and violent, who are all in a sense yearning to return from exile to a place, a relationship, a particular stage in their lives …’The Irish Immigrant
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