The Dig

by Cynan Jones

  “How is it?” asked his mother.

  “Steady,” he said. He began to tell her the counts and the small crises and the surprises and they talked for a while, the conversation shifting about like something in the wind being lifted and dropped, left for a while, lifted again.

  His mother had a staid, farmhouse traditionalism. You could go abroad to an agricultural place and you would find the same taciturn dependability in the women there. You would be able to sit at their table and there would be the same ironic hospitality, and then they would unload cookery at you and you wouldn’t be able to move. If you were hurt, their responses would be nurse-like and unsympathetic but their remedies would work, and if you were to make one of them angry it would be a great and dangerous thing. They are like this because they have been charged for generations with keeping their men working, by feeding and repairing them, and there is no room for sentimentalism in that. You would not find kinder people, but their kindness would be in essential things and they would pour it on you.

  But this sureness of purpose can only come from having a defined role and from not questioning it. It was certain to him that his mother had never questioned the role, but with that same conviction—age being a role in itself—she had adopted oldness when she assumed she should, rather than when her body told her to.

  She had seemed to prematurely age, to adopt some strange outwardly witnessed notion of old people in the way teenagers put on some adulthood. There was no adjustment to the fact that eighty was not a rare age anymore, and that sixty was what forty used to be. She started to order elasticated trousers and strange shoes that made her look incongruously aged like teenagers look in grown-up clothes, and seemed to choose a stock phrase book of senior comments which she took to saying with a wistful acceptance; again, like a teenager trying to sound grown up.

  He didn’t know exactly what to do about this, but it was wearing. And then suddenly she was old, and the incongruity was not there.

  Like a teenager finally growing up and letting the honest little bits of character from childhood come through, now his mother actually was old there was something once again more girlish to her, and he could trace this. It was as if he was coming to know her as the person she was before she even had him. There were all these little signs, and he began to understand how there must have existed a great chemistry between his young parents that had gradually been rhythmically buried by life. The role, he thought, looking at her now, understanding her fearfulness at having to split her care once more between her husband and son, his father half-paralyzed and he bereft. It’s the role, he thought. The role gets you through.

  “Ma,” he said. “I’m okay. I don’t want you to come round.”

  “It would tire two people to death, this,” she said. He saw in her eyes the flash at the word she’d spilled, saw it catch in the air before her and shifted his head, letting her know she could let it go. She understood that he was not being proud, remembered his childish independence and hoped it would be enough.

  “I have to get through this,” he said. “It’s easier if I don’t see anyone. I have to just get through. It doesn’t matter how I am.”

  He tried to put it as clearly as he understood it. He could not bear the responsibility of small talk, of reassuring people he was coping. He seemed to know the offer of sympathy would be like a gate he’d go crashing through. He could bear only the huge responsibility to the ewes, to the farm working, which would be tyrannical and which was in process now, and which didn’t care about him.

  “After?” asked his mother.

  “I don’t know after,” he said. And truly he didn’t. She held him then, and she felt the massive devastation of him.

  PART TWO

  The Dig

  chapter one

  THE BOY HAD not slept. He was gawky and awkward and had not grown into himself yet. When his father came to rouse him he found the boy awake with expectation. Warm, remember, said his father.

  The boy nodded loosely in the way he had. The way was to have a minute hesitation before doing things. This came from trying to be eager and cautious at the same time around his father.

  He was long and thin and he could have looked languid without this nervousness but instead he looked underdeveloped. When he got out of bed in his T-shirt and shorts it emphasized the awkward gangliness of him. He had the selection of muscles teenage boys’ bodies either grow or don’t but the skin on his face was a child’s.

  He got dressed and went downstairs. In the kitchen he sat at the table with the kind of extra-awakeness not sleeping can give you and started automatically to spread paste onto the sliced bread. He had a low-level excitement running through him. A day off school. He felt the same illicit closeness to his father as he did when they went lamping and in these times he was capable of forgetting that his father did other things.

  His father put the tea on the table and filled the big flask and then they sat and blew on the tea and drank it. Then they went out.

  They took the dogs from the run and got them in the car and drove off the estate. The boy found the smell of the sawdust and dog shit in the run hard to bear in the early morning. The smell of it was a strange note against the deodorant he enveloped himself with.

  He had not been digging before and was trying to imagine it. He imagined it frenzied and was excited by this. He did not know it would be steady, unexciting procedural work and that it would not be like ratting at all. He had broken his own dog to rats himself and this gave him pride. When they picked on him in school he kept his pride in this. He hung on to it.

  The boy’s father parked the car and they sat seeing the dog runs and the broken machinery and the boy was momentarily stupefied by the darkness and emptiness about the place. In the car lights he could see just beyond the runs the bodies of cars like some disassembled ghost train littering the field.

  The big man heard them pull up outside and saw the car lights catch and reflect on the mesh of the run and came out to them. The boy had a brief inarticulate awareness that his father shied a little when he saw the big man come from the house. He hadn’t seen that in his father before. The boy thought the man looked like some big gypsy.

  The man leaned into the window and the dogs in the back came alive at this new presence and set off a yapping, which set off a yapping in the dog sheds beyond. The car was full of a deodoranty smell that got into your mouth.

  They yelpers? asked the big gypsy.

  They’re good dogs, said the boy’s father.

  It stinks, said the man. It’s a girl’s bedroom.

  The big gypsy looked accusingly at the boy and the boy felt himself redden. He felt the nervous flush go up in his throat.

  They’re good dogs, said the boy’s father.

  We can’t have them hardmouthed, said the man.

  No. They’re good dogs, the father said.

  We can’t work with hardmouthed dogs, the big gypsy said. The big gypsy was looking at the terriers, taking them in. The boy could feel there was a grown-man tension.

  Then his father said: They’re not hardmouthed, mun. They’re good dogs.

  There were three terriers in the back. One was the big Patterdale, Jip, thirteen inches at the shoulder and a solid fourteen pounds. He was about as big as you’d want for a badger dig without being too tall in the shoulder to suit the holes. It was why the man had called the boy’s father, thinking of the big boar.

  What’s the pup? said the big gypsy. He nodded at the boy’s dog and the boy felt the redness on his throat again.

  She’s just along, said the boy’s father. The big gypsy looked at the pup.

  She’s not going down, said the big gypsy. He had to take the badger and there was too much risk the young dog would not be able to hold him.

  The boy felt this shame and the crushed feeling from school came up in him.

  She’s just along, the boy’s father said.

  chapter two

  THEY PARKED UP in the machine yard of the
big farm and got the dogs out and coupled them dog to bitch with the iron couplings.

  In the east a powder of light was just coming and in the barn the tractors looked immense and military. At the edges of the fields the trees were still a solid deep black.

  They coupled the boy’s pup to the older dog and coupled the gypsy’s older bitch to the big Patterdale. They had to couple the right dogs. Dogs that could work together at rat could fight at a badger dig, as if they sensed the individuality of the process.

  They got the tools and divided them up to carry; then they took the big five-liter tubs of water from the van and the bag with the tin drinking bowls and the food and gave them to the boy. They weighed on him immediately. It was crisply cold and with their thin handles the weight of the water bottles burned on his fingers.

  They went through the gate and down the lane, letting the dogs run in front of them, passively aware of which dog took the lead of the other as they rooted in and out of the hedgeside at the dying scents laid down in the night.

  Mud had gathered in the track and the overnight rain left it wet and the boy, alert and cold and overawake, took in the sucked sounds underfoot and the clinking of the coupling chains and the body sounds of the dogs as they pushed through the undergrowth of the bank. He was using the gulping sounds of the water sloshing in the tubs as a kind of rhythm to walk by.

  The thin light was beginning to increase and the few bean-shaped flowers on the gorse stood out with unnatural luminosity. The men’s feet went down hard and solidly in the lane, but the boy constantly tripped on the loose stones the winter’s rain had brought down, as if he didn’t have enough weight to himself.

  They went off the track and whistled the dogs in as they went over a field, the lambs prone and folded next to their mothers. Some of the smaller lambs wore blue polythene jackets against the rain and they looked odd in that first light and overprotected.

  The boy could hear the ewes crunching and one or two faced the dogs and banged a foreleg on the wet ground, giving a thump that sounded like kicking a ball. He wished he could play, but he was clumsy against the other boys and this inability was just another little cruelty to him. Even now, he looked out across the lightening field and saw himself catch a high kick, the crowd of trees a fringe of spectators. But then—the school field, the ball smashing off his fingers, the laughter of the other kids. That was the reality of him and it brought up a wad of sick and anger.

  They worked their way down through the topped reeds that stubbled the slope at the base of the field and stopped by the brook and the boy set the water down. They put the dogs to lead. His pup was shaking a little with excitement.

  She’s got rats somewhere, he said. The sentence came out on the swell of pride and he realized it was the first time he had talked in front of the man.

  The man lifted up a tub of water and unlidded it and took a rough swig.

  Keep her in, he said. The bank’s snared.

  The boy was made thirsty by the river and wanted to drink but he did not like the idea of drinking the water after the big man had drunk from the tub.

  In the relative openness of the lane and across the field the dawn light had been enough, but here things closed in and they checked the snares with the torchlight.

  Bar the one, the snares were empty. The boy heard the dogs whine with the scent of something and the man signaled them to hold back and the boy put the water tubs down and stretched his fingers. Then the boy heard the dull crack of the mink’s skull and for a while did not register what the sound was. The man had hit it with a foldaway spade.

  They went on. The water had become convincingly heavy to the boy now. The scrub began to encroach the bank until it was thickened and difficult to pass and after a while they cut away from the stream. It was heavy going but somehow the big man had mobility in it and seemed to fit into the countryside in a way the other two did not.

  The dogs sniffed in and out of the torch beams ahead of them and the men pushed through the sprawling holly and they drove into the wood. Every now and then they disturbed something and there was a clatter in the branches or the tearing of undergrowth as something fled. The wood thickened. Everywhere there were branches down and in the strange beams of light some looked animal and prehistoric.

  •

  They staked the dogs some way from the sett and poured them water and took a drink themselves. The boy had a queer feeling about the man’s mouth being on the water and still did not want to drink it.

  The trees had opened up a little and you could see the light finally coming through. There was a moment of greater coldness, like a draft through a door, and the boy felt an unnerving, as if something had acknowledged them arriving there. They had made a lot of noise moving through the wood and when they stopped they heard the birdsong and the early loud vibrancy of the place.

  First dig? said the man.

  The boy nodded, with that hesitancy. They could hear the dogs lapping and drinking at the water bowls.

  The main hole’s up there. The big man gestured up the slope. We’ll put in the dog, he said. He meant Jip, the big Patterdale.

  The big man’s own bitch was by his feet, with her distant, composed look against the other dogs.

  I want to put her in next. He indicated. Better be a dog goes in first. The big man was thinking of the big tracks and the possibility of the big boar. A bigger dog would have more chance up front. They knew if you put a bitch down after a bitch, or a dog down after a dog, there were problems most times; but if you changed the sex the other usually came out with no trouble.

  The boy’s father nodded agreement. He was checking the locator, checking the box with the handset.

  The boy was thirsty and looking at the water, not wanting to open the other tub in front of the man.

  Take him round and block up the other holes. I’ll do the other side.

  The big gypsy brought out the map he’d drawn of the holes and went over it with the boy’s father. The gypsy asked the boy if he understood and the redness came to his throat under the zipped-up coat collar; but he was feeling the rich beginning of adrenaline now. He was dry and thirsty and had a big sick hole of adolescent hunger but he could feel his nerves warming at the new thing and began to feel a comradeship of usefulness to the man.

  They unwound the sheets of thick plastic and went off and systematically blocked the holes with stones and sheets of plastic and laid blocks across the obvious runs with heavy timber and then went back to the dogs. Then they went up the slope with the two first dogs and gathered around the main entrance and stood the tools up in the ground.

  There was old bedding around the hole, the strange skeletal bracken starting to articulate its color in the gray light. Jip started to bounce on the lead and strain for the hole as if he could sense the badgers. The strewn bracken might have meant the badgers had gone overnight, but from the way the dog was behaving there was a fresh, present scent.

  The boy looked at the dog straining on the lead and could feel the same feeling in his guts. He felt the feeling he did before the first rats raced out and the dogs went into them.

  The boy’s father knelt with the excited dog and checked the box and collar over again and Jip let his enthusiasm solidify into a determined, pointed thing and stood stockily facing the hole, a determined tremble going through him.

  The boy’s father studied the locator once more and checked the signal, then they sent the dog in.

  The boy was not expecting the delay of listening for the dog. He could feel his stomach roll though. He could feel a slow soupy excitement. This was a new thing. Then deep in the earth the dog yelped. Then again; and his father was instantly by the hole, prone, calling to the dog, calling with strange excitement into the tunnel.

  Stay at him, boy. Good Jip. Good Jippo.

  The boy glanced at the man as his father called this out, as if it had revealed what he was thinking about the way the man looked. But the big gypsy seemed to be rapt, a pasty violence setting
in his eyes as he listened and watched Messie, his bitch, solidify, focus. Finally, the dog let out a low whimper of desire.

  You could hear the barks moving through the ground now and they came alternately sharp and muffled until they seemed to regulate and come with a faraway percussive sound.

  The big man moved across the slope. He seemed to swirl in some eddy, then came to a halt, as if caught up on something.

  The big man moved again, listening, and the boy’s father tracked across with the locator until the two men stood in the same place, confirming the big man’s judgment.

  Here, he said.

  They brought up the tools and they started to dig.

  •

  It was very early spring and the bluebells were not out but made a thick carpet that looked newly washed and slick after the rain. They cut through this carpet and cleared the mess of thin sycamore from the place and the big gypsy cut a switch and bent it into a sack mouth and laid the sack down by where they would dig.

  The ground was sodden with rain and sticky and they worked with the sharp foldaway spades, cutting through the thread roots. The smell of rotted leaves and dug-up soil strengthened. When they came to a thicker root, they let the boy in with the saw. Then they started to dig for real.

  The big man swung the pick and the father and boy shoveled. Within minutes the boy was parched with thirst and hunger and could not shout properly when they called constantly to the dog below. He was dizzy with effort. He was afraid of not being able to keep up with the men. As the hole deepened they shored up the sides of the hole with the plastic sheeting and the work steadied to a persistent rhythm.