Lies the Mushroom Pickers Told

by Phelan, Tom;

  However, on the July fair day of 1951, the sun was shining warmly on Mikey Lamb and Barlow Bracken as they kept two bullocks cornered against the yellow-washed wall of Horans’ Bakery. The bullocks had calmed down after the long, early-morning journey over the Esker from Clunnyboe. The two big bullocks stood motionless in the hot sun, their heavy heads hanging and their chins within inches of the dungy footpath. The boys constantly glanced over their shoulders to see if there were signs that Mister Lamb was making headway with Mister Thompson-the-cattle-jobber.

  “Say it once more,” Mikey said to Barlow.

  Bracken quietly chanted, “Don’t eat Horan’s bread. It’ll stick to your belly like a lump of lead. Your mother will just wunder when she hears your clap of tunder—don’t eat Horan’s bread.”

  Mikey repeated the rhyme several times to commit it to memory. “Now I’ll remember it for Kevin Lalor. He never laughs out loud at my jokes or riddles, but I know he’s always laughing on the inside.”

  Since Barlow had taken up residence with the Lambs, Mikey had begun washing his face, brushing his teeth and using Brylcreem to flatten his rebellious hair.

  “I have one for you, Barlow,” he said. “Missus Brown went to town to buy some macaroni. She blew a fart behind the cart and paralyzed the pony.”

  Mikey let his head hang down and held his arms out at his side to imitate the paralyzed pony. And Barlow Bracken laughed out loud. Then he repeated the rhyme and copied Mikey’s pantomime. The two boys laughed, and when Mikey glanced around at the seller and the buyer, he saw his father spitting on his hand.

  “He sold them,” Mikey whispered at Barlow. “In a few minutes we’ll be able to go to the hucksters’ stalls.”

  When Barlow looked, Mister Thompson spat on his own hand and slapped it into Mister Lamb’s upturned wet palm.

  “They never need a middleman,” Mikey said.

  “What’s that?”

  “When the buyer and the seller can’t agree about the price, another man joins in. It looks funny with the middleman talking and at the same time trying to slap the hands together that don’t want to be slapped. You’d think they were all fighting. And then they agree, and it’s over all of a sudden. But Daddy likes Mister Thompson, and Mister Thompson always gives me sixpence when we drive the cattle to the yard behind Humphrey Smiley’s.”

  “Sixpence! Will he give me sixpence?”

  “Even if he doesn’t, I’ll give you half of mine,” Mikey said, not so much out of a desire to share, as out of his insecurity about Barlow Bracken’s friendship. Even though everything had worked out exactly as Kevin Lalor had said it would, Mikey was still using bribes to insure Barlow’s reciprocity of feelings. Even though Barlow was living with the Lambs for this first week of the summer holidays, Mikey was not fully convinced of his good fortune in having a friend.

  Barlow Bracken looked back at the two men. “They’re standing real close together and Mister Thompson is counting out money.”

  But Mikey, as if his feelings of insecurity were suddenly externalized, swiped his ashplant at a perfect volcano of animal waste, sent a fine shower of the dung flying toward four huddled and talking men. “Quick, Barlow, look this way and don’t turn around no matter what happens.”

  “Who the hell’s throwing cowshite?” a voice bellowed.

  “Jeepers!” Mikey whispered, his face flushed with fear. “Pretend you didn’t hear him. Pretend we’re minding the cattle.” They separated and approached their two bullocks and roused them from their stupor.

  By the time the boys regrouped, the four men had given up trying to detect the dung-thrower and were pointing to specks of shite on each other’s faces.

  “Why did you do that?” Barlow asked.

  “I wasn’t thinking,” Mikey said, “and I just made a swipe at the cow dung.”

  “Your father is giving change to Mister Thompson,” Barlow said.

  “That’s not change. That’s the luck money. The seller always gives some money back to the buyer for luck. Most of the time when they can’t agree, it’s all about how much the luck money will be. Nobody ever tells how much they get for their animals, so don’t ask my father. That’s why they’re over there, so we won’t hear them. Sometimes when there’s bargaining going on near us, my father sends me over to stand around and find out what price the men are talking about.”

  “A spy,” Barlow said.

  “A spy in the war hiding and listening.”

  Barlow said, “If Mister Thompson gives me sixpence I’m going to bring it home to my mother.”

  “Aw, Barlow. Keep it and buy something off the one of the hucksters.”

  Mister Thompson had two silver sixpences hidden in his hand when he came over to the boys with Simon Peter Lamb. “Well, Mikey, your father robbed me again,” he said. “You’re Ned Bracken’s son?” he said to Barlow.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I hear you’re becoming a farmer, down living with the Lambs for a few days. What’s your name?”

  “Barlow, sir.”

  “Well, Barlow, don’t let this scallywag make you do all his jobs for him. I see he’s trying to be a gentleman farmer now with his hair oil.” Mister Thompson put his hand on Mikey’s head and ruffled his hair. “Be jakers, you must have put a whole jar of Brylcreem on this morning, Mikey.” He wiped his greasy hand on the seat of his trousers. Mikey blushed, and he and Barlow stood open-mouthed in front of the friendly jobber. “Now, lads, I want you to pretend you’re cowboys and drive these two boney yokes down to Smiley’s yard for me.” Mister Thompson glanced at Mikey’s father, a twinkle in his eye. “If you become a cattle jobber instead of a farmer, Barlow, the first rule is always to insult the animals you’re going to buy. Then you start bargaining, and when you buy an animal, always let the farmer think he got the best part of the bargain. Here’s sixpence each for pretending you’re cowboys.”

  The boys held out their hands, and their eyes became misty with excitement as the coins were placed in their palms. “Thank you, Mister Thompson,” they said in unison.

  “If the cattle aren’t in Smiley’s yard when I go down with my lorry, I’ll call out the sheriff and a posse. And you know what happens to rustlers, don’t you lads?”

  “We do, sir,” the boys replied.

  “They get hung, sir,” Barlow added.

  “From the nearest tree,” Mister Thompson said, and he leaned down and whispered into Mikey’s ear. “And they get hung, too, for spraying cow dung all over their neighbors. I didn’t tell your father.”

  “I wasn’t thinking,” Mikey whispered back, feeling compelled to defend himself, but Mister Thompson had already turned to Mister Lamb. “Thanks, Simon Peter,” he said, and he touched Mister Lamb on the shoulder. Mister Lamb touched the touching hand and bade Mister Thompson goodbye. Mikey ran after Mister Thompson and tugged at his jacket. “I wasn’t thinking when I hit the men with the cow dung.”

  Mister Thompson smiled down. “I know you didn’t mean it. But the next time you’re going to do it, tell me first. There’s a few oul lads I’d like you to get for me.” Again he ruffled Mikey’s hair, looked at his greasy hand and said, “Be jakers!”

  They were only five hundred yards from Smiley’s yard, but it was fifteen minutes later when Mikey swung the gate shut on the two bullocks. The animals had poked their heads through the door of Horans’ Bakery; had walked into other farmers’ groups of livestock; had been seen as a threat to the stall of the fishwoman who screeched in a Dublin accent—in her ignorance threatening to rip out of the bullocks what had already been removed when they were calves. Barlow, still not convinced that a big animal is afraid of a small, arm-waving boy, nervously jumped backward and sideways whenever the animals made unexpected moves.

  As Mister Lamb secured the gate in Smiley’s yard, he told the boys they could ramble around the fair until Spud Murphy rang the Angelus, and then they were to meet him on the street outside the hardware shop. He gave them sixpence each. Barlow’s eyes bulged.
The boys bolted back out onto the street and disappeared.

  As Simon Peter stepped back in the mayhem on the streets, he reassured himself by touching the trousers pocket where he’d stuffed Mister Thompson’s money. And as his fingers felt the bulge of the ten-pound notes, his shoulder hit up against the becapped Eddie Coughlin.

  “Simon Peter,” Coughlin exclaimed, and he held up his two hands, each with a piece of a four-grain fork. “Did you ever notice that a tool always breaks at the wrong time? I’m bringing this into Smiley’s for them to weld it, and the turf bucking mad to be turned. I was just saying before I got up on the bike, if it’s not one thing it’s another. There we were all day yesterday bringing Jarlath up to the Mater Hospital in Dublin with his appendix. A great day for turning the turf, and we had to spend the whole day getting lost in Dublin. Between you and me, I don’t know why the hospital in Marbra wasn’t good enough for him. Nothing would do but we take him to the Mater. I’m just after telephoning them from the telephone in the Post Office—sixpence, the hures—and they told me they took it out last night and it was a lucky thing it hadn’t bursted, there would have been poison all over the place inside him and it would have taken hours to clean him out or he could have died, too. Eleven stitches, and now Bridie and myself will have to be going to see him on Sunday to bring him apples and pears. A whole day it will take, and if he’d only gone to Marbra we could have gone to see him every night. But that’s the way he wanted it. ‘Take me to the Mater,’ he says, and when Bridie says to him that Marbra was a lot closer than Dublin, he nearly et the face off her. There we were driving over the River Liffey a thousand times and up and down roads blocked with motor cars and lorries and double-decker busses and everyone blowing their horn at us. I haven’t sweated as much since the hay. As far as I can see, there’s no one in Dublin who knows where the Mater Hospital is. One fellow would point us in one direction, and when we’d get there another fellow would point us back again. It was five o’clock when we pulled in through the gates, and Jarlath stretched out on the backseat making more noise than a stuck pig the whole way there. I was just saying to Bridie that I’d rather thin seven acres of sugar beet on my hands and knees than drive to Dublin again. But what can we do? We’ll have to drive up there again to bring him apples and pears. There’s nothing like fresh fruit for the evacuation of the bowels. Did you ever see a cow shiting after a feed of apples? Put the squarts over the moon, she would. I’ll tell you something, Simon Peter, even though he’s my own brother and a priest at that, I could have hit him with a swingletree to get him to stop roaring. He made Bridie stay in the car when we got there, and I brought him in, and he kind-of half hanging out of me. The minute the nurses saw the white collar and the black suit, he was put in a wheelchair and whisked off, and me left standing like an eegit for a long time till I decided I was forgot about so I went back out to Bridie. It took us till nine o’clock to get home, and not a cow in the house milked. And then, first thing this morning, this bloody fork broke, and I had to leave Bridie on the bog working away; just snapped like a twig. Bloody into it, says I to myself, what’s going to go wrong with this fecking turf next. It wouldn’t surprise me if it rained from now till Christmas Day, and we not with a sod to burn. And I after riding in already this morning to telephone the hospital on the telephone and going home again and off to the bog only to have the bloody fork break before I had turned twenty sods; nothing’s any good since the war. And the telephone! I never used a telephone before, and I walked into the Post Office and said to Miss Bergin, ‘Where’s the telephone?’ I went straight into the box and stood looking at this yoke for a minute. Then I picked it up and I says, ‘How is Father Coughlin? He was brought in yesterday with an attack of the appendix.’ Then I heard someone saying, ‘What number do you want, Mister Coughlin.’ ‘I don’t want any number,’ I said, ‘I just want to know how my brother is.’ ‘Where is your brother, Mister Coughlin?’ she asks. ‘Be gob, if you don’t know where he is, how could I know where he is? I left him in the hospital yesterday with the appendix.’ ‘In what hospital, Mister Coughlin?’ says she. ‘Your hospital,’ says I. ‘The Mater Hospital in Dublin.’ Then she tells me to wait, and after a while I hear this sound like a buzzing bee in the telephone. Then she says, ‘The Mater Hospital. Can I help you?’ ‘Didn’t I tell you? My brother Jarlath,’ says I, ‘he had an appendix yesterday, and I want to know how he is.’ ‘And what’s his name?’ says she, and I nearly said, ‘Be Janey, you’re a terrible eegit of a woman, and I only after telling you his name.’ So I told her again and then I had to tell her my name and she asked me if I was Jarlath’s father and she must have walked a mile and a half to find out about him and it costing me by the second. Jarlath’s father, I ask you! When she came back, she says, ‘Father Coughlin is resting comfortably and he has eleven stitches,’ and then she told me about the appendix nearly bursting. I see you had a couple of bullocks over against the bakery wall when I was going to the Post Office. Did you get a good price, Simon Peter?”

  “I didn’t do too bad at all,” Simon Peter-the-secretive said.

  “That Mister Thompson’s a fair man to deal with,” Eddie-the-curious persisted obliquely, “and he a Protestant for all of that.”

  “Sure, there’s a whole lot of nice Protestants, Eddie,” Simon Peter said. “And I hear you sold eight big bullocks in May, yourself.”

  Coughlin ignored Simon Peter’s probing about the price he got for his own animals. He said, “There’s too many Protestants, Simon Peter. They should all go back to England where they came from.”

  Eddie Coughlin looked around in the manner of a man who’s going to impart an important secret. “At least the appendix will keep Jarlath from bothering everyone for money for his school in India. But I was just saying it wouldn’t surprise me if he started after the nurses and doctors in the hospital. He has no shame when it comes to asking for money for God.” Again, like a fisherman casting his net, Coughlin threw his suspicious eyes over his near surroundings. And as if he had detected someone with big ears, he abruptly brought his runaway verbosity to a halt. “I’d better get this fork welded. Bridie will have a pain in her eye looking out for me. I’ll be seeing you, Simon Peter.”

  Surfacing from Coughlin’s verbal inundation and feeling as if a cloud of summer midges was buzzing inside his skull, Simon Peter restarted on his journey. He kept his eyes on the ground and avoided anything that would cause him to slip. But before he even got to the footpath outside Mister Morgan’s shop, where the pig carts were resting on their shafts, he again bumped shoulders with someone who demanded his attention. It was Mattie Mulhall.

  “Simon Peter! Just the man I’m looking for,” the thatcher said.

  “Mattie! What are you doing at the fair on a day like this? The sun shining and not a breeze to blow the straw?” Simon Peter asked.

  “I’ve a few piglets I’m trying to sell, but all them hures of jobbers ever do is insult you. I got tired of it, had to walk away for a few minutes. Such a crowd of hures I never saw in my life. You’d swear they’re all from Dublin. One of them offered me fifteen shillings a pig, and they three months old and fed on milk and potatoes and scalded bran twice a day, and a handful of pollard now and then, to say nothing of the bonemeal. The hures. I’ll tell you something, Simon Peter, this is the last litter of shagging pigs I ever want to see. I’m taking the sow to the factory tomorrow, and they can make her into sausages. I said to your man, the jobber, if I was to bring them home and drown them in a boghole that’s what I’d do before I’d give them to the likes of you for fifteen shillings. The hure. And the bloody looks of him—all dressed up in a suit and polished boots, not a speck of dung on him. I think they’re all a crowd of chancers; buy here today and sell tomorrow somewhere else for a profit. Middlemen, the whole lot of them. Fecking gombeen men. Hanging’s too good for them; a good kick up the arse is what they deserve.”

  A big bullock galloped by with a young boy in pursuit shouting, “Stop me bullock, st
op me bullock.”

  “Remember what your Mikey told us about Doul Yank in the bank, getting a wad of money from Hairy Gorry? The only way he could get money out of the bank is by taking it out against the farm. Peggy found a piece of pink paper in his coupon book, right between tea and clothes. A bookmarker worth a hundred quid in his coupon book! The question is, how many times did he take out a hundred quid? You know yourself it wouldn’t take too many hundred quids to put the farm in the hands of the bank. All he has himself is the old-age pension and my rent. Before that it was the dole, and that wouldn’t keep an old woman in snuff. We’re afraid we’ll have to buy the farm back from the bank when the fecker kicks the bucket. Did Mikey say anything about seeing him up in the bank lately? God, Simon Peter, you don’t know what this is doing to me, and the bloody pig jobbers coming along and doing nothing but telling me how bad the sucks look. I’d like to grab one of them by the scruff of the neck and push his nose into a pile of pig dung and ask him, ‘Do you smell the bran in that, and the bonemeal and the pollard?’ The fecking hures. And was Father Coughlin around yet looking for money off you for his school in India? I said to Peggy, we’re hardly able to keep our heads above the water, and he looking for money for a school in India. In fecking India, for Christ’s sake, thousands of miles away. And a few shillings won’t do him either. He told Peggy he’d like for her to give him ten pounds. Ten pounds, and me not able to get one fecking pound for a young pig. I wanted to ask you about your drill harrow—will you be using it on Saturday? There’s chickweed in the turnips, and I want to give the drills a bit of a schelp before it gets away from me. Isn’t the chickweed a real hure! ’Twould scald you, the way it grows so quick after all the tilling, but there’s not one bit of praiseach so far this year, thanks be to God. Did Mikey say anything lately about Doul Yank?” Mattie paused to catch his breath, and Simon Peter was finally able to answer his question.