The Law of Dreams

by Peter Behrens

  “It’s your winnings, so. I don’t know why you stand it.”

  “He’s not so bad.”

  “You let him rule you too much.” McCarty puffed his pipe contentedly.

  “Oh, and you stand up to him? Very brave I seen you, McCarty. Very bold.”

  McCarty shrugged and waved smoke away.

  “Never, McCarty. Not once.” She went back to chopping turnips and leeks.

  Fergus smoked his pipe, staring into the slow fire. Muldoon was an oppressive presence in the shanty, even when he wasn’t there. Molly seemed always to be listening for his footsteps, always waiting for him. No supper could be put out until the ganger was in his chair, eyeing every plate, making sure that no one had a bigger portion than his. They each had to sit in the same place at the table every night — it was another of Muck’s rules.

  Men like to rule — girls, and others. Rule animals; rule the ground.

  He remembered Carmichael distributing the plots each year. Telling them where they could dig their beds and plant the sets.

  Muck ruled her. Also ruled him, and McCarty. It was no good pretending he didn’t rule them all.

  In order to live, you had to submit to rule. It was what you did in exchange for wages. What a horse did for food.

  You could try telling yourself you weren’t in submission; navvies liked to pretend so. Men had their pride. Tramping had seemed like freedom, but that was an illusion. What was a tramp except a road slavey, always hungry, looking for a place to fit himself in? Six days a week when the timer’s bell sounded three hundred or so ex-tramps picked up picks and shovels, which they were not permitted to put down again until the noon bell rang — when they were allowed twenty minutes to eat their dinner. Then they worked until another bell rang at the end of the day.

  The Bog Boys had thought they weren’t in submission. At least Luke had imagined so. Misappreciation killed her.

  Molly, interrupting his thoughts, handed him a package wrapped in newspaper. “Here.”

  “What is it?”

  “Turnip tops.”

  He immediately thought of that gray, cold day with Luke, scouting, when they had gleaned a turnip field.

  Turnips, hunger food on the mountain, only eaten in bad times.

  “Do you want ’em or don’t you?”

  He looked at her blankly.

  “For your blue horse.” Impatiently. “Still kicking, ain’t he?”

  “He is.”

  “Muck don’t care for the nags so don’t tell him.”

  I’m only a horse myself. So are you.

  “And here he comes,” McCarty warned them.

  The door flew open and Muldoon entered, followed by old Peadar, both of them smelling of beer.

  “What are you doing with these fellows — having a game?”

  “No, nothing, Muck — only waiting for you. Sit down, I’ll take off your boots.”

  “What supper have you got me?”

  “Mutton it is.”

  “Mutton, mutton . . . I’m tired of your old mutton. Why don’t you feed us beefsteak like Englishmen?”

  “Well, mutton’s what there is.”

  “English eat beefsteaks. This is England here, let us feed like English. Give it to us red. Sick to death of your old mutton.”

  “It isn’t England anyhow. Wales it is.”

  “Damn you for saucing me!”

  “I’m not, Muck. Sit down, let me take off your boots.”

  Muldoon’s hungry, rampant look made them all uneasy. Molly started pushing the ganger into his chair. Suddenly he threw his arms around her in a bear hug, lifting her feet off the dirt floor.

  “Set me down, Muck, you idjit.”

  Instead he began swirling her around the dim, crowded little room. “You ain’t Kelly’s — you belong to Muck.”

  “Oh, go on, Muck! I can’t breathe. Let me down! The fellows want to eat. Come, let me go . . . I’ve made you a good supper.”

  “You’re my sleeper, ain’t you? Druid mna, little witch.”

  “Let me down, you lugger.”

  Then Muck stumbled and released her. The girl nearly escaped, but he seized her wrist. “Give us a kiss, angel.”

  “No, let me go.” She was turning away when Muck cracked her.

  Suddenly the room smelled very bad — not different than before, only stronger: the stench of half-burned trash, men’s dirty clothes, and sweat.

  Her lip was cut, there was blood in her mouth and on her chin, and Muldoon was pushing her roughly across the room.

  “Muck, don’t — there’s the supper, I cooked you good supper. Meat on the hob —”

  He gave her a shove through the curtain of their bedroom then went in after her, disappearing.

  Fergus looked at McCarty, who shrugged.

  How unfinished and shapeless you feel. How lewd.

  They could hear Muldoon cracking her, again and again.

  “I’ll show you down, you little witch.”

  The iron bedsprings bucked and creaked. Muldoon owned the only set of bedsprings in camp — he’d boasted of them. Molly was proud of them as well.

  Fergus caught McCarty’s eye again, and the horse boy slowly shook his head.

  He could hear the thrusts clearly.

  She didn’t make a sound.

  Kneeling by the hob, Peadar, the old lodger, sighed and picked up a spoon to give the boiling mutton a stir. “Come, this looks quite ready. We had better eat.” He began dishing out the mutton onto their plates.

  McCarty sat down.

  “He’ll kill her,” Fergus said.

  “She’s a rugged little thing, tough as a pony. Come, take your feed. It ain’t your affair, Fergus.”

  He sat down reluctantly. Staring at the mutton on his plate, smelling the steam, and disgusted by his own appetite.

  The question is, who rules, and why. These arrangements can change. You don’t need to accept. You can struggle. You may bust out of one set of rules into another.

  He made up his mind he wouldn’t eat. While he was staring at his food, smelling it, hunger licking his mouth — the ugly sounds from the bedroom stopped.

  “There it is,” McCarty said, relieved. “All blown over now.”

  “I would nail that fellow’s tongue to a tree,” Fergus said.

  McCarty looked up. “Don’t you give him no spark. She’s the one will pay for it.”

  He was still staring hungrily at his untouched food when Muldoon sauntered out, buckling his belt. Spitting into the coals the ganger helped himself from the kettle of boiled meat. “Ain’t this fine spoileen?”

  Old Peadar nodded. “It is, it is.”

  You butcher a pig by slitting its throat. At first, hung by its heels, blood dripping, a pig retains its shape. White strings of muscle and the force of whatever it was that binds flesh to bones. As you butcher, the shape dissolves, until there is nothing left except a pigskin attached to a heel caught in a loop of rope, a soak of black blood on the ground, a pair of eyes.

  He heard her come through the curtain and cross the room. While she was helping herself from the kettle he saw her gown was torn. Sitting down, she started to eat. She had cleaned the blood off her chin.

  No one had noticed his foolishness, his pathetic gesture of solidarity. He hesitated, then began to cut up his food.

  “I said you’d be eating meat every day in England,” Muldoon told her.

  “You did,” she agreed.

  THE BLUE horse filled out. New drafts of animals came in, but never any with the bones as good as his. The galls were slowly healing. Feeding on oats twice a day, his coat had taken on a shine. Fergus soaked the cuts on his legs with brine, applied salve, then wrapped them in clean rags overnight. He persuaded the farrier to replace two missing shoes. They were tipping sixteen, eighteen, twenty trucks a day. The blue was a puller, strongest on the contract, but the other tip boys, fearing his evil temper, left him to Fergus.

  The better he fed and cared for the blue, the meaner
the horse became. Going out in the field in the mornings with a handful of hay, Fergus could sense the animal’s distrust as it backed away from him, snorting and pawing, slashing his tail. Captured then led inside, fed and watered, he tried to bite at every opportunity. Each time they ran a tip, he could feel the horse’s anger uncoiling. Sometimes he thought the blue was going to dash off the embankment and carry him along but at the last moment the horse always let himself be pulled away.

  Ashes

  ONE SATURDAY NIGHT in Mr. Murdoch’s camp, Muck Muldoon was battling a tramp called Greaves for a prize of one sovereign, put up by the contractor.

  All the tip boys wanted Muldoon to defeat the navvy.

  “Muck is our boy,” McCarty said. “Greaves, who’s heard of Greaves? A tramp, a shifter.”

  Three hundred navvies formed a hollow square in the muddy street outside the contractor’s beer shop. There were no ropes; four tip boys with torches stood marking the corners of the ring.

  In his corner Muck studied his gold watch, then slipped it into his coat pocket and took off his coat, waistcoat, and shirt, handing the clothes to Molly. In the opposite corner Greaves had already stripped off his shirt and was slapping himself briskly against the cold.

  At the sound of the timer’s bell, the two boxers approached the center of the ring warily, Greaves massive and yellow, Muldoon wiry and dark, lean and agile as any horse boy.

  They touched knuckles, stepping back as if they’d been stung. Muldoon began dancing around the ring, darting in to throw little hectoring jabs at the navvy’s face, like a bird stabbing nectar from a flower. Greaves seemed bewildered, shaking his head, spitting blood from a split lip. He began working Muldoon steadily into a corner, ignoring the jabs, pressing ahead stolidly. Once he had Muldoon trapped, Greaves stood and fought like a mountain. Muck kept jabbing but his quick, light punches didn’t seem to have any impact on Greaves, who was working the ganger’s head and ears with high, hard blows that must have hurt his own hands.

  But Muck stayed on his feet, and Greaves was visibly tiring, slowing. When the tramp dropped his hands for a second, Muldoon quickly placed a jab below each eye. Greaves threw up his hands to cover his face and Muck hooked him once on the belt then took the opportunity to escape the corner.

  The crowd was breathing steam that floated and spun in the gaslight. He could see Molly yelling for Muldoon.

  If men hit so hard for so long what is left? What is inside? Where is your spirit? Where is your voice?

  Greaves suddenly caught the ganger with a blow that knocked Muck on his rump, but he sprang up while the crowd was still roaring. Both men had foam dripping from their lips. The tramp had open cuts on both cheeks; the skin below his eyes was puffy. Muldoon was unmarked except for a trickle of blood from his right ear.

  Suddenly he stopped prancing. Taking position at the center of the ring, he beckoned Greaves, taunting the tramp to stand and fight, toe-to-toe, mantoman. This was what the navvies wanted to see and they began howling at Greaves to meet the challenge.

  Greaves approached warily.

  Once they were toe-to-toe, both men began driving their punches. They fought like two engines — slamming, stamping; not really human.

  The sight of two men using themselves brutally, blood and spit flying from their mouths, was wildly stimulating to the crowd, cawing like crows.

  The nearness of death provokes. The smell of blood. Violence drives you from yourself.

  Suddenly Muldoon fell to his knees. Greaves stopped punching and stepped back, nearly tripping over his feet. Blood streamed from a cut on Muldoon’s scalp, drenching his eyes, blinding him. On his knees Muck was still swinging wildly, punching at air while Greaves paced back and forth and the crowd roared. Molly stepped into the ring and came up behind Muck with a towel.

  It seemed the fight was over. Greaves had retreated to his corner, where his friends were rubbing his shoulders while he gulped from a jug of beer.

  Fergus watched Molly clean blood from Muldoon’s eyes while Greaves stood with arms raised, acknowledging cheers.

  Men were turning away, going inside the beer shop, when the crowd gave a roar — Muldoon was on his feet again, roaming the ring, feinting punches and barking at Greaves, who stood with hands on hips, chest rising and falling.

  Something terrible in the scene, desperate, and something you understood.

  We are all trying to break out of something.

  Shrugging, Greaves threw away his towel and started into the ring after Muck. The ganger wouldn’t let himself be cornered. Weaving and ducking, he dodged each cumbersome punch, skipping around the ring with the tramp rumbling after him like a loaded truck.

  Then Muldoon made a stand at the center of the ring once more, and beckoned Greaves.

  The tramp closed in and uncoiled a punch, but Muldoon dodged it. As Greaves stumbled, thrown off by his own momentum, Fergus saw Muldoon fling a cloud of dust or ashes into the tramp’s face.

  Roaring in pain, Greaves raised both hands to his eyes and Muldoon landed two jabs at his kidneys, then two more under his eyes when the tramp dropped his hands. Then Muck got behind him, leapt onto his back, and began punching his ear and clawing at his face while the tramp staggered around the ring trying to throw him off.

  Fergus saw Molly jumping up and down in the corner, screaming for Muck.

  Didn’t she think the violence applied to her?

  He’s a killer, don’t you see? He could kill you. Easy he could.

  When Greaves stopped, Muldoon knelt on top of him, hammering his back, neck, and hip until the bell rang and men surged forward and dragged the ganger off.

  They washed Muck down with a bucket of beer sluiced over his head. Fergus watched him accept his prize from Mr. Murdoch, who clapped him on the shoulder and said he was the roaring boy, the lion of the line, and a credit to the Milesians.

  They were throwing water over the prostrate tramp, Greaves.

  Men like a rampage.

  FERGUS AND MCCARTY walked up the path with Molly. She was carrying a bucket of beer, and Muldoon stumbled after them, muttering and clutching the sovereign in his fist.

  “What was it you passed him?” Fergus asked.

  “Whatever are you talking about, boy?” She grinned at McCarty.

  “When you were in the ring. What he threw.”

  “All’s fair,” said McCarty. He exchanged a glance with Molly, both smirking.

  “In France the Scotch navvies would carry iron spikes into the ring,” McCarty said. “What’s a little sanding? Old Muck won clean enough, for a railway bout.”

  THEY CARRIED the laundry kettle inside, and Muck stepped in. She began washing the blood off him while he stood docile.

  “What’s wrong with Muck?”

  “Punchy. That fellow put some hurt on him.” After washing him down she rubbed him dry and settled him on a stool in front of the fire. Using Muck’s steel razor, she carefully shaved a patch on his scalp and began cleaning and dressing the gash.

  “Ashes,” she said suddenly.

  “What?”

  “Ashes I give him. To taste on his tongue. When he’s lagging. The bitter sparks him up — there you are, hold still, Muck. You’re a broken egg.”

  “To toss in Greaves’ eyes, you mean.”

  “What do you suppose a bout is, after all, Fergus? Do you think it’s country feast, a dance to the moon?”

  “A fight’s to win.” McCarty spoke without looking up from the newspaper he had spread open on the table.

  “That’s right,” she agreed.

  “Perhaps you want ashes then. For you don’t seem ever to win,” Fergus said.

  Molly ignored him, carefully winding a cotton bandage around and around Muck’s head.

  McCarty looked up then went back to his paper.

  A girl was a mystery. You wanted to protect her, also destroy her a little. You wanted her to ruin you in exactly the same way.

  Tired Horses

  THE WELSH SABBATH
WAS ENFORCED by magistrates and no work could be performed along the line. Even the beer shop was shut. The navvies and the tips spent the day sleeping, or drinking at blind pigs — shanties where the women sold beer. Others went roaming the country looking for fresh eggs. A few men with guns went out poaching.

  It was his second or third Sunday in the camp. Molly gave them black sweet tea at breakfast, and in the middle of the morning Fergus and McCarty were still at the table, eating wheat bread and honey. Molly was piling up clothes for a wash. Muck and Peadar had dragged the bench outside where they sat in the watery sunshine smoking their pipes and drinking beer.

  “Who feeds the horses on Sunday?” Fergus asked, thinking of the blue standing out in the barren field.

  “Feed the nags? No one, I suppose. Sunday’s the day of rest.”

  “I’m going down, then.”

  “They aren’t your creatures,” Molly said. “You’re not responsible.”

  “Feed bins are locked,” McCarty reminded him. “They’re always afraid of gypsies stealing. Muck keeps the key.”

  “I’ll get it from Muck, then.”

  “He won’t give it to you.”

  “Can you get it?” Fergus asked Molly.

  She shook her head. “He keeps keys on his belt — he’d murder me.”

  “Then I’ll drive them out along the road. It’s free grass along the ditches. I’ll give them a graze. Will you come with me?” he asked McCarty.

  “I’m going to sleep all day and mend my clothes. I seen enough of nags.”

  “Let it be, Fergus,” Molly said.

  “I can’t let it be.”

  THE CAMP felt desolate on a Sunday morning. It seemed abandoned, and the stillness made him think of Cappaghabaun. Were Carmichael’s cattle surviving the winter up there without hay for their browse, with no one driving them from pasture to pasture?

  Browsing cabin wreckage. Rotten potatoes were cattle feed, perhaps.

  What wild things had seeded over his plot?

  When ground lay open, you never knew what would take.

  He passed a few lumps of men lying where they’d collapsed the night before, on the spree. Asleep not dead, but they may as well have been.