by Paul Lynch
Colly says, I know what it is. It is the way that Boggs looks at you.
She slides off the rock and bloods it with her finger. C’mon, she says. We need to go gleaning.
Hold on, he says. His hand to his chin like a man in boy bones, always puzzling something out. What’s fat as a cake but has nothin to ate, is ten times tall but contains nothin at all?
You told us that riddle last week.
How could I? he says. I just made it up.
Colly!
What?
She means for me to leave.
She stands in the shade watching for her mother, the creeping sun stirring strange colors in the far-off. The land has become manifold, stretching itself in darkly different forms, shadows that reach and consume and dissolve into the one dark as if everything were just play to this truthdark all along. The wind low like a snuffling animal bending unseen the grass. This wind an accompaniment to all her days here, Blackmountain, a rock-ribbed hill road used by travelers, sales folk, drovers herding livestock to the townlands by the sea, or farmers carting lumpers before they went black and liquid in the earth. Men who took a meal and sometimes stayed the night if they were late passing, left the odd coin but most times bartered. But this last while, the road has risen few travelers and those who pass bring nothing to eat. A knock on the door now is more often the open hand of a beggar.
She sees her mother’s relief coming over the pass, steps quickly into the house. Colly on the stool, his body bent over the yellowing book of sums. The youngers tangled together on the straw. The older, Finbar, is making rope of Bran’s hair until the younger wails and she swings the child onto her shoulder. She hushes him and the candle beside Colly flickers as if something unseen has entered, though something unseen has already entered, she thinks. It sat itself down and spoke in secret tongue with Mam and it is you now who has to deal with the consequences. Footsteps and then Grace turns to see Sarah standing ill-sainted between the jambs of the door muttering about her feet. What is held in the woman’s hand.
Hee! Colly throws the book and leaps from the stool.
Sarah says, don’t you even think about looking.
She turns her back, takes the knife, and unsleeves the hare from its skin with a slowness the watchers inhabit. She drops it into the pot and fills the pot with water and hangs it over the fire. Then she takes the jug outside and laves her hands and cools her feet with water. Colly pretending again at the book but he is sly-watching the meat as if it could leap from the pot back into its skin and hare out the door. Grace sits rubbing at her head but Colly takes no notice. It is still strange to her, this bareness of scalp. Having hair now that tufts like tussock grass. Hair like fir needles. Hair like the blackthorn robbed of its sloes. She thinks of what the hare looked like headless and skinned, how it glistened gum-pink. The shine of its inner parts as if the mystery of what brought it life gleamed with revelation. And then the shock of a thought. What did Mam barter for this? She watches the woman carefully. She says, we gathered some charlock while you were gone. Cooked it up with some nettles and water.
Sarah sits and beckons for Bran. She opens her clothing to the hang of her breast and puts the child to it. My feet are broke, she says. Pass me that creepie for my feet.
The child takes the nipple but cannot draw milk.
Tongues thicken to a meat smell that can be tasted. She cannot remember the last time she had meat. She thinks, the spit-taste of lead. That man with the wolf face, telling stories over the fire, left hanging two wood pigeon full of shot. How he told them he was raised by wolves, said he could bark before he could speak. Started yapping at the roof, leaping about with two fiddling elbows. Mam telling him to shush, you’ll stir the youngers. The way his eyes shone while telling his stories as if they were not just true but had happened to him. Then he quietened down, hunched like an animal when he told them the story of his birth. Said, my name is Cormac mac Airt and I was found in the woods by a wolf. I was left there by a mammy that didn’t want me. The wolves raised me up as their own, so they did. Learned me to lap at the river with me tongue. I did everything the way of the wolf but they weren’t impressed later on, when they saw me do a man’s business standing up. How everybody had a laugh at this but Colly, the entire time giving the man a funny look. Cormac mac Airt’s not yer real name, he said. You’re Peter Crossan. And the wolves died off, so they did, in Ireland before you were born.
How she had wished Colly would shut up. Wolfman pawing at Colly with his eyes. You be careful, buachalán. Too much knowledge will make a tree grow from your neck.
It was two days later when Boggs came to visit.
All eyes at the table are upon Sarah as she piles the meat into a bowl. Colly’s elbows have expanded, his eyes eating the meat. He shoves at his sister as Sarah carries the bowl to the table. She slides it before Grace. Colly reaches to grab at it but Sarah cuffs his ear with a quick hand. Sit you quiet, she says.
She speaks to her daughter. All this is for you.
Grace blinks.
Eat you all of it.
Her stomach tightens as if with sickness. Question and confusion alight her eyes as she looks at her mother, looks at Colly, the faces of the youngers. She eyes the meat again and slides the bowl towards the center of the table.
She says, the others are hungry too.
Sarah pushes the bowl back towards her. I got this meat specially for you.
I won’t eat it. Here, Colly, you eat it instead.
She does not see the hand that strikes from darkness, her cheek scalded. She closes her eyes and watches the fire burn out. It is Sarah who begins to shout. Yer just like your father. You with your stubborn head. Her voice drops and then wobbles. If only you knew what I went through to get this. Now eat it. Eat every part of it. And what you cannot eat you will take away with you.
Salt tears in her mouth flavoring the food she eats with her fingers, heaven’s taste though she cannot enjoy it. She hears only the words her mother has said, wants to ask what she means though in her heart she knows. Colly has gone quiet, his eyes squished with anger. She eats until she can eat no more, pushes the bowl into the center of the table.
I feel sick. I feel sick with it. Let the others eat some.
You will take what is left with you. You need it to make you strong.
Sarah stands away from the table with Bran hanging from her arm. She points to Colly and Finbar. Take a look, Grace. Take a good long look at their faces. The harvest is destroyed, you know that. I’ve tried all over but nobody is giving alms. I am too far gone with child. You have to be responsible now. You must find work and work like a man, for nobody will give but low work to a girl your age. Come back to us then after a season, when your pocket’s full. This meat will get you started.
Her mother’s words reach her as if by some foreign tongue. The measure of what is known of her world stretching abruptly and beyond what a mind can foresee, as if hills and valleys could be leveled into some sudden and irrevocable horizon. She will not look her mother in the eye, is trying not to cry but she is. She looks around the table, sees the way the youngers stare at her, sees what is in Colly’s eyes, the whites of all their eyes and the who they are behind that white and what lies dangerous to the who of them, this danger she has feared, how it has finally been spoken, how it has been allowed to enter the room and sit grinning among them.
She wakes wet with tears knowing she has grieved her own death. A dream-memory of herself lying broken after some fall, a strange witness to her own passing. She touches her wet cheek, feels relief to have wakened, listens to the others. The way it seems each boy’s breath entwines one to the other like rope. The arch of Colly’s foot warm to her shin. His mind off on some night adventure. She wonders how far he is traveling in his dream and hopes he is happy. How each mind, she thinks, is held in its own husk, a night-drift more private than anything you can see behind a face by day.
And then it comes. Grief for what has changed. Grief for what is.
The whispering breath of Sarah tells her to change out of her clothes. Soon she is out of bed, stands naked before her mother, covers an arm over the small of her breasts. Sarah grabs Grace’s hand and yanks it away from her. Weren’t you naked the day you were born? She produces cloth to bind Grace’s chest, stops and says, you’ve no need of it. Hands her a man’s shirt that swallows her. It smells like rocks pulled from a river. She holds the breeches in front of her and studies them. The fawn fabric is patched tan at the knees. She thinks, they look like a dog has had them for slumber. From whom did they come? Into the first leg she steps and then the other and she looks down at herself—such a sight, wishbone legs snapped loose into two gunnysacks. The breeches go past her ankles. Sarah rolls the ends up, stands behind her and loops the waist with string. A jacket that stinks of rained-on moss. A frieze coat ravelly about the neck and yawning at the elbow.
I might as well be wearing jute.
Sarah whispers. Here. Put on your boots. And try this cap. Your brother’s cap is too small for you. Pull it lower. Plenty of boys go about dressed in a father’s old clothing.
Grace stands staring past the door at the world held starless by a flat dark. Leg-skin strange in these breeches and the cold whittling her head. Sarah hands her a candle and the light falls from her mother’s face so that it seems she is not herself, stands masked to her own daughter. She fusses over Grace, puts a satchel over her shoulder, rolls up the sleeves of the jacket. Then she looks towards the sleeping children, holds Grace with a long look, and whispers. Get to the town and don’t dally on the mountain road. Ask for Dinny Doherty and tell him you are your brother. He has always been kind to us. He likes the boy’s humor, so try and sound a bit like Colly. Tomorrow is the Samhain, so stay indoors with him and keep from going out. The streets will be full of trouble.
She sees a memory of a man passing by stringing heaps of ponies and a huge laugh out of him. Dinny Doherty is that wee man who takes over a hill with his laughter.
Sarah says, go now before the others stir up.
She turns, finds the center of Sarah’s eye, holds it. She says, what are you going to call the wean?
Sarah holds her eyes closed and then opens them again. If it is a girl, I’ll call her Cassie. Now go.
Cassie.
A hand on her arm the last moment of her mother.
Of a sudden she knows. That these old clothes belonged to her father.
The sun’s breaking light traces the mountain’s solid dark. She steps into that first light, the track cold to her feet, her legs weirded. She cannot stop sobbing. Cannot understand how it has come to this. Her life as if it were just some rock hurled by someone else. She wades up the hillside path and stops at the vanishing point. When she turns she sees her mother has been watching, an indigo streak that steps into the house. By now the dawn has fanned its bluing light to brighten the stone house made small but held within it a universe. The chair on the road with its shadow is a twice-empty shape. She thinks of Colly and what he gave her before they went to sleep, his hand spread open in the dark so she had to see it with her fingers. His box of lucifers. The matchbox cindered at the edges where one time he tried to flame it. Now it is filled with strands of her hair. Just so you can keep your strength till it grows back. And then his whispers. Let me go with you. Please. Let me. And she answered. I wouldn’t know how to care for you. How he lay there sulking.
She is about to turn when she sees the small shape of Colly come running out of the house. Her heart leaps to meet him, Sarah out the door after Colly and she takes a hold of him by the shirt, tries to pull him back. Something sad and comic in their distant scramble and then Colly hurls a heart-full shout that rises and then is gone into the sky’s all of sound.
She waits all day out of sight of the house until evening fringes the moss. Knee-bent and in stealth she returns among shadows down a different hill. The heather brushing off her breeches whispers, do not get you caught. She steals by the back of the house, can hear Sarah chiseling at the youngers. To the side of the house and what she hopes to see—Colly is toking on the hammer rock. She wants to tell him everything will be all right. That she will be back soon enough. That it will be a matter of months. That he has to be strong for the others. She fingers a small rock and flings it at his leg, misses, throws another. He springs off the hammer rock like a jacked-up dog. What in the fuck? he says.
She whispers. Would you ever shush.
He steps forward. Grace? Is that you?
I said would you shush.
His voice comes to her luminous and then his face appears and he is bright with the sight of her. He pulls her into a hug. Are you back for good?
I’m still gone.
Then what are you doing here?
She hears herself speak as if another has stolen her mouth.
Do you still want to come?
Everything is still wet. Where can she wait for him but by the windbreak of a peat trench cut by who knows when and dry just about. The night enfolding all into the one. She thinks, he did not come when he said he would. He did not come because to do so would be mad in the head. He did not come because Mam will be watching—she knows what he is like. He is so giddy he would not be able to hide it. You are on your own now, wee girl.
She lies and listens to the pulse of all things. The closing song of the birds. The air stitched with insects. The wind’s voice and how it speaks over everything. Closer still, the sound of her own body. The sound her blunt head makes as it scratches her cradling arm. The breath held short in her mouth. When she squeezes her ears there is a sound like distant thunder, loud enough to drown out her heart. Closer still, and what lies beneath her heart’s thudding, the silent screaming of fear.
She awakes with a start when Colly finds her. She is sullen with tiredness, wants to slap him. The night has almost swung through.
She says, why didn’t you stay at home?
Colly can manage, it seems, with the shortest of sleep and his mood never darkens but she can tell at once he is different.
He says, Boggs came back like you said he would. How did you know he was coming? Came in the door as we were off to bed. I had to wait till they were asleep and then Bran was crying and when I finally got out, the hounds followed me halfway up the hill. I had to keep telling them to shush their yapping. He’s in a wild temper. Said everything was gone to fuck. That some cunt up in Binnion clubbed one of his dogs dead. Kept giving out about the rents. I was sat at the fire. He asked Mam to feed him and she gave him the soup and he fired it across the room. It went all over my legs and the bowl rolled at my feet. I’m still wet with it. He said to her, what is this? Charlock? After all I done for you. Putting a roof over your head. All I ask is that you look after me now and again. You want me now to treat you the same as any other spalpeen? It was then that he saw you were gone. He asked after you and laughed when Mam said she sent you off to get work. He said, what’s the use of her? There’s only one use for her, and then he laughed again, a great laugh to himself. Mam said you cut your own hair and would go at it like a strong lad. He answered her back that you could work all you like but there’s no lumpers for a hundred mile that can be bought or sold and that means what it means. And she said, what does it mean? And he said, I’ll tell you what it means. It means she’ll be coming right back with her tail between her legs. It means everything is beyond dire and getting worse, for there are men sitting about hungry and idle and they’ll grow violent because that is the way of it. It’s simple economics unless they do something about it—the Crown, he said. And it was then that Mam said the strangest thing I ever heard from her. This is the truth. She said, let her steal for us, then.
They walk all day deeper into the deep of the world than they have ever traveled alone. Colly gushing as if rivered with words, walks swinging his arms like a soldier. She has begun to notice how she holds her breath as she walks. She thinks, he sees all this as sport, but my heart beats out of my chest like a fist. They wa
lk through the mountain bogland along rough track, the place vast-seeming, almost treeless, a mean wind scolding from the east. The cloud shadows drifting against the moss. She thinks, there is no memory in this place. A slab of lake and a lonely tree and a sky that foretells the worst kind of rain. They sit under the tree and she unwraps for Colly what’s left of the meat. He sucks and slavers on the bones while her stomach sounds out as if something is being ripped leisurely from it. Colly looks up, says, would you listen to the unholy yelling in my gut.
That was my tummy, eejit.
He looks at her dumbfounded. Twas not.
Twas so.
Tell me this, then. What’s thin as a rake but looks fat as a cat, is bald as a coot but wears a black hat?
She pinches him in the ribs. Says, shut your bake.
She wishes her mother had not made her eat the way she did. Her appetite had grown dormant, had settled into a low ache you could live with. Now it is alert—the tearing teeth of an animal inside her, or a knife with a twisting point.
Colly reaches into his pocket and produces a clay pipe. This was lying about, he says. You’ll have to learn to smoke it.
She rolls her face in disgust. I will not.
Do you want to be a man or not?
I can be a man without smoking.
No you can’t. Anyhow, I keep telling you. You can stave off the appetite with tobacco.
He tries to teach her how to walk like a boy. Yer doing it all wrong. Like this. Hold the pipe in your mouth. Let it hang like so. Aye, that’s it. Now say something to me.
She sucks on the pipe. Says, can you gimme some plug, please?
Jesus. Whatever you do, don’t speak.
What’s wrong with my voice?
What’s right with it?
She adjusts her voice, says it again. What’s wrong with it, I said?
You’ve got to stop sounding considerate. Your voice needs to sound like yer always telling somebody to do something even if yer not. Like there’s a dog listening, waiting on your command. That’s the way men talk, so they do.
