by Paul Lynch
The old man’s eyes continue to wolf. Their yellowing and the way they are orbed in the skull speak a clear reminder of death. His bone-hand to her wrist and what he does then with his thumb, how he trails with his thumbnail the underflesh of her wrist as if to startle her to his plight, to mark her with his existence. Her arm jerks back. She puts a hand into her pocket where she finds a mealcake half eaten. Here. The old man snaps it out of her hand and gobbles it like a dog. She looks across to see Wilson with some string of a fella, chatting as if they were old friends, handling first a melodeon and then a fiddle. Wilson trying to strike a deal for the fiddle with two crumbling mealcakes. He is wearing on his face the bent spectacles. Some woman in a gnawed old dress walks beside Soundpost leaning into his strength. She whispers, a farthing for a bit of relief?
It is then she sees the mule encircled by four others, three men and a woman, and she does not think but pushes quick through the cattle, Colly roaring at the top of his voice, fuck off, fuck off, the lot of ye! How they fall from the mule like shadows.
They are dreamwalkers who leave that village behind them. How those mask-faces linger like what haunts a dreaming mind. She looks to the land to see what is real. The trees solid-stood. A knit-stone wall that could take the weight of a bull. She does not know what she feels, this almost-fear. Thinks of the booley weaponed against thieves—the rifle, the blunderbuss, the cudgel. Wonders if they are weaponed against hunger. She looks to Soundpost with the blunderbuss unslung and realizes now she has separated from one world and is part of another. Soundpost mouthing on for all to listen. It were one of them stole my animal, I know it. And now that godless lot want the blessing of my Christian charity—
She cannot listen, joins Clackton up front. There is soothe in walking alongside him. In side view she sneaks a look at him, tries to imagine her father. He is the only man among them, she thinks. The way he walks within his own peace. You can learn from him, Colly. You can learn how a man is to behave in trouble. You can learn how to keep hold of your head. The way he never even reached for the rifle in warning yet Soundpost threatened so he—
Clackton suddenly sputters on his gin. She watches him cough into his sleeve.
Colly says, aye, yer right, I can learn how not to drink gin.
An ancient washerwoman stands on the road with a weasel in her hand still soft from the kill. When Clackton salutes her she scuttles off-road into hedgerow. Grace watches Clackton take another sup. She studies the town rising before them. A trace of cold light sketched on rooftops. The enfold of church bells and how after them the street empties into silence. Just one quick face peers out of a doorway to see upon the coming bustle and then disappears back in.
They halt the booley in the town upon a skewed triangle of streets. A broad-armed barrel roller stops to watch them. Wilson whoaing and whistling at the dogs. He stands with a teacherly air in his new spectacles. Clackton supping from his flask. He says, I can’t believe they named a town after a skin condition. I must have Pettigo all over. He begins scratching himself. She looks at Clackton blankly, as does Wilson.
Soundpost has an errand to run—for a relative, he says. He alludes to legal documents. He smiles, she thinks, as if he were the father of importance. You would think, says Colly, the way he taps his nose that the secret is housed in that great honker of his.
She watches Wilson step through a shop door that tinkles a high bell. Down the street a two-horse gig pulls up with a wobble and two men get off and go in separate directions. Clackton is talking to some stranger and when next she looks they have walked off together. She eyes the jook of a lone magpie by the church tower. Knows she is transfixed by these ill-spoken birds yet wishes she wasn’t. Such plumage when you see them up close—not black at all but jade and turquoise—and yet she cannot shake the feeling of ill omen. She watches the noisy flit of the bird. One for sorrow, she says, two for joy. She sighs with relief when another magpie joins it.
Colly says, how can it be that one bird can change luck—they do their own thing without any magical powers, they’re not even aware of us—they are trapped in magpie land doing their own business.
Maybe they look at us and think we bring them bad luck.
I reckon what they say about magpies is to teach you that life is whimsy—one minute you are in sorrow and the next you are in luck and the wheel of life is always turning.
Another two magpies wing down upon the bell tower. That’s two more, she says. You know what that means. Three for a girl, four for a—
Soundpost is suddenly beside her. Who are you talking to? he says. A large brown envelope is tucked in his oxter. He is giving her that look again, the frown that peers past her eyes as if to see into the place that holds the lie. He stamps his foot, reaches for his watch. And where now has that Mr. Clackton got to? Give me patience, patience and peace.
Wilson has returned from the shop. Soundpost shouts at her. Go find Mr. Clackton.
She walks past an old man bent dragging a gunnysack, passes a girl her own age leading a cart horse by the bridle. And then there is Clackton, in a laneway running his hand through his hair talking to some fellow, his back turned to her.
Colly says, what’s he up to?
Soundpost grunts when she says she could not find Clackton. Then Clackton is behind her as if he were there all along. He is looking over the mule, begins scratching his head.
Soundpost says, you are holding up the booley once again, Mr. Clackton.
Clackton stands staring at the animal. Christ almighty, he says. Are yez stupid bastards or what?
Soundpost turns on his heel as if struck. All eyes follow Clackton’s pointing finger to the fastening straps on the mule that have been severed. Clackton scratching at his head. He says, that fucking meal bag is gone. Which one of you were supposed to be watching it?
She feels for these cattle as they idle in the street. Their eyes skite with agitation and hunger. She rubs at the pregnant belly of a cow she calls Kira, who seems permanently vexed. Another called Ailbe keeps butting the cow before her. You can tell a lot about the mood of a cow just by watching its tail. When they are happy they let their tails hang down. When they are frightened or sore they tuck their tails between their legs.
She turns and watches the street where Soundpost marched off waving his arms in search of a new meal bag. His crimson cheeks no match for the color that came out his mouth.
Colly says, that Soundpost had his tail tucked into a third leg—how long now is he gone?
She says, who knew he had such fine words?
Colly says, some of his curses have not yet reached Blackmountain—you ass-backwards bastards—hee!—I liked that one in particular.
What was the other?
I heard him say cockchafers.
I think he put syphilitic in front of it. What is syphilitic, do you think?
I asked Mam that once, she said it is something to do with Sisyphus.
It is later that she feels sorry for Soundpost. How he has vexed the group, reduced them to sneaky-eyed contact, whistles and herding calls. And yet he has fallen further into himself. She knows he is angry but also unsure and all over some stringy cow that’s gone missing and a bag of meal.
Colly says, in all my days, I’ve never encountered a fellow so unfortunate.
Clackton behaves now as though Soundpost did not exist. Quietly he has assumed control of the group. Led them off-road onto some hill track without consultation. She would like to say, please, Mr. Clackton, no more rock eaters or thieving townlands. Soundpost walking with the blunderbuss cradled, watching the new meal bag as if the pooka could secret it away. He stares at every sioch and furrow. Stares at Clackton and she wonders what he thinks, if it was Clackton sold the meal bag. She wonders, did he see those beggars in Sircog trying to cut the bag free with a knife?
As Wilson walks he has a go at his new fiddle. Has no idea how to tune it. When he strikes the horsehair it sounds like all the pain in the world gathered at once and man’s
inability to express it.
Finally Soundpost snaps. Mercy! Mercy! Mercy! Make the music stop.
It is evil that blooms out of a field or just the frightening shape of a boy. She cannot decide because what she sees makes her feel both sickened and fearful. How the boy stands on the verge like something whispered. Closer still and she can hardly look, for there is something so awful about him. Colly calls him a monkey but clearly he is not. It is not his tattered clothing Colly refers to, the stick shape that makes it seem something within the child is broken. Nor is it the hair thinning on his head that makes this boy of perhaps five appear like an old man in miniature. It is the fur on his face. The fur of a half animal. The fur of a cat. The fur of a mule. The fur of a boy who has had the gab taken out of him by the pooka. For sure it is the fur of hunger. The way he stands stock-still but for his hands that knead with worry. There is a roar and a wave from Clackton that bring the booley to a stop.
She says, Soundpost is going to pop his hat.
Colly says, he’ll think this is a trick, that’s what.
Clackton bends to the boy and the boy takes Clackton’s sleeve and tries to pull him with urgent solemnity towards an off-road path. Clackton puts some question to the boy but gets no answer. She sees Wilson intently watching. Her eyes flit the tree gaps, shoot like sparrows through hedgerow. A mud cabin stood in its own winter at the eye’s long reach. And then Soundpost is upon Clackton and the boy, his hands nervous with the blunderbuss. What in mercy’s name are you at? he shouts. This could be a trap. Mercy! Mercy! Haven’t you caused enough trouble as it is?
Clackton still upon his knee looks hard and long at the road and then at the child. He stands slowly and meets Soundpost with a look that seems to bore through him. Put away that gun, you fool, he says.
He walks to the new meal bag and unstraps it, drops it with a thump, scoops his cup into it, and hands it to the boy. Soundpost begins as if to protest but stops.
Clackton says, you’ve got five minutes, wee man, to show me what your trouble is and then we’ll be on our way again.
They could be father and son upon that path to some distant observer, but she has seen the child’s ill-nature.
She says to Colly, he could be a demon sent by the pooka to lead us wrong.
Colly says, mind that story about the she-wolf that stole the baby boy from the woman, carried the baby off in her mouth, and then gave suckle to him with her cubs—I’ll bet that’s what happened to this fellow.
Sight of such a boy stirs up thoughts she had earlier when they came through Sircog. How you are made to feel both despair and disgust. How you want to help and find you cannot. How you want to show kindness and yet feel loathing. That raggedy old man and scratch of his yellow fingernail. It is disgusting to be touched unless you decide to be the toucher. It is hard to help those who give you horror.
She watches Clackton grow smaller, his left hand upon the rifle strap. Soundpost holding his blunderbuss as if ready to use it. He eyes the air as if air itself could fold in concealment. He eyes the fields, where shadows could hold crouching shapes to a mind that wants to see it. The unsettling dart of a bird. The world reshaping itself into cunning and disorder. He turns and looks at the empty road behind them, studies the distance. Finally he says, you two. We’re moving on without him. This is a trap, I know it.
He is trying to bold up a voice that sounds cracked and fluted as if Clackton’s ghost were standing a boot to his throat. She glances at Wilson but he sends back a faceless look. He seems tense, different somehow. The spectacles are gone from his nose. He has put the cudgel on the ground and holds instead the satchel.
She steps towards Soundpost and it is then she becomes another, or perhaps it is that another becomes her. How she touches his wrist and says quietly, wait for him, Embury. There’s nobody hiding to steal your cattle. That boy is just sick. You need Clackton to see the booley through.
In the moment she says it she realizes what she has done—fingers upon flesh and the clammy charge of his skin.
She has spoken and touched him as a woman.
The moment widens as if time could allow for her expanding horror. Soundpost snaps his wrist to his hip while she turns to hide her blush. She hears Colly’s laugh, waits for Soundpost to make some charge at her. She thinks, how can this have just happened? You should have bound your chest down, just to be sure. Now you have given yourself away to him.
She hears the thumb-flick and click of Soundpost’s pocket watch.
Five minutes, Soundpost says. Five minutes is all he’s getting.
Colly says, you’ve just confused him is all—now he just thinks you’re in alliance with Clackton.
They stand alert to all movement, watching the distance. The cattle bawling their blithe conversation. Soundpost fidgeting.
Colly wants to know how raiders might come, if they come upon you all at once or sneak off your cattle one by—
It is then she sees Clackton. He is an ant shape traversing hell’s half acre until she can see him draw near, a slumberous way about him and slightly bent, his rifle easy. The boy is not with him. When he meets the booley his eyes see only some private darkness.
Soundpost says, well, then? What is it?
Clackton, it seems, has been infected by the boy’s soundlessness. He will not give an answer. He runs a shaking hand through his hair and restarts the booley with a grunt, foots forward with slack shoulders. She watches his hand reach into his coat and withdraw a bottle of gin.
Hee! says Colly. So that’s what he was getting in Pettigo.
She watches Clackton soak his mouth and her mind fills with visions—that small cabin and what was in it. A portal to hell itself and all evil, Colly says. And Clackton meeting face-to-face with the devil.
She finds herself walking alongside him, knows he needs comfort. Watches the way he grips the bottle by the throat, the way he has suddenly drunk half it. She sneaks a sidewards look and sees the man is crying.
The warmth this spring evening is like the coming of summer, she thinks. The quartz in every stone wall glitters like gold struck by sun. She has been debating with Colly about the weight of a soul. If a cow’s soul is heavier.
Not necessarily, says Colly. The human soul is more complex, full of sorrow and anger and guilt and all them other things that make people bitter, whereas the soul of a cow has no weight in it, eating grass all day just fills you with hot air—now, a horse, that is a different—
Of a sudden, Clackton sits down on the side of the road, then slumps forward. She turns and shouts for the booley to stop. Wilson roaring commands at the dogs.
She studies Clackton and thinks he is dead.
Colly says, that demon boy put a spell on him.
Soundpost takes one look, says, that man is drunk as a dead donkey. Mercy! What a fool. Throw him up on the pack animal.
Wilson grabs hold of Clackton’s empty gin bottle and throws it high into a field so that for a moment it gathers the sun into itself. Then they lift Clackton and flop him pendulous over the back of the mule and the pack animal complains with a loud call.
Colly says, that Clackton has got the tunnies for sure.
Soundpost waggles his finger at the road, tells her to lead the booley until camp. Just follow the general direction, he says. Soon, she has forgotten the day’s troubles. The downing sun throwing lanterns of gold and everything haloed in that light seems rapt in its own greatness. She is high and happy, begins to feel a new power over herself.
She thinks, I have been gifted the world. Leading this booley in such peace and freedom. She begins to count everything in the luck of sevens. Seven steps forward and back to one again. Sevenly clusters of rushes. A sextet of bunched ponies near the house of some rich man and how they open to reveal a seventh. The way they stand aloof, eyeing the travel and file of such lesser animals, and then they step forth nodding as if in approval, lean out over a tangle of rotten fencing that would sigh if it could sound for itself.
Th
e track travels downwards to meet a higher road. Soundpost waves his hat to continue. She wishes the length of the moment. They meet a fellow leaning his weight into a pushcart who stops and salutes, shouts hello, taps the tin that hangs off the cart signing his name and occupation—Butler, Cutler. Any wares for sharpening? Then he stares at Clackton and points. Is he kilt or what?
Later, Wilson begins again at the two-string fiddle and what he finds is the song of an untuned instrument lamenting its player, or perhaps he is in tune with something else, the despair summoned deepest from the place of all hearts. Clackton begins to sing in some drunken drone-song softly rising but then he falls quiet.
She says to Colly, look at me now, earning wage and leading the animals. It is me who is in charge. Who could have expected it?
She imagines returning to Blackmountain triumphant. Waving money and buying enough food to last until the new crop. She tries to see their faces, the new wean called Cassie, but their faces slip like smoke into the blind of what holds them.
They camp on dry ground under trees near a river. Clackton groaning when they drop him on scutch grass. It is Soundpost who notices his smell. Mercy! Mercy! What has the man done to himself? The others lean in with their noses.
Hee! says Colly. He’s gone and shit himself.
Wilson hunches against the breeze-cold slapping mealcakes together.
Colly says, riddle me this—what’s white as goodness but black as sin, loves the water but won’t get in?
She sneaks Clackton’s soap from his pocket. Takes the pail and follows a path through woodland to where the river appears pooled and hidden. A conspiracy of gorse and fir trees for cover. She is quick out of her clothes, slides slow off the bank. Her teeth gritted as the water fangs at her ankles, gnaws at her hips. She dunks down, slides completely in. A vise-tight coldness that brings all thought to hush, the self to floating stillness. She washes herself slowly, imagines rose toes, porcelain skin. She wonders if it is the soul of the river she can hear and then beyond the river she hears the carry of some haunt-sound that surely is Wilson working ache from that fiddle. She lifts herself whitely and shivering onto the bank, begins to examine herself. She squeezes at a breast not yet as big as Mam’s, she thinks. Soon the booley will be done—another two nights of this, Soundpost has said. And then I can go buy good cloth to bind my breasts. She watches two rooks flutter and take rest on a tree as if to watch this spectacle and it is then she hears it—the snap-sound of weight upon twigs. Her hand flies to cover her chest and she crouches and reaches for her clothing. Her eyes in haste to the place of the sounding, her foot trying to find a leg into her breeches, and it is then she sees him—a bent shape scuttling through trees that is the shape of Soundpost. She closes her eyes, sees in her mind the river, the staring black head of the sheep.
