In Exile

by Billy O'Callaghan

  She poured tea into mugs and brought McCarthy’s plate to the table. Then she sat across from him and watched him eat.

  He ate slowly, not especially hungry. When he was finished he leaned back again to the wall.

  ‘I suppose you’ll be staying in today.’

  He shrugged.

  ‘Can’t be going out in that. The boat would never stand it.’

  ‘Well. There’s plenty needs doing around here.’

  ‘There’s always plenty needs doing,’ he said, his irritation rising.

  She let him finish his tea.

  He knew that she was holding something back so he took his time, savouring every mouthful. It was what his head needed, hot and sweet. But soon enough it was gone.

  ‘Something the matter?’ He felt the wash of weariness. Already the joy of not having to go to sea today had begun to abate.

  She fumbled for the right words but it was an act, because this was all rehearsed. ‘There’s no easy way to say this. It’s the dog. You’ll have to get rid of him.’

  The dog was Buttons, a mongrel fourteen-year-old springer that he had reared from a raw pup.

  ‘Why?’

  She shook her head as if saddened by this too.

  ‘He’s just more trouble than he’s worth. Old as he is, he’s good for nothing now but menace. Now he’s had after the hens, and that’s the last straw. We could far better spend the cost we waste on his feed. Not to mention what he cost us now with them two he killed.’

  McCarthy groped for words. This must be what it felt like to be drowning.

  ‘I’ll keep him tied up. How about that? Sure he only eats scraps anyway. I won’t get rid of him.’

  She stood, leaned skeletal across the table. ‘He’s going, and that’s it. You do it or I’ll do it myself. Whichever way you like is up to you. But he’s going.’

  The dog was older even than the children. Lame since an entanglement with a snare some six years back, his left eye stared uselessly milky and his right was sinking down toward that too. He lived by his sense of smell.

  But his loyalty could never be questioned. Alert with every dawn, he was always the most intent of the crew, scurrying ahead through the village to the shore, yapping out sharp encouragement, urging the men ever onward. He loved the sea as much as McCarthy despised it, loved how the spray matted his rough hair. In the boat he took up his usual position at the bow, crouched down into the heap of oilcloth. And as Dinny Shea steered them out of the harbour the wind beat the old dog further down into the shelter of the cloth, and he watched the frothing leagues and barked his great joy.

  Last night, he got into the hen house. He had been in before, but had in the past been content enough with the chase alone. Last night he killed two of the hens.

  It was Peter, the youngest, who had answered the bestial screams. He had to stoop to get inside, and at first there was only a darkness emphasised by the terrified squawks and useless flapping and all the risen specks of dust and hayseed, and through it all the carousing barks of Buttons, throaty and high in the same manner of awaiting a cast stick.

  One of the dead hens lay strewn all across the floor, her slight body savaged in what had surely begun as play, but the other lay protectively between the dog’s front paws, looking unharmed except for the unnatural stillness. When Peter picked her up, the odd give of her body told him that her neck had been broken.

  The back yard, with the shelter of the cottage, was very still. The wind sighed through the thatch, and there was the incessant dance sounds of the rats disturbed. But that wind held no ground back here, and the stillness was somehow worse.

  Buttons was in the shed, whining to be set free. Once or twice his paws scratched at the door, urging.

  Sometimes when McCarthy laughed his mouth split open and his lips bled in the most painful way. Those times he dragged his tongue slowly across his mouth and the taste was the taste of salt. Blood tasted of salt but the winds of this place tasted of it too. His susceptibility to this particular ailment was just more proof to him that he was not cut out for this kind of life. Sometimes when the weather was especially cold it could take weeks for the chapping to heal, and in those times he would be miserable because it affected the way he ate and even drank. Laughing was the worst thing of all, even smiling, but it was odd how often he felt like smiling, and even laughing, pain be damned, as he watched the dog walking importantly through the village and how he would chase gulls on the pier, not wanting the fish guts that they so savoured at all, but just for the sheer joy of running on a cold morning and of disturbing the peace. The other fishermen would smile too, when they saw Buttons like that.

  The hatchet leaned upward from its block bed of wet ash. McCarthy pumped the handle up and down until the blade released itself from the firewood. His big hard fingers took in the coldness of the steel, and he punched the palm of his hand with the blunt backside of the blade. It had a sure heft, and he knew that it was right for what lay ahead.

  For just a breath he hesitated at the shed, listening to the dog cry out his excitement and scratch frantically at the door. Paws drummed frenzied circles against the shed floor, hind quarters bounded against the same spot on the wall over and over like something lapping the side of a galvanised drum. Guttural whines rang out, jarring against the hour.

  ‘Whisht,’ McCarthy grunted, as the crying became restless barking.

  The half-lit morning wore the cloaked aura of impending rain. He knew that he should just open the door and lead Buttons out here into the yard and do it. But he was not ready yet. And not here, for Christ’s sake.

  Until he was through the back gate that gave onto the fields, Buttons skipped and danced around him, skittish with pent-up energy after the long-incarcerated night. The gate’s bottom edge ground hard against the dirt, loose hinges, and the top leaned in full moments before the bottom finally gave way.

  Because of what lay ahead, McCarthy felt unnaturally patient, and he stood while Buttons went through the usual motions of sniffing the long grass along the dirt path. Eventually the dog seemed to sense his master’s inner turmoil and stopped, muddy haunches set low and trembling, looking up at him. Dark knowing eyes and mouth hanging open, tongue sighing away a throb. Understanding maybe that life was soon to end, or maybe just loyal, as always.

  ‘Come on,’ McCarthy said, his words not much more than a drawn-out grunt that a dog could understand, throaty above the trill of every breath.

  Obedient, even now this one last time, Buttons led the way out along the path.

  White light split the eastern cloud but McCarthy hardly noticed, lost as he was in all the random thoughts of an overtired mind. Memories and aspirations glinted like shards of glass, splinters that carried all their times together. Devastation coloured everything, shadowed the happiness and emphasised the tragic. It was such an ugly thing that he had to do.

  The dog furrowed through the long grass at the road’s verge, pleased by the coolness of the night’s rain. His muzzle when he raised his head again was wet and clotted with mud. He watched McCarthy for the word to stop, that they had come far enough and that they could stop awhile before turning back, he running wild and rolling in the still-green wheat fields, McCarthy settling on a flat part of ditch and tamping his old pipe for a smoke or maybe content just to sit and watch his dog at play. But McCarthy kept a steady pace along the path, up towards the woods.

  In the ditches, swathes of cobweb stretched out between ropes of briar, ghostly strands steeled with moisture. From the dyke came the soft slush of running water, shielded by the long grass. Sometimes field gates offered glimpses of the waiting vista: miles of field falling away vaguely north, impeding light cutting to ribbons any lingering dusk.

  The hatchet swung idly from his left hand, a promise awaiting conclusion. The woods lay just ahead, another half mile or so, and he hoped to Christ that the darkness up there would make this thing easier.

  But then it rose from within, the forceful inflection of B
ríd’s voice: Do it now.

  He felt no surprise to be hearing it; he had been beaten with it for so long now, it was inevitable that some version of it would have rooted itself inside of him.

  Do it.

  A forlorn and already destroyed figure of a man, he couldn’t take another step. His height and substantial girth hung awkward, burdensome, his great shoulders sagged, his face fumbled already with the collapse taking a hold of his mind.

  He watched mute and useless as Buttons was swallowed up in the long grass of the broken ditch, trailing a rat maybe. Even old, the dog had a turn of pace still. The wind stirred the wheat in the field, and then came the further ripple of his small charging force and the keen peal of his barking.

  ‘Buttons! Come here, boy!’

  McCarthy’s voice was very small and at first the dog, happy at play, paid no heed to the call.

  Louder then. ‘Buttons! Here, boy!’

  The barking ceased. A minute passed when there was nothing but the beat of the wind and the view of the small village and the harbour below, the dark horseshoe of the land cradling the brackish sea. McCarthy stood in foolish wait, the tails and lapels of his heavy coat flapping hard with the breeze.

  Then Buttons appeared, his head hunched low with guilt. He approached slowly, the long grass of the verge hiding his legs. His best eye fixed on McCarthy, and his nose twitched with the sense of danger.

  ‘You’ve been a good dog to me, Buttons,’ McCarthy whispered. ‘I’m sorry I have to do this.’

  Careful not to make his movements too sudden, he raised the hatchet, blunt backside of the blade at the ready, and let the dog approach. Then he brought it down, hard.

  It was odd, how it felt, to see in his mind how he crouched to one knee there on the road, Buttons moving to him like all the times before, that head raised and almost smiling for some affectionate gesture. And then how the hatchet fell, coming down hard on the skull, between and above the eyes blinding and already blind.

  A last pathetic whimpering sound and then the collapse. Not like when as a child McCarthy had watched his father swing the sledge hammer for the cattle, not in that staggering way like wilting flowers. Buttons just dropped, straight down, his life lost between the stance and the soupy puddle of the road.

  To see him there, matted with mud and spools of hayseed, he looked no age at all. His eyes still stared, the blind eye flushed dark again from the sudden haemorrhage, and his mouth hung open, the whelk-like tongue greying in the dirt. He was truly dead, but death had made him in a strange way young again.

  McCarthy pitched the hatchet violently away. It made no great distance, barely clearing the ditch; men would surely find it in the months to come when it was time to bring in the wheat, and by then it would be rusted beyond use.

  When his father died, McCarthy had cried. He remembered going out behind the barn and just crying until his throat ached. But that had been forty years ago, and he hadn’t given in much to tears since then. Now though, he could feel them catching his breath and hurting his throat once more. Buttons had loved him more than the world.

  Dead, the dog was surprisingly heavy, much more so than during life. He sagged awkwardly and it took a full minute before McCarthy could find a secure enough position to carry him the long way back. The wind was ­approaching gale force, and it beat him low. Random casts of rain, cold and hard, scratched at his face.

  It’s for the best. You did the right thing. Buttons was old. Blind and lame, worn out. That was no way for him to live. It’s the best thing for everyone, Mac.

  Bríd’s voice in his mind had been sated. She could be gentle when she got what she wanted. He hated that about her.

  Ghosts

  The Viet Cong soldier stepped out of the churning jungle mists, a floating silhouette that ached for substance. I had pulled the last watch, and sat crouched in my foxhole as the darkness slowly became that murky, shielded green of jungle dawn. Stagnant water clung to everything, and my filthy boots shone a blunt reflective black through the congealing stripes of mud. The rain had folded up earlier in the night and now there was nothing to disturb the solitude except the searing heat and the mosquitoes. The trees stirred all around me, softly percussive, in palpitations that matched exactly the beating of my heart.

  It was sweltering beneath the poncho but I was too tired to disturb my settled rut. The growing white light of the hour was thickened here beneath the trees to a strange luminous glow, and alone, thinking about nothing in particular, I was in a state that encouraged the calm of sleep, the spicy air of unreality further emphasised by the gossamer swaths of mist which veiled the trail and snaked between the pine trunks and branches.

  The figure was just a greyness in the congruent twilight.

  I sat hunched beneath my poncho, its neckline pulled up over my nose so that only my eyes were exposed, and I ­busied myself by watching the beads of rain fall in little smacks from my helmet brim down on to the poncho’s khaki plastic. Beneath the cover, my hands held a ready M-16 rifle, but in the idle way of a child tired of the game.

  It was a shock to see the enemy suddenly so close. He was just there, this obscure, spectral figure, moving slowly, but with an assuredly fluent gait. He seemed unconcerned about the need for cover, but maybe for him the smothering tendrils of jungle mist were cover enough. Or maybe this track was his domain.

  The terror that tore through me was sickening. This shape made so vague by the mist; it crossed my mind that it could just be a ghost. I was nineteen years old, which made me a man without feeling very much like one, especially here, on some long forgotten jungle trail, just waiting for yet another night to fall away. I didn’t believe in ghosts, not then, but at that moment I think that I believed in everything. And if my age made me fearful then it also made me stupidly brave, which is why they have young men fight wars, I think.

  I was afraid, terrified, but I was a soldier too, and coupled with my swelling fear was the urge to jump up and empty my M-16 in a freeing roar. I wanted to scan the area for others but didn’t dare to look away. Instead, I swallowed hard to quell all thought, and let him approach.

  The enemy filled the dirt path, and clarity stole his ghostly pallor. I saw that he was just a boy, younger than me, as young as fifteen maybe, or twelve, dressed in simple cotton black. Charlie, the soldiers always called his kind. VC, Victor Charlie. But just Charlie for short. He wore dark leather sandals, of the thong-strapped type which offered nothing in the way of concealment or protection, and thick leather or rubber soles that slapped the sodden floor of the trail with every easy step. The softening green backdrop made the skin of his feet, hands and face seem very white. It made me think of ghosts again and I tightened my grip on the gun.

  He moved with a swagger that the war had not yet fully stripped away and he allowed his big dark eyes to probe the jungle’s ceiling in search of sky, his mouth pursed in the kissing shape of a soundless whistle. His fringe was cut straight and low, perfectly uniform, but the back of his hair stood up from the place where he had passed the night. A rifle hung in a lazy bias across his back; I could see the stock protrude from just behind the sharp corner of his right shoulder and the barrel, lower down, by his left elbow. It was left to my mind to fill in the falling diagonal of whatever lay between.

  When he was about twenty feet away, he hit a shaft of thin light and it was possible to see or maybe just imagine runnels of sweat trace courses from his temples down across his smooth cheeks. A thin moustache painted shadow beneath his long blade of nose, the dark hair wispy and fine. He smiled at some private thought or memory, a gesture that offered just a glimpse of his upper front teeth, the small, even whiteness of them. Then the smile left its breathy realm and rose to the satisfying audibility of gentle laughter. Only laughter, a small grumble of it, but astounding to my ears in its alien rawness. He rolled his head a little, his eyes closed for just a moment, and when they opened again they fixed themselves on me.

  Time was made fragile, a paralyse
d wait before the heart began to beat again. There was nothing for either of us to do but stare, it seemed, each of us frozen with fear, each with our features stretched wide in a funhouse mirror image of the other. The VC’s lips parted as if with the need to say something, but all they offered was a tiny pop of dryness. He reached for his gun, his hands almost hypnotically slow, his wide black eyes still huge with the fixation of the moment. Something inside of me had the thought that I could just let him kill me, that it would finally all be over for me, but his movement served to give my body release, and I squeezed down on my own gun’s trigger. Not a leaping flush but the single manual pulse of noise that burst like a thunder crack in a cave.

  Dimly, I could hear or feel movement behind, but the fading bullet’s howl still carried weight, and felt like the only thing that mattered.

  The trance between us held, a mortal lock. The Viet Cong boy’s mouth hung open with the intention of a previous thought and his reaching left hand seemed welded to the rifle’s barrel. The shaft of my M-16 dipped and from above it I watched a wet bloom spread slowly across this thin child’s chest, taking the black cotton top a silky step darker. The mouth which had so recently held laughter drew closed and shuddered with the convulsion of a swallow, his long throat juggling the hump of his Adam’s apple.

  A boy that someone somewhere, and for reasons that made little sense, deemed to be my enemy.

  Behind me, men were scrambling to their feet, called by the rifle; I could see them without having to turn, could feel their movement. They didn’t matter. Needing to do so, I levelled my gun’s barrel again and fired once more. The second shot had a bark, ringing slightly hollow. I had Charlie’s chest in sight but the adrenaline rush of fear or excitement caused me to draw up on the target and instead of adding a second spreading bloom to the one already delivered, it was the face that this time bore the savage brunt.