The Abstainer

by Ian McGuire

  “Aye, but it’s the men like me who break ’em when we wish. I’ll be a poacher till the day I die, and if there’s poaching in heaven, I’ll be the same up there.”

  O’Connor shakes his head and smiles.

  “In heaven every man will have his equal share. All will be held in common. That’s the promise leastways. So there’ll be no need for poaching there.”

  The lantern light casts strange, distending shadows across the poacher’s face. His eyeballs gleam and his pockmarked features melt like wax, then harden.

  “Then if I have to give it up, I will do,” he says, “but I’ll mourn the loss of it, I swear, since poaching is the thing I love most dear.”

  They walk across a sheep field, through a wooden gate, and into the woods. The twilight thickens around them, and the only sounds are their own wet footfalls and the scratch and creak of birdsong in the trees above. After a mile, they hear water falling onto rocks, and then a stream appears between the trees, narrow and fast-flowing at its center, the surface brown with shifting flares of white, ribboned and twisting. In a pool below the stunted falls, three thick-bodied trout hang suspended in a void. Matter inside emptiness, like three thoughts waiting for their thinker. The poacher crouches down at the water’s edge, raises his lantern up, and smiles at the sight.

  “Give me that gaff now,” he whispers to O’Connor.

  O’Connor hands him the gaff, and the poacher gives him the lantern and tells him where to stand with it and what to do.

  “You watch me,” he says. “I’ve got my eye on that fat one yonder.”

  He rolls up his trouser legs and steps into the shallow water at the edge of the pool, then lowers the gaff and waits. The fish stay as they are, three long shadows, poised and motionless against the flow. The poacher bends a little at the knees, reaches slowly forward until the gaff is inches from the largest fish’s flank, then yanks it up and inward. As the fish curls and thrashes on the barbed point, he tugs again to be sure it’s firm, then steps back onto the bank and pulls the gaff toward him. The fish fights against the hook but cannot free itself. O’Connor watches it twist and bend in the fatal air, fast then slower, the hard mouth aghast, the long belly palest gray against the dead bracken.

  As they walk back through the woods, the trout dangle, blank-eyed and blood-spotted, on the end of the gaff. The poacher hums a jaunty tune. They pass through the wooden gate and back across the furrowed sheep field. The sky is dark purple in the west and black as ink above the saddleback. There is a hazy half-moon and a muddle of stars overhead. As they approach the cabin it begins to rain, heavy drops, cold against the face and hands. The poacher pushes the door open with his foot and steps inside. In the light of the lantern, they see a tall man with a shotgun seated by the fireplace, smoking a pipe. He is wearing a leather coat, corduroy trousers, and a slouch hat. When he sees them in the doorway, he stands up and raises the gun to his shoulder.

  “I warned you once before,” the man says. His voice is strong but steady, as if he is used to issuing commands. “I told you not to come onto this land again. I told you if you did there’d be a consequence to pay. Yet here y’are as if my words meant nothing at all.”

  “Would you have me starve?” the poacher asks.

  “I’d have you feed yourself like other men do, through sweat and honest toil.”

  “I’m no hireling and I never will be,” the poacher answers, unafraid and unabashed. “The man who works for wages is no better than a slave if you ask me.”

  “So you’re proud of your thievery?”

  “I ain’t ashamed.”

  “I’d say you won’t talk so freely when you stand before the judge. That fish is private property no different from a watch or a purse; poaching is just stealing by another name.”

  “If that fish is property, he ain’t none of yourn,” the poacher says.

  “I work for the squire.”

  “I know very well who you work for. You’re a bought man and I’m a free man, and that’s the difference between us two.”

  The gamekeeper nods in the direction of O’Connor.

  “What’s this?”

  “A helpmeet. He didn’t play no part.”

  “If he played no part, then why is he holding them fish?”

  “I asked him to. He’s a traveler on his way to Harrisburg. You don’t need to trouble yourself with him.”

  The gamekeeper lowers the shotgun to his hip and looks at O’Connor.

  “What’s your name?”

  “My name’s O’Connor. I’m on my way to Harrisburg. I met this fellow on the road and he promised me a meal if I lent him a hand.”

  “You don’t look stupid, but you must be.”

  “I held the lamp for him, that’s all.”

  “Do you know that poaching is a crime?”

  “I was a constable in Ireland. I know the law.”

  “You know the law in Ireland mayhaps, but that don’t mean you know it hereabouts. The man I work for owns this land, every creek and every blade of grass, and he’s grown tired of being robbed of its fruits by scoundrels like him and thee. He knows Judge Scoresby in Allentown, them two are firm friends, and Judge Scoresby will make his decision as my master advises in a case such as this. Last fellow I caught poaching got two years, I believe. He’s away breaking rocks somewhere now.”

  “I have to get to Harrisburg.”

  “We’ll see about that.”

  They walk back along the road, the poacher first, still holding the lantern, the gamekeeper with his gun and O’Connor in between. They hear the bleating of sheep on the hillside and the murmurings of wind and rain. When the road bends to the left, O’Connor sees the big house up on a rise, dark and square-shouldered. The rutted driveway is lined with ancient oak trees, their black branches wind-bent and fantastical. When the gamekeeper knocks, a girl answers and tells them to go around the back, then she lets them in and they wait in the basement hallway until the squire is ready. The poacher tries to make merry with the girl, but the girl pays him no mind, and the gamekeeper tells him to be quiet. O’Connor is still holding the gaff with the dead fish bloody on the end of it. He asks if he can put it down and the gamekeeper shakes his head.

  “It’s proof of the crime,” he says. “The master will wish to see that for hisself, I’m sure.”

  Upstairs, the squire is sitting alone at an empty table, drinking coffee from a dainty china cup. He is a corpulent man with a wide red face and a mane of thick gray hair combed back from the forehead. His skin is scaly and scarified and his eyes are large and pale blue. Every now and then, when he talks, he has to pause to take in more air through his nostrils. There is a fire blazing in the hearth behind him and a liver-colored hound asleep on the flags. Above the fire is a painting of a fine bay horse standing beside an elm tree with a dark-skinned servant in scarlet livery holding the reins.

  “I know that stallion,” the poacher says. “I seen him run the steeplechase a time or two.”

  “That stallion is no business of yourn,” the gamekeeper tells him. “You keep your eyes to the front.”

  The squire looks them over, then asks where the fish has come from, and the gamekeeper explains what he knows.

  “A man must eat,” the poacher says. “Least that’s what it says in the Scriptures.”

  “Can you read?” the squire asks him.

  “Not so well.”

  “If you cannot read, then how can you claim to know what it says in the Scriptures?”

  The gamekeeper chuckles.

  “You’re fencing with the squire now,” he says. “He won’t put up with any of your damned nonsense.”

  “Is this the one that was warned already?” the squire says, stabbing his sausage finger toward the poacher.

  “I warned him two months past. I caught him on Johnson’s Lane with two de
ad cottontails, and I told him that next time it would be Judge Scoresby. That’s what I told him. But the warnings don’t do any good with his kind.”

  “Two rabbits and now some good-sized trout,” the squire says.

  “I ’spect he’s taken a sight more than that in between times, sir,” the gamekeeper says.

  “I’d expect he has,” the squire says. “I’d expect he’s been snatching the good food off my table for a long while now, hasn’t he?”

  He drains his coffee cup and grimaces at the taste. The poacher twitches and scratches his face but doesn’t speak. His usual liveliness has faded and he looks suddenly morose and fearful.

  “You take a fish from me today,” the squire continues, “but what will you take from me tomorrow? If word gets out that men like you are safe on my land, then soon enough it’ll be stripped bare.”

  “I’ll move away from here,” the poacher says. “Go west.”

  “Too late for such promises. You had a proper warning. You’ll see Judge Scoresby tomorrow and he’ll decide what you deserve. He’s a fair man, and he’ll give you a fair hearing, but he don’t like poachers much, I’ll tell you that. No, he don’t like poachers very much at all.”

  The squire winks at the gamekeeper, and the gamekeeper smiles back at him.

  “What about this other fellow here?” the squire says.

  “Says his name’s O’Connor and he’s a traveler,” the gamekeeper replies. “Says he’s on his way to Harrisburg.”

  “He was the one caught holding the gaff?”

  “Yes, sir. But he claims he was only helping.”

  “Where’re you from?” the squire asks.

  “From Dublin, but I’ve lived a while in Manchester. I was a constable there.”

  “Manchester?” The squire looks affronted. “From what I hear, that’s a filthy place. The air is full of poison and the people are like jungle savages.”

  “They say it’s the future,” O’Connor answers him calmly. “They say that all places will be the same as Manchester one day.”

  The squire frowns and shakes his head.

  “That’s a lie,” he says. “There’s no truth to that at all. The Lord rained his brimstone down on Sodom, and he’ll do the same to Manchester when he deems the time is right. Are you a Papist, O’Connor?”

  “Yes, sir, I am.”

  “What does the Holy Father in Rome have to say about the crime of poaching, I wonder?”

  “I couldn’t tell you.”

  “He couldn’t tell us.” The squire turns to the gamekeeper. “Do you know about the Catholics, Mr. Brown? Do you know what kind of stuff they believe in?”

  “Not so much, sir, but I hear they’re a superstitious lot.”

  “They believe in magic, in the power of toenails and bits of old bone. They make carvings out of wood and plaster, then pretend they’re alive. Can you imagine?”

  “I hardly can.”

  “It’s a backward, heathenish sort of faith.”

  They look at O’Connor, but O’Connor doesn’t try to argue. The hound gets up slowly from the flags, yawns, rotates, then drops back down.

  “I’m on my way up to Harrisburg,” he says. “There’s a man there I’m looking for. If you give me a warning and let me go, you’ll never see me in this place again, I swear it.”

  “You promise to leave, but why should I believe you? That fellow standing beside you was warned, but it made no difference to him. I’d say a man who is bold and brazen enough to steal the fish from my streams is bold and brazen enough to lie to my face.”

  “I can take them both to see the judge, sir,” the gamekeeper offers. “Two prisoners is as easy as one for me.”

  “I don’t like to trouble Scoresby more than I have to. He’s a busy man.”

  “Or I could whip this one and send him on his way.”

  The squire considers this for a moment.

  “I know what we’ll do,” he says. “We’ll set him to work in the mine for a week. Nothing like a spell of honest labor to purge a man’s sins. A week is fair, I’d say.”

  “What mine?” O’Connor says.

  “The lead mine. It’s five miles from here, to the east. The other side of the river. I’ve had men digging there a year, and they’ve just struck a nice-looking vein.”

  “That will teach him, right enough, sir,” the gamekeeper says, “and pay you back for your losses. It’s a fine idea.”

  “You can’t force me to work. It’s not right or lawful.”

  “I’m not forcing,” the squire says. “I’m making an offer. It’s the mine or Judge Scoresby. You can decide.”

  “I’ll do it, if he won’t,” the poacher offers. “I’ll work there a whole month if you’d like me to.”

  “You can shut your mouth,” the gamekeeper says. “We’re already finished with you.”

  “What will I eat?” O’Connor says.

  “You’ll have hot food at night and a dry place to sleep. I have a mine agent by the name of Garnett over there who’ll give directions and keep his eye out in case you’re ever tempted to slacken off.”

  O’Connor looks about the room, the cracked wood paneling, the brass fireplace tarnished and dull with dust, and then looks back at the squire’s square, ogreish features. He feels like he has been here before, standing in the same place, hearing the same words spoken, but he can’t remember how or why.

  “I can work for a week,” he says, “but no more. After that I have to get to Harrisburg.”

  “To find this man of yours? What’s his name?”

  “His name’s Doyle. He’s a Fenian. He killed my nephew back in Manchester.”

  The squire raises his whiskery eyebrows half an inch.

  “There’s more than one Doyle in Harrisburg, I’ll wager. I hope you get the right one,” he says.

  “I aim to.”

  “If you kill this fellow Doyle, even if he did as you claim, they’ll likely hang you for it afterward. You can’t kill a fellow in Pennsylvania nowadays and walk away scot free. It’s not like it used to be. You know that, I trust.”

  “I’ll take my chances with the law.”

  The squire scratches his brow and frowns awhile before commenting further.

  “I killed a man once,” he says. “Down in Texas near Fort Mason. Shot him dead. He deserved it right enough, he was a thief and a liar with it, but it’s weighed on my conscience a time or two since. It was twenty years ago now, but I still wake in the night now and then and see him lying there, a-weeping and begging for his life, a grown man weeping like a little child. That’s not something you can quickly forget.”

  “I don’t forget much at all,” O’Connor says. “It’s not in my nature to do so.”

  “That’s both a blessing and a curse, I’d say.”

  “I’d say you’re right about that.”

  The squire nods, as if satisfied by this exchange, then coughs and turns to hawk into the fire.

  “The two of you can sleep downstairs in the cellar,” he says. “Anne, the girl, will find you something to eat if you want it. In the morning, this one here will go to the judge, and you and me will drive over to the mine. I’ll explain to Garnett who you are. He’ll show you the work. I hope you’re better at mining than you are at poaching.”

  “I’m about the same, I expect.”

  “A week won’t kill you either way. If you like it there, you can stay longer.”

  That night, in his sleep, as the poacher shifts and snuffles next to him, O’Connor hears the whispering voices of the recent dead. They weep and groan and tell him how much they suffer for his sake. Some become angry, some plead for his intercession. He tries to block his ears against their murmurous din, but the voices only get louder and more insistent. It is as if a dam has been breached inside him, and the torrent of m
emory is rushing through, sweeping aside all that is solid and real. As if the past is taking its bitter revenge on the present.

  In the morning, he is set in the back of a hay wain and driven over the hills to the mine. There is a gray building beside a narrow, fast-moving stream. In front of the building, wooden rails arc unevenly from the mine entrance to the washing floor. A boy is standing by an empty ore tub, breaking rocks with a spalling hammer. When the squire asks for Garnett, the boy tells them he is up in the woods checking the sluice gates but will be back down soon. The squire goes into the mine shop to sit, and O’Connor stands outside by the window listening to the low rush of the stream and the dull echo of the spalling hammer on the knockstone. The damp air is cold against his skin and the sky above is thick with cloud. He looks down at the black earth between his boots and wonders how this will finish and how much more of it he can endure.

  CHAPTER 30

  They had a pony once, but the pony died of dropsy, so now a man must do that work instead. The ore tubs are five hands high with iron wheels and wooden sides, and the man who trams out the bouse must wear a harness on his shoulders and a broad leather band across his forehead to take the weight. Except for a few weeks in midsummer, there is always water flowing down the level, a foot or more in depth, which keeps the stopings dry but adds to the discomfort. If a man is not used to bending, there is the danger that he may strike his head on the timbers and knock himself cold. That has happened more than once, but after you have been in the mine for a while the bending becomes like second nature. The rails are good oak and they are strong but not always true, so there are places where the wheels will jam and extra force is required. On the best days the miners will fill four or five tubs with the bouse or deads.

  It is a mile and a half from the vein to the mine entrance. Once a tub reaches the dressing floor, it must be tipped out and the load shoveled into the grinder. The boy will attend to the grinder himself, but it is the job of the man to shovel. If there is time, he may also help with the hotching tubs or join in breaking rocks with a hammer, but only on a quiet day or if the agent has given express instructions to do so. The boy is lazy and dishonest and will ask for help whether he needs it or not. The empty tub can be left by the dressing floor if there is another already standing at the vein, but, if not, it must be trammed back in and refilled. Compared to a full one, though, an empty tub is easy to move, even on a grade.