That Old Country Music

by Kevin Barry

  When Con McCarthy died it was, of course, to a spectacular absence of fanfare—suddenly, unexpectedly, and rating no more than a brief line in the Chronicle “Deaths” of a Tuesday in November.

  Almost laughing, almost glad, I went along O’Connell Street in the rain with it; I leant in, I whispered; and softly like funeral doves I let my suffering eyes ascend…

  “Did you hear at all?” I said. “Did you not hear who’s dead?”

  ROMA KID

  She watched her brothers sleeping but not for long and left them in the grey dimness of a February morning that was not yet half to life. She did not speak the language but understood plainly the knotted gestures and the dull faces of the people that worked here. Her mother had told her nothing but the girl knew that soon the family would be sent home again and she would not go back there. She was nine years old and chose for her leaving the red pattern dress and zipped her anorak over it.

  She went quietly among the chalets of the asylum park. She held the zipper of the anorak between her lips and its cold metal stuck fast to her lips. It was a ritual of safe passage to hold it there until she was clear of the park. She did not look back at all and no voices rose to call her back. She walked out to the foreignness of the morning. She climbed the embankment. She had none of the words that appeared on the advertising boards by the motorway as she walked in her squeaking trainers along its verges. She did not have the words on the side of the bus that passed by lit against the morning and she had none of the pitying words that formed on the mouths of the passengers who stared out at the thin child in a dress of red paisley, an anorak—

  Poor knacker child.

  Poor pavee kid.

  Poor latchiko.

  She walked for an hour or more. She was hungry. She knew where to cross for the station by the image of a train on the road sign and by the arrow’s direction. There were people at the station waiting in a yellow heated room. She did not ask them for money because if she did not speak there was a good chance she would not be spoken to. Her stomach hissed and the morning sent up its first cuts of lonesomeness and fear. She would not see her brothers again.

  Slight as a ghost she went about the station as its haunting. She knew by the one journey the family had taken that the trains aiming left must be headed back to the city of Dublin again, and to its trouble, and those that aimed contrary must go to the countryside beyond. There was no ticket checker at the station—it was a man on the train that checked the tickets and on the outward journey he had been a kind man and on the fact of this kindness she had built her plan and laid her fate.

  She crossed the rails by the metal bridge. A light rain began to fall and it spoke more than anything else of the place through which she moved. There were just a couple of passengers waiting on the far platform. Her trust also was that the countryside would be kinder.

  As she sat on a bench she felt again for the zipper of her anorak and got it between her teeth and bit down hard on it. When she had played with her brothers the evening before, it was for the last time, and they had fallen one by one to sleep then, and she counted off in her mind once again, and as she would for many years, the four black buttons of their tiny bopping heads: Andrzej, Luca, Tobar, Bo, the way there was a tune to it almost.

  The minutes passed and the platform became busier. Tired-looking men and women took their morning places on the platform and let down slow ropes of words. She listened intently for the tone that might signal danger but the people were too tired to notice her, or at least they did not notice her for long: she registered for half a second’s pity or distrust—poor Roma kid—and was erased again.

  The train’s noise came up as a rumble of promise. The word on the bulb of the train’s nose was Sligo. The morning came alive around her as the train pulled in and she watched herself as though from above as she climbed on board. She stayed in the space between two carriages. The train took off again and she rocked on her heels as she crouched there. There were many empty seats but she did not enter a carriage to take one. As she crouched and rocked she began to sound a low groaning beneath her breath, and she let it sustain, and it slowed the beating of her heart, and it made her feel stronger. She blinked her eyes also, rapidly, and in a rhythm counter to the low, held groaning—she made in this way a shield of hummed noise and flickered movement against the world and its grey morning.

  The train pulled back the morning and the countryside and she was alert to the grey fields passing, to the sheds and outbuildings, the sidings and high, the distant towns, and as she went by she checked for possible hiding places and lairs. She was reassured. She was very hungry.

  Drawn by her hunger a cart came trundling along the passage laden with sandwiches and cakes and crisps and cans of soft drinks. The cart was pushed by a young woman and the girl knew at a glance she was not from this country either. The woman searched her out quickly with a look, and said—

  Okay?

  The girl was frightened at the day’s first contact but smiled and something in the smile was read by the woman.

  Are you alone? she said. You speak English?

  She knew the word “English” and shook her head against it.

  The woman spoke in another language then and it was closer but not known and again the girl shook her head and with her large eyes she pleaded.

  Don’t be frightened, the woman said.

  She passed the girl a muffin and moved on again and as the girl held in her hand the muffin she held her breath also.

  She waited, and then she took off the plastic wrapper, and the doughy smell came up like heat and there was the smeared blue of the berries, and she broke off precisely a quarter piece, and wrapped the rest again carefully, and placed it in the pocket of her anorak. Even as she savoured the first bite she was already patting her pocket to be sure the rest of the muffin was in place. The creatures in her stomach were soothed and quietened as she chewed.

  She kept watch along the carriages for the ticket collector. After a couple of stops the train was almost empty. The wind moved in slow waves across the winter fields; there was the iron beat of movement along the line. She was lulled, and she closed her eyes for a half-minute, and then more—she tried not to go deep—but she drifted, and almost dreaming she felt the soft pads of fingertips on the back of her hand. She opened her eyes to the ticket collector—

  Now, he said.

  By the word she could not yet tell if he was kind or not. She shook her head, and pleaded.

  Uh-oh, he said.

  She knew what that meant.

  Are you not with somebody? he said.

  No mother? he said. No father?

  She bit down hard on her bottom lip.

  Okay, he said.

  The nine years of her life were written on the fibres of her skin and she could be plainly read. All the alleys and doorways and pleading years could be read, and the longing for the four tiny brothers who had been her comfort and, guiltily, her burden—their black buttons of heads, bopping—and the cold tile floors of railway stations, the detention chalets, the home place that would not be seen again, the cherry brandy on her grandmother’s sour breath, the softness of her father’s touch; all could be read.

  Do you know where you are even?

  Silently, she pleaded.

  We’re past Longford now, he said. Have you people waiting on you? I’m not even going to ask about a ticket.

  He made the gesture of scratching his head and she smiled as he played at being puzzled.

  What’ll we do with you at all? Hah?

  The food cart at that moment came by again. She was the subject now of a consultation. The ticket man conferred with the woman who pushed the cart. After a moment, both of their heads moved sadly from side to side. A phone call was made.

  The train pulled into a country station. The doors gasped and opened, and
the treetops outside were eerie with the voices of birds. She hummed a low groaning and flicked rapidly her eyelids.

  Go handy now, the ticket man said.

  She was made to leave the train. She was placed in the station master’s care. He brought her to a room of the station house that was made up as a home.

  What in Jesus’ name are we going to do with you? he said, as the colour rose and then faded in his face again.

  He gave her a banana and some biscuits. He went to the office adjoining his home room to make a phone call—she knew it would be the police next. She heard him speak and understood the notes of anxiety and confusion. She pocketed the banana and the biscuits and opened the station-house window and climbed outside and landed in a flower pot. She put her feet to the ground and quickly she was across the car park and over a fence and into the sidings and into the fields.

  February.

  The fields were cold and soft and wet as she crossed them and open to the skies and the wetness came through her trainers and a sharp wind cut across the fields and through the fabric of the anorak and of the dress to her bones. She kept to the edges of the fields and moved in quick darts. She kept down when cars went past. She beat away the briars of the ditches that swayed with the wind and the branches were bare but with swollen buds that told soon a cold spring would come. Now the birds were everywhere garrulous. She was at home again in the country—the rough lanes were home, and the ditches were home, and she could walk for miles; her heart lightened. After a time the country rose into hills. She knew that she was strong. She went for another hour, and then longer, and ate the banana—she ate it under a tree of early blossom by a rough stone wall and as she sat there motionless in the wind but for her chewing a sweet black mouse crawled from beneath a crack in the rocks of the wall and lowered itself to the ground on a strand of yellowed grass that leaned and bent slowly with its weight and always in the future she would think of this place as the place of the mouse blossom tree. She moved on again. After a while she saw a small town rise to the north and knew to keep clear of it. She walked along a country lane by its old stone walls. She saw nobody. Sometimes a dog’s bark came from far off hoarsely and it was always the same dog. Another town stood up to announce itself, and she kept clear of it, and there was a great swathe of woodland ahead, rising, and she knew at once that she would climb to this wood—she was drawn to it strongly. She climbed a lane made dark by trembling hedges on either side and the chill in this laneway was intense and made of more than the air—it was malevolent, a badness—and it hurried her step, and soon she was in the late-winter of the woods, at the quick fade of the February day, and it was strange but familiar, the path that led through and became rougher, and there was the scent of the needles of the pines that she trampled and the wind was distant as she became lost in the woods, it was such as the wind at the edges of a dream, and she felt now a presence among the trees.

  She hurried to get through the woods but it was everywhere around her, as gripping as a cold sea, and a terror built and would not relent—she knew that she was being watched. She hummed against the fear and flicked her eyelids rapidly but she was in disarray now as she felt the presence and she began to run and the root of a tree took her ankle—she went down. She reeled inside and vaulted on a high white screech of pain. She was wretchedly in pain. She lay there crying and in great pain as his shadow moved across her. The broken hatched light of the woods became impoverished as the day ended and his face was made of haze and shadow.

  Hush, he said.

  He leaned down close to her and her heart popped clear of its box and clear of the trees and she clenched her teeth and prayed hard that she might wake from the bad dream—she did not wake.

  Ah look it, he said. No one’s dead.

  He placed lightly a hand on the broken ankle and she lurched again in pain.

  No one’s dead, he said. As we always say at times of abject fucken disaster.

  He was old and had the look of the woods—he was a ferny, mossy, twisted old thing, and all of his roots and fibres spoke of years long and deep in the shadows and out of the light. He was a small bony creature but limber, and he lifted her from the ground, and she felt his odd energies and strength, and now she was not afraid at all.

  Best thing to do with pain, he said, is ignore the ignorant fucker.

  As he carried her through the woods the effort caused his breath to labour but only slightly even though she was almost as big as he was. They came to a sudden clearing in the woods—a trailer was kept neatly there on blocks.

  Do you have the English? he said.

  No, she said.

  No is a good start, he said.

  He set her down on the plastic crate that worked as a step to the trailer. He pointed at her ankle. The tops of the trees swayed in the wind and sang.

  Is the pain bad, missy?

  He winced to explain the pain he meant.

  Yes, she said.

  We are making progress, he said, in leaps and bounds.

  She smiled to show the perfect white of her teeth. He laughed at the smile. He considered her. He displayed with a sweep of the hand and a formal bow the bleakness of the woods surrounding.

  Fine spot you picked, he said. There being no place known to man nor beast of grimmer fucken aspect.

  He opened the trailer door with a poke of the foot and reached for her and carried her inside.

  The Ox Mountains you decided to land in? he said. Christ on a bike.

  The pain came again in a nauseous swooping and he saw it in her and spoke quietly against it and it fell away. About her was a solitary man’s cabin. It had great neatness. There were stacks upon stacks of old books. There must have been thousands of them that lined the walls and made of the trailer a cave of books.

  Did you come through the town? he said.

  He set her down on a low armchair and stoked a fire of sticks in a potbelly stove.

  Town? he said, and he made steeples of his knuckles for rooftops.

  No, she said.

  The fire took again and its glow filled the small trailer’s room.

  As well not to have, he said. That place is gone maniacal.

  He fetched some bandaging from a high shelf and wrapped tightly her ankle.

  The fucken vulgarity of people, he said.

  He placed a pot of water to boil on the hot plate of the stove.

  Not that I’d be passing judgement, he said. But the auld glamourpusses down in that town? On the sun beds and gettin’ blood changes?

  There are women of sixty down in that place now, he said, with lickable legs. And faith that wasn’t always the case around here.

  He snorted a dangerous laugh and tears came to his eyes that she saw were made of this mad mirth and she chuckled, too. The trailer held also a low table and a hard-backed chair and there was a pallet bed on the floor. She thought of her brothers far away. She knew that by now they would be crying for her, their tiny worlds cracked open to fear and confusion, and she echoed their cry—

  Kizzy!

  Is that your name? he said.

  She nodded—she had the word.

  Kizzy, he said, you are most certainly not vulgar.

  He made her tea with leaves and settled to drink a cup with her.

  I’d say we have serious trouble on our hands, Kizzy. But what’s trouble today can seem like nothing tomorrow. Are you with me or agin me?

  She smiled.

  Good, he said. We’ll make a job of this calamity yet.

  He took down a loaf of bread and a pot of jam and he cut a thick slice and spread it with butter and the jam and it was the finest thing she had eaten ever.

  Would you believe the jam is made by my own fair hand? he said. If I’m nothing else I’m knacky.

  She found somehow the belief that her brothers would know s
he was all right, that she was strong, and that she was guided in the world. She did not care what her mother thought or believed.

  We’ll figure this out between us, Kizzy, the old man said.

  * * *

  That first night she slept hardly at all—it was not out of fear but out of strange excitement. She lay on the pallet bed as he lay on the floor and she listened to his breathing and tried to decide if it was a type of elf that lay there—it could not be an elf for this was not a dream—and the sound of the high wood by night in the wind was all about them and it was as real as the slow pumping inside that was the motion of her settling heart.

  * * *

  Kizzy?

  She had slept at last for a while but she woke to the word again, and there was more tea to be had, and it rained hard on the roof of the trailer.

  A day for the books, he said.

  He was busily all the morning about his books. He hunted through old volumes. He made tsssking sounds and gasps of affirmation.

  Right so, he said, reading.

  Kizzy, he said, is the Romani form of the Hebrew Qetsiyah, which is a bark similar to cinnamon.

  A flavoursome young lady, he said, that’s named for the fucken trees.

  * * *

  He was no elf but simply a tiny old man. His contact with the towns and villages beyond the woodland was minimal. Sometimes he sold wooden ornaments for Christmas and net sacks of kindling at the car boot sales, and once a week he walked the miles to a twenty-four-hour supermarket at the edge of one of the bigger towns but he did so in the middle of the night when he knew the aisles there would be empty as desolation.

  When it rained they stayed in with the books.

  Her ankle soon mended.

  When the bright spring days came they were about the woods and the mountain fields at the peripheries of the woods, as the wild garlic rose, and the blossom that formed on the bushes and hedges was an itch on the air and caused giddiness in them both. The understanding that grew between them was first of tone and gesture, and then of words, as she took them one by one and in compounds from him, by the phrase and the sentence, and she took the colours of his dialect, and her own talk by tiny degrees took on the precise timbre of his, just as her own young malleable life took on the form of his—they settled to a type of collusion with each other. The pretence that they must puzzle out their dilemma was soon dropped. It became clear that this was where she wanted to be. There were no questions to be answered here. None except for the simple questions of when to eat and when to sleep and when to work, and slowly, the dilemma was allowed to disappear and was replaced by the quiet efficiencies of love, and both knew that she had come to the end of her path, and she would go no further.