The Black Snow (10 page)

You and me need to talk, she said.

Her words sounded out of her with the relief of hemmed-in animals let loose. His brows leaned down to meet his eyelashes.

You’re talking to me now again?

A dour light trapped everything in that yard and he stood where he was in the shadow of her voice, heard in it a quaver of sadness, the skyfall of a child’s small kite.

What I want to know, Barnabas. How you could have kept that quiet from me about the insurance? All that time? When you could have said something? And all the times I mentioned it?

She shook her head as she spoke and he found himself staring at patterns of shadow on the ground as he listened to her, the imbricate of all things vertical from the sun to the dust. He began to knuckle his cheek, looked towards the sleep-slumped dog by the back door. In that moment she saw what was held tight in his face fall and a long breath came out of him.

I didn’t know how to tell you, Eskra. I thought you were sore enough. I didn’t want to hurt you. He turned then to face her. Honestly, love. I was trying to figure out something. I don’t know. At the time nothin could be done so what was the difference?

She shook her head again at him. We are going to have to sell
up some fields, Barnabas. Go in to the auctioneer tomorrow and talk to him. There’s no other way.

What are you on about, Eskra?

Maybe if you had done what you were told by the government. Not gone and bought that exemption for the compulsory tillage order. We might be growing wheat now for The Emergency and getting paid for it. But you had to be bull-headed. I don’t see what else we can do.

He went to speak but she cut him off. How are we going to live? she said.

He watched her as she walked across the yard, her arms across her chest to make a barrier of her back to him, and he turned and walked behind the new shed. He stood very still and then he turned and kicked a dull sound out of a barrel half full with ashes, stood staring into the full sense of himself, kingdoms of the mind that are to a man what makes him, and he said to himself, what in the hell does she think, that I’m just going to lie here and take what’s coming?

She stood in the sweet of peeled apples, placed around the plate the sliced fruit in grins. When she looked up she saw Barnabas marching down the yard from the new shed, his hands like stones that magicked into fingers. He stood by the back door and kicked out of his boots and came in red-faced and she sighed and turned away from him. He padded past her in his socks and went into the living room and poured himself a whiskey all scorch and satisfactory and he refilled the glass and went into the kitchen, sat down on the range chair. It was then that he spoke to her, steam issuing from a pot on the stove beside him. His face was bittered. You said to me how are we to live, as if I donny get out
of bed every morning thinking about that, hoping for a way to make things better for this family. What kind of useless man do you take me for?

The ceiling rumbled above them as if Billy were dragging something huge across it. Eskra turned towards the stove. The dinner’s near ready, she said. Call the boy down. She took a saucepan of potatoes and drained it and poured the skinned spuds into a white bowl patterned with amber and olive flowers. The potatoes piled like small steaming boulders and he sat there staring at her pop-eyed. He took a slug of his whiskey and felt it burn.

I will not be selling off them fields, Eskra, and with good reason.

She went to the door and called out in a high voice for the boy to come down to his dinner.

You find me a man around here with good reason and I’ll listen to all he has to say, she said.

Barnabas stood up. Eskra turned to the turnips and buttered them.

What then, Eskra? We sell the fields and what? Rebuild the byre with the money? And farm out the cattle. Where? Grow grass in the yard? That new barn wouldn’t house four of them.

We don’t have to sell all of the fields.

She turned and took the meat out of the oven to rest and Barnabas stared hard at the joint and began to saw at the black bread. Leaned into the jam. Eskra put the potatoes on the table.

We don’t have to sell any of them, he said. I’m going to go and get a meeting at the bank and get money off them so I am. I’ve already been talking to somebody about that at the bank. They said that reptile Creed would consider it.

Barnabas took the jam and smeared it on the bread and as he began to eat the jam blooded the sides of his mouth. She looked at him in disgust. The big red face on you, she said.

What?

We already owe the bank a debt for the new barn. And we can’t even pay that. Why would they give any money to us, Barnabas, when we can’t even pay them for what we already have?

What’s that about my face you said?

Creed sent another letter, Barnabas.

Barnabas stood and looked at himself in the mirror and saw the jam on the side of his mouth and wiped himself, picked up his drink, took a long slug of it. She went to the dresser and took from the drawer knives and forks and asked Barnabas to call Billy again but he just sat down to the table. Eskra went to the kitchen door and leaned upon the jambs and called out. Billy came down the stairs like he was footing heavy weights.

Would you listen to who it is. It’s Lord Clatterclogs, Barnabas said.

Billy looked at his father and smirked. There’s jam all over yer face.

Shut up.

Barnabas got up off his chair and went out to the next room and fixed himself another whiskey, drained it where he stood, poured another and went back into the kitchen. He stared at the plated meat on the table, his face darkening.

What’s that? he said.

What’s what? Eskra said.

That.

What do you mean?

I meant what I asked.

If you are going to be like that, Barnabas, then it is what it is.

I suppose you think this a joke.

It’s a side of beef, Barnabas. Pat Glacken came around the other day and gave it to us. Can you explain to me now what’s wrong with it?

I won’t eat it.

Excuse me?

I can’t eat it.

Since when?

Any other animal but not that since after what’s happened.

But you ate beef last week.

Billy leaned over the table and spooned potatoes onto his plate. Don’t be stupid, Da, he said. Since when don’t you eat meat?

Barnabas gave the boy a long look that held no expression at all, turned to look at the bowl of spuds and reached into it and began to spoon them onto his plate and then he put the spoon back into the bowl with a clink and leaned back, looked again at the boy as if he did not know him, and what was building inside him coalesced and was conjured quick into a fury that took the boy unawares, the hand that swung out flatly towards him and whipped across his cheek. Billy bucking backwards, stood up in shock holding his hand to his face. In that same movement he threw a look to his father of pure hate. Eskra stood up speechless and Billy fled from the room and Barnabas looked at her mouth gasping wordless like a fish. He stared at her dead-eyed. I’ll break that boy’s bake if he talks to me like that again.

Eskra stared at him like she saw a different man before her, looked at his face so long his features altered and fell away into an exaggeration of its parts, his lips ballooning into a fattened sneer that became all of his face and she watched him fork spuds
into that same swollen mouth indifferent. He ate with the kind of patience of a man who is feigning thought about his food and it was then that Eskra banged the table with her fist. She went around to Billy’s place and plated meat and potatoes and poured gravy over it and took it upstairs. When she came back down Barnabas was leaning back sucking on a cigarette holding in his hand his whiskey.

You’ve had enough of that, she said.

He gripped the glass and swirled it towards his lips. Eskra sat on the range chair defiant.

Barnabas.

He turned slowly towards her. I am the boy’s father and he will not talk like that to me not ever.

He was asking you a question, Barnabas. Since when don’t you eat beef?

A long sip of his whiskey for an answer.

Do you know what I think? he said.

I don’t care what you think any more. I’m just sick of it.

I’ve been thinking about the day it happened. How people round here responded. Everybody came to help us that day. Everybody.

She did not look at him.

Only that’s not true, he said.

He saw the damask of puzzlement on her face. What are you on about, Barnabas? she said. They all came.

He shook his head. They all came but one.

She could see when he stood that he wore a sly smile, like a man who had cracked the nut of a puzzle.

Everybody came who saw the fire and even Doctor Leonard who lives a good mile away, she said.

You’re right. Everyone within reach. Everyone within reach but one. You know who was here. Fran Glacken and those eejit sons of his. The McLaughlin clan–even that imperious fucking father of theirs dragging his beard all the way over here. Peter came cycling his bike in his fucking wellies. And the others came after when they heard. But there was one fucking bastard who didn’t show. And never came to offer his condolences neither.

She did not like what she saw in his eyes nor the way his hands fisted. The way he looked at her.

One fucking bastard, he said.

And who was that, Barnabas?

It was Pat the fucking Masher Doherty, he said.

Her face bunched up confused and Barnabas leaned back in the chair smiling to himself. He drained the glass of whiskey.

So what if he didn’t, she said. Pat the Masher is a quiet man who keeps to himself. He has enough of his own troubles, what with that son of his.

I reckon it didn’t suit him to help us.

That business before Christmas with his son. Sure he would have no reason to be upset with you about that. What happened with John the Masher wasn’t our fault. It wasn’t anybody’s fault.

Don’t be foolish, Eskra. Do you think that would not be remembered? From where that house is he could have done nothing but see that fucking fire, I’m sure of it. Watched us be burned out of the farm so he did. And I’ll tell you what, Eskra. I’ll tell you this. There might have been more to it than that. I can see the whole picture in my head so I can.

You need to stop this, Barnabas.

Stop what? he said. I’m not doing anything.

He stood and left the room without looking at her.

He awoke again from a malignant dream that spread its corruption within him. From what dark place in his mind it came he could not know. In his waking day these things lay hid and unimagined but at night they ripened like malign fruit and he awoke with relief into the dark certainty of the room, the assurance of Eskra’s breathing, the quiet mesh of the house. His tongue slapped his mouth and his mouth was dust and he rose up before the morning, walked downstairs amidst the tangle of dream. What lingered there was like dawn shadow from a ragged tree snaking a suggestive and ghastly thing upon the ground unreal but shrinking now in the light of the sun. He reached into what was left of the dream and saw the face of a woman he met on a road. Nightfall, her skin moon’s milk and her dark hair was curled and he asked her where he was going and she smiled and said nothing, walked alongside him, their hands touching and he asked her again and she turned around and said, all those who have died follow the same road, and when he looked at her again he could see she wasn’t young at all but an old woman with her hair gone grey and her skin sored and then that face became the face of Matthew Peoples and he saw the awful things that insected out of his mouth.

He lit a lamp for comfort and fixed the fire awake. Sawed bread for breakfast and ate it dry watching the dawn, a blue skate wing that left a wake of blood on the horizon. When it was light he went out, a rawing cold speckled by spit-rain that promised greater rainfall and he looked towards a huddling of dark cloud
shaped like an anvil. He went to the byre and began to clear out the remains, his hands reddening in the cold. He pulled at the charred wood, lifted fire-cracked stones, kicked cattle bones that lay concealed in the ashes. Caught amidst the byre the linger of the fire’s stench. The metalwork shaped now like the letters of some occult alphabet signing for him sounds that led to a dark and final truth about the nature of man and beast. He removed pieces of the ruined remains to a site behind the new barn that he had begun to use as a dumping ground. He did not want to return yet to that taper field. Back and forth with the wheelbarrow all day to make with char a small dark hill. Nature had taken to the barrow as if it were a coat, gnawing the front of it until it was holed above the wheel. He could see the ground as he walked while the barrow leaked its load, left a trail of black dust upon the grass. The tangled ruins of the byre began to take shape with other ruined things behind the new barn, a cutting bar rusted to reddened bones as if it had laid down weary and died there. An old stove laughing at its predicament with hysteric grill teeth. Machine tools worked and put down by hands long gone.

He thought often about Matthew Peoples. Remembered the first time he saw him. Watched him lumbering up the yard, a white moustache on his face at the time that could have hoofed a horse. Jesus, if a whole tree could walk, he thought. Figured him for useless but Matthew soon learned him. That man could turn a hand to anything, could hedge and harrow, ditch and reap and sow. Could cure croup even. Told Eskra to sluice the young boy’s chest and throat with a sponge in coldest water and sure it worked. Knew how to cure fistula on a horse too. Told Barnabas he needed a toad and Barnabas laughed at him but Matthew turned up the next day with a sack and produced a toad from
it, a warted and bloated thing with eyes slow-blinking, a strange duplicate of Matthew Peoples himself. He held it in the air towards Barnabas. Hold it to the horse’s hole, he said. Goan fuck yerself, said Barnabas. Matthew leaning back laughing. He began to rub the back of the toad off the sore. Keep yer head back, he said, for there’s a wild smell off it. Barnabas half-turning his head in disgust. I’d say there is. You can stick your head up its hole for all I care, I won’t be going anywhere near it. He called Matthew a juju man but Matthew stopped laughing and looked at him puzzled. There’s no magic in it. It’s the milk from the toad’s warts will ease it so it will. He threw the dead toad into a ditch like a useless flap of skin. Said it would take about two weeks and sure as he said it, it did.