The Black Snow (15 page)

No, Fran. I had it cancelled.

Glacken leaned his head out and took a look at the rain and he rolled his mouth into a spit. So yer all out.

I’m all out.

Knowing you, you have ideas.

Well, that’s what I’m here about.

You want to sell me some of those fields then.

Barnabas gave him a strange look and he shook his head. Naw. I’m thinking bout something else you might be able to help me with.

Glacken looked at him surprised. And what’s that?

That mountain of blocks under the tarpaulin behind the barn. I seen them there a long time unused. Was wondering if you’d let me have them. There’s nearly enough of them for what I want to do. I can pay you back the full price of them when I’m back up and motoring.

As Barnabas talked Glacken began to knead the palm of his
left hand with his thumb. He spoke with his eyeballs full upon the yard.

Well, Barney. That’s wild problematic so it is. Wild problematic.

Come on now, Fran. I’ll pay you interest.

That doesn’t stop it being wild problematic.

What is wild problematic?

That.

I’m just asking, Fran, is all.

The problem is I need em. I’m not done with em yet. I’m really sorry, Barney, but that’s the way it is. Glacken turned around and nodded towards his son. Them boys are gonna help me put up a new shed for the new machinery. We’ve been waiting for the summer to build it. He pointed across the yard to where he would build it.

A long silence wedged between them and Barnabas began to look at an old shoe lying at the edge of the yard, its mouth stouped to the rain.

Just a wee bit of help, Fran, is all I ask.

Help has nothing to do with it, Barney. Would ye not sell up some of them fields to me? I’ve got two boys hungry now to put down their own roots.

Sure what would I farm if the fields are all gone to yous? Haven’t you enough of them?

I’m wild sorry, Barney. Listen, when yer leaving would ye go in and tell Pat I said to give you a side of beef. It’s there hanging.

I canny build a byre with raw meat.

I’ll talk to ye man to man, Barney, about the fields if ye want to sell, but I canny help ye with the blocks. I’m wild sorry.

The men stood there plain and awkward and Barnabas saw himself standing like a fool. He searched for something to say that
would save face, make it seem he had other things to talk about, that he was indifferent to the man’s attitude, but what came out of him whipped unbidden from its own dark. Jesus, you’re a tight cunt of a man, Fran Glacken. A right dog in the manger. Them blocks are lying there as long as. He shook his head furiously as he spoke and he saw then Martin stepping fast towards him and he took a hold of Barnabas’s tie and roared at him, don’t you talk to my father like that, and Barnabas gave him a shove backwards and Martin lowered his head and charged into him. The two men went to the ground and began rolling like the stars of some silent slapstick comedy till Fran Glacken roared at his son and kicked him in the ribs. Glacken staring pop-eyed at Martin who stood up red-cheeked, began fixing his shirt calmly, not once lifting his eyes off Barnabas who bent for his spilled cap. Barnabas began to brush dirt and straw off his arms and he stared at Fran Glacken, his breath heaving, a look in his eye of derision. In the silence that was held for that moment it became clear to all that the words Barnabas had said were said and would always be said and Glacken’s silence stood itself between them in acknowledgement of that fact and Barnabas began to walk off down the yard, his fists out of his coat a pair of useless shining obols, could feel the hard orbs of Glacken’s vision upon him. Down onto the road amidst the sharp sheets of rain that cut into him and he pulled his hat against it.

He stepped into the house with his clothes stained dark from the rain and in the shadows of his eyes lay storm pools. He stood there shaking his head at no one in particular.

Didn’t I tell you not to go out in that? she said.

He began to mutter. I’ll never ask nobody again for help, nobody at all.

She helped him out of his coat, turned a chair towards the stove and hung the coat off it. He stood over the heat with his hands flat out, water vapours beginning to rise off him like some spectre freeing itself of his body, water from his coat pooling upon the tiles, water in the hollows of his ears, and he put a finger into each earhole and shook them.

You’ve got dirt all down the back of your coat. What were you doing?

I tell you, when I was a youngster in America I remembered nothing of the rain.

Go upstairs and change out of them wet things or you’ll get a cold.

He turned and she saw him briefly like a different person, the colour of his face changed by a rusting beard that was at odds with the darkness of his hair. How the beard had aged him quick. He stood a minute staring at the wall and then he turned for upstairs. He came back down in a change of clothes and poured himself tea and sat drinking it. He began to roll a cigarette and she ran her hand through the glisten of his damp hair and stopped. I’ll get you a towel, she said.

You’re all right. I’ll get it myself.

He took to the stairs again with heavy steps, went to the press and stood looking at its contents, reached into the back and pulled out two balled sheets. His brow thickened. He stood looking at them, had just begun to open them out when Eskra came quickly up the stairs, swiped them out of his hands.

Are you mad, woman? Aren’t those the sheets that went missing?

No, they’re not, she said.

Well what are they then?

Those are the sheets that were ruined in the fire. Take a look at them. They’re smoked dark.

Well, what in the hell are you holding onto them for if they’re ruined?

Just.

He looked at her a moment as if she were the flesh and bone of confusion, grabbed at a hand towel and shook his head at her, began back down the stairs muttering. She stood with the sheets in her hands and looked towards the window, saw the rain had just stopped. The air held hushed and trembling and the world washed to a lustre that took the evening light and glittered it back in all its manifold colours. She heard then the back door close, pricked her ears for Billy’s voice, but heard none. She put the sheets back in the press and went downstairs but what she saw was an empty room and the soaking coat gone from the chair against the stove.

The house of Goat McLaughlin rose to meet him in the spit-rain that lingered after the hard fall. He came to it from the back fields, saw the dirty white walls of the house alight in evening’s amber. From behind a galvanized pig house came a black dog alertly forward. It woofed sharply and the other dogs came. One of them sidled forward on spindled legs with eyes shark-like and then another younger just like it. The three grouped watching Barnabas trudge the turnip field and begin to climb the barbed wire fence, saw him swing a leg over and stop, snapped loud woofs when they saw his trouser leg snagged on a barb. It clung tenacious as if it had its own animal nature and Barnabas roared out a curse at the dogs, at the fence, shook his leg but set free only beads of rain. Arrah fuck. He shook his leg again and took a look towards the house, had a feeling he was being watched,
could see himself from a distance as if he had been stuffed to the gills with stupidity like some ridiculous scarecrow with its leg held aloft. He saw then Goat McLaughlin come spry towards him gathering the spit-rain in his beard. Pig shit smell off him. A pinch of his fingers and Barnabas was freed.

I wouldn’t have recognized ye in that new beard ye have, Barnabas.

Barnabas nodded towards the dogs. Did you steal them wild cats from the circus?

Deep smell of dog and boiled meat in the man’s house and he was watched as he entered by a pleading, sad-eyed Christ from the wall. He took a seat at the table while Goat stood on his short legs in the scullery with his back turned pouring tea. Barnabas sat poking a finger inside the new hole in his trousers. Goat sat light of bone on the chair, looked as if wind could lift him out of it. One of the black dogs appeared behind him and sat watching. The sound of pigs outside.

Tea all right for ye?

Tis a bit cold.

When I was a youngster, before your time now, the town and the countryside used to be swarming with pigs. Those mucs were called greyhounds, long-snouted and near as skinny as dogs so they were. Goat smiled and leaned into him. They had a wild habit of roaming. If you let one of them go wandering somebody else’s cornfield the price of trespass would be sore.

Barnabas smiled back at him. Is that so?

Aye.

Goat took a drink of tea. I still canny make it the way my auld missus used to make it what with the rationing. She made tea so thick you could stand two men on it.

How long is it now since she’s gone?

Five year.

As he spoke, the old man’s eyes removed themselves from the room and just as quick they sharpened.

Barnabas spoke. You did a good turn coming out to help me that day of the fire, Goat. You and your boys. They came up to the place like lightning.

Goat McLaughlin nodded grimly. Aye. Ye were lucky they were working in the farthest field. Tell me, I hear now you’re having further bother.

Who told you that?

Goat McLaughlin pulled his chair closer to Barnabas, leaned his pig smell into him. Barnabas saw how the old man’s silver beard bore fading flashes of red and had to lean back from the smell.

The old man studied the man dripping before him. So what would make a man like you tramp all the way out here in this rain?

Barnabas cleared his throat, sat up straighter. I came to ask you for help, Goat. I canny get the money to get the byre rebuilt and I donny want to have to sell up my fields. So I’m asking for help. Scrap blocks. Any old timber. Anything your boys might have. Anything at all would do. Just so’s I can get started and get to building again. Feed my family. You understand that, don’t you?

The old man eyed him long without blinking and when he blinked he made a show of it. I understand that need fine rightly, Barnabas. Didn’t I raise up three boys and a daughter of me own. But times are tough. I would imagine most around here would be likely to help if they could but most round here have nothing. Them boys of mine, each one of them is struggling with their
own families to feed. The way I see it, it’s not so bad. Your feet are put back on the earth now like the rest of us. Twill do ye no harm.

Barnabas winced. That’s some position to take, Goat. I’ve a wife and boy to look after.

Aye. But you are alive, Barnabas, and not dead like Matthew Peoples and that is your great blessing.

Barnabas began to feel his head thicken and he looked into the old man’s eyes and began to hate what he saw in there, the yellowing rheum and the righteous blue that shone out of them. He leaned in towards the pig smell. No one put a blessing on my house. And there’s no need to bring him into it.

The old man watched the way Barnabas’s face tightened. The great Lord is all the property we need, he said.

All I’m asking is if you’d put word about.

Goat eyed him and blinked another slow blink as if looking at an inner picture of the man and his eyes began to burn more fiercely. Aye, I will. But it is the way of the Lord that we must embrace suffering and adversity. Ye should have been prepared, Barnabas, for this sort of reckoning. It comes to all men, sooner or later. The great question in life is, are ye ready for it when it comes? That is the measure to my mind of a true man. Like I said, it will do ye no harm.

I’m not the kind, Goat, to go through life lying down.

A second dog entered the room making a high clip on the floor tiles with its nails. The dog’s black fur shined near blue and it stood with red eyes watching Barnabas. The third dog appeared and the first dog yawned and Goat McLaughlin watched Barnabas stand up. He stared at the old man in disbelief and shook his head at him, saw the chorded folds of his throat, found himself
wishing for a moment the old man’s death. By a knife, probably. Something blunt to make the pain endure.

Would you ever go and tell those hounds of hell to fuck off.

The spit-rain stopped in solemn sympathy with the man and in the sheen of the road he saw the world corrupted, the sky, the trees, the mountains, the fields, remade now into a shadow world in which one could not perceive their true forms. What he saw in those shadows was a lesser truth of what the world was and what he saw around him was what the world is and nothing else goddamnit. He walked and could feel the breeze enter cold through the hole in his trousers, saw in his mind the leering face of Goat McLaughlin, the scrawny old man with bird-like talons for hands. That puckered face sucking it all in. Deliberating on my ruin like some un-anointed priest.

He followed the road home and rubbed the scab the razor left on his hand, searched his mind for ideas, felt all the while as if he were on the brink of some revelation. He passed one of McDaid’s small fields and saw the corner of it flooded with rain. A rust-gnawed gate stood sentry to it and he unlatched the loop of old blue rope and entered the field. Sheep black-faced staring at him. He walked towards the corner where the land sloped and held a huge rain pool and he went over to it and surveyed the field’s drainage. The liquid silver of the rain pool mirrored the world so intently it was like a rag of sky torn free. In it he could see the sky satin white and the limbs of trees, a barren beauty like some kind of sprawl-boning clamour of the dead. When he returned to Donegal he was first struck by such trees. Could watch their different shapes all day. Not one the perfect image of a tree but each one oddly unique. Some of them huge
and thickened with snaking ivy so that it seemed life was being constricted out of them, the trees breaking free near the top to gasp for air. There were trees cleaving like married old couples. Long-necked superior larches and firs aloof and furred a thick green. Old sycamores that were strangers to time. An oak he saw daily at the back of a field naked and dead like a stunned invert octopus.

McDaid was sitting in front of the fire eating when Barnabas came through the door. The house held in an almost religious silence. He looked up at Barnabas and laughed. Jesus, ye look like a dying bastard.