The Black Snow (18 page)

Before they left Billy had called for the dog and did a circle of the yard but the dog did not come. A busying breeze behind them on the road as they pedalled and Billy kept searching the road, expecting to see the dog as if he would appear at any moment from one of the fields, wet and wild and that eagerness brightly from his single eye. They came to the beach two miles up the road and it lay festooned with dark ribbons of seaweed. A slate sea that made it seem the world did not bend to meet itself but continued straight and true into the eternal.

They left their bicycles by the machair dunes and Billy ran towards the water. He stood in the caul of a previous tide that lay spectral on the sand, leapt back from the advance of the water. He turned and took hold of a long cylinder of seaweed and began to flay the beach. Eskra walking slowly towards the water in bare feet, the lullaby sound of the sea and the salted air lush, and she bunched her skirt to her knees. The cold bit her toes as she entered the water to her ankles. Part of her dress fell from her hand and she watched it soak and darken, let the rest of it drop. She reached her hands into the water, a numbing cold and the sea’s salt stung the rawest part of her fingers, and then she felt the pain ease. She began to squeeze her hands into fists and released them, opened her palms in the water skywards as if making an expression of grace.

Behind her on the beach Billy began shouting to himself and threw a wrack of seaweed into the air, watched it flutter birdly and glisten. He turned and frowned when he saw his mother squatting strangely in the sea with her dress floating around her, the slow way she washed her hands.

The sea lay itself upon the beach without anger or rush, sighed as it made its retreat. They walked the length of the strand to a place of basalt rocks and they watched the tide recede and saw wobbled shapes of themselves on the sand’s shining surface and shrinking marks of their feet. Billy walking awkward behind his mother. Ma, he said.

She turned around to look at him.

Why is Da rebuilding the byre? The cattle are all dead.

She studied him where he stood, the boy all bony elbows and long and awkward feet, saw the way his gaze was both daring and avoidant.

It is in your father’s nature, Billy. To keep trying. What else do you want him to do?

The boy shrugged.

Your father is going to get us out of this mess. The bank did not want to help so what is he supposed to do? The alternative is to give up and move away. When I first met your father he was smarter than any of those men he worked with. He was filthy and greased all the time from the work and he drank a little too much but inside him he had intelligence. I saw it straight away. I saw that if your father had been born with better chances he could have been somebody great. That man had to build up a life from nothing in America and what he built for himself he built with no help. You know, when we came back here, I had it in my mind we were returning him to what should have been. That he had a right to be here in his own country. And that you could grow up in your home like I never did. And then what happened, Billy, with that fire.

She stopped and began to shake her head and stood staring at the sea. Billy walked past her.

In the back of his mind your father has never forgotten where he came from and what that was like and what that kind of life did to him. You know, he would rather die than go back to all of that again and lose everything he has. Do you see what I mean?

As she spoke she saw Billy frowning again. But why don’t you just sell up some of the fields? he said.

Eskra did not answer him.

The distant shape of a person on the beach walking in their direction and a small shape breaking away towards the water, a dog chasing a stick.

Goat McLaughlin marched breathless towards the Kane farm making sharp and short whistles at his dogs, the animals fanning out into an advance party of three that scuttled and sloped as if alert to some danger. They slid quick through the gate’s ribs, one of the dogs trailing blue rope from its neck and it made towards Cyclop’s water bowl and began to lap from it. Barnabas heard the old man’s whistles and looked up, saw the invasion of dogs, Goat moving quick-footed up the yard, his talon hands loose and jiggling. Barnabas muttered. Bring forth the prophet. Barnabas stretched his back and looked down at his hands and slapped the dust off them and he stepped out of the byre and stood in front of the pile of rocks in the yard, met the man’s advancing gaze. Yes, Goat, he said.

Yes, Barnabas.

The men did not shake hands but stood there eyeing each other, the old man clad in purple knee-patched dungarees and his eyes kept flitting to the stones behind Barnabas. A shine in his eyes that told he would speak and would be listened to. I didna want to disturb ye, Barney. Donny like to see a man taken from his work.

Well, here you are.

I see yer rebuilding the byre.

That is so.

The old man paused a moment and looked at the staggered wall beside him and dropped down his chin. When it rose again his words came out lit by some internal fire of indignation and his hands began to jiggle intensely. Them stones, Barnabas. Those stones that ye took. Don’t ye know, Barnabas, there’s a desecration involved? Ye took from the land what is not yers to take. Ye cannot expect nobody to say nothing about it.

One of the dogs came towards Barnabas and began to nose at his feet, a tight and curling tail it sported and Barnabas gave the dog a menacing look, lifted his boot and pushed the dog away with the flat of his foot. The animal retreated sullenly and Barnabas eyed the old man, stood silent for a moment. What are you on about, Goat?

Beard to beard they stood and beneath the brushwire of the other’s chin Barnabas saw the old man bite down on his teeth. His eyes never leaving the stones. His mouth made a strange shape as he spoke and he began to wag a weazened finger. Ye know fine rightly what I’m on about. Ye took them stones from the famine houses up at Blackmountain. Yes, ye did. I heard fine rightly. Everybody round here knows. That accident ye had on the hill. Them stones do not belong to ye, Barnabas, and they must be put back even though the desecration is done. We will figure out a way.

Barnabas said nothing for a moment and then he let loose in the man’s face a great laugh, stood there with his mouth open and the black of his back teeth visible and then he snapped his mouth shut, leaned in towards Goat. The old man’s eyes had scorch in them enough to light tinder.

As Barnabas spoke his mouth tightened. I got them stones from me own land, Goat. And while you’re here let me tell you that you’ve some neck coming in here telling me what to do. When you wouldn’t help me out with nothin. He shook his head at him. You are a pious, superstitious old bastard who for all your Christian talk could not see fit to help another man when he was down. Now I’ve got to be getting back to my work.

He turned and began to walk towards the byre and the old
man stood a moment quaking. When he spoke his voice had found a higher register of anger.

Them houses belong to our tradition, Barnabas. Yer making a mockery of the Lord. They were not yer stones to take. They belong to our people, people round here who were starved by the famine. The bounties of this land are not here to be used indiscriminately by local strangers like you.

As he spoke he was wagging his finger and then he stopped himself, seemed to find control and his voice dropped down. I know ye are a reasonable man, Barnabas. I know ye are doing what ye think is right by your family. Look. I hear you’ve no longer a cart of yer own. I’ll help ye take the stones back so I will.

Barnabas’s eyes began to widen and he curled his mouth and walked back from the byre to the old man, stood right up to him. Nobody owns them rocks, Goat, but the dead and the dead have forfeited all rights to them. There’s a life to be lived here first. Nobody takes nothing to the grave. Not even you.

The old man met his glare. The earth bears all things freely when no one demands it, he said.

Barnabas leaned in to the heat of the man’s breath. Tell me, he said. Who the fuck consecrated you priest?

The old man stepped back. He shook his head with fury and his eyes began to bubble and burst. Ye are sowing division, Barnabas Kane. Ye are turning yer back upon our fellowship. Cutting yerself off from this community. Ye should listen to what people are saying about ye. Ye have no animals, Barnabas, yet ye are building this byre. What kind of foolish thing is that? Ye should sell up and support your family. I’ll help ye take back the stones. Those stones are our bones, Barnabas. Ye
don’t want to isolate yerself from this entire community now do ye?

As he spoke Barnabas saw Billy and Eskra come through the gate, saw Eskra stop when she heard the old man’s raised voice. She directed Billy to go in through the front door of the house. Barnabas felt his fist begin to boulder and he held it in a way that would have been fit to fell the man had it not been that Eskra appeared then from the back door. She stood with her arms folded but said nothing to alert the old man and he leaned in towards Goat.

You ever tell me again how to look after my family and I’ll rip that great beard of yours right out of your head. This byre will be rebuilt with your help or not and when I asked you for it you wouldn’t give it to me. Now give me head peace and clear the fuck off.

The old man thumped a foot, turned and saw Eskra, and his voice dropped low.

Ye think me a hard man but I just want for ye to do what’s right.

Get off my land, Goat.

It’s a good thing for ye none of my boys are witness to this.

You can send any of your boys over to see me any time they like, Goat. They’ll get a great welcome. I’ve got a twelve-gauge Browning behind the backdoor for trespassers and I’d just love so I would to take off a foot.

Goat eyed Barnabas with a look that would break an ordinary man apart. Barnabas stared the old man back, stared so hard that the old man’s features began to dissolve into a mush of skin and hair and bones. The spell was broken by one of the black dogs that began to giddy about the old man’s feet. He turned and
made two sharp whistles to the other two dogs and they snapped their heads to their master, followed the old man out the gate.

Barnabas pulled a chair out from the table and let out a long sigh as he sat down. He began to cut the black bread on the board in front of him, leaned towards the butter and knifed at it. Do you remember that one time years ago, Eskra, when we came here, what Fran Glacken said to me? He said to me I was a local stranger. The cheek of him. The big smiling face on him and I nearly hit him. Do you know what he meant by that? Did I ever explain it to you? It meant that I was not the same because I was gone out of here. Because I had emigrated. As if I had a choice in it. This fucking place. I never treated anyone any different when I came back and I never lorded it over nobody. I’m the same as them but I’m different because I went away and that’s the way they see it.

He chewed on the bread and sent his tongue to lick at butter on his beard.

Maybe them cunts are right calling me a local stranger. I can still see this land in a way that they aren’t able. And for all the time spent here I still canny get a handle on the place names–every nook and cranny with a bloody name on it. You know something–Matthew Peoples knew it fine rightly too. The old bastard was always taking a hand of me because of it.

She saw as Barnabas spoke he began to make a face, pulled a mocking impression of Matthew Peoples. One time I was asking him about the best place for trout and he starts putting on this expression and I knew he was pulling my leg. Oh, that would be down by the whin pool, he says, now you know where that is, don’t you? You’d have to cross the seven bloody magic stones
near Cloontagh but not go as far as it, naw. Go past the bloody potato field of James Duffy. Not the big one but the wee one. And you’ll find it then by Altashane. He says all this to me with barely a straight face. Just a yonder beyond the fairy circle that’s near the fir trees.

When he stopped talking he leaned slow over the table towards the teapot and poured himself tea that dribbled from the spout onto the tablecloth. He slapped it down, took a drink. Damn it, he said. This tea would freeze a man’s balls off.

It’s made only a while ago, Barnabas.

He turned and began looking out the window and all that was turning to dusk.

Being of the land, but not of it, he said. That’s why we can expect nothing but difficulty from them. Nothing at all.

When he turned in his chair he saw Eskra trying to smile at him but what lit her eyes was sadness.

Anyhow, he said. We’ll fucking show them. I showed them once before. I’ll fucking show them again. It won’t be a bother.

He rose under a great dark each day to work upon the byre and as he worked he would look at the sky and wonder. Dawns that came like the aftermath of slaughter, a battleground of the gods during the night. Or some mornings it seemed there was no dawn at all, just a pale light that sent forth a day stunted, slung down upon him its cold. He would work regardless, work with his sleeves rolled soon to make a sweat while the weather tensed and threatened but kept favour. He began to work up a cadence, an old rhythm that his hands knew, his feet in lockstep, a meeting of mind and stone that spoke to him of fundamental things. His hands upon the stones as if he had delivered each one
from the earth. The stones loosening memories as if they had within them shamanic powers, memories that came like drifts of clouds from over some blind horizon of mind. Saw himself aged twenty, a strange and fearless creature who would not know the man he was now. Hanging off a corner without a harness nearly sixty floors up. The sally and slap of the wind and Manhattan beneath him like some epic ruin. The fearlessness of that kid. It scared him now to think about it because he had learned the taste of fear. He saw in snatches the faces of men he had worked with, could remember most of their names–Patch Barry and Matty O’Brien and Sonny Bracken–and one by one they left the work and fell forgotten into America. Sonny the best friend of Patch and both of them Mayo men and everywhere you saw one you saw the other and the high talk out of them. He recalled, too, the times he spent with the Mohawks up in the Gowanus. Jim Deer inviting him up to the streets of Brooklyn they had turned native. That dim, smoke-thickened room called the Spar Bar and Grill where he would drink and listen to their speech like strange music. The Mohawks did not look like Indians at all, wore their hair short. Jim Deer with his hair greased and the way he laid out his long hands and big moon fingernails upon the table or wrapped them both around his beer, his silent way of looking into the deepest parts of you. Deer’s sweet baritone voice explaining how his father died from a fall off the skeleton of a railroad bridge over the St Lawrence, and the man’s eyes like stones in the telling. They all had such stories yet worked the skyscrapers anyway, drank till they could stand no more and when the time was right retreated to their home at Caughnawaga, a reservation on the St Lawrence River. Deer said, in the river’s silence you are in the company of your dead. Barnabas had learned to forget the
dead, had put Donegal out of his mind, but the way the Mohawks returned home so easily awakened in him something dormant. That aching place of his childhood. The death of his parents stirring sorrow in him as if from the grave they would not let him forget. The last time he drank with Deer he asked him why they were so fearless. Deer answered, death is an invisible presence all around us. We just pass through. None of us know how close we stand to it.