The Black Snow (20 page)

She picked up the bicycle and began to walk, thought again of Pat the Masher. That man did not look right at all. I hope there’s no new bother with that son. The day-bright of fields and the bluebells in the basket. The bicycle back wheel clicking in satisfaction. The day felt loose to her and she swung in answer to its easy rhythms, looked up left at the lane that rose for the hills as she passed it and thought of Barnabas coming down with the horse. Light and peace now upon the mountains. The air a pure crystal. She followed along the road and a lorry passed by her. The driver signalled hello and she waved back though she did not know the face. When she reached the turn for their road she saw Billy coming from school along the main road. She stopped and waited, watched him shape into view, his short auburn hair standing skywards and his fists balled by his sides and she saw more clearly in his march the cut of a young Barnabas. Billy saw a pleased smile on his mother’s face and watched it fall away when he spoke. Has Cyclop come back yet?

She shook her head slowly. He wasn’t there when I left after lunch. He’ll come back, Billy, I promise. He’ll come back when it suits him.

She pulled the schoolbag off his shoulders and wore it on her back, wheeled the bicycle beside him. He marched ahead up the road. She called out to him how was school and he answered her with some vague mutterings and she did not follow up on it. As they walked past McDaid’s house she saw Queenie sitting lordly on the step, a beast both sad and proud and she made them all look her minions. Billy did not stop as was his usual, but marched past the dog. He disappeared around the corner.
When she reached the turning she heard Billy’s voice call out. He’s back. He’s here.

She heard him shout the dog’s name a long eager call.

Her eyes passed beyond the trees and followed through the gate and she saw by the front porch the dog curled up and Billy running towards him. From her heart fell a load she had not realized she was carrying. Billy began to call the dog, but the dog lay there indifferent to him, exhausted perhaps after some epic journey through the fields, and she watched as Billy approached Cyclop and bent down to him. The boy put his arms around the animal and in that moment he leapt back, stood and stepped away with a jerk as if the dog had snapped at him, and Billy began to stagger backwards looking down at his shirt. He held out his hands and as he turned towards his mother she saw the horror that was held mute in his face, the boy’s eyes opened wild and his hands steeped in blood. She was not aware of herself dropping the bicycle to the ground as she ran towards Billy, nor of the school bag that bounced on her back, and she grabbed a hold of Billy’s arms looking to see where he was bitten and she saw that he wasn’t, and in that small moment of time a vision of something else took form and expanded, held itself clear before her, and she ran towards the dog and saw how Billy took a step backwards, as if he held her accountable for what was, and she bent down to the animal and lifted up his head and what she saw was the glassed eye of death and a wide smiling gleam in his throat that had been cut into it with a knife.

Behind her, the boy howling.

Billy stood by the horse in the stable and leaned his head against the animal, held himself still in the must and silence and then he
reached his arms around the neck of the beast. Heat-flesh brought to his ear the animal’s storm workings, what stirred internal sounding like weather surges and governing all else the boom and ghost echo of her thundering heart. What he kept seeing in his mind was an awful vision of the dog and his mother’s drawn face and he could not stop seeing them until his mother came into the stable. She went to him and she saw in the gloom his cheeks shining from his tears and how his lower lip was trembling. She reached out for him, sensed the tensed fibres of his arms, held him until they softened. The boy stood between woman and horse and the horse stood staring out of the barn with her eyes upon the yard and then the animal reared her head backwards and sneezed, broke the spell of silence. Billy pulled back and groaned. Oh, Ma. She’s gone and sneezed all over me. Eskra could not help herself, tried to stifle a laugh and couldn’t, and her laughter caught the boy by surprise and he looked at her upset, and then he started laughing too, and the horse shook its head at the two of them. They held each other as they laughed and Eskra’s long laugh petered out and met sorrow waiting at the end of it and the two of them leaned in towards each other and sobbed. When their tears ran dry he let go of the horse and she wiped his face with her sleeve. She held his face in her hands and saw in his eyes a look of fear that left her shook, as if what the boy had witnessed was everything that was solid of this earth and its forms deliquesced, and she went to speak to him but did not know what to say and she was glad then for the sounds of Barnabas outside until she figured what it was he was doing. The dead-weight dragging sound of the dog being brought up the yard, and then Barnabas appeared backwards, walking past the door, hauling the body of Cyclop in a gunny sack. The boy tensed and made to move from her but she
stopped him from going outside. From his cried-out eyes he gave her a pleading look. I don’t want Da to bury him without me.

He’s just moving him someplace else for now.

The hauling ceased and they heard Barnabas cursing, the agitated click of his heels on the flagstones, his face then appearing at the door. What are yous doing in here? He leaned against the jambs and squinted his eyes at the two of them. Do you know any reason, Billy, why somebody might do this?

He saw Billy shaking his head quickly, furiously, and then the boy made a low sound as if he had not the strength to talk. Naw, he said.

Barnabas stepped outside and stood looking at the byre and then he turned around to them and spat on the ground. I’m going over to Peter’s to see if he’s got a can of petrol. Gonna take the car up the town to talk to that sergeant. See what in the hell is going on around here.

She stood by the front door watching the road for Barnabas. In her mind she began to see a reason for what befell the dog. It loomed and pushed against her reason and she tried to hold firm against it, but what pushed powerful was an intuition–that it was that tiny Peoples woman who could do a thing like this. She could not tell it to Barnabas. She looked at the bloodied step and saw it catch the light like porphyry. By the gate lay the bicycle and beside it on the ground lay the bluebells that had fallen out of the basket. She picked the bicycle up and laid it against the wall, lifted the flowers and walked through the gate and hurled them into the ditch. She turned and saw Billy watching from the bedroom window, his face a whisper to the glass.

She was saddened and angry and she went into the kitchen
and took a bowl and cold water and added hot water. She kneeled to the step and washed it with both hands and her hair fell loose in her face. She rinsed the blood from the flagstones where Barnabas had dragged the dog to the sack, tried to imagine what kind of person would have the sickness to kill a dog like that, cut its neck on the step and leave it out for the boy to see. No thing for any child to see at all. Blood spilled at the back of our house and now blood spilled at the front of it and this place nothing but wretched. She turned and for a moment saw the trees and watched the way with grace they moved and she said aloud to herself, the wind sways not the leaves evenly.

Dog blood mixed in the water filmed her hands a translucent red. Dog blood a shadow of itself on the step after it was washed out, as if the life-force of the animal there remained. Dog blood a pool beside the step for two wasps that swung down from behind her. She watched them test and taste the blood and saw some vile conspiracy in their movements, that evil could find work out of evil, and she felt a sudden and deep sickening. She swung at the wasps with the cloth and flattened one of the wasps into a pulp while the other swung up agitated. It made a loop in the air and swung by her face and then shot for the roof and disappeared. She stood and removed with her shoe the mess of dead wasp, saw the disarmed point of its stinger, heard then behind her another drone. Two cars coming up the road.

Barnabas swung the Austin in front of the house and a black Garda car parked alongside him. Eskra watching the sergeant climb slowly out of his car. The way he stood. His shoulders slack as if he was weary of such trouble and the look of him barely forty. His face was slack too, his cheeks blue-shadowed and a soft
end for a chin, and he wore a belly that pushed out at the buckle. Too many days with his feet up and she saw now he left his cap on the front seat if he ever wore it at all. But she saw something different in his eyes, the bright steel of composure that gave the lie to his demeanour and he caught her watching, looked at her grimly and nodded. Take me up to see this dog, Barnabas, he said.

They stood by the new barn with Cyclop lumped in a gunny sack. The jute had darkened with blood and when Barnabas rolled back the sack’s opening his hand brushed off the dog’s cold nose. He drew his hand back quick and wiped it off his trousers. The head of the dog held loose in the policeman’s hands and his eyes met with the vitreous unseeing of the dog’s eyes and then Barnabas spoke. This dog’s dead only a short while. There was heat still off him when I lifted him. The blood was warm on the step.

Aye. Aye. That may be so.

Barnabas watched the man examine the stiffening animal, the slow-breathing like this was nothing new to him, the way he ran his fingers like a vet through the dog’s fur, felt about the legs and up to the neck where he held gently the dog’s snout without fear of it snapping open, trained a thumb through the fur around the mouth. He stood then looking at dried particles of blood on his hands, rolled them between finger and thumb, smelled it. He stood and turned and walked down the yard to the pump and worked a quick heave and sluiced his hands clean. He stood there looking at the byre with long interest and he leaned back and began to walk towards Barnabas.

I’m glad to see, Barney, you got yourself up and going again. There was talk there for a while this farm was done for. Aye. Aye. He turned towards the byre and nodded. An antique look you’re going for. As he spoke he smiled as if he could not help it.

Barnabas frowned and he looked down at the dog in the gunny sack and began to swivel his foot, looked back up at the Garda with a squint eye. Tell me, Pat. What are we going to do about the dog dead here? The one with the throat cut out of it.

The Garda looked at him and he looked at the sack and he made a funny shape with the side of his mouth and then he sighed quietly, gestured with his eyes as if he wanted to say something. Barnabas looked at him. Do you think it was them Travellers that did it? I scared some of them off here a few weeks ago. Came right into the yard so they did and began rummaging as if there was no one living here at all.

The Garda shook his head. I doubt that very much.

Vicious cunts whoever they are doing that to a dog. It’s the kind of them to do it.

The air shook with the sound of the back door closing harder than she had wanted it to and they turned and saw Eskra coming towards them. She walked with her arms folded to her chest as if she was guarding against peril itself and she did not give a damn that her hair had fallen loose. She stood to the Garda and did not meet him with the respect he was used to. What are you going to do about this? she said. She nodded towards the dog. Whoever did this to an animal should be well met by the law.

The Garda pursed his lips and agreed with her and Barnabas looked towards his wife. Eskra, would you go in and fix the Garda a wee sup. Something for his travels all the way out here.

Eskra threw him a look. Would you not go get it for him yourself? Have I nothing to say to him?

Barnabas looked at the Garda and he looked again at his wife. Please, Eskra.

A slow smile came upon the Garda’s face and his eyes lit up. He
raised a hand and brought finger and thumb into a near circle. Just a wee dollop, Eskra.

She looked at him and wiped the hair out of her face. I don’t see anything around here to be smiling at, she said.

She turned and walked down the yard, her arms still folded, and the Garda turned to Barnabas. Is that what you’d call the American temperament?

Barnabas shrugged. That woman is usually soft as butter, as you well know.

Well, said the Garda. I respect what yous have gone through here. And it must be terribly bad for the boy to see it. It’s extreme all right. To see that done to a dog. Aye. Aye. Though I’m not sure realistically what I can do about it.

Barnabas squinted at the Garda again. I don’t understand, Sergeant.

Surely you do, Barnabas.

Barnabas gave the Garda a long look, saw the man standing expressionless with his hands by his sides as if there was truth in plain sight between them and he was waiting for Barnabas to seize upon it. The Garda began to look out upon the fields and nodded in their general direction where a low sun lay flat upon them. There’s blood on that dog’s fur that is a day or two old. Flakes of old blood, Barnabas. That’s not his own blood whatever way you look at it. You’re a farmer, Barnabas. You can take a guess. You must surely be able to picture in your mind what that dog was up to.

Barnabas looked at him, blinked slowly, spoke with a tightening throat. Sergeant. That dog was just an animal. I want you to go and find the person who did this. It was my boy Billy who found him. That’s no sight at all for a boy to see so it is. Just a youngster.

The Garda nodded slowly. Aye. Aye. I agree with you about that. But you see, I can go around and make specific enquiries about who might have done this to your dog. But then I’ll end up finding out about who has lost newborn lambs from this area, likely within two or three miles about here, and then I’ll have to be coming back to you with costs for the damage or a summons. And I don’t want to do that. And I don’t think you could afford it. It’s blood for blood. And I’m figuring, Barnabas, you don’t need any more trouble so you don’t. You’ve surely had enough of it. And I can tell you are climbing your way out now with this byre getting built. Good for ye. You’ll have new cattle out on the fields for the summer. That’s what I’m saying to people when they’re complaining to me about where you took them stones from. That’s what I’d rather see. So perhaps it would be best if we just let this one be, Barnabas. Let the sleeping dog lie, so to speak.