The Black Snow (22 page)

He told her he might have difficulty getting timber for the roof straight away, that he might be a while in getting it, that this was the nature of these things. And if all else fails we’ll take down a few trees of our own. Anyhow, I’ve the slates for the roof all sorted out. Peter says they’ll need to be cleaned up a bit but they’re as good as.

She said they would figure it out somehow, that they had figured it out as far as this, and she gave him then a squeeze of her hand.

He turned around. Is Billy about? he said.

I haven’t seen him.

He winked. Come on then. The lion in me needs to have a wee lie down.

Two days before the fire coming home from school I heard him in the trees, was nearly certain of it, that funny bird call of his whistling at me. I knew it rightly, so I did, knew it was him and I knew then he must have escaped from the mental home. Me too afraid to stop and look into those trees and I could feel the blood sent ready to me legs, was hearing his call in my mind coming for me like a noose toward my neck. I had a wild bad feeling then, saw how he would hide himself in the forest, so many places to go hiding. Waiting for his chance. Me walking home with my ears sharp as a blade and my hand on my knife in my pocket. Kept listening out for that bird call wondering how it is they could have let him escape.

Then that day of Big Matty’s funeral and me pimpled to fuck in me shorts and I coulda ate a horse too cause I’d slept in and the auld doll made me miss breakfast, sobbing over her tea she was. The saddest day ever and all I could think about during it was I wanted to get away and go down the back of Doherty’s Hotel and have a fag. We were stood amongst the gravestones and I tried to imagine for a while what dying was like and I could only imagine it with me still being there to witness it and I took to wondering what it was like for Big Matty to die like that and then I had to stop thinking of it. When I was a wee boy Big Matty used to be always messin with me. The wee finger was gone on his left hand and he used to have this trick that made it seem like he had all the fingers on it and then he’d shake it and the wee finger would disappear. I
used to ask him how he lost it but he’d tell me a different story every time and I would believe him. One time he said the fairies stole it off him cause he cursed them one night when he was younger and on the drink. Said he slept in a sheuch and when he woke it were gone and the rest of the day he spent lookin for it to no avail. Another time he said he got it blown off him in the civil war, said it were them gorilla fighters shot it off him and every time I thought of that later on I always pictured him fightin against monkeys, I never did know what he meant. The auld doll said there was no way Matty fought in the civil war and that he got no further out of town than that lump of a horse out there in the stable. She said he must have lost it in an accident. Maybe a threshing machine or the slip of an axe she said but it isn’t our business to ask him.

She were talking to some old dear in the cemetery and the old man was chatting to that scary auld bastard Goat McLaughlin and then that crazy wee bitch of a granddaughter of his Molly the Moss is standing beside him. The thing that I done to her with The Masher I cannot speak of it and the way she was watching me now I began to get stressed. She stood there smiling at me with that devil look in her eye and then she comes over, the silly bitch leaning in with her face and arms chaffed blue from the cold she wasn’t even wearing hardly nothing. She begins whispering to me all conspiratorial and I knew she could see I’d been crying and I reached out and grabbed her tit real quick and she pushed me back and stood there looking at me with those huge eyes. Her voice dropped low beneath the din of the auld ones and she leaned in to speak as if she had within her the answer to all mysteries like the teacher would be saying. And as she spoke I saw a fellow walking towards us, it was her older brother Jeb and I was sure he was coming for me, that he saw me make a grab at her and my throat went tight as fuck. I did not hear what it was she was sayin other than she was on about The Masher and she made mention of the fire but I was lookin at the brother wondering what he was going to do
with me and then he’s standing over us and he just smiles at me like I’m some eejit and drags her away. Off she goes tottering like a wee lamb back for its milky mother and she tilts her head backwards to send me a big smile. I heard her voice in my mind ringing with its mystery and I got a sick feeling in my stomach because I wondered then if she knew what I knew, that she might well do from the tone she took with me, that it was obvious to her, the thing I had been thinking all this while, that it was The Masher started that fire to get back at me. I know he did but how can I tell anyone? I know it was him that burned the byre for what I done to humiliate him with that girl and to get back at the old man too.

T
HE END OF
A
PRIL
passed dryly into May and he saw the horse was happy on its feet. An eagerness from the animal when he went in to see her, the way she nosed her head towards him with affection and took the apple with appreciation from his hand. When he led her out of the stable to roam the side field there was no resistance and the horse began to stroll alongside the sun’s contour of herself on the grass as if paired again with her better nature. The byre once again a presence in the yard they were happy about. It stood with a cement floor awaiting a roof, cast over the yard and fields new and large shadows of itself.

He went into the stable and took the bicycle and cycled the mile to the roofer John-Joe up at Glebe. The man stood in his sixties with wrinkled skin and hair the full earthen colour of his youth. For years he had worked as a blacksmith and his hands were still red and rough because of it, stood always as if his arms were wielding heavy tools. He held a hand out for Barnabas and Barnabas took it, the man’s skin like pumice, and John-Joe listened carefully as Barnabas explained what it was he was doing, that he had no money for the job and what little he had was to pay for new animals but they could chop down trees and he would fix him up later no doubt about that at all when he was back
at full swing. But John-Joe shook his head for he owed Barnabas no favours. I can get you some old fir lumber for nothing from up the yard, Barnabas, and you might even get a purlin beam out of some of it though probably you won’t. I wouldn’t say it’s first grade and that might explain why it’s lying there but that I can do for you. Things are just too tight right now to work for nothin or on credit Barnabas. I’ve had just two jobs to do this three-month and one of them fell through on me yesterday and I have an unexpected wedding to pay for goddamnit, Mary my youngest, he said, and as he spoke he swelled out his belly and began slowly to shake his head.

Barnabas went and took a look at the wood and began to knuckle his cheek. Arrah, John-Joe, you know I canny build a fucking roof with that.

She watched the days pass under every kind of weather, a neutral grey sky, bursts of sunshine, rain gentle upon the roofless byre. Barnabas going off on the bicycle and coming back at the end of each day empty-handed but for some lengths of wood he picked up some place. She watched him grow more frustrated, slip back at times into his earlier troubling behaviour, the kind where he would snap at the very walls as if the shadows were leering at him. She saw to the chores of the house and would check on her bees and heard in their tone the mild sound of agitation. Could not figure what was wrong with them. In the evening she would play a little piano. Leaning into the music. The notes on the page arrayed before her a perfect abstraction and she would reach into them and try to make them real. The music came in snatches of beauty, stumbled and sped and fell apart again as if the music could not be set free from their ideal by the stiffness
in her hands. She stopped and felt the raw webbing between her fingers, looked to the pictures arranged on top of the piano. Saw her mother and father as they were newly married, her mother straight-backed in a chair, hands placed awkward before her. Her father clean-shaven in a way she never knew him. A boy’s face with lug ears and small uncertain eyes. Another photo of her father taken years later with those same eyes deepened with knowing. A newspaper on his lap and a white pipe in his mouth beneath a black lunette moustache. She saw in each photo how her parents were staring into a future void unknowable to them, and she met their gaze over that passage of time, looked back over a bridge of knowledge of all that came. Their struggles and their pain and their small successes. The jaundice that turned her father yellow, became for him a slow death from cancer. How his demise left her mother poor and ruined–the man fading to ragged bones in the bedroom, a whittled emblem of the family’s fortunes. And she thought then of the byre, the way it was stood and how great it was but how in a certain light its rooflessness made it seem already like a ruin, as if the building had amounted to failure before it was finished. As if she could see it from some strange future, see in it the ruin of themselves. It was then an idea resolved inside her and she stood from the piano and went out into the hall, put on her coat. Went to visit Peter McDaid.

He left the deadland holding two taupe-brown rabbits in his hand, the necks of the mammals twisted as if each of them had turned to see what it was had brought them their moment of death. The day swung to a pendulum point of dusk and as he walked the hind legs of the rabbits brushed the grass. The deadland began to merge with the brighter hues of fertile fields
and he came towards a large gate, swung the rabbits over the peeling iron bars and climbed the top of it, began up a hill. As he neared the top he saw the land level out and realized he was in a cattle field, by the far trees dumb-staring silhouettes that stopped him where he was. I will not walk amongst them. He turned back and swung the rabbits over the gate and followed his body over it, took off in a wider circle. None of this land his own and he thought of the stupid bovine stares and he began to think of Matthew Peoples, the lean of him on a spade, a big-boned shifty weight of pure strength. A waddle up the yard with Cyclop at his heels. The melody of his laugh on a joke, the rising tune of it. He thought of the man and the dog standing in the yard and it did not seem real to him that both of them could be dead. He recalled a time when he brought over to the man’s house a flank steak, Matthew Peoples opening the front door while tightening his rope-belt. Watching how the man dropped three mucked spuds without cleaning them into a pot over the fire and the way then he dropped the steak into the water after them to boil it. The brown froth on top from the mucked spuds. Barnabas standing up out of the chair in outrage. Jesus Christ, sir. You canny boil that fucking steak. He could still see the way Matthew Peoples was shaped over the fire, tried again to picture him clearly but could not.

The day fell upon its blue hour and everything in that light seemed to him intensified, as if the evening had thickened the trees and nature’s canvas had become enriched with mystery. A storytelling of rooks made raucous the air and he came upon a path that cut through whin and bramble and passed through a stand of trees. It was then he met upon a plain view of Pat the Masher’s house. He had not thought of it and stopped, the house
in that bluing light softened to an indigo and everything in it held still to a whisper, no smoke drawing from the chimney and no people about. Something in his mind began to loosen and move forward and he could feel it as an idea taking shape, began towards the house before he had an answer for it. He walked down those sloping fields until he stood before the house, saw with disgust the disarray of the back yard, the tin cans strewn amidst broken boxes and pieces of timber, farm machinery lying whole or in pieces as if somebody had once attempted their repair before letting them to rust.

He walked into the yard and caught its smells, paraffin and tar and something else he could not decide on, like faint gone-off food, and he went slowly towards the window, looked in, the house dark and the outlines of a chair and a kitchen table. He turned and stood facing the direction of his own house and he knew then what it was he was looking for. Saw the window afforded a clear view–a distant darkening roof that was his own. You could see us fine rightly, he said to himself. You could see the whole of that fire. And you sat here doing fuck all. He turned for the door and put his hand upon the latch and it was then he looked out across the smallholding, saw the shape of Pat the Masher walking across the field, froze with his hand upon the latch, let it go and turned quick, across the yard then towards the fence unsure if the man had seen him.

He hung the rabbits in the stable and called out for Eskra, heard just the silence of the place. Washed his hands and poured luke-warm tea, fucking Christ, and held the cup by the throat. Leaning down to hitch up a loose sock when he saw in the tail of his eye a person pass the kitchen window. A man standing to the back
door and then a quiet knocking. The door handle turned to open. Who in the—? He stood up in expectation, was near to his full height when he saw who it was come into the kitchen. Ah, it’s you, Peter, he said. I didn’t know who to be expecting.

Tis me all right.

Peter McDaid stood in his wellies with one eye on Barnabas and the other cast towards the window and he stood scratching his blue chin.

Eskra not about is she?

Naw. She must be late coming back from the town.

McDaid walked towards the deal table by the window and took a seat, moved a book out of the way to make space for his big hands, began to lean over them.

Do you want me to make up a fresh pot, Peter? The tea as usual around here has gone cold.

Naw, I’m all right.

Barnabas took his cup and sat down opposite. Did you take a look at the byre?

Aye, I saw it last week. It’s a fine shape, Barnabas. A fine shape.

Wait till you hear the most ridiculous thing. I’m up in Tully’s having a pint the other night and there’s this fella there, a lorry driver who goes up and down to Derry, big thick head on him, never talks, and then he tells us this story. He says he was out by the Point and all of a sudden something makes a wallop on his windscreen and when he gets out to look he sees it is this huge owl. Imagine. This creature all brown and broken he says and curled into itself and its heart still beating cause he says he could feel it in his hand. And he doesn’t know what to do with it so he picks it up and rests it on his coat on the floor of the lorry, drives around looking for a vet but he canny find one, so he says then
to himself, I need to get rid of it for what I can do with a battered bird like this anyway? So he puts it in an auld bag and throws it into a ditch. This is after trying to rescue it, you see. So then I says to him, was it still alive? And he says to me, aye, I think so. So then Olly Mooney pipes up and says, would you not have killed it first? And the man turns around and tells him, I didn’t want to have to kill it again.

Barnabas let off a gunshot laugh and then he stopped and blinked. McDaid was trying to force a smile but gave off instead the smell of trouble. Barnabas watching him in silence. What’s wrong with you, Peter?

McDaid sighed. I got to talking with Eskra, he said. The other day. She called over and had a wee talk. Asked for me to have a word with ye.

As he spoke he reached his hand into his pocket and his eyes cast about as if he did not know where to rest them. He produced a white envelope, placed it on the table.

Barnabas looked at it. What’s this, Peter? he said.

McDaid slowly swung his eyes to meet Barnabas, saw something change in the man’s face, a sleety dark that fell quick to his eyes and when McDaid went to speak his mouth was chalk. It was Barnabas who spoke first, talked real slow, began to shake his head. Arrah, Peter. Tell me this is not what I think it is.

Cold weather passed between them and then McDaid’s tongue warmed loose. Eskra came to see me, Barnabas. Suggested it. It’s everything I ever saved this past few years. You know how I could do with the extra space. It’s just the one field and it will pay for the byre roof. I’ll be happy to see it back to you in a few year. You can buy it back from me when yer good again.

Barnabas held both hands before him on the table and
he stretched out his fingers and looked at them in a slow and strange fashion as if he had just awoke to the use of them as appendages, and then he made his hands into fists. He looked out the window. The cowling evening upon them and that same abandoning of the light pressing down on his eyes. He stood and spoke real slow, continued shaking his head. Why would you go interfering, Peter? Getting in the way? Why would you do this? I’m nearly out of this, Peter. Nearly out of it. Can’t you see the byre is near built? After all that trouble I went to. Why would you go and insult me like that?

The more he spoke the more his face took on an incredulousness that deepened the sleet in his eyes, made his cheeks burn. McDaid looking at him speechless.

Barnabas continued. Naw, he said. I’ll tell you what it is, Peter. You are taking advantage of me now. That’s what’s going on. You are taking advantage of my situation. You’ve been sitting there waiting for this moment.

Barnabas pushed back the chair further and fixed a stare towards the door. McDaid stood slow as if he had become his own mule after taking a beating, his eyes low, and then he looked at Barnabas sadly and shook his head, took back the envelope, fumbled it into his coat. Ye have it all wrong, Barnabas, he said. Ye have it all wrong.

Naw, I don’t think so, Peter.

McDaid shrugged awkwardly and began for the door, stopped before it and turned to look at Barnabas. Well, he said.

Barnabas spoke. Aye. That will be the last of it so.

That same night after the house finally went quiet Billy could still hear his parents in his dreams. All night they came to him
in shouting, his father’s roar accusatory and titan against his mother’s defensive squalls, their voices like some kind of weather that rode in furious over the sea, met the house and quaked it, shook and smashed crockery off the dresser. He was beset by such dreams all night that came in swells and abated, and who he saw at times were hardly his parents at all, for he had dreamed them out of shape, twisted and freakish apparitions composed of parts of themselves and other people, faces he grasped to love but faces that could not hear him or see him, and sometimes he saw in them John the Masher’s face and he would shout and shout to silence. His father merging into his mother into some malevolent deity of one. It seemed to him all night he was beset by these visions, and in the dawn light when he awoke he felt tired and tormented, and for a while he sat on the side of his bed rubbing at his eyes with his fists, the dark silt of those dreams ashed upon the morning in confusion until finally he stood and heard the house was still.

The way she walked to the yard pump gentled the morning air, a gown soft-swung and bare feet soft upon the flagstones, her toes curling against the cold. The height of the sky a blue vertigo–the kind of day to leave the doors open for a while to let in the keen air. The porcelain jug in her hand bore an empty white belly layered with fine cracks, could have been a secret map of lost rivers long dried up, and those cracks were licked wet by pump water that was sent silver into it. She went inside and reached for a tin and saw they were near out of tealeaves. The kettle on the boil. She made a weak brew and left it to draw longer.