The Black Snow (25 page)

When Billy returned home after dark Barnabas did not hear him come into the room. The lamp he held put pale fire on the ceiling as the boy leaned over him. He whispered, what’s going on? Why are ye in bed? When Barnabas did not talk, he spoke again, a rising tremor in his voice. Are ye sick? Where’s Ma? Barnabas lying there silent with his back to the boy and Billy crossed the room and stood over the other side of the bed and saw his father’s eyes wide open to the dark but taking nothing in. He shook his father and Barnabas blinked.

The next morning Billy came into the room holding his mother’s letter. His eyes were red from crying. He stood before Barnabas and prodded him with his finger until the man stirred and heaved his eyes up like heavy stones. What does
Mammy mean? Billy said. What does Mammy mean when she says she’s going home? That you are to look after me until she’s better?

Barnabas eyed the boy coldly and he spoke in a low monotone.

Your mammy’s left, he said. Gone back to where she came from. She says she couldna take any more of it, son. All this. That her nerves are shot. That she canny look after you like this. She won’t be back. She never liked this place anyway. Says she is gonna send for you when she is able but you’ll not be going nowhere. You’ll be staying here so you will. She can come back here, so she can, if she wants to be your mammy again.

Billy silent for a while, his face white. Is she not my mammy any more?

She is still your mammy. She hasn’t been herself this last while. That’s all there is to it. Now, please. Leave me alone.

The words of his father let flee something loose in the boy like storm-startled animals and he walked to the window and half opened the curtains and looked out. The view as he had always known it charged now with something different, as if the components of this world had come to hold an entirely different meaning. He turned around. Why didn’t you go after her? he said.

I didn’t know she’d gone only until later.

You coulda stopped her so you could.

Can’t you see the car’s gone? She went and took it.

His voice fell away for a moment and then he spoke. I don’t have any energy for this. I’m done in. Please leave me alone.

Billy stood there and his face bittered towards his father and his eyes became slits and he reached towards the man and let loose his fists upon him, shouted all the while. Why didn’t you go for her? Why didn’t you go? You could have gone for her.

His father took the blows without moving, stared up at him a dumb beast.

He fell out of time, went to the deepest place. Days spent like nights and awake through nights like days. Where he lay was a stone room in his mind that shut out the dim day, the frowning night, the hours circling around him like prowling dogs unwanted and wary. He lay awake in that cold room cancelled from living things, nameless in his own void and when he slept it was a fitful sleep and he saw in that shapeless space leering faces of all those he loved and could not reach. She hovered like a wraith in his dreams with her spirit broken and he reached for her, saw her indifferent towards him, her eyes cold like she did not know him–like she had unlearned her love–left him with a feeling of pure hurt that carried through into his waking being. How he loved her. An ache of love. He dreamed he was walking along a road and he met a procession coming towards him and in that parade he saw every person he ever knew and as they walked past him weary in old clothes and sad faces he knew that every one of them was dead. He did not know if it meant anything. In his waking hours, the years of his life had taken on such weight he felt he could no longer lift himself from bed, lift himself into the world, felt like he had been tumbled out of his life. Images flickered and memories roamed unbidden, wild animals set loose to move about dangerously and each had their own distinct reek. It came to him how strange this place was to her when she first saw it, that it was no place she could call home. How she hated it but endured and he denied to himself that the vast and mythic place he held it to be in his mind was but a dream, that it was scant and cold and wild and it did not care for them. How he loved her. How he loved.

In the hours of day he could hear Billy making noise downstairs, the boy trying to keep the house going. The pump in the yard made its bird squeak and he could hear every few hours the opening and closing of the stove door, sometimes noises of cooking. The boy kept the radio on and let it run all day and every few hours he would appear with food speaking kindly, slices of buttered bread and tea, and the boy attempted to make soup and he cooked spuds and brought them up to the room steaming but the plates and bowls piled up beside the bed and the food went barely eaten. In the evenings Billy skulked softly in the room watching his father, afraid to open the curtains and when the man was sleeping he drew the covers over him. In the thin lamplight he saw himself a spectral figure upon the wall, did not know what it was like to watch a man dying but thought it might be something like this. Wondered if a grown man could die from hurt. He urged his father to drink some tea, to sup on water and after a while Barnabas would put his mouth to a cup. The lost child eyes of his father. The boy tried to talk about his mother but Barnabas guarded his silence as if his mouth had been bouldered up to keep in the dead and he did not hear how the certainty of being that was held in the boy’s voice began to escape out of him. The boy hovering unlit amongst the shadows of the room, fear gnawing deeper into him.

The days swung loose around the house and then a night beamed a full moon oblivious, beamed again half hid in cloud and less the figure of what it was. He could hear the boy’s breathing as he stood behind the door, hear the soft moan of wood as Billy stood at the top of the stairs, holding still in the dark afraid to make noise or take what was circling in his mind and let it speak. And when Billy went into the room later and spoke to Barnabas he did so quietly, spoke as if he were afraid his
words would shatter what was left of the man. After he spoke he heard not a sound and he shook his father’s shoulder with both hate and affection and he saw then that his father was asleep and the words that passed his lips went unheard, the shapes sounded by his voice uncoupling into silence.

Barnabas dreamed he was working again at great heights, stood on high steel and in each and every such dream he faltered, fell the long fall. Three times he had that dream and awoke from it sodden and helpless. And then he awoke and heard the drum of rain on the roof, noticed that his mouth was arid. He sat up and listened to the rain, heard when it stopped the house fill with silence and he spoke to himself. I’m not dying. The radio was off and he heard no sound of Billy and he reached for his water and saw it was finished, stuck his tongue up into the glass. He swung out of bed and stood on weak legs, began to walk as if his legs were new to him, padded downstairs in bare feet. Every room silent in the hand of the cold while his breath rode the air before him. Into the kitchen. Saw the place distressed as if a fight had occurred, a chair lying broken on the floor and an empty bottle of whiskey sideways on the table. He righted the bottle and called out to the boy. When he opened the fire he saw it had long gone out, saw on the table beside the whiskey a plate with food beginning to moulder. Called out to the boy again but was met with no answer. He went to the water jug and shook it and saw it was empty and he called out again, heard his own voice faltering, cleared his throat. Billy. Where are you? He went outside with the jug. Lost to whatever it was the time of day.

He found fuel for the fire and lit it, watched how it danced newborn upon the wood and held his hands over it. I hope that
boy’s not gone after her. How far will he get like that? We’ll go together and bring her back. That is what we will do. The room began to spread with heat. Afternoon and he found only the dust of tea leaves in the tin so he drank hot water instead. A stale heel of bread to chew on. He tidied away the pieces of the broken chair and fed them to the fire save for the chair’s seat that was too large to fit into the stove. He went upstairs to the room and went to the drawer in the dresser where all their money lay hid in a biscuit tin but when he opened up the box he saw all of the money was gone. His voice a whisper. Eskra. He sat down on the bed and held his head in his hands, stood again and began to look through Eskra’s things, saw she had taken little with her but that her valise in the press was gone. He sat back down upon the edge of the bed. Wept.

Downstairs and he put on his hat and he went out to look for Billy. That boy lying some place silly drunk. He called about the yard and walked down the road until he came close to McDaid’s and then he turned back. Billy. He went to the chicken coop and saw the birds had fled, had not been fed in days, one lone chicken wandering the far edge of the field, went over and rescued it. He felt about for eggs, found one and then another, stomped back towards the house. The eggs stood on end in water but he was too hungry to care, watched the water foam over the top of them, stood at the window peeling the shells. The albumin white rubber in his mouth. Through the window he saw the horse waggling its head up the side field. That animal unfed and how long. He put on his welly boots and went back out, walked through the dim day up the field. Billy. The horse came towards him and shook its head with welcome and he took it by the halter, began to walk it to the
stable. How long you out here, horse? Eh? What is a horse to do? The horse sounded brightly upon the flagstones and he saw how the byre stood bare to the day in its shape of rough stone, roofless, waiting for him to return and finish it, and he walked the horse into the barn door and stopped. Held in that gloom of horse dung and web and must and a faintly reaching daylight was something else, the sensation that came to him of a person, and as soon as he was aware of it he turned and saw, let the horse’s halter drop, saw held in a shell of grey light the limp hands of Billy as he hung lifeless from the roof, and something collapsed in Barnabas’s mind for he turned then and walked the horse back out, walked it towards the field, let it loose, watched it roam towards the trough unfilled but for what rain had fallen into it and he stood watching the sky his mind darker than all things made of weather and anything else that stood under the sun.

McDaid was on his haunches unrolling wire when he looked up and saw the form of Barnabas taking shape through the trees, the man staggering down the road, coming near to his house. He stood quietly and backfooted into the wood. Lambs spangled snow-white around him and his left foot began to itch in his welly boot. He leaned against a tree, pulled out his foot to scratch it, saw Barnabas disappear and appear again at the edge of the field. The way he stood like he had a heap of drink in him, his hands making dumb fists and calling out to McDaid, squinting, could not see him. McDaid watching him, saw Queenie watching Barnabas, hope to fuck that dog will not give me away. How it seemed that Barnabas could barely speak. Heard in his voice a desolation that reached into the sky and fell silent and it was then that he wanted to go to him but would not, not until that
man addresses the misunderstanding between us, watched as Barnabas turned and stumbled away.

Out of the house plodfoot he came with an old milking stool in his hand. Stood outside the stable and looked at the sky. Strange clouds. They stood over the land shaped in clusters of near-hexagonal cells, each cloud heavy at the centre with dark. Their outer parts were fringed with an electric light. He saw blue sky hovering behind the parts that did not touch as if waiting to break through.

He did not want to go in.

Upon the flagstones he watched a devil-wind whip together a vortex union of grass and leaves, a moment of pure concentric energy that rushed them into violent being, a dancing circle that danced and danced until the circle fell broken, grass and leaves blowing in different directions away. He puzzled on it for a moment as if he could read some meaning from it. He ground down on his teeth and went into the stable and stood the stool in front of the boy’s bare bluing legs. He laid his coat out upon the floor for him. When he stood on the stool he saw the rope behind the throat, a goddamn double granny knot did the thing. He closed his eyes as he reached with a knife to cut the rope. What came from his own throat as he cut was a freak animal sound and he opened his eyes to catch the falling dead weight, laid the boy gently on his coat. He cut the noose free from his neck, bent to the ground and lifted him. He carried the body out into the day and stood grim in the shadow of the byre, the body’s stiffness having passed so that the body fell loose in his arms. My dear boy. He could not stop his mind becoming vivid, pictures and smells of Billy as a young child feather-light in his arms, carrying
him up to bed, a sick child a few years later, worn out from fever all hot skin and his small hands curling and clutching at him tightly never wanting his father to leave him. My dear boy. What he carried now in his arms was as heavy as all the clay of the earth and his heart the equal of it.

He did not know what to do so he laid him out on the deal table, made a pillow for the boy with his coat. His breath stalled into a terrible silence and then he let it out, his breath a cold and haunted face. Could feel against the flat of his hand Billy’s cold skin, could feel the rough texture of his hair, smoothed with his thumb the boy’s blue eyelids. The diagonal rope burn on each side of the boy’s neck and soft light pressing through the window caressed his face, made him seem serenely beautiful, the bluing lavender of his skin, such lightness an unjust beauty. Barnabas stood over the boy and wanted to speak but his mouth was filled as if he had opened it to a scarp of loosed earth that pitched into him, clumped his tongue, stuck to his teeth, began to fill up the insides of him.

He lifted his boy up and held him longer than any time he held him alive since he was an infant, his tears warm on the boy’s cold cheek.

He kicked something skidding under the table and he bent down to retrieve it. A black notebook. When he opened the cover he saw Billy’s scrawl on it. Wondered why it was on the floor and then he knew what it was, the boy drunk beyond caring. He took it to the stove and opened the door, saw the fire reduced to a depressed red slump. He fed the fire turf and threw the diary in on top of it, closed the door and sat broken on the range chair. Suddenly he snapped back up. He opened the stove door and
reached in and took hold of the notebook through smoke, saw it was not yet burnt. He collapsed into the range chair and opened it, the boy’s scrawl a strange mix of small and capital letters, saw the notebook was filled with a confusion of entries and stories. He began to read and in his heart he feared it was a violation but could not stop. What he read placed Billy’s voice into his mind in the purest form. He heard him in a way he had not heard him while he was alive and the strength of the boy’s voice through each word struck him weighted with the full of the boy’s being.