A Man in a Distant Field (24 page)

First he stood by the track and simply looked. Two walls of the house had collapsed or been tumbled, two remained but were scorched black, a window blown open like an egg. A tendril of burned curtain hung on one side. The chimney stood like one of the cairns you could find in isolated areas, erected in the deep past by the ancient tribes of Ireland. Someone had
tidied the ruin, raked out the rubble, and stacked the useful rocks in a heap.

The haggard walls still stood, though plants grew in untended proliferation—gooseberry canes, a mallow, some leeks gone unpulled and sprouting seed heads as big as a fist. Declan forced himself to look towards the small hill where the graves were. The grass was long, ungrazed by geese or the cow, and Michaelmas daisies rose on leggy stems beyond. He walked over. Someone had kept the area tidy; a jam jar held the remnants of a fall bouquet: a branch of red haws, some daisies, roses that Declan recognized as those Eilis had trained around the front door, slips of which had been rooted and given to anyone who asked. The plant had not survived the fire, he could see that, but someone had brought a cluster of roses for the graves of his women. Aodhagán O Rathaille's poem came to him then:
They were ears of corn! / They were apples! / They were three harp-strings!
He felt tears come to his eyes, but he quickly wiped them away. Despite the charred stone and the rubble of the walls, it was peaceful here.

What was left? He looked around. The byre stood, supported by the gable end; the pig shed too. The shed where they'd stored turf was untouched by fire. He looked down the slope of hill to where Fin Lough slept under the rain like a seal. Smoke rose from the two chimneys he could see, Mannions and O'Learys. Farms he had known all his life, families he had known, too, and generations before that had helped his ancestors as his helped theirs. Their cabins were tucked into the hills to protect them from weather, as his house had been, hedges of fuchsia planted for windbreak and beauty, and blackthorn for strength. One of the women from the cabins had probably tidied the graves, kept a few blooms there to grace the final ground of his wife and daughters. He would visit soon to thank them. He remembered the women in the Neil kitchen, how they took over the work of the place
without a second thought, folding the family's laundry, peeling their potatoes, their kindness a halo of light.

He would sleep in the turf shed, he decided, knowing it would at least be dry, and the smell of bog earth would be preferable to generations of cows and pigs. He took his rucksack and walked to the door, a few slats of wood he had nailed together with a bridge of broken chair rung, hung to the frame with hinges of thick leather. The turf bucket stood outside, full of rainwater. He opened the door, then clasped his hands in shock. In the darkness of the shed he could see the outline of a harp. Grainne's harp, in front of a pile of crumbling turf.

Pushing the door open as wide as he could, Declan stood his rucksack against it to keep it from closing. Light entered the shed. He could smell burned wood, and his heart turned in the cage of his chest. The frame of the harp was dusty, and when he brushed it, soot came away on his fingers. He brushed a little more and saw that it was really just the surface that was charred. The soundboard seemed intact and undamaged by heat, but most of the strings were broken, a few of them melted to lumps of dull brass. Carefully he lifted it outside where he could look at it in full light. A little rain couldn't hurt a harp that had come through a fire.

Grainne had loved this harp. Made of bog oak, it was heavy and dark, not like some of the harps she had seen made of walnut or lighter woods. This oak had depth and burnish, which had something to do with the change wrought by the action of the bog. The wood had long been used for furniture, torches, even fuel; a few famous harps had been made of it—and Grainne's, not famous but certainly beloved. A harp might emerge from the earth as one did, in Limerick, still carrying its strings. Once, while cutting turf, Declan had seen an ancient oak stump unearthed by a group of men, and they'd managed to pull it up to the uncut area of the bog with the help of two donkeys. The lines of it were
beautiful, and if you squinted and looked, you could see the lyrical shape of a harp there. The men were cross that the neat and straight face of their bank was ruined by the stump—“A feckin' disaster my working has become,” one man muttered as he surveyed the gaping hole, a man who'd taken pride in his clean cuts—but someone was pleased to take it home for fuel. It puzzled Declan that Grainne's harp had escaped relatively unscathed and everything else had been immolated almost beyond recognition. He had only identified his daughters by their shoes. Yet a harp was wood,
this
harp crafted from a wood given all the qualities of fine fuel from its long residency in the earth, as plants and roots and whatever growth that had been taken over by the bog had turned to such a usable heat source.

Using a sally branch, he swept out the turf shed so he could put down his blanket from the rucksack, a rolled gansey for his head. Then he hunted around the site until he found a rag. Dipping it in the turf bucket, he carefully washed the harp. The soot came away easily, flakes blowing off when rubbed a little with the damp cloth. He thought about unstringing the harp but had neither the tools nor the expertise to remove ruined strings, some of which might still be made usable. He ran his thumb across the few intact strings and winced at the sound. There were no words. Nothing like the tale sung by Demodokus with his gut-strung lyre, a tale of Troy and the departure of the twelve ships, the battle with the Cyclops and the prison of love on the island of Aeaea. This harp guttered of fire and sorrow, ugly sounds, a last string shuddering as he took his hand away. He wondered who had put it under shelter after he'd fled, not knowing anything had survived. Perhaps the same person who tended the small garden of graves, kept flowers in the jar. He cried a little for the kindness of these acts.

Declan ate his bread and cheese on a stone by the garden which had always been used as a bench. Sitting there, he could see for miles. In the morning, he would talk to neighbours, find out
about turf. If he were to stay, he would need fuel. Just before the fire, he had spent a week on the bog with his daughters, cutting their turf for the next winter's fires. They'd cut and footed but never had the chance to bring the bricks home to stack against the wall, with a good lot filling the turf shed as well. Maire especially loved being on the bog. She'd carry the sleáns, and Grainne the sack with their meal and a jar of cold tea. Depending on the climb of the year—sometimes they began to cut soon after St. Patrick's Day, some years they had to wait until the spring winds had dried the bog out and that wouldn't be until May—there were wildflowers and interesting plants to be seen and collected to bring back for Eilis: butterwort, the spotted orchids, sweet gale, gilly flowers, marsh marigolds. There was a purple moor grass that looked splendid rippling over the surface of the unstripped bog, and when the marsh marigolds were in bloom, the sight of them, brilliant yellow against the dark earth, was a picture to gladden the most winter-weary heart.

That was a happy memory, and Declan was startled at how it arose without the accompanying stab of pain. It made him want to remember more. Maire running down from the bit of pasture beyond with the cow at her heels, or calling owls at twilight and having them call back, so convincing were her imitations. Grainne conjugating Latin verbs as she wrung the milk from the cow's teats, Eilis beating the hearth mat with a stick in a brisk spring wind, the dog herding a wayward chick back to the haggard as seriously as it would herd a flock of sheep.

He made a small fire just outside the door of the turf shed, using dried stalks from the garden to ignite the broken sods. How good it was to smell the smoke! He held his face very near, breathing it in like medicine. The evening was cold, and he put his hands very near to the smoldering sods. He sat there for a long time before curling up on his blanket in all his clothes, that familiar smoke the last thing he knew before sleep.

Waking, it took Declan a minute to orient himself. No sound of water lapping at the shingle just there, no muttering of ducks at the mouth of the creek over there, no soughing of wind in the wild roses that tangled themselves by the window. No excited whimper by the door as Argos heard him rise, wanting her pan of food. He rubbed his eyes, massaged the crick in his neck from the lumpy pillow the gansey made, and climbed to his feet.
Imagine
, he thought.
I am in my turf shed where I've no doubt I'll be spending the winter, God willing
. The turf smoke had woven itself into his clothing, soft against the sharper smell of cedar kindling, which he carried from Oyster Bay like incense.

Someone was walking up the boreen, carrying a basket. As she came closer, Declan could tell it was Bride Mannion. He went out to meet her. She put her basket down and took him in her arms, crying, both of them were crying. She murmured a welcome, a blessing, then held him at arm's length.

“It's too thin ye are, Declan, but never mind, we saw the fire last evening and I told Fergus I'd take ye a bite in the morning. We've been expecting ye somehow. Fergus drove off the gentlemen who came to ask about rates, saying he'd a mind to put his foot to their backsides, did they not have an ounce of sympathy in them at all. I said I knew ye'd come, ye'd never leave them alone on that little green hill forever, and yer potatoes still in the earth.”

They seated themselves on available stones and she passed him barmbrack, thick with currants, and spread with the butter she made from the family's cow. Cold salted potatoes, a slab of bacon, and a jar of tea, still warm.

“Was it ye, Bride, who cared for the graves and put the harp to shelter?”

She told him it was. The graves looked so forlorn on their slope and sure it was no trouble at all to tidy them up a bit and
keep flowers there. Eilis would have done the same, she said. Grainne's harp surprised them all, coming out of the fire with only the wee bit of damage, but hadn't enough sorrow come to them?

“And Declan, ye'll be wondering about the beasts so. We put the cow to our grass and killed the pig with our own last fall. Her hair never came back quite right and she was always nervous after she'd been singed, but what animal wouldn't so? The cow can come up any time ye're ready for her, and I'll have young Seamus bring a side of bacon once ye've a place for cooking. When our pig farrows, we'll give ye two of the wee ones. I can give ye a few chicks once we've let the rooster at the hens, too, and maybe a hen or two until then. I've no idea where yer hens went but foxes would know they'd nothing to fear of course with the dog gone. Those lads can sniff out a misfortune from the other side of Ben Gorm.”

Her practical kindness made Declan think he had indeed done the right thing, coming back to Delphi, although there were moments, awake in the turf shed in the night, when he had wondered how he could possibly build a life out of such debris—a pile of stones, daisies gone to seed, a scorched harp with melted strings. He still wondered. Yet this piece of land was once as unpromising, before his family had poured their love and labour into its rocky terrain; a forefather had seen the possibility of making a home of the raw stone, of raising a few animals to feed a family, of creating lazy beds for potatoes wherever a little bit of soil might exist to be planted and improved, had named it Tullaglas, the little green hill. This was where his ghosts might greet him daily when he fed the chickens or milked the cow, a few notes from an air for Bridget Cruise hanging in the grey air.

“I stopped in Leenane to buy a loaf and didn't recognize the woman in the shop. Have there been many changes, Bride?”

“Well, Paddy the shop was accused of burning out the Fitzgeralds at Aasleagh and made himself scarce. An aunt came
from Roscommon to take over the shop. That'll be her ye saw. Nice enough. Fitzgeralds moved away, although there's someone there now, a cousin, in the old cabin the gardener used, him up and gone after the fire. Mostly it's us as it's always been, but I mind that the Troubles have us more careful now and ye don't know quite how it sits. Some of the younger lads ye taught only a year or two past have taken up guns, Declan, and there's the damage, I'm thinking. Men like my Fergus refuse to carry arms even though he believes the Free State is not enough and that more must come. Sometimes I am so sick of the names, De Valera, Griffith, poor Michael Collins, rest his soul, that I could spit, if ye'll forgive the expression. And to see the lads heading into the gap of trees towards Tawnynoran, where ye know they've guns and are practising shooting at old sacks filled with straw—well, our old parents would turn over in their graves.”

He did not know yet how he thought about it all. He would need to listen and pay attention to his neighbours. He knew one thing, and that was that the old order was in upheaval. On the boat coming back to Ireland, Declan had met a young student carrying the poems of William Butler Yeats. The two had spoken much over the duration of the crossing, and the student had recited poems in great excitement. One of them had been particularly powerful. Declan had borrowed the book to copy the poem into his journal. The lines shimmered as he recorded them: