The Black Snow (7 page)

The men were silent. Barnabas looked up through the trees towards the tapered field and saw in his memory Matthew Peoples standing in it, the man’s big-boned shuffle. The slow blink of his eyelids. He began to roll another two cigarettes but McDaid put up his hand to say he’d had enough and Barnabas continued with just the one and smoked it. As he did so a blackbird swung down and hitched a ride on the horse. It paraded its amber beak as if it had dipped to drink in a Christmas orange and what it drank filled its eyes with rings of coloured juice. The watching carrion birds had scattered and Barnabas looked up and saw two rooks linger on the wall talking noisily till both of them agreed on some point of conversation and took off. The horse turned and the way the sun’s shadow fell upon her cast the blackbird like a pterodactyl. It stretched its wings on the horse’s flank hugely. The ground full of dark lesions as the men began to walk from the field and Peter McDaid spoke. Eskra says there’s insurance due in. How long have ye to wait?

Barnabas shook his head. That woman.

He stood silent for a moment. Will you come in for a wee sup?

I would but I’ve a huge shite in me that’s dying to get out and I donny want to do it in your outhouse. You’d need a bucket of Jeyes.

The big dirty hole on you.

The men laughed. Barnabas called out to Cyclop and saw the dog ignoring him. He turned and pointed. That useless fuckdog. Never does what he’s told. McDaid squinted, saw the dog snouting the field under a burst of ragwort yellow, and he turned and began to walk off. Barnabas called out thanks and McDaid waved a big dirty hand into the air as if the work meant nothing. He slung the shovel over his shoulder and began to march leg-high like a soldier. I’m off to take Berlin, he roared out, pulled the shovel off his shoulder and began to fire it like a gun. Barnabas roared out. Say hi to the Jerry for me. He turned and went back into the field and walked towards Cyclop, saw the dog holding something in his mouth. Come here to me, you, he said. The dog in plain sight ignoring him. Saw when he came up close what Cyclop held in his mouth was a cattle bone.

Through the window she saw them. Three shapes roaming the yard, two men and a boy. The men were strange-looking, grey and hard as if they had stepped out of hills formed by intense heat and pressure, and when they began rummaging through the byre an invisible hand tightened around her heart. One of the men stood so tall and gaunt she saw something in the way he held himself that evoked in her an ineffable sadness. He moved through the rubble with his long arms swinging sadly, went at the stones as if his hands contained teeth, could have been some
kind of peculiar ruminant, rummaging the byre’s remains for food. The other man was steady and stout, wore a porkpie hat, moved about the place with the quick feet of a goat.

She called out to Barnabas upstairs but he made no answer and she shouted again and then she opened the back door and stepped out. She went towards them hesitant, each hand beaked birdly up her sleeves. Dark rust of hair on the boy and she saw he whispered something quick to the others when he saw her. The stout man turned, made a step towards her, took off his black-brim hat that wore an emerald feather clean as a blade. His voice was hoarse, came at her in strange, fast-talking cadences she could barely understand. No trouble at all meant to you missus just looking for some scraps from the burning, wild bad so it is. She heard in his voice notes of foreignness and colour. What she saw in his eyes was earnestness, and something else, a quality as if he was bearing up with fighting shoulders some ancient curse or weariness. Thick lips as he spoke and the flash of yellow teeth and the stubble on his face was dark and almost bearded. As he spoke the tall man turned around to look, held draped in his hand a piece of warped metal like a wilted flower that had died to his touch.

Sure you know how it is missus, my own missus isn’t well and please be to God she’ll get better and we got through the winter tough as it was with God’s help and thank goodness for the spring, anything at all now from the burning might help us you’re very kind. Suddenly he produced a smile that reached up gibbous. The tall man kept his quiet and averted his eyes to the ground when she looked at him. The boy stood where he was and she found herself looking at him, saw that his clothes were threadbare like those of the others. The boy pure of face with
crooked yellow teeth gapped widely, freckles that shone from his face like inverse stars. She saw a change come quick in the boy’s countenance, a worried look that flashed in his eyes and she heard Barnabas before she turned, saw him storming past her towards them with his arms rolling boulders. The short man rose a hand up in hello and went to speak, got the words out of him, howareya sir we meant no harm, but Barnabas was already upon them. Get to fuck off my land, he said.

Eskra saw the boy and what was pure of spirit became a darkening thing as if he had witnessed the blooming of evil. She turned to Barnabas and cast him a look he read from her as a warning to back down, but he took no heed, and he said to the strangers, go on, get, pointing towards the gate. Eskra’s voice fell away from her. The men lowered their heads and the boy cast Barnabas a petrified look and the gaunt man began towards their horse and cart on the road. The stout man began talking. We meant you no harm so we didn’t no harm at all sir praise God and may the Lord look after your house and everyone in it, may there be a year’s blessing upon it and no harm meant to yous at all God bless.

Later, she stood over the sink and noticed her hands were shaking. Through the bluing glass of sundown she saw the remains of the byre that sat to her like some kind of depravity. She let drop a cup into the water. When she spoke her voice came loose, a coiled spring that stung him where he sat. I did not marry the bastard you’re becoming, Barnabas Kane.

Barnabas in the range chair straightened up, folded over the paper, did not answer, did not look at her either.

They were only good people. Poor is all. Tinker folk. What did you have to do that for? she said.

She turned and faced him and he stood and turned his head as if he planned to leave the room but then his head snapped around to her, the look in his eye measuring the fight left in her. Them people? he said.

There’s nothing out there but scraps of wood and metal and cracked stones. What would you be wanting with them? That thing staring down at us every day. An abomination. Why wouldn’t you want to get rid of it?

Their kind are good for nothing, Eskra. They roam around living off others. These are lean times. We need what we have round here. That’s all there is to it.

Why couldn’t you let them take what they need? That byre will be rebuilt without any of what’s there. Why did you have to be so rude to them?

I’ll tell you why, Eskra. It’s because they’re insects. Parasites is what they are. None of them ever work. I’m sick of them traipsing around the countryside eating up everything with their eyes. Should be rounded up the lot of them. The smell off them.

Eskra’s shook her head in disbelief. Many’s the time I talked to Matthew Peoples about them and he had great time for them. Said they were full of uses.

Matthew Peoples was a half-baked fool.

He saw her mouth and eyes open as if to let in more light against the darkness that came from his mouth. What do you mean by that? she said.

That’s not what I meant.

What did you mean then? He saw her eyes set down to disdain. Do not speak ill of the dead like that. Weren’t you the one after all who sent him in?

Barnabas’s mouth opened like his tongue had been yanked
out of him. Billy came into the room and asked what time it was and began to saw at the bread. Barnabas tried to speak, shook his head violently. After all the work I done yesterday burying them cows. You think that was easy? He pulled at the back door and left her standing, went up to the byre and took the snake-twisted metal that had been left lying on the ground by the gaunt stranger and threw it off the wall. The metal pinged a brief high note that rose into the evening silence and then dulled fast like it never was.

He stepped out of the house and could not read the sky. The weather withdrawn into a nilness that was wan and made him tense with unknowing. Everywhere he saw foreshadows of rain and opposing signs of sun held in slivers and when he looked again towards what he thought were such signs, everything he saw could be read otherwise. Eskra was still sullen with him. She spoke one thing, told him to take the car on account of his lungs. He walked towards the Austin and saw the breeze dance detritus and dust at his feet in leaps little like a child’s playing. He drove determinedly, choked the car’s gears, leaned over the wheel into his thoughts, followed the main road in the direction towards the town for a half mile. The road skirted patchwork fields of cattle and sheep he saw if only by his refusal to acknowledge them. It seemed to him that spring should not keep.

Strange these days to see a car on the road on account of the petrol rationing, and walkers or those in the fields turned to see who it was. They saw him hunched over the wheel and he wagged unseeing a finger at them. He took a turn-off where the land leaned down lazy like a barren afternoon and he turned then onto a lane. Gravel muttering under his wheels and he followed
the way made dark by deciduous trees until the doctor’s house loomed before him. A two-storey house with a small extension that led to the doctor’s surgery. He parked in the lee of the gable wall, sat in the car and did not get out. Sat there and looked up at the wall. Upon it a tree made a shadow drama of lightning invert that fired darkly without sparks towards the roof. He looked for his tobacco and rolled a cigarette, coned the smoke out his nose without coughing. Took another drag and noticed the settle in his lungs. There you go, doctor. Not a bother on me. He rolled down the window and flicked the butt out onto the stones and watched it snuff out, heard the surgery door open. He started the car quickly, clanked the gears into reverse. An old woman bending over a boy came out the door.

He drove towards the town that rose greyly into a ragged shape upon a hill. Two-storey houses lined each side of the road in rising uniform fashion. He made his way to the centre of the town and parked where the streets converged into the shape of a warped cross. He walked past the hardware store where an old man nodded to him, the fellow sitting on a chair with his legs spread out like he had groin pain, nursing in his mouth a limp unlit cigarette. Barnabas stopped and lit it for him, stepped into the post office, fished from his pocket a letter from Eskra addressed to her mother in New York. The small black script neat as calligraphy had smudged. Would be opened no doubt by the sister. He posted it and went towards the butcher’s, stopped outside, heard the bone-snap of a cleaver, stepped in. Gag of meat smell that hit him. He stared at the floral tiles on the wall and made his order and tried not to breathe for the meat smell that persisted and wove into him its reminder of death.

He went back to the car and put the meat on the seat and
rolled down the window. As he reversed the car, rain came with a sudden temper and he looked at the window and left it open. As he drove the rain sprayed his face and put a slick upon the road. Soon the surface shined and made the reflection of the car passing over it a sleek tremulous thing, the shadow of an animal fleeing half seen. In the film of rain everything that was held in it shimmered as if the shadow image of things were themselves alive—solid-stiff trees made trembling and buildings quivering as if that which was solid of the earth was not solid any more.

He took the turn off the main road and followed the track for the half mile towards his house, parked and put on his cap and got out. He stood under the rain and listened to it make music with his hat. His eye followed the downpour towards the mountains and he saw their dark countenances near hid behind cloud. He reached into the front seat and took out the grease-paper with the meat cuttings inside and stepped into the house. He did not note the strange settle of the place, how the radio that usually hummed with music or chatter was hushed, how even the clocks seemed careful. He hung his coat on the coatrack’s curling tongue and his hat on a hook. As he lifted the package off the bureau he noticed a trickle of thinning meat blood leak towards the floor. Fuckdog, he said. He hurried with it into the kitchen and walked past the shape of Eskra in the range chair, put the meat into the Belfast sink. Said to her, the meat’s leaking all over the place, goan get the mop for me.

She did not answer, sat where she was. He saw she was sitting with her hands flat on her thighs, the way she was staring blankly at the wall. What’s the matter? he said. No answer came and she did not move her head to meet his eyes and he wondered then if she knew he had not visited the doctor. Billy not yet back from
school. What’s the matter? he said again. He walked towards her but she averted her eyes from him and pointed. He looked towards the deal table and saw on it a letter opened, knew then what it was, felt his stomach sicken and the veer of an abyss unseen came suddenly towards him. He stood looking at the letter as if by not moving he could put a hold on time and the event in the room that was unfolding, but the mantel clock took opposition to that thought and began to unfold the mechanism for the bell that would chime for quarter past, a preparatory stretching sound and then it clicked and the clock made note of the time passing, and he knew he would have to say something.

She spoke then. I wrote to them not knowing. Asking them for the forms. Writing to them all kindly like some kind of stupid woman I am. They must have laughed at that letter all right. Must have passed it around in there. Laughed at me like I was a fool.

Eskra—

You cancelled the insurance last year without telling me.

His legs grew heavy like he was stood in manure to the waist and he turned slowly on the ball of his foot and his chest began to tighten, could feel the manure pooling towards his throat. He took a deep breath and his mind roamed but was unmet with answers and his eyes swung wildly to the brown-tiled floor, to a fly resting still against the window, to the place that was newly wallpapered, anything but the shape of her. The shriek of her eyes. He tried to speak and he had to clear his throat and then the words turned solid and he spoke. I never thought we would need it so I cancelled it. It was a waste of money at the time. We needed it for other things.