The Black Snow (26 page)

Hours passed. Flies began to appear around the table and he stood up and batted at them with his fists. When he looked again from the range chair their number had multiplied. He looked at them appalled for what they were wont to do, how they moved in black flits around the room, arced and alighted, flew away again to fill the space with their sickly buzzing. He saw them gather at the window nosing at the pane as if they could see a path out into the wider daylight, the drizzling rain, buzzing their way frantic at the glass without knowing it was the limit of their nature to be able to see outside but not to be able to pass through the window. He began to see a different picture of what had caused the fire as he read the boy’s words, saw it puzzle together, keeping that Masher boy hid, that’s what was going on, and it seemed to him a perfect picture.

An evening of two suns. Those strange cellular clouds had been scattered west by a wind that left the sky with what seemed like blue smoke. Upon it rolled a penny moon magnified and aflame. It made a fool of the waning sun and its flames sent filigrees of light into the sky, cast everything around it with a magnificent burnt-orange. There was within him now a rage, an anger basic
and fundamental to the nature of what it was that made him, and he let himself ride its fierce energy. Walked through the rear gate and left it lying open. Behind him the gate finally gave up and slumped towards the earth. Through barren back fields he walked with his fists balled watching inward dark visions that came to him unbidden and he let them roam, those animals of a fiercer nature, his vision narrowing down so that he ceased to see what direction he took, ceased to see the land before him or what was underfoot, ten thousand wet tongues of grass reaching for his ankles, thistles spiking at the sky. The vanishing shape in the grass of his foot. Overhead a skim of dark birds passed with a great whoosh. He walked down a triangular field that narrowed to a rope-tied gate and he entered now into one of Fran Glacken’s fields, the soaking bottoms of his trousers cold against his leg as he swung himself over the gate. Marched through a long slanting field shaped like a sickle, the earth freshly ploughed, stomped the soil under him slow and heavy like sand under his boots. The land leaning down and baywater a short distance away reflecting that smoke-blue evening light and what seemed like those two suns shimmering on its surface. Over the water a lone gull sobbed and jooked sharp for a flint horizon. Down the sloping land till he saw the isolate shape of Pat the Masher’s house.

He walked in the door, stood in the man’s kitchen, saw it was empty, took in the deepening strange smell, boiled cabbage and meat and other things he could not name, the unique smells of another. What was in him now needed letting out and he walked into the other room, saw Pat the Masher asleep on a chair, his hands shaped into useless fists on his lap, his jaw hung loose. There was serenity in his being and it slipped off him like a mask when he awoke, Barnabas standing over him with a fist balled the
diviner of all malice. What Barnabas saw alight the man’s eyes when he awoke was puzzlement, his brow lowering to thicken over his eyes, and then the wide startle of fear. Barnabas’s voice coming at him sea-tidal and what he saw in Barnabas’s eyes made him speechless, the animal shape of the man over him. Where is that fucking bastard son of yours? Where are you hiding him?

As Barnabas spoke he wavered a red fist before the man and The Masher opened his mouth but no words would come out. Barnabas pulled him out of the chair by his shirt but the mechanics that brought The Masher to standing ceased to work and he fell limp like a rag doll. Barnabas grabbed him by a ruck of his shirting and dragged the man out of the house, dropped him in the yard beside an old potato digger livered with rust, its giant wheels lying useless like discarded Grecian suns. He leaned down into him so close he could almost see the other man’s thinking.

Where is he, Masher? You fucking hid him, didn’t you? Oh yes you did. Now tell me where he is. He burnt down my byre and took away my farm and now he’s kilt my son.

The man’s face puzzled and he went to speak but he could not find the words and Barnabas beat him twice with his fist in the forehead. The man took the beating uselessly and his head fell loose to the floor and then Barnabas lifted him up again. Tell me, he said. Something then in The Masher came to life and he began to struggle and they turned about and he swung a fist up that made a perfect blow to the side of Barnabas’s head. Barnabas staggered rearwards, lost his footing, fell in a helpless slow fashion upon the potato digger. The old metal rang from the bang of his skull and for a moment there opened up a terrible silence, Barnabas lying there stupid and mute, his eyes stunned,
The Masher standing over him in horror with his hands to his head, watching the dark blood come.

You stupid man, he said. See what you done to yerself.

The Masher turned and paced about the yard and he came back to Barnabas and leaned in again. His eyes shaking. That boy of mine, he said. His voice broke and his mouth fell loose but the power to speak was propelled by some last wind within him. He shook his head at Barnabas again. That boy of mine, Barnabas. He was kilt. Died weeks ago at the hospital. Took a bad beating at the asylum though they say he took a fall. Buried him in the asylum graveyard before I even got to hear. Twas the priest drove me up.

Barnabas trying to stand, his mind faltering, his hand to the soft and bloody part of his head, his body a tree riven in two places so that he began to see in double. He could not see where The Masher had gone. Could see hardly anything at all but for snatches of the evening light as he stood bent against it, the sensorium of his mind coming undone to a dazzling dark that sought to spread like ink within and consume him. He tried to speak, could taste himself in his mouth in new ways, clump of tongue-flesh rolling loose in his mouth, and a stumbling then towards the fence. Fell over it, began to move a wambling pack beast up the field, a mountain rill in the back of his mouth trickling iron blood. Back-bent and heaving. Blinking against the unseen light. His mind become animal instinct, a place of pure survival.

He made his way slow up that hill, the world an unearthly sloping while he tongued his wet blood mouth. Colding fingers. He found his way into the sickle field, walked till the nausea defeated him and he bent over and vomited food and blood, and
when he stood back up he saw in his split vision his handprints as they had pressed into the earth.

An almost sparkling white hotness.

Shivering when his shadow fell in the door.

He made his way through the kitchen blind and past the point of grief. Did not stop to take in the shape of his son, took the stairs hands and knees drooling blood upon the boards towards the bedroom dark. Grasped off the chair a towel and when he lay down on the bed he put the towel under his head roughly folded. Lay there shivering in the long shadow of the bed while the night opened like a mouth from a dream.

Drifting then into a tangle of strangeness and what came to him was a talking in dream tongues, crazed stranger faces, a howling wind of pain. The nausea in his belly rose again and he awoke and was sick all over himself and when he lay his head back to rest and put his hand to his head he could feel his hair cotted with blood, the softness at his skull quietly weeping. He did not understand. He wanted to apologize.

The burning moon turned a cold bone. What light it cast fell weakly into the room, laid a shellacked shawl upon the dresser, glanced off the mirror onto the wall. And then the room became dark as the moon was fought back by clouds and it lay so until hours later. His hands so cold now, could not feel his feet, adrift into an oozy darkness, drifting and then slipping deeper into those dreams. Their faces. The pair of their faces before him. Dreamed the coming sound of a car.

He awakes to a room without moon, a void of pure dark and he hears an echo in his chest where his heart is. What lies behind his
eyes is a pulsing hurt that drifts like the tidal sea, a soothing and crash, and he spreads himself starfish, drifts further down, drifts into the deepening sea, can feel himself letting go down into a benthic deep. Just his breathing now, so delicate a thing like an animal sensing the air before the rush of being born. So cold. So cold. And he lies there drifting down until something stirs in the room and his mind comes up out of that dark. Someone else. He senses in the room a person. A small stone of heat begins to burn in a place he has thought burned out and he pulls his hands free of the blankets, slowly sits up, blinks to see. Sees his own starlight first and then out of that sparkling dark at the far side of the room he sees a lamp’s low glimmer. The yellow flame casts the silhouette of a figure in the chair and the stone inside him burns brighter now for he knows in his heart she has come. Love. The purest light. He climbs slowly out of bed, stands unsteady, begins to walk towards the shape of her and as he nears then he sees that the other person is not Eskra at all.

He sees before him Matthew Peoples.

The old man with his eyes upon Barnabas, so tired a face he has looking up at him, and then he rests his hands on his lap and stands up. He leaves the lamp upon the floor and tightens his blue rope-belt and lifts it up again, takes a look at Barnabas, shakes his head sadly for him. He turns and begins towards the door and Barnabas begins to follow, out of the room, slowly down the stairs he follows the lamplight of Matthew Peoples, shadows melting on the walls. In the hall he sees the moon is gone and he follows him into the kitchen, peace in his mind, peace in his heart, and Matthew Peoples pulls out a chair and sits down at the table. Barnabas sits beside him and they survey each other for a moment, and he can see now in Matthew Peoples the
man’s eyes so clearly, the pure look of them. The look of a man’s sadness. And then Matthew Peoples stands and leaves the lamp upon the table, begins towards the back door, the room pooled to dark, and Barnabas stands slowly and starts to follow, so cold, so very cold now, and as he follows the night is without sound so still, his feet cold on the chill floor, and he can see the outline of Matthew Peoples open the back door, and then he is beside him and he stands looking at Matthew Peoples’ face, old man face of wind and rain and rivers, and then Barnabas speaks, his voice a bare whisper.

I didn’t know how to do it any better.

His voice falls away and there is silence and Matthew Peoples reaches towards Barnabas and he lays a hand to his cheek, smiles at him, and then he turns, the bulk shape of him moving out the door, the night that is starless.

In the field the horse stood and nickered softly, turned from the wobbled reflection of herself in the trough, began west towards the wooden fence. The day bright as crystal and the hills stood everlast in that wind that blew soft, soft through that land invisible like the harrying hand of time itself. It tipped the wilding grass in the fields that lay barren, shook dust over the hush of the farm house, shook dust from the byre’s bare stones, the building as it lay roofless to the elements. A grand silence but for the hum of the world that came to the horse the same ever in all its sounding.

It were Stephen’s Day morning and I’m trying to eat me porridge and the auld doll was over by the stove telling me about something to do with when she was a wee girl la la la and I’m watching through the window and I see the strangest thing, Cyclop standing in the front yard with his tail swung up and he’s trying to snatch at a magpie. No chance though because them birds are too smart and there’s two of them and they take up either side of him and one of them comes in at him daringly close and Cyclop turns around for him but as soon as he does that bird skips back and then the other jigs forward behind him and bites at his tail. It was like they were tryin to confuse and torment him and this went on with the birds snappin at his rear and the dog getting more frustrated. Me laughin me head off, come here Ma and look at this, and when the auld doll didn’t turn I shouted at her, what, she says, and I motion towards the window, and then she comes to the window and watches, and at this point the dog is chasing his own tail in circles and she starts laughing too and outside Cyclop starts woofing and then the auld boy is coming down the stairs and he starts shouting, what is all the fuss about, and the auld doll points him to the window to watch, and he stands there between us with his arms resting upon each of our shoulders, the weight of him, and then the big sound of him, filling the room with his laughter.

Paul Lynch was born in 1977 and lives in Dublin with his wife. Formerly a journalist and film critic, he is now a full-time novelist. This is his second novel.