The Dig (15 page)

The Long Dry

Everything I Found on the Beach

FORTHCOMING FROM COFFEE HOUSE PRESS IN
2016

from

The Long Dry

the Cow

He'd woken earlier and gone out to check the cows. The night had been still and again he could not sleep with all the thoughts filling the silence of the unmoving night; so he had got up and gone into the clear, still morning. For very long it had been very still. It was before the light came up.

With the light of the torch he found the stillborn calf dead in the straw of the barn. He rubbed the stump of his missing finger. He could see the cows' breath in the morning air—which even then was cold—and a warm steam off some of their bodies. The mother of the stillborn calf was kneeling beside the calf lowing sadly and gently. The other animals hissed and puffed and chewed straw.

He took the dead calf by its ankles and lifted it from the straw that was bloodied by birth, not by the calf's death. It was strange because the mother had licked the calf clean. He thought of the mother cow licking her calf and not understanding why it would not stand clumsily to its feet, its legs out of proportion, its eyes wide. Why the incredible tottering new life of it did not come.

He carried the calf out of the barn, counting the cows inside, and went out into the field. Kate would be sad about the calf. The calves died very rarely for them.

Over the hills behind the farm the light started. Just a thinning of the very black night that made the stars twinkle more, vibrate like a bird's throat and put out a light loud compared with their tininess. He'd noticed the missing cow.

He'd hoped it had got out of the barn and into the field, where there were other cows with older calves out. She was very close to calf and heavy and perhaps went because of the terrible thing of the stillbirth.

In the dark he could not see the cow and he carried the dead calf across the field, hard grazed because there had been no rain. Somewhere, a large truck growled along the road, near the land he had his eye on. He dropped the calf into the old well at the bottom of the field because he did not want Kate to see it and because it was expensive to send in the dead calves to find out why they died. You always lose some, he knew. There is no reason. You will just lose some. He hoped the cow had not gone missing.

the Farm

The farm sits on a low slope a few miles inland from the sea. Gareth's father bought the farm after the war because he didn't want to work for the bank any more. The farm had belonged to an eccentric old lady who was found feeding chickens in her pajamas by the postman one morning. She had no chickens. Three sons and her husband had gone to war and they were all killed in the war one after the other, in order of age. When they found her feeding chickens that were not there she was taken away and put into a home where she died of a huge stroke like she couldn't be away from the farm. When Gareth's father bought it, the farm was collapsing.

The family moved in with the intention of rebuilding, of refurbishing the farm; but after the first few frantic months they did little and settled into the place. Things took on names—the rooms and the fields.

In the new house, after the floors were redone and the walls sealed and plastered, painted brightly, things were placed here or there—the ornaments and bowls. It was too deliberate, like posing for a photograph, and odd to Gareth, who was young then.

When the house started to live around its new people, things seemed to find a more comfortable place for themselves—like earth settling—haphazard and somehow right, like the mixture of things in a hedge. They relaxed and walked round the house in their shoes. Before that, for a while, it had seemed to the children like the house was bewildered by the attention—it was like they were when their mother wiped their face with a cloth.

“I wanted him last night,” she thinks. “Really. And then I don't know. It went away again. I went flat, like I was numb, when he started touching me, and I tried to be patient and coaxing but he could tell, so he stopped and he didn't say anything. I could tell he was angry. Not really with me, just, he's been very good recently not starting anything and then I started something. And then he knew I didn't want it; and I don't know why. I miss his hands. God, I miss his hands.”

She's started this, now. This way of thinking—as if she's talking aloud with herself, as if she is a face framed in a mirror talking back to her. A means of control, or of measure. Of trying to make sense. Women get old quickly, when they get old.

She feels her body moving under the rough cloth of his shirt, which she has thrown on to be out of bed. In the mirror, behind her, the unmade bed. She feels her body is soft and filled with water and dropping with age, and there is no way he can look at her now and feel the things he has felt for her in the past. He will want her because of his care for her now, not out of desire. It's like being allowed to win a game. He can't possibly want her body. She wonders about cutting her hair short again.

Sometimes they go funny. When they're fat with calf. They go funny and they do something, and it's impossible to guess what they have done by trying to think like them. Because they don't think when they do this. If they decide to go they can go a great distance. Just stumbling and crashing along and it doesn't make any sense. All you can do is try and find them and hope they are okay and do what you can. Stay near them. Check them. Mostly they're okay once the calf has come.

from

Everything I Found on the Beach

The sergeant was on the beach and looked down at the body and the younger policeman Morgan was with him and it was the first time for him, seeing something so severe.

The body had most of the fingers of one hand off and there was a big wound to the face and out through the back of the head.

The tide had lapped up on the body and the salt water had swelled the edges of the big wound. It was early but the birds had been awake and the eyes were already gone. It was really severe to look at.

The owlish man got out of the taxi that he'd just rolled up along the little slip to the beach and came down the slip and called out to the young policeman.

The sergeant looked up tiredly. “Christ,” said the sergeant. “Keep him away.”

The young policeman saw a small crab scuttle from under the face of the body and it seemed to dislodge the balance of the head so it rolled slightly, as if it moved in its sleep. It made the young policeman feel sick. “What have you got, Morgan?”

The young policeman went up to the owlish man who was standing by the blue and white tape the other police had put up. The owlish man was pecky and curious looking.

“What have you got?” he asked again.