Cathal opens the window, sticks his head out, lets the cigarette drop, and watches it spiral and fizzle in the wet grass. He looks toward the lake once more.
“Good morning,” he shouts. “Have ye room for another?”
The swans drift on, like paper, while the shout comes back to him in a distant echo. He coughs again, spits out the window, closes it, walks to his rumpled bed, pulls on his underwear, a white open-necked shirt, a large pair of dirty overalls, and some wool socks. He trundles slowly along the landing, down the stairs to make his breakfast. All these young men and women dying, he thinks, as his socks slide on the wooden floor. Well, damn it all anyway.
* * *
And maybe the soldier who fired the riot gun was just a boy himself. Cathal’s bacon fizzles and pops and the kettle lets out a low whistle. Maybe all he wanted, as he saw the boy come forward with the Liverpool scarf wrapped around his mouth, was to be home. Then, as a firebomb whirled through the air, perhaps all the soldier thought of was a simple pint of Watney’s. Or a row of Tyneside tenements with a football to bang against the wall. Or to be fastened together with his girlfriend in some little Newcastle alleyway. Perhaps he was wishing that his hair could touch his shoulders, like it used to do. Or that, with the next month’s paycheck, he could buy some Afghan hash and sit in the barracks with his friends, blowing rings of Saturn smoke to the ceiling. Maybe his eyes were as deep and green as bottles in a cellar. Perhaps a Wilfred Owen book was tucked under his pillow to make meaning of the whistles on the barbed wire. But there he was, all quivery and trembling, in Londonderry, his shoulder throbbing with the kickback of the gun, looking up to the sky, watching a plume of smoke rise.
Cathal picks the bacon out of the sizzling grease with his fingers and cracks two eggs. He pours himself a cup of tea, coughs, and leaves another gob of phlegm in the sink. The weather has been ferocious this Christmas. Winds that sheer through a body, like a scythe through a scarecrow, have left him with a terrible cold. Not even the Bushmills that he drank last night could put a dent in his chest. What a terrible thought that. He rubs his chest. Bushmills and bullets.
Perhaps, he thinks, a picture of the soldier’s girlfriend hangs on the wall above the bunk bed in the barracks. Dogeared and a little yellow. Her hair all teased and a sultry smile on her face. Enough to make the soldier melt at the knees. Him having to call her, heartbroken, saying: “I didn’t mean it, luv. We were just trying to scatter the crowd.” Or maybe not. Maybe him with a face like a rat, eyes dark as bogholes, sitting in a pub, glorious in his black boots, being slapped and praised, him raising his glass for a toast, to say: “Did ya see that, lads? What a fucking shot, eh? Newcastle United 1, Liverpool 0.”
All this miraculous hatred. Christ, a man can’t eat his breakfast for filling his belly full of it. Cathal dips a small piece of bread into the runny yolk of an egg and wipes his chin. In the courtyard some chickens quarrel over scraps of feed. A raven lands on a fence post down by the red barn. Beyond that a dozen cows huddle in the corner of a field, under a tree, sheltering from the rain, which is coming down in steady sheets now. Abandoned in the middle of the field is Cathal’s tractor. It gave up the ghost yesterday while he was taking a couple of sacks of oats, grass clippings and cracked corn out to the swans.
Shoveling the last of his breakfast into his mouth, Cathal watches the swans glide lazily across the water, close and tight. Sweet Jesus, but there’s not a lot of room left out there these days.
* * *
He leaves the breakfast dishes in the sink, unlatches the front door, sits on a wooden stool under the porch roof, and pulls on his green Wellingtons, wheezing. Occasional drops of rain are blown in under the porch and he tightens the drawstrings on his anorak hood. Wingnut, a three-legged collie who lost her front limb when the tractor ran over it, comes up and nestles her head in the crook of Cathal’s knee. From his anorak pocket he pulls out a box of cigarettes, cups his hands, and lights up. Time to give these damn things up, he thinks, as he walks across the courtyard, the cigarette crisping and flaring. Wingnut chases the chickens in circles around some puddles, loping around on her three legs.
“Wingnut!”
The dog tucks her head and follows Cathal down toward the red barn. Hay is piled up high in small bales and bags of feed clutter the shelves. Tractor parts are heaped in the corner. A chaotic mess of tools slouches against the wall. Cathal puts his toe under the handle of a pitchfork and, with a flick of the foot, sends it sailing across the barn. Then he lifts a tamping bar, leans it in the corner, and grabs his favorite blue-handled shovel.
Christ, the things a man could be doing now if he wasn’t cursed to dig. Could be fixing the distributor cap on the tractor. Or binding up the northern fence. Putting some paraffin down that foxhole to make sure that little red-tailed bastard doesn’t come hunting chickens any more. Or down there in the southernmost field, making sure the cattle have enough cubes to last them through the cold. Or simply just sitting by the fire having a smoke and watching television, like any decent man fifty-six years old would want to do.
All these years of digging. A man could reach his brother in Australia, or his sister in America, or even his parents in heaven or hell if he put all that digging together into one single hole.
“Isn’t that right, Wingnut?” Cathal reaches down and takes Wingnut’s front leg and walks her out of the barn, laughing as the collie barks, the shovel tucked under his shoulder.
He moves back through the courtyard again, the dog at his heels. As he walks he whisks the blade of the shovel into the puddles and hums a tune. Wonder if they’re singing right now, over the poor boy’s body? The burns lightened by cosmetics perhaps, the autumn-colored hair combed back, the eyelids fixed in a way of peace, the mouth bitter and mysterious, the tattooed hand discreetly covered. A priest bickering because he doesn’t want a flag draped on the coffin. A sly undertaker saying that the boy deserves the very best. Silk and golden braids. Teenage friends writing poems for him in symbolic candlelight. The wilting marigolds jettisoned for roses — fabulous roses with perfect petals. Kitchen rags used, this time to wipe whiskey from the counter. Butt ends choking up the ashtray. Milk bottles very popular among the ladies for cups of tea.
He reaches the lane, the wind sending stinging raindrops into the side of his face. Cathal can feel the cold seep into his bones as he negotiates the ruts and potholes, using the shovel as a walking stick. In the distance the swans drift on, oblivious to the weather. The strangest thing about it all is that they never seem to quarrel. Yet, then again, they never sing either. Even when they leave, the whole flock, every New Year’s Eve, he never hears that swansong. On a television program one night a scientist said that the swan’s song was a mythological invention, maybe it had happened once or twice, when a bird was shot in the air, and the escaping breath from the windpipe sounded to some poor foolish poet like a song. But, if it is true, if there is really such a thing as a swansong, wouldn’t it be lovely to hear? Cathal whistles through his teeth, then smiles. That way, at least, there’d be no more damn digging and a man could rest.
He unlatches the gate hinge and sidesteps the ooze of mud behind the cattle guard, and tramps on into the field. Water squelches up around his Wellingtons with each step. The birds on the water have not seen him yet. A couple of them follow one another in a line through the water, churning ripples. A large cob, four feet tall, twines his neck with a female, their bills of bright yellow smudged with touches of black. Slowly they reach around and preen each other’s feathers. Cathal smiles. There goes Anna Pavlova, his nickname for his favorite swan, a cygnet that, in the early days of the year before the lake became so choc-a-bloc, would dance across the water, sending flumes of spray in the air. Others gather together in the reeds. A group of nine huddle near the bank, their necks stretched out toward the sky.