‘If he wants his hair black surely that’s alright.’
‘It isn’t the colour that anyone minds. Sure once didn’t the priest wonder on the altar if he was in a place to get petrol with the smell of him. And then didn’t a gob of that muck get on the bottom of Father Flaherty’s gold chalice and make marks all over the altar cloth. But it was nothing mind like when he put perfume in it and sold the stuff in jam jars down the village to Kelly the chemist for a cure to the grey hair. Sexton’s Genume Compound, the eegit called it. With him printing out labels for it and all. They nearly kilt Kelly. There were women acreaming at him over the husbands greasy black hands they got laying holt of their heads. And the great mess it made of the pillows. But never mind that now. See the wood beyond. That’s where we’re headed.
Foxy at a trot across the velvety soft meadows. Holding his arms up against briars and backing his way as he climbed through the thorn hedges. Jumping streams and ditches. And down a heathery hillside and around the stony shores of a lake. Up a steep bracken covered hill and on top Foxy pointed out across the bleak moonlit flatness.
‘’Tis out there just a little walk. But mind now it’s the worst of our travels. Many coming this way to-the woman have been swallowed up in the bog. Once you slip in there you’re done for. Never to be heard tell of again. But if they find you even after a hundred years you look like you only died yesterday.’
‘I want to go home.’
‘After we come all this way. I am going to sow me oats. Sure if you keep right behind me you’ll get across safe. But some of the holes go down ten men deep.’
The sound of pigs honking and snuggling about in their pen. The back of a long thatched cottage standing desolate in its muddy farmyard. One door and three small windows. A wisp of sweet scented turf smoke descending from the chimney. Foxy putting his cupped hands to his mouth and hooting like an owl. A candle flickering past a window. One’s feet wet and chill. Falling twice up to my knees in the oozing bog. Back of hands torn by briars. And finger bones stung by thorns. Across all this flat haunted land. Like we’d reached another world somewhere the other side of the earth. Huddling near the warmth of a steaming manure pile.
‘I’m cold Foxy.’
‘Keep in close to the heat of the dung. Won’t be a minute now.’
‘We’ve been here ages.’
‘Ah sometimes it takes a little part of the night waiting.’
‘Why.’
‘She might have to give the ould fellow the slip.’
‘Maybe he’s heard your noises.’
‘Ah he’s nearly deaf. And the one eye he’s left with is nearly blind. But we have to get a spell away over the bogs where we’re safe with the woman.’
‘If he’s blind and deaf how could he find us.’
‘Ah he’s used to the place, he’d know every stump, ditch and hedge hereabouts.’
‘Could he not be lost and sink in the bog.’
‘Ah he’d be too wise for that. He’d know by his own steps where he’d be safe. And he could chase you up beyond with a hook and just by the heat of you he’d know where to swipe to lop off your ears. He nearly had me once only I’m too fast. And I had a raw potato I was chewing that I let him have it in the gob. It shut up his shouts with the spud locked in his mouth he was trying to dig it back out with his big ould fingers. I nearly couldn’t run with laughing.’
Foxy hooting again. A wind rising. The moon passing behind thickening clouds. A donkey brays and a rooster crows.
‘It could be getting morning Foxy.’
‘It’s not morning at all. Sure the smoke is still coming out of the chimney from the evening fire. And them ould cocks don’t know when they’re crowing. And if it was morning, that mean rooster in there would be out charging pecking and clawing at us.’
‘I want to go home to bed now.’
‘I’m telling you wait. Or you’ll never clap eyes on your first cunt. And then we’ll go back by way of the big castle. There be shenanigans to be had there as well.’
‘I’m sleepy and cold.’
‘Go then. And be sure to watch where you’re stepping across the bog. And it’s worse for you falling in the lake. Pike in there ferocious, bigger and longer than you are. Rip you asunder. Sure they snap duck and fox down like flies and a few big rats they gollop is only to make them hungrier.’
‘I will stay.’
‘And it will be the better for you.’
In the shadowy greys of dawn great wings of a bird flapping slowly across the brown bog lands. And curlews whistling as their flight dipped right and then left under the haunted sky. A snort of a horse. And the wind creaking the rusted corrugated iron roofed stables. As Foxy suddenly turns his head to look behind. And the murmur of holy shit slips from his lips. A face with a black patch over one eye looming over the wall followed quickly by shoulders coming in a giant heaving mass just behind it.
‘Ah you pair of dirty little blackguards I’ve caught you now and you won’t hoot again I’m telling you.’
‘Run.’
‘Run is it.’
Foxy like a streak was up and over the heap of manure. Leaping down the other side and his feet pounding and splashing through the deep mud across the farmyard. A great hand descended clutching Darcy Dancer by the back of the neck. Lifting him up in the air his feet dangling. Then dropping to the ground with lights exploding and comets zooming with sparkling tails as a blow landed on the side of his face.
A voice speaking. The smell of turf smoke and a flickering light. To stare up at a stained panelled ceiling. A hook holding a black kettle hanging over the orange glowing embers of a fire. High on a wall a red flame beneath a picture of a bearded long haired man, upon his chest his heart, out of which grew a cross. Like a statue Catherine the cook had in her damp basement room. And from a bucket of cold water on a chair, a white cold cloth came wiping blood from my brow.
‘Ah the poor darling. His eyes is opening now. You nearly kilt him.’
‘I did. And I would. And I will. If I ever catch him or that other one Slattery from beyond there in Thormondstown. They’ll be in the bog saving the cost of their funerals. They’ll be taught coming around here. And if this one needs another lesson I’ll give it to him right here and now.’
‘Stay away now from the child. Or I’ll fix you with a bat in the kisser with thier handle’.
God love
The poor little
Defenceless
Creature
5
In the late dying afternoon, a bird happily chirping just out the window of this dark strange room. One heard hoofs clip clopping far off on the surface of the hard road. Coming slowly nearer and nearer. The squeal and clang of a gate and wheels grinding over the pebbles to halt outside. Then a loud rapping on the cottage door. My head still swirling as I lifted up on my arms. And voices raised outside.
‘He fell I’m telling you.’
‘Be gob never mind there are pieces of you missing, if you’ve touched a hair of that lad’s head I’ll do you here and now. Till you’re nothing more than rudis indigestaque moles.’
‘Gospel now, the lad took a tumble.’
‘Gospel is it. I’ll give you gospel and it won’t be from St Luke or the Corinthians. Nor will it do your inferiority complex a bit of good.’
A smile of greeting on Sexton’s face. His hair gleaming black and wavy. A rug over his arm. As he steps across the earthen floor. And this large bosomy red headed lady wiping her hands in her apron.
‘Ah it was only a little blood spilled out of his ear and a cut there he got on the head.’