Everything in This Country Must (2 page)

The tea tasted good from long brewing and we had biscuits for special visitors, I fetched them from the pantry. I bit one to make sure they were fresh and I carried out the tray.

I was sneezing but I was very careful to sneeze away from the tray so as to have politeness like Stevie. Stevie said
God bless you
in his funny funny way and we were all quiet as we sipped on the tea but I sneezed again three four five times and Hayknife said
You should change out of them wet clothes, luv.

Father put down his teacup very heavy on the saucer and it was very quiet.

Everyone even the soldiers looked at the floor and the mantelpiece clock was ticking and Mammy’s picture was staring down from the wall and Fiachra when he was playing football and the soldiers didn’t see them but Father did. The long silence was longer and longer until Father called me over,
Come here, Katie,
and he stood me by the window and he took the long curtain in his hands. He turned me around and wrapped the curtain around me and he took my hair and started rubbing, not tender but hard. Father is good, he was just wanting to dry my hair because I was shivering even in Stevie’s jacket. From under the curtain I could see the soldiers and I could see most of all Stevie. He sipped from his tea and smiled at me and Father coughed real loud and the clock ticked some more until Hayknife said
Here, guv, why don’t you use my towel for her?

Father said
No thanks.

Hayknife said
Go on, guv,
and he put the towel in a ball and made to about throw it.

Father said
No!

Stevie said
Take it easy.

Take it easy?
said Hayknife.

Maybe you should all leave,
said Father.

Hayknife changed his face and threw the towel on the ground at Father’s feet and Hayknife’s cheeks were out-puffing and he was breathing hard and he was saying
Fat lot of fucken thanks we get from your sort, mister.

Hayknife was up on his feet now and pointing at Father and the light shone off his boots well polished and his face was twitching so the scar looked like it was cutting his face. Longgrasses and Stevie stood up from the chairs and they were holding Hayknife back, but Hayknife was saying
Risk our fucken lives and save your fucken horse and that’s all the thanks we get, eh?

Father held me very tight with the curtain wrapped around me and he seemed scared and small and trembly. Hayknife was shouting lots and his face was red and scrunched. Stevie kept him back. Stevie’s face was long and sad and I knew he knew because he kept looking at Mammy and Fiachra on the mantelpiece beside the ticking clock. Stevie dragged Hayknife out from the living room and at the kitchen door he let go. Hayknife turned over Stevie’s shoulder one last time and looked at Father with his face all twisted but Stevie grabbed him again and said
Forget it mate.

Stevie took Hayknife out through the kitchen and into the yard toward the army truck and still the rain was coming down outside and then the living room was quiet except for the clock.

I heard the engine of the army truck start.

Father stood away from me and put his head on the mantelpiece near the photos. I stayed at the window still in Stevie’s jacket which Stevie forgot and he hasn’t come back for yet.

I watched the truck as it went down the laneway and the red lights on the green gate as it stopped and then turned into the road past where the draft horse was lifted from the river. I didn’t hear anything then, just Father starting low noises in his throat and I didn’t turn from the window because I knew he would be angry for me to see him. Father was sniff sniffling, maybe he forgot I was there. It was going right down into him and it came in big gulps like I never heard before. I stayed still but Father was trembling big and fast. He took out a handkerchief and moved away from the mantelpiece. I didn’t watch him because I knew he would be shamed for his crying.

The army truck was near out of sight, red lights on the hedgerows.

I heard the living room door shut, then the kitchen door, then the pantry door where Father keeps his hunting rifle, then the front door, and I heard the sound of the clicker on the rifle and him still crying going farther and farther away until the crying was gone and he must have been in the courtyard standing in the rain.

The clock on the mantelpiece sounded very loud, so did the rain, so did my breathing, and I looked out the window.

It was all near empty on the outside road and the soldiers were going around the corner away when I heard the sounds; it wasn’t like bullets, it was more like pops one two three.

The clock still ticked.

It ticked and ticked and ticked.

The curtain was wet around me but I pulled it tight. I was scared, I couldn’t move. I waited it seemed like forever.

When Father came in from outside I knew what it was. His face was like it was cut from a stone and he was not crying anymore and he didn’t even look at me, just went to sit in the chair. He picked up his teacup and it rattled on the saucer so he put it down again and he put his face in his hands and he stayed like that. The ticking was gone from my mind and all was quiet everywhere in the world and I held the curtain like I held the sound of the bullets going into the draft horse, his favorite, in the barn, one two three, and I stood at the window in Stevie’s jacket and looked and waited and still the rain kept coming down outside one two three and I was thinking oh what a small sky for so much rain.

WOOD

I
T WAS JUST PAST NIGHTTIME
when we brought the logs down to the mill. The storm was finished but there was snow still on the hedges and it looked like they had a white eyebrow.

Mammy drove the red tractor. It went down the lane with hardly any speed at all. The headlights were off and she kept the throttle steady so as nobody would hear. She was wrapped in two coats and I had my brown duffle closed to the neck but still the wind was cold. The logs scraped along the ground behind the tractor and made a sound like they were nervous too. The logs were wrapped with chains to keep them from slipping, but still the chains rattled and I held my breath.

The light from Daddy’s room was on. It sprayed out yellow onto the snow at the back of the house.

Mammy said hush to me.

She pushed the throttle forward and the tractor quickened a little on the hill. She didn’t want the engine to cut out and die. Daddy might hear something and then he would ask. The engine was like the sound of a cough rising.

Mammy turned in the tractor seat and pulled up her head scarf to look back and see if all the logs were following. I was walking behind the logs and I gave her a wave and she smiled and turned again.

My boots made footprints in the tracks left by the pulled wood. They were size eights that belonged once to Daddy and still they were much too big for me and I could feel the newspaper shifting in the toes.

The snow had frozen and it crunched under my feet.

The tractor got to the top of the hill and then, when the logs came up, Mammy pulled back on the throttle.

All the clouds had disappeared and there was a slice of moon out that looked like a coin had been tossed in the sky. I wanted to sit on the end of the logs and have the tractor skid me along. We had a small wooden cart before Daddy got sick and he skidded us through the fields on the back of a rope. We laughed and shouted hard, me and my brothers. Sometimes he dragged us along through the mud, all the way down to the church where we had services. Once he pulled the cart too hard and we slammed into a tree. I got a big cut on my head and it bled down my chin, but I didn’t go to the hospital. Daddy said I was a big enough lad, not to cry, and he carried me all the way home. He had wide shoulders then, not hunched into himself like an old raven.

*   *   *

THE MAN WITH THE BIG CAR
had called at the door three days before. He had gray hair and a gray suit and a Union Jack in his lapel. His face was very tight like someone had squished it together with pliers. I knew him from church, but couldn’t remember his name. He said that there’d been a fire in the Lodge and it was an emergency, he didn’t want to use the Kavanagh mill on the other side of town.

Forty poles, he said to Mammy. Twenty-five shillings each. They’ll be carrying the banners. We’ll leave the wood at the end of the laneway. They’ll have to be smooth and varnished and rounded at the top.

I was sure that Mammy was going to say no thanks. Ever since Daddy got sick she said no thanks to every other job, she said we got enough money from the checks in the post. But this time she rubbed her hands together and finally she whispered, Okay.

Your husband’ll be all right with that, then? he asked.

He will, aye.

He was never mad keen before, was he?

Mammy looked behind as if she was expecting Daddy to be listening, then she jiggled the door handle up and down.

The man smiled and said, Next week, so?

Aye, next week, said Mammy.

*   *   *

I LOOKED UP TO THE LIGHT
in Daddy’s window and then back to the tractor. Mammy had her hands held hard now to the steering wheel as she turned the corner going close to the house.

There was ivy on the walls and it looked like our secret was climbing up the vines to Daddy’s room.

I ran to catch up with the logs in the courtyard. My chest rose and fell hard. Mammy was leaning back over the seat and waving her arms at me to hurry up. She was trying to say a word but there was no word coming and then she whipped her body back around.

She stood up quickly from the tractor seat and turned the steering wheel hard left and braked. I was thinking maybe she had hit one of the dogs, but I ran around the side and saw the wheelbarrow, full of bricks. The back wheel of the tractor had just missed it. It would have made a fierce noise. I grabbed ahold of the wheelbarrow and rolled it away a few feet.

Mammy whispered: Get you there in front of the tractor and make sure there’s nothing else in our way, good boy.

The courtyard was empty mostly but I moved the bricks to the side of the old outhouse and then I dragged some scrap planks over to the water tank. Mammy looked stiff in the face, but then she gave a smile as I cleared the path for the tractor.

The snow from the top of the planks sat on the sleeves of my coat and then melted and ran down to my elbows, where it made me shiver.

I waved Mammy on.

She put her boot down hard on the brake, releasing the lock—it clicked a loud click—and the tractor rolled forward slowly once more. The tires caught on the hard snow and the logs made a groan against the ground.

The doors to the mill were open. Mammy drove the tractor all the way in and now the sound was different, softer, the tires rolling over sawdust. I pulled the string that led to the light and it flooded the mill and there was dust all around us. A few empty bottles of lemonade were on the workbenches, where Daddy had left them long ago. I thought about running into the house to get some milk from the fridge but Mammy said: Come on now, Andrew.

She climbed down from the tractor and yanked her dress from where it caught on the mudguard. She closed the door of the mill, clapped her hands together twice, and said: Let’s get cracking.

*   *   *

DADDY SAYS
he’s as good a Presbyterian as the next, always has been and always will, but it’s just meanness that celebrates other people dying. He doesn’t allow us to go to the marches, but I saw a picture in the newspapers once. Two men in bowler hats were carrying a banner of the King on a big white horse. The horse was stepping across a river with one hoof in the air and one hoof on the bank. The King wore fancy clothes and he had a kind face. I really liked the picture and I didn’t see why Daddy got upset. Mammy never said anything about the marches. If we asked a question she said, Ask your daddy. And when we asked why, she said, Because your daddy said so.

I thought maybe our poles would hold a banner just like that, with the King sitting high up on his horse. I asked Mammy but she said, Hush now son we’ve got a big job to do.

*   *   *

I KNEW WHAT TO DO
from watching Daddy. We unwrapped the chains from the logs. The metal links felt dead in my fingers.

Mammy had thin little wool gloves on and she offered them to me, but I said no thanks. She took off her head scarf. Her hair fell to her shoulders, black with little bits of gray. Her cheeks were red from the cold and she looked pretty like she does in old photographs. She reached into her dress pocket, took out some matches, went across to the kerosene heaters.

When she struck the match it looked like there was fire jumping from her hands. In a few minutes the mill was heating. We pulled the last of the chains out from under the logs and one of them rolled across the floor of the mill. It bumped into the sawhorse.

Mammy looked out the window, but the yard was empty except for the tracks we had left in the snow. She tapped on the windowpane and the ice on the glass shook. Then she took the chain saw down off the wall and said to me: Stand back.

Mammy fired it up and the metal teeth ripped around and around the blade. She made a vee cut at first and I put pressure on the log so it would cut quicker. She sliced the log into three long sections and there was a bead of sweat on her forehead, just sitting there, not quite sure if it was going to fall down her face or not, but she turned off the chain saw and put her head into her shoulder, and wiped the sweat away.

How long will it take? I asked.

A few days, she said. They need them in time for marching practice.

I saw some bats flying outside, past the window. They dipped around and went very fast.

We bent down to lift the piece of log into the cutting machine. The wood was wet where Mammy had sawed it and I could feel it ooze down my fingers.

We were breathing hard when we got the log in place. Mammy hit the switch and the sharp blade went along the middle of the log. When you cut trees you can tell how old they are by the number of rings, and I wondered if I cut myself open would I be able to tell things about myself, but I didn’t say anything because Mammy was staring into the machine.