Colum McCann - Everything in This Country Must

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.

IT 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.