Colum McCann - Everything in This Country Must

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.

Do you think the pieces are too thick? she said.

I wasn’t sure, so I said no, they were perfect.

She gave a small smile and some hair fell down her face and she tied it back behind her head. She stood with her hands on her hips.

Right so, she said.

We took the first piece to the rounding machine and Mammy spent a long time making sure that everything was adjusted right: the blades, the buttons, the oil. She looked at me across the machine for a long time and said, It’s our secret, right?

Aye.

You won’t tell your brothers neither?

No.

God help me, she said in a whisper.

Mammy turned the machine on. It clattered and she looked like she wanted to tell it to be quiet. The wood spun around and around and bits came flying off until it began to look like a pole. I started sweeping the floor. I put the bristles of the brush right down into the gaps of the floorboards just so I could get every little piece.

There was a great smell of timber in the air. Mammy switched off the machine and ran her fingers along the wood and then she turned to me.

Will you get the thingymajig ready there, love? she asked. She was pointing at the sanding machine. I ran across and got it. It wasn’t heavy.

Plug it in there, good lad, she said.

A little spark jumped out from the wall, blue like lightning.

* * *

WE MADE ONE GOOD POLE but Mammy said it was too late, that we’d try again the next night. We reversed the tractor out and left it in the courtyard where it was before and then we put the lock on the door of the mill. Mammy took a rake to the snow on the ground to get rid of all the footprints and tire marks.

When we got back to the house I showed Mammy the secret to keeping quiet on the stairs, staying to the left-hand side, watching for the creak on the seventh step, then stepping real light on the eleventh and missing the fourteenth altogether.

Mammy washed her hands in the sink so Daddy wouldn’t smell the wood and then she went in to wake him up and turn him so he wouldn’t get sores on his body.

She does that six times a day. First she tucks her hands in under his legs and she props them up with a pillow. Then she puts her hand under his back and she rolls him over. The first few times she did it he used to moan but now he just grits his teeth and looks straight ahead at the wall. Once, when she was rolling him, my brothers and I saw his willy fall out from the gap in his pajamas. Paulie laughed first and then me and then Roger. Daddy looked at us and said, Get out boys. Mammy tucked his willy back in and pulled the drawstring tight.

* * *

THE DAY DADDY FELL he went down between two sawhorses. My brothers and me were playing hide-and-go-seek in the courtyard. Roger found him and shouted to come quick to the mill and I ran as fast as I could. Daddy was there with his eyes wide open. He had a piece of sandpaper in his hands and his hair was covered in dust. He was trying to move but he couldn’t.

He was making chairs when it happened. Daddy made the most beautiful chairs in the whole of Britain. Any man or woman, said Mammy, would be proud to sit in one of his chairs. They were fit for the Royal Family and they were even fit for the Queen herself. He used to make cabinets too, and sometimes he even fired the little brass handles in the forge at the rear of the mill. They were mahogany cabinets, which was the most expensive wood and only made on special order from a man in Belfast. Every time he sold a cabinet Daddy would bring us to town for red lemonade and ice cream. Sometimes for fun he swayed in and out of the lines.

Daddy even made the seats in our church. He said everyone should do his bit for God. Our neighbour Mr. McCracken said the seats would put the Catholic church to shame, but Daddy said there was no shame in any church, cheap wood or good wood, everyone sat in the same direction.

Reverend Banks said in a sermon that they were great works of the Lord, and that day all the men slapped Daddy on the back and he walked out tall and proud.

He was so tall he could grab onto the rim of the door in the mill and pull himself up ten times. He worked there all day long, last star to first, and Mammy used to bring out sandwiches to him, sometimes in the evening a can of beer.

When he finished a chair Mammy always tested it out for him. Once in summer I saw her standing outside the mill on a wooden stool and she was reaching up in the air and laughing. Daddy was beside her, smiling. He used to smile a lot like that and his teeth were nice and white.

The doctor said it was a stroke and when Daddy tried to say things he couldn’t. For a long time his words were all jumbled like he had too many in his mouth. He sometimes stared at his hands like they belonged to someone else.

Mammy moved into my bedroom because Daddy couldn’t sleep right, and I moved in with my brothers.

The worst thing was that he wasn’t able to turn the pages of his Bible anymore, but Mammy had an idea. She took out her makeup bag and put hairpins on his favorite pages so they stuck out the top. Then Daddy was able to flip the hairpins using the back of his hand, and he was happy then even though it was hard for him to smile.

Daddy has a face that, if you don’t know it, you might think he’s angry when he smiles, but it’s like a special password, the way his mouth turns.

* * *

EACH NIGHT it was like we were digging a secret tunnel. I never stayed up so late before. We cut the logs until they were thin, smoothed them out, and made little round rims at the top, so they looked like the front of our banisters. That was the hardest part. Then we used paintbrushes to put on the preservative and even some polish so the logs would be nice and fancy and dark brown.