Niall Williams - The Fall of Light

“Dia duit,” he called out, for he knew the name of God was abhorrent to the Devil and reasoned that he needed to know at once if such was his adversary.

The figure on the road stopped and slowly raised its head in such a manner as to suggest that the man had been riding the horse in sleep and now lifted his face into the breeze to see if he was waking or in dreams.

And it was Teige. Father and son saw each other and did not move. There was a stalled moment of disbelief, puzzlement at the work of fairies or madness that threw such a likeness on the snow road. For Teige had long supposed that his father was dead and similarly imagined this to be only the most recent of a long catalog of his family’s ghosts, although the one with the most verisimilitude. Francis Foley was no more certain that this was Teige, and the beating of his heart raced up the side of his neck and into his right temple, where he could hear it like a drum. He touched his tongue to the crisped edge of his lips and tasted the sting. He looked at the boy now grown almost into an old-looking young man and there flashed before him the last moments they had seen each other in the flooded river. Then he said the boy’s name.

“Teige.”

He heard how old and thin his own voice had become since he had last said the name and could not imagine what he looked like, as it was so long since he had seen himself. The stone fell from his hand.

“Teige, it’s me.”

And his son stopped and looked and blinked his eyes and then climbed down off the white pony and walked directly across the slippery road to the old man. And in the moment when his father thought that he was about to embrace him, Teige struck him with both hands in the hollow of his chest and sent Francis Foley flying backward onto the snow.

He lay there for some time. He lay there and Teige stood over him and kicked at the snow about him and cursed and then shouted. The loneliness and anger of those three years came from him now sharp and heavy as stones. He yelled out curses and was weeping as he did so. Birds crossing the noontime in the daily hope of a thaw and the emergence of worms wheeled about and flew elsewhere. Cattle in the rumpled fields turned their heads to listen. Teige spat and coughed and spewed the words out. He told his father that once he had had brothers. He told him once he had had a mother and a family. He told the old man that he had ruined everything, that he had torn up the world and thrown it away. He told him everything was gone now, that Finan was gone, that Tomas had vanished, that Finbar had stolen a girl from the sea and ridden off with her and the gypsies and had not returned the following year. He told the old man there was no point in their even looking for them, that the Foleys were gone into the wind and it was all the father’s fault, all his own stupidity and recklessness and stubbornness. The stones of his anger kept coming, and soon they were piled there all about Francis Foley where he lay on the ground being buried alive in the evidence of his vanity and error.

Time passed and still Teige stood there on the road over his father. The glitter of the ice began to melt around the fallen figure of the old man while his beard strangely thawed and his eyes watered. He offered no resistance. His mouth was agape. His hands were thrown to the side palms upward, as though attempting to hold the unbearable weight off his chest. And they were still so a long time, the father on his back and the son standing over him. The winter night drew on. At last, Teige stopped. He stood over his father with his mouth open and no further accusation came out. His jaw ached. In the bluish light of the crescent moon he could not tell for sure if the old man was still living, and he got to his knees beside him in the snow. Then he lowered his head until it lay on the other’s chest.

“Teige son,” said Francis with his hollowed eyes staring at nothing. “Teige son, ‘tisn’t all over. We’ll find them, we will. I found you, didn’t I? And I have been drowned and in a place where none or few have come back and yet here I am. Teige son,” he said, and raised one hand out of the wet and melted ground and lifted it to touch the boy’s head.

They lay so a while. Then they rose and moved into the shelter of a roofless cabin, and Teige tethered the pony and they slept.

It was the pony and not the thieves that woke them. Dawn was rising with silvered streaks when they opened their eyes. There were figures there. At first they could not separate them from the gloom and they seemed like insubstantial fragments or velvet shapes come alive as the light thinly cracked the morning open. There were three or four of them. Francis sat upright and called out. The pony was being led away on its rope and was resisting and turning about in the road and making a long whinnying of dismay. One of the thieves smacked it hard across the face and shouted and pulled down on its rein as the pony’s fright worsened and it tried in vain to rear on its hind legs. Teige was up and running then. He was a flicker of light and then shadow, and his father was behind him. They hurried on the slippery road, crying out and making such sounds as they hoped might ward off the thieves. These last, vagabond and itinerant, had come on the two figures lying on the road and had at first supposed them dropped dead from exhaustion and hunger and the ways of the road. They had approached them the way men approach blessings that have fallen from the sky. They had quickened their step and moved around the fallen, examining their clothes and small belongings and beginning whispered argument about possessing the pony. There were three and a boy, they were blackened, their heads hatless. One with the toothless and sunken expression not uncommon then shook his head and held a stub of finger to his lips when he had discovered the father and son were alive. In the obscurity they had moved with the infinite care of those engaged in detailed work of jewellery or silversmithing. They had fingered the rags of the sleeping in absolute silence like some flimsy wraiths or strange angels elected to divest and prepare the mortal for the hereafter. The dirty garments of the Foleys could not be removed without waking them, and the fellows had taken only the boots and the pony.

Now, in the sliver of light, the Foleys charged at them. The thieves, whether grown accustomed to near capture or out of natural fecklessness, seemed unafraid of punishment and ran about and yelped in high voices and called names. They were giddy and wild. Teige arrived first at the pony. He placed his head next to her shoulder and said some words and then ran his hand along her back, before leaving her to stand snuffling anxiously and as he chased one of the thieves that had his boots. Francis was by him. He was concerned not for the robbery but only for the safety of Teige, and that nothing separate them again. He cried out to frighten the robbers off. But these would not let go of the boots they had and jumped about in weird dance. At last Francis caught hold of the scruff of one of them and yanked the man toward him, and a piercing cry rang out. The others froze. They stood watching, balanced on the moment between fight and flight. Francis held the man’s head locked within his forearm. The boots fell to the ground. He looked for Teige and saw him turned to where the boy robber was holding the pony.

“We have no fight with ye,” said Francis. “Leave us something, and be gone along the road, and we’ll not think on it again.”

The man within his hold grimaced. He felt the nearness of his neck to snapping and called out to the others. One of them took a coat then from three he wore and laid it on the ground. Francis released the thief and the fellow stepped away and twisted his head about. There was a strange sense of clemency there and a moment without words as the thieves stood in shambling pose with eyes downcast. Then the scene disbanded. The men scrambled away in the gloom, muttering and groaning, and the Foleys did not chase them.