John Banville: Long Lankin: Stories

A fine rain began to fall, it drifted soundlessly through the tangled branches and settled on the carpet of dead leaves on the ground. The boy turned up the collar of his jacket and crouched by the fire. He was cold. About him the wood was silent, yet beneath the silence there were movements and strange sounds, strange stirrings and rustlings in the trees. He shivered, and blew into his cupped hands. A burning branch fell in a shower of sparks from the fire and rolled near his feet, hissing in the wet leaves. In the hazel grove behind him a tuneless whistle rose, punctuated by the dull cracks of an axe wounding wood. He stood up and went into the trees.

— Is the fire all right? Horse asked, turning with the axe held above his shoulder.

— Yes, said the boy.

— You didn’t put any of them green branches on it?

— I only used the dry wood like you said.

He made another chop at the branch before him and muttered:

— They’d see the smoke.

Horse was sixteen, a great hulking boy whose clothes never fitted because he outgrew them while they were still new. He had a raw bony face and huge hands, and a mop of carroty red hair sprouted up from his skull like the stalks of a root vegetable. Horse knew the wood from which the best bows could be made, and he had a secret method of hammering nails flat for arrowheads. He could build a fire in the worst conditions, and he knew how to skin and cook a rabbit. Such gifts made him the natural leader of the gang, but he never acknowledged this leadership, and seemed unaware of the unspoken honour. A strange wild creature who rarely spoke and never smiled, his own secret lonely ways took all his concentration.

The boy sat down on the rotten stump of a tree and looked at his hands.

— Horse, he said. Are you going to school tomorrow?

Horse said nothing, but went on chopping at the branch as if he had not heard. The boy went on:

— I think I better go in tomorrow. If I mitch again they might send someone home to my aunt to see what’s wrong. Then they’d find out and I’d be in trouble.

— Here, said Horse. Peel that.

He threw the long branch like a spear and it plunged into the ground at the boy’s feet, then he turned back and attacked another part of the tree. The boy pulled the branch from the ground and with his penknife began to peel away the bark in long green strips.

— Well you won’t be going in tomorrow then, Horse?

For a while there was no reply, then Horse said violently:

— Not going back anymore. Never.

— But what will you do?

— I’ll build a hut here and live in it.

— But they’ll come and take you away, Horse. You heard Harkins what he said, that he’d send you to Artane.

— Too old, Horse grunted.

The boy looked at the knife in his hand, shaping silent words on his lips, testing them. He said:

— They might put you in prison.

Horse turned, the axe held loosely by his side. His pale blue eyes were wide, his mouth worked uncertainly.

— They won’t put me away anywhere, he muttered. They come for me here, I’ll show them.

He whirled about and with a grunt brought the axe down savagely into the fork where two long branches met. They split apart with a crack, one fell on either side, torn and dead. He moved on into the tree, the axe flashing as he swung it again and again, white chunks of wood flying about him.

The boy watched the wood falling and flying, the axe flashing, and Horse’s mouth moving mutely, and thought he heard, far away in the wood, other sounds of destruction echoing these about him. At last Horse’s axe embedded itself in the trunk of the tree, and he grew calm as he worked it loose.

After a long time the boy said quietly:

— I saw someone in the wood.

The wind rattled the leaves above them.

— In the trees out by the fire, he said. I thought someone was moving around and watching me.

Horse stared at him with his mouth open, then he turned and crashed away through the trees towards the clearing where the fire burned. Alone now, the boy looked at the branch in his hands, bare of its bark and gleaming like a moist bone. He raised his eyes and looked fearfully into the shadows gathering about him, and listened to the stirrings and rustlings. He stood up and went out to the fire. Horse was sitting on his heels among the leaves, carefully feeding the flames with pieces of dry wood. The boy sat down beside him.

— Did you see anyone?

Horse shook his head absently. His eyes were vague, as though his mind were moving in some private landscape. They sat silent, listening to the small voice of the fire singing. The rain stopped, and in its place the night began to fall. The boy said:

— Maybe I only imagined there was someone.

Horse was biting his knuckles and gazing pensively into the fire. The red flames flashed in his eyes.

— How could you live here, Horse, in the cold and wet? the boy asked. And you know they’d come and get you. They’d come for you and then they’d say you were mad and put you away. What would you do then?

Horse pushed another stick into the flames.

— They wouldn’t get me. I’d be gone before they came. Run away.

The boy sighed and rubbed his forehead.

— All right, Horse. But maybe we should go home just for tonight. Just until you have everything fixed up here.

— I’m not going home.

He began to rock slowly on his heels. A long tongue of flame leaped in the fire. The boy shivered as the damp ground sent a chill along his spine. Horse said:

— I had a white rabbit one time. She had pink eyes and a pink snout. She was a nice rabbit. I kept her in a hutch I made with chicken wire and all. Something got in at her one night and killed her. Ripped her throat like that — slash. Like that.

He paused, and turned his great pale eyes on the boy.

— They won’t find me.

And then, as though his challenge had been heard, there came to them the sounds of something moving through the wood. Horse got to his feet and stood with the axe held in his fist. The boy looked up at his face, searching for a sign. The noises came nearer, and then a figure left the trees and came slowly toward the light.

Horse raised the axe, and the flames flashed along the wicked cutting edge. He took a step forward, and another, and the figure before him halted in uncertainty. All was still. Far off in the wood something cried out, and the strange voice called to them over the tops of the dark trees.

— What’s up, Horse? said the figure in the shadows. It’s me.

Horse gave a grunt of surprise, and the boy jumped to his feet.

— Rice, he cried. You gave us a fright, boy you really did.

Startled at the loudness of his own voice, he lowered his head and looked at his hands in confusion. Rice advanced, and Horse lowered the axe but did not move from where he stood. Rice passed him by, laughing nervously.

— You gave me a bigger fright, he said. Your man there with the hatchet, I thought he was going to take my head off.

He laughed again, and stood by the fire with his hands on his hips. Horse came and sat by them without a word. Rice looked from one of them to the other and asked:

— What’s up here?

— Nothing, said the boy. Why?

— You’re very pale, the two of you. Who did you think I was, anyway?

— Why did you come out here? Horse asked quietly.

— Do you not like my company, Mr. Big Shot?

Horse shrugged his shoulders and looked away. Rice turned and grinned at the boy, and winked. Rice was a fat little boy with a plump round face and straw-coloured hair. He had short thick fingers with broken nails, and he was always short of breath. He turned to Horse again and said: