Cynan Jones - The Long Dry

When she had drunk long and hard from the buckets Bill brought from the water butt she got to her feet and she dashed a short way as the madness of sense came back to her. She shook and bucked but Bill spoke to her gently and soon she lowered her head to the grass and rubbed her nose on the short turf and started to follow his voice. Bill was clucking and speaking and the slow cow came with him. Soon the day would come to an end in a broad and brave sunset, like it was angry at its finish. The evening was beautiful with the glittering sea and the sun specially lighting some of the far hills.

It was a long walk that day for the cow but she came back to the farm and she and Bill were in the yard when Kate found them and the swallows were flying lower now with the change of pressure in the air. Bill was stroking and patting the roan cow and dust came off her into the evening.

‘Hot day,’ says Bill. ‘Hot day.’

the Earth

He cannot sleep much after the argument. She lies next to him, tense in the way she has now when she sleeps, the corner of the thin sheet held over her mouth in a tight knot and every now and then her arm jumping, or a sharp inhalation of quick breath. It’s like she’s scared now, when she’s asleep. It’s difficult to be by her.

The sleep he gets is snatched, is not caught safely enough to take him into proper sleep and it is more like opening his eyes momentarily on a violent film: there was a quick nightmare. Rats attacking the dead dog’s face, taking his eyes and his tongue, and opening the big growth so the sick grey cells spill out.

He gets up and pulls on his shorts and the old jeans and throws the day’s t-shirt back on. His mind is too busy. He can’t bear to think of Curly lying in the straw beside the old tractor wheels and fertiliser sacks and the broken machines. The thought of his old dog beats everything out of his mind and he can’t think about the argument, or shouting at her, or the next day or the unhinged gates. He is horrified by the thought of the dead dog lying there; it feels unfinished like this. He does not want to wake up in the morning and need to bury the dog. The image of the rats taking him comes back to him.

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The ground is very hard and there’s still warmth in the night. It feels close and oppressive and unfresh. The ground is hard but the hard work soothes him as he brings the caib into the ground. The digging is hard without a finger, and his ankle still hurts when he puts pressure on the spade to move the soil; but all of these things help him work. Gradually, the earth breaks up, scattering dust and small stones in the thin light of the Tilley lamp. The Tilley lamp hisses as it burns and gives out a silver light. Around it, moths and lacewings start to come.

He’d taken the Tilley from the porch and filled it with sharp pink meths. It’s a smell he’s loved since being a child, when the smell of the Tilley was with them in the lambing shed, or a few times late out in the garden. Some of the meths was on his hands and evaporated quickly, leaving his skin strange and dry but supple like a belt.

He pumped pressure into the lamp and lit the mantle and the thin silver light spread out.

He lifts the dog down into the hole he’s made. He looks like a big proud dog in the hole. Covering him up is very difficult but it is right. There’s the slightest change in the air.

On the flat hard ground by the place he has dug, the raindrop lands and disappears, seems to be drunk up by the dry earth. He holds out his hand and the rain starts to fall. The drops flash in the light of the lamp and spread on the ground.

And then it really rained. The rain came down on the corrugated tin of the porch roof and fell into the dry, cracked soil and onto the wide fields.

Kate rose from bed and went over to the window. She leaned out and she let the rain fall on the bare skin of her arms. It seemed as strange as snow.

On the stairs she hears him, and she knows that he is coming lovingly to her; that there is no malice now. She leans her head out of the window and when she turns back into the room the rain is on her face and her hair, and runs down her neck into the soft cloth of the shirt. She starts to cry. He is strong and proud and good.

‘It’s raining,’ he says, and she can hardly hear him.

The ‘memories’ that run through the book are taken from Hen Arferion a Hen Gymeriadau, recorded to tape by my grandfather David Llewelyn Williams before his death in 1991. They are given either faithfully, or I have used them and turned them to the purpose of the story.

The section ‘The Rabbit’ is for Sean Kelly, who was there.