The Law of Dreams (24 page)

“New lodger, Muldoon,” Molly said quickly. “Fergus the name. This is Muldoon.”

Muldoon glared at him with black eyes. Fergus nodded.

Two others, a thin young man and an old man, came in behind the ganger, bringing a smell of cold soil in with them, faces windburned.

“Sit down, Muldoon, you mollusk.”

The girl helped the ganger taking off his coat, and Fergus saw her lift a pistol from a pocket and set it on a shelf. Muldoon sat down in the armchair while she knelt and began untying his boots.

“Get his sub?”

“I did.”

“Give it over.”

She handed him Fergus's ticket.

“God, you are the fucking queen,” said Muldoon, sitting back.

“Oh yes I am. The supper's ready of course.”

The two lodgers shook hands shyly, muttering their names. McCarty was a horse boy, tall and thin. The other was an old navvy, Peadar. They set their muddy boots in front of the fire then took their places on the bench while the girl began dishing out the spoileen.

The men ate using knives and fingers, silent, as though the cold wind had bowled all words out of them.

AFTER SUPPER
, while the men smoked pipes by the fire, he watched Molly chip mud off their boots, working grease into the leather with her hands.

“You're a horse boy,” Muldoon suddenly said, “but McCarty there's a boy horse.” While the ganger smirked at his joke, the tall thin boy — McCarty — looked up from his pipe. “Have you come from the south?”

“Liverpool.”

“Any news of London? Are they hiring for the tunnels?”

“Why do you care about London?” said Molly. “Ain't I good to you?”

“Heard they was paying well on the tunnels.” McCarty shrugged. “Like to see London town.”

They continued puffing their pipes, staring into the fire.

He felt loneliness crushing — the unyielding, metallic otherness of the world.

Unable to withstand the weight any longer, he went outside to stand in the cold darkness, pissing and staring up at the sky of stars. The air buzzed with coal smoke. The sting raked the back of his throat and tears lubricated his eyes and dripped down his cheeks while he shook off his prick.

Self-pity. Wet face. Disgusting.

Should have stayed back there, let them bang you.

The world's an empty barrel, full of black air, scent, and nothing.

You're nothing brave. You're nothing.

Where do you go from here?

No answer in the darkness. He felt nothing near. Even the dead were gone.

He was about to go back inside when he encountered the girl stepping out.

“Ate a good supper, did you?”

“I did.”

She studied him. “Look, boy, it's hard when you're fresh, always.”

“Oh yes. I know.”

She walked off into the dark until he could no longer see her.

“I never did like a new place,” she called to him. “New always feels wicked at first.”

A moment later he heard the sound of her pee zinging in the mud.

“Are you Muldoon's wife, then?”

“Railway wife — they won't have girls in camp unless you must be fixed to someone. My old ma was transported, for stealing tools. They put us both on a ship for Van Diemen's Land — only at the very last, when the she-lags was all wailing, and the soldiers was knocking them about, I slipped down the cable and got ashore. Derry Quay — that's where Muck Muldoon found me. I am a rough chicken, Fergus. Hungry enough to scrap and fight. A rough chicken will get her share and more. A rough chicken don't mind a little blood.” Suddenly reappearing out of the darkness she gave him a push. “Let's go inside, man. Fucking cold it is! You're lucky to be off the road.”

MULDOON WAS
standing in front of the coals, slowly swinging a gold watch on a chain.

“You must warm a watch before winding,” Molly explained. “Show him, Muldoon.”

Cracking open the watch case, Muldoon displayed the white face with its black numerals and slender hands.

“It's French,” said McCarty. “Muldoon won it at Rouen, when we were digging Mr. Brassey's contract, and he knocked a horse down.”

“Tell us the time, Muldoon,” Molly said.

Muldoon studied the watch face intently.

“Go on,” she coaxed.

“Quarter past the eight o'clock.” Muldoon looked around, daring anyone to contradict him.

There was something wild in Muldoon, like an animal, a ferret; handsome in a dark disjointed way, with his chipped skin, wide mouth, and thin lips. Eyes pale and lit.

Snapping the case shut, the ganger began carefully winding the pea-sized golden knob.

“What do you like best, Muldoon — the watch or me?” Molly asked.

Muldoon kept winding.

“Trade me on a pair of good boots,” Molly said. Kneeling, she began to smoor the fire.

“Never let you go,” said Muldoon.

MULDOON AND
the lodgers retired, leaving Fergus and Molly alone. He liked the warmth and stillness with the two of them in it. She was kneeling in front of the coals, greasing boots, while he smoked his pipe. “Here, give me a puff,” she said, suddenly reaching out. He passed her the clay pipe and she took a draw, letting the smoke curl out between her lips. “I suppose you had a randy up in Liverpool and spent all your wages?”

He didn't feel like telling her about his crossing from Ireland on the boat of sheep. He nodded.

“Did you spend lot of money?”

“Molly!”

Muldoon's shout came from their bedroom. She concentrated on the boot she was rubbing.

“Come to bed!”

She grimaced. “Yes, yes, only I must get done the boots, mustn't I?” Taking up the next, she started rubbing the warm, pliable leather with a lump of fat.

Fergus could hear the lodgers snoring.

“Come to bed.”

Looked around, Fergus saw Muldoon in the curtained doorway of the bedroom, wearing a yellowed undershirt that hung almost to his knees.

She kept on rubbing grease. “I must finish your blessed boots, mustn't I, Muck? And set out the breakfast iron. You go down, Muck, I'll be in by and by.”

Muldoon stood glowering, small and wiry, bowlegged. “What are you looking at?” he said to Fergus.

Fergus shrugged and gazed at the fire. A few moments later he heard Muldoon retreat back to his bedroom. She finished the boot she was rubbing and picked up another. “Old Muck's a little sore. Pay was made last week and he went off on a randy. They found him in a hedge. He'd spent every farthing, or the Welsh cats robbed him. Sold his hat, for drink. Sold his best waistcoat.” Her hands, shiny with grease, were flying over the leather. “He'll fight, and slag, and pour beer down his gully — die in a hole one day, Muck will.”

Finishing the boot, she set it alongside the others at the grate where the warmth would keep the leather open and the grease would soak in.

“I don't like night anymore,” she said firmly.

She began banking the coals with a poker. “Old Kelly, I can't hardly recall his face. See him dead on that table better than alive, and we knew each other pretty well, Kelly and me. He always said he was going for Indiana. Do you know where it is?”

He shook his head.

“It's America.”

“I used to think Liverpool was America.”

“Indiana is in America, somewhere near enough Quebec. Last year it was three pounds passage for Quebec. New York fare is twice that or more, on the Black Balls. Kelly's brother had a stone house, and a great many sheep, according to letters. I never seen the letters. It could have all been a story. Kelly was always going on about how he was to buy a farm and grow Indian corn, raise pigs, and keep bees as well. However. He's dead.”

“Molly! Come to bed!”

She arose quickly and moved into the shadows. Fergus heard the curtain rustle-as she disappeared.

* * *

HE LAY
awake in his crib unable to push the girl — her quality of tension, anger, suspense — out of his head.

Old Peadar's snoring rattled the dark.

Thinking of her in bed with Muldoon was troubling.

He tried not to see Luke moving along the edge of his thinking.

It took a long time to sleep.

“
GET UP, YOU BEARS
, get up.”

He had been involved in a dream but all he could remember was wind blowing
through a sea of grass, and horses, seen from miles away, moving across open
country.

Molly stood in the doorway holding a candle. McCarty and the old navvy
were groaning and hacking.

Molly left with her candle and the room went black.

Might be anywhere. Might be dead.

LATER, BY
the fire, while the men ate porridge, he
watched her slicing bread and cold mutton, wrapping the food in their clean
handkerchiefs.

He consumed his breakfast, trying to let go of everything he remembered.
Porridge with milk was luxury. His boots, cleaned and greased, were placed along with
the others in front of the fire. That was good enough.

The boots felt supple and warm when he pulled them on. Molly stood by the
door with their dinners.

You were safer without some girl leading you into the wild.

Putting the pistol in his pocket, Muldoon accepted his bundle. Placing a
finger under Molly's chin, he tilted her face and kissed her on the mouth.

“Go on, leave.” She was impatiently
pushing Muldoon away. The ganger grabbed a fistful of thick hair and gave it a tug.

“Like kissing a fish!”

“Let go of me, Muck! Don't be a beast.”

“You want some better manners I think,” Muldoon said, grinning
at the other men.

“Oh go away, Muck.”

Fergus could see her cheeks flaming with what — anger?

Humiliation.

The worst is to have someone own you. His father had once owned him, but
as soon as he was old enough to resist, he did. Carmichael, it turned out, had owned
them all. The farmer would have preferred they were cattle, not souls. He would have fed
his cattle.

Muldoon gave Molly's braid another sharp tug then walked out the
door. “We'll see you tonight, though,” he called back at the girl.

As the lodgers followed Muldoon outside, she handed them each their
dinners.

“Spare the horses,” she told Fergus, handing him his bundle.
He nodded. He wanted to say something consoling, but before he could produce the words
she was shutting the door.

The gray morning, raddled with coal smoke. Weak sun licking the rim of the
world. Men were silently streaming down the hillside, heading for the works, every man
carrying his dinner tied up in a handkerchief.

MCCARTY TOOK
him through the camp and out to the pasture
to collect a horse.

“You want to catch the strongest nag you can, though none are any
good.”

Forty or fifty animals stood in the barren, muddy field, ice on their
backs, looking bewildered.

“Don't let Muldoon catch you standing about. You must always
be pulling. Twenty tips a day. Fast is how they like it.”

“Poor horses.”

“They're poor, yes — they're cheap old nags. They
don't last long neither. A railway contract is founded on the murder of horses.
Come now, let's choose
our pullers — catch the best as
you can, and lead him into the stable for oats, then I'll show you how to hitch
him to a string of trucks. You watch me, Fergus, you'll see how it's
done.”

They joined a line of tip boys slowly advancing across the field. There
was a fluff of snow on the crisp mud. The horses stumbled before them, wary of capture,
then crowded nervously along the fence as the boys closed in, calling softly in Irish,
holding out handfuls of hay, rubbing it between their palms to release its scent.

Fixing on a gaunt black horse, less famished looking than the others,
Fergus began slowly working the animal into a corner of the field.

“There you are, good man. I ain't seen a one like you. No I
haven't.”

It doesn't matter what you say; they must hear softness and
flexibility in your voice. Also power of will, firmness. To capture a horse, you feel
what he is feeling, anticipate his thoughts. Distance must be respected, negotiated. A
horse doesn't hate a voice that is steady. Shrieks and yells frighten them.

“That's all right. You're a rugged old fellow. I shall
treat you well.”

The horse snorted and flared, then abruptly relinquished, extending his
neck to bite at the poor, silvery hay. The brief show of spirit seemed to have exhausted
him. He was docile as Fergus knotted his fingers into the mane and led him into a big,
noisy, gloomy barn where the farrier had a red fire pumping in a small hearth and was
banging ferociously on horseshoes. Dozens of horses stood at a tin trough noisily
munching oats while the tip boys buckled on leather harness collars and pried stones out
of their horses' feet, using sharpened sticks. Muldoon prowled impatiently.

The horses all looked thin, wretched. Coats were dull. Manes were wild,
feet shaggy, backs glazed with ice.

Using his fingers, Fergus curried and scraped the ice off the
horse's back and flanks. McCarty showed him where the harness sets were kept,
hanging on iron spikes driven into barn beams, then helped him fit the harness collar
over the horse's neck and showed him how to arrange the buckles, straps, and
cinches.

The horses shivered as they munched, their hides steaming.

“That fellow of yours is new,” McCarty said, eyeing the horse.
“Ain't seen him before. The gypsies drive old cart horses out from Chester,
and Mr. Murdoch buys twenty, thirty at a go.”

“His feet are good. He's strong enough.”

“He won't last.”

“Come on, come on! It isn't a tea party!” Muldoon
yelled.