The Law of Dreams (48 page)

“What would you call it then?”

“Sheer Hell is what I'd say. I quit last spring, soon as the
roads were fit to travel, and I won't be going back. I'm for the Boston
states. Here, look.”

Taking a piece of paper from a pocket of her apron, she unfolded it
carefully before handing it to him.

OPERATIVES WANTED

Young persons of Respectable Character

seeking Employment at GOOD WAGES

enquire
at the York Manufacturing Co.,

at Factory Island, BIDDEFORD, MAINE, U.S.A.

GIRLS & MEN
needed

GOOD WAGES

He read slowly, parsing each word until he had the sense of it, then he
handed it back and watched her fold it and tuck it away in her apron like something
precious.

“They say you can walk there from here. They say you might meet a
bear along the road. Are you sure you don't want your fire lit?”

“No.”

As soon as she left, he fell back on the soft, clean bed and lay with
hands clasped under his head, staring at the high ceiling, which like everything else in
that room was painted white.

How do men speak of women who have betrayed them? Whom they have put aside
or left behind? He tried to imagine that language.

That little piece. Dodged her.

She weren't respectful.

Oh I dropped that cunt.

Only a railway wife, man, they count for very little.

The windows facing the river hung on the wall like silver blocks of
light.

Pulling off his boots, he dropped them on the floor. He had never lived
much in rooms. Up the mountain, a cabin had no
rooms
, nothing private. Nothing
solitary, except what was in your head.

His attic room at the Dragon, Bold Street; he'd felt safe there. For
a while. Women fussing, and the scents of butter toast, oranges, and honey. Black Betsy,
carefully varnishing his nails.

I come across on the sugar ship
Angel Clare.

Burnish fading slowly from the windows.

Life honed to the very edge. Sharpened on the whetstone. Chopping through
the days. Working time like it was a sweep of hay.

Feeling restless, he arose and went back to stand at the window, peering
out at the narrow slice of river. He remembered seeing Farmer Carmichael shoot a bird
from the sky, a merganser. Wing shattered, flapping on the surface of a little lake,
waves of madness rippling across the calm.

I have eaten too much the world. I am not hungry no more.

HE KNOCKED
on the door of the old man's room. When
there was no answer, he went inside to find Ormsby lying helpless across the great black
bed where he had collapsed without removing his coat or his beaver hat, which had rolled
onto the floor.

You could smell fever in the room.

The baggage was in the box room downstairs except a single trunk carried
upstairs and left at the foot of the bed, unopened.

“Fergus? Is it you, Fergus?” The old man stirred, licking his
lips.

“It is.”

The eyelids fluttered. Any light was most painful, to a fever.

“What will you do with yourself?” His voice was papery and
thin.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean you're walking like a ghost,
an
mhic
.”

An mhic
, my man, my fellow, my son.

The old man licked his lips again. “You've had the fever
yourself?”

“I have.”

“Black fever?”

“Still here, aren't I? You'll come through.”

“You were young.”

There was a jug of water and a cup on the washstand by the window. He
filled the cup, carried it to the bed. Sitting on the bed, he raised the old man's
head a little. “Here, take a swallow.”

Most of it spilling down his chin.

“Old,” the old man whispered, “too old, can't go
the fight.” He gripped Fergus's wrist with surprising strength.
“Don't let 'em know downstairs! They'll put me out. Don't
want to lie in the sheds.”

“All right.”

When he pulled off the old man's boots he grumbled and moaned, the
delirium of fever starting to bite. Unbuttoning the coat, Fergus found the purse, and
his cigar case, and two leather envelopes heavy with money. He unrolled one on the
dressing table and studied the rows of glinting gold coins arrayed inside.

He closed it up again. Stripping off Ormsby's, he began sponging him
with a damp towel. His skin fluttering with heat. Mumbling nonsense, weakly
thrashing.

Quite thin he was.

He dried Ormsby off and was trying to get him in between the clean, rough
sheets when he heard a knock on the door and a girl's voice “Shall you be
wanting tea, sir?”

He crossed the room to open the door a crack. A servant girl, a different
one, stood with a tray.

“Will your master take something for his tea?”

“No, he don't want nothing. He is quite tired from the
journey.”

“Does he want me turning down the bedclothes and making things
nice?”

“No, I'll see to it, he's a tired old fellow. He'd
likely sleep through until morning if we let him be.”

“I won't be disturbing him. Will you take something
yourself?”

“I won't.” He closed the door and went back to the bed,
looking down at the old man.

Lighting one of Ormsby's cigars from the lamp, he pulled up a chair
next to the bed, and sat down to wait.

Everything ends in smoke.

Men are born to get lost, it seems.

“An mhic.”

He had been dreaming, and awakened with a start, thinking it was his
father, Mícheál, calling him, starting off for the north with a crew of
cousins, the barn builders, the wall menders, and summoning Fergus to join him.

“Daniel.”

It was the old man gasping his son's name. The noise as small as the
last drop of water falling from a cup, in America, in the middle of night. It was quite
dark in the room, and he could smell the fur trader's fever breath and the sweet,
salty scent of his hair pomade.

“Daniel . . .”

Fergus leaned over the bed. The odor dense and wicked.

“Is it really you, Dan?”

“It is. It's me.”

HE SAT
up the rest of the night, watching over Ormsby,
cooling his brow with wetted cloths. Giving him water when he would take a little.

Opening the trunk at the foot of the bed, he looked to see if there was
more money, but there wasn't. Sorting through clothes and linen, blankets and
clocks and table silver, he tried on what might be of use, studying reflection in the
window glass.

Outlaw. Bog Boy.

One of the houghers, come to open a vein.

Where do they come from, thoughts?

Like wrens, out of the sky.

They arrive.

Noisy, hungry, perfectly themselves.

What about Luke? You don't think of that now.

THE OLD
man lasted through the night but his face was
quite dark, his tongue thick and stiff. He hadn't much strength, really. There
wasn't a lot of flesh on him.

“Hey mister,” Fergus said quietly. “I'm going to
take your money.”

Ormsby was twisting and grunting on the bed and didn't hear, of
course.

He stopped breathing as soon as first light showed in the window.

“Give me your hand, so.” Fergus picked the dead man's
hand up from the sheet, held it. Surprised how heavy it was, how warm. That
wouldn't last.

What do you remember now?
he thought, looking at the old man.
Everything?

EARLY MORNING
in busy, noisy, narrow streets crowded
with horses hauling loads of silver hay, last year's cut, to the hay market.

He wore a clean linen shirt, a fine suit of clothes that fit him pretty
well, and his own beaver hat, well brushed. Ormsby's boots sounded crisply on
pavement.

He carried a hundred gold sovereigns and another suit of clothes wrapped
in the blanket roll slung from his shoulder. In his coat pocket, the purse with more
sovereigns, and shillings, pennies, Yankee dollars, and French
louis
.

The weight of solid money kept you in the world; Molly had known this.

Farther along Notre Dame Street, past merchants' coffeehouses, a
morning girl stepped out of the blue shadows of an alley. “Come along, sojer, try
a bit for a shilling?”

Small white face, tartness of voice. Her feet bare on the cobblestones.
“Come, follow me,
ma chroi
.”

Perhaps you had to bang life just to know you were among the living.

You needed to work yourself back inside.

He let her take him by the hand and lead him into the alley between a
livery stable and a church.

“Now let's see your ready.”

He started to unbutton his trousers, but his fingers couldn't locate
the unfamiliar buttons.

“Not your jerry!” the girl said. “Your money, sojer!
Show your money first.”

He fished a shilling out of Ormsby's purse.

“There it is. That's nice. Now give it over.”

He handed her the coin.

“You're just over, ain't you, sojer? Where
from?”

“Mountain of Cappaghabaun, near of Scariff.”

She quickly unbuttoned his trousers, fishing out his prick with her
fingers. “There you are, sojer.”

Crouching she took him in her mouth. His prick responded, stiffening.

As she worked him, a set of bells began ringing
Angelus
from the
church. He heard the shuffling of feet in stalls and smelled the horses in the livery
stable. She was licking and rubbing him vigorously with her fist but it was no use, he
could feel his prick weakening and shrinking. He pushed her away.

“What's wrong with you?” The girl, annoyed, gathered her
shawl, scowling at him.

“Nothing.” He began buttoning his trousers.

“I'll keep your shilling, I will. I give you a good blow,
sojer.”

“Keep it.”

“Not my fault your old jerry don't like it.”

He shook his head. “Keep it.”

“For sixpence, I'll give you another go.”

“No.”

“Suit yourself.” The girl flipped the shilling in the air and
caught it. He watched her run back out to the street.

Everything is strangers.

AT THE
hay market Canada farmers stood by their carts,
wearing tasseled nightcaps, hands in pockets of long woolen coats, pipes jabbed in their
mouths. Everything was for sale, the carts and wagons loaded with hay, with
firewood, turnips, onions, maple sugar, crocks and bottles of
syrup. Cattle, ducks, and chickens. Stone crocks of lard, butter. Barrels of salt pork.
Enough food to make you jealous of the world. Sacks of wheat and wheat flour and Indian
corn. Sacks of last year's apples.

Fifty-weights of moist black tobacco. Old clothes and furniture. Boots
arranged on the pavement as if a company of soldiers were standing in them. A powerful
stench of coffee, leaking from somewhere.

The world was composite, various, and got along very well without you. It
could sew you up with a couple of stones then drop you into the ocean. It would not
remember your name.

THERE WERE
horses for sale at the market and at livery
stables around the square. Dray horses. Plow horses and pullers. Singles, pairs, teams.
A few carriage horses, not many. He liked the little black ones called
Canadiens
, smallish black cobs with deep chests and shaggy manes.

The manner of buying and selling was no different from what he had
observed at the fairs at Scariff. Men trying to get the best of each other, then
spitting their palms and slapping hands to seal a bargain.

Something in the loneliness of horses, their garish solitude; something he
understood.

Mares and early foals. Saddle mounts, young and old, some quite broken
down. Long-legged animals with plenty of snort and clatter, and horses shaggy from
winter. Springy little trotters, and cart horses galled from harness, gaunt and
dry-skinned, showing too many bones. Ladies' horses and gentlemen's mounts.
Nothing so big as an Irish hunter. Horses penned too long on wet ground, with troubled
feet. Glossy coats and gorgeous manes, polished bridles. Ponies rough and ragged and
cheap as those the gypsies drove out from Chester.

Length of bone was significant when you were trying to judge a horse.
Teeth mattered, a horse's life story being in its mouth. The eyes. How they take
the halter, walking them out, pacing.

By the end of the morning he had purchased four strong little black
animals,
Canadiens,
along with bridles, a leather string line, a couple of
sacks of grain to feed, and a saddle.

He asked the liveryman who had sold him his fourth horse, a hardy little
black with a cold manner and iron feet, where he might find the road for the states.

“Go out to Windmill Point and take a ferry across the river. If you
can walk these beauties to Vermont you'll get a price for them, I suppose,”
the man said. “They like a black horse down there.”

WHILE HE
was saddling his best horse, he noticed a boy
loitering across the road, watching, with a hungry look.

“Come over here, you.”

The boy approached, eyes narrowed.

“Are you willing to work?”

“I am, so.”

“I'll pay you a shilling to help me walk these beauties out to
Windmill Point.”

“Where you taking them, mister?”

“South. What's your name? ”

The boy shook his head. Fergus repeated the question in Irish.

“Don't have a name, mister.”