The Law of Dreams (9 page)

“What's your name?” Luke asked.

Fergus was silent. It was all he had. Why give it up?

“Come, give it over.” Luke smiled. “We won't spend
it. You'll have it back.”

He was about to say his name was Murty Larry when something stopped him
— a sense of violation. “Fergus.”

“Thieving and outlawing ain't so bad, Fergus. We killed a
sheep once, and would do better if there were more of us. When was the last time you had
mutton for your supper?”

“Luke!” Shamie was smirking and clowning, wearing the
teamster's hat. He spun his soldier cap at Luke, who caught it.

“If you was ejected they won't have you back,” Luke told
Fergus. “They'll drive you to a ship and send you over the water.
You'll never see your country again. No, come with us. We'll give you the
oath, won't we, Shamie?”

“He's a damned grasshopper stealing rides. It's not for
him to question.”

“We are the Bog Boys, Fergus. You've heard of us,
perhaps?”

“No.”

“No matter.” Luke sounded resigned. “Better that way, I
suppose. We ain't done nothing mighty yet. Will you throw in with us or
not?”

The teamster was wailing. Fergus tried to shut his ears.

“Here,” Luke said, “there's nothing for it now.
You won't find no soup at Limerick. We're living quite a gallant life.
We'll take you to our home and offer you a meal — what is there to say to
that?”

“Why him?” Shamie protested. “He's a spy
perhaps.”

“Come, Fergus. We'll be your sure ones.”

No use resisting. Spurned, they'd kill him. Murderous boys.

And Phoebe, and the mountain — that was over, he didn't
believe in it, not really. And Limerick was just a word, Ohio another word.

Can't live on words.

Jumping down off the dray, he stumbled and fell on his hands then stood up
quickly, wary.

Luke smiled at him. The moon glowered across the fields, and the tormented
horses snorted and whinnied.

“Stand away, men!” Luke called. “Tell the fellow he may
go, Shamie.”

Delicately picking up the reins on the tip of his muzzle, Shamie raised
them until the teamster took them.

“You may go.”

“I'll perish, I'll perish,” the naked man
moaned.

“Well, God bless you, mister,” said Luke. “I am sorry
for your trouble.”

The small boys had scrambled onto the stone wall and perched along the
top, clutching stone, knives, and sticks, faces smeared with horse blood.

The teamster flapped the reins and the horses pulled. Shamie pointed his
musket in the air and discharged, the barrel spurting red just as the horses snapped the
wheels from the freezing mud.

Standing in the road between Luke and the soldier, Fergus watched the dray
lumbering away, the cargo of coffins banging and squeaking.

“We might have kept them horses,” Shamie said. “A troop
does well off horsemeat.”

“Whoever heard of outlaws eating horses? Jesus, Shamie, you would
curse a fellow with your glooms.”

The younger ones were laughing, frisking, pitching stones out into the
fields, but Fergus stood with Shamie and Luke, watching the dray as it moved farther and
farther away, until he did not see it at all.

THE BOG BOYS FOLLOWED LUKE
across unkempt pastures under
the moon. Fergus had never crossed country so wide. There were scars where hedges had
been burned and uprooted, leaving white fingers of dead root exposed. The boys chattered
like birds. The youngest ones stumbled along half asleep.

Luke dropped back from the head of the column to walk beside Fergus.
“We are glad to take you home with us.”

“Where is that?”

“The bog, Fergus, the bog.”

Luke called back to the soldier. “Shamie dear! You were very
cool!”

“I didn't mind it, so. I was very little scared.”

“Bold, you were. Thought you was going to kill the
fucker.”

“I'd have shot him had he tried any business. Shot your hopper
as well.”

Fergus heard wind tugging through gorse. The sky green with dawn.

“If you hadn't stopped me, Luke,” the soldier went on,
“I'd have shot the juice right out of him.”

“Don't mind Shamie,” Luke said. “He is
nervous.”

“Nervous but not shy!” the soldier called.

* * *

THEY CAME
through an oak grove,
branches stark against the moon, and searched for acorns, but these had all been
gleaned.

They crossed rough, wet meadow, then a piece of limestone ground divided
into plots and beds where the ruined, blackened potato plants had fused on the soil, the
stink of rot lingering faintly like a scar. At dawn the sky was gray. Mist floated over
the country.

Luke led the Bog Boys through a deserted
baile
, a collection of
wrecked cabins. In silence, in single file, they passed the ruins. Fergus thought of his
family.

No graves for them. Tumbled walls and heaps of rubble stinking of moldy
straw.

A memory is a hole, it would swallow you.

Breathe calm, breathe calm. Never a night like this.

You have broke out of everything.

THE GROUND
was softer, and he could smell the astringent
bog smell. They passed banks that had been cut into, the turf excised. Luke was leading
them along a trench where turf had been cut from a fragrant black seam of peat.

Light-headed from hunger, Fergus stared at his feet plodding along the
spongy ground, brown water squeezing out with every step.

The sun arose and cut their faces as they were climbing out of a trench.
The wind stiffened and the bog plain sprawled as far as he could see, dotted with
limestone islands that were striped with lazy-beds, for raising potatoes.

No roads on the bog. The sun was bright, not warm.

Luke halted so abruptly that Fergus walked into him.

Luke was pointing downwind at a hare crouched in front of a trembling
gorse bush.

Fergus looked about for a stone to throw but Shamie had already swung the
musket off his shoulder. Taking a paper cartridge from his pouch, he ripped it open with
his teeth, spilling a few grains of powder into the pan and dumping the rest down the
barrel. The bullet rattled when he dropped it in, but the hare didn't move. After
ramming the bullet softly, Shamie stuck his ramrod in the ground, brought the musket to
his shoulder, took aim, and pulled the trigger.

The powder flashed. The shot cracked. White smoke wreathed the
soldier.

Two Bog Boys went racing across the ground, yipping.
Shamie lowered his weapon. “Meat for the kettle,“ he said casually, wiping
powder from his lips.

One boy was holding up the hare by its ears.

“You're the great man, Shamie,” Luke said warmly.

They were all awake now after their long night march, excited with hunger.
Luke ordered two boys to hurry ahead to get a fire started. “Chop the nettles
fine, and get a broth boiling, but not so hard it spits.”

Luke led the way across the bog plain. After a while Fergus could smell
smoke, then see a curl of smoke rising over the plain, but he didn't see the camp
until they were upon it, because the Bog Boys were living below the level of the plain
in a maze of trenches and cutbanks worked into the peat bog by generations of turf
cutters.

Turnip tops and herbs were already seething in an iron kettle. Shamie sat
on a lump of bog oak cleaning his musket while Luke skinned the hare with his
fingers.

After warming humself by the fire Fergus climbed up out of the trench and
walked across spongy heather and bracken on the flat plain of the bog. From a distance
the Bog Boys' camp was quite hidden, except for the smoke rising.

Luke's head appeared. “Come, I'll show you your
quarters.”

He followed Luke along a trench lined with scalpeens made of mud and
sticks. Each Bog Boy had his own scalpeen. The little shelters reminded him of
swallows' nests.

“You might take this one next to mine, there's no one in
it,” Luke said, pointing. “That next is Shamie's. Good day to you,
Mary,” Luke said to a little girl who was kneeling in front of Shamie's
scalpeen, picking lice from a piece of linen.

“I smell meat,” she said. “Has Shamie killed us a
sheep?”

“Only a hare, but a large one. Fergus, this is Mary Cooley. Fergus
here has joined up with us.”

“Well, I was hoping it was a sheep,” the little girl said.
“Mutton for spoileen.”

A spoileen was a feast, a dish of meat eaten at a fair.

“No spoileen, but still a taste of meat, thanks to
Shamie.”

“I shall congratulate him.” The little girl trotted off,
heading for the fire.

Fergus crawled into his scalpeen. It smelled of earth
inside. There was a pad of soft bracken to lie down upon. His feet stuck out the
opening.

“What do you think?” Luke asked.

“It's a long way from the roads.” He was exhausted and
knew that if he shut his eyes, he would sleep and the stirabout would be eaten without
him.

“Shamie hates roads. He says you never know when you might meet
dragoons. Come on, rations ought to be ready enough now.”

LUKE SERVED
out the stirabout into their wooden noggins.
The scent of simmering meat had drawn all the Bog Boys from their scalpeens. They ate
with spoons and with their fingers. It was mostly a broth of wild herbs with a handful
of yellow meal and a bit of butter, but the scraps of meat gave it beautiful flavor.

“That's a good kill, Shamie,” said Luke. “All our
honor to you.”

“Our sergeant used to say a soldier's first duty is obedience,
his second is to fire low.”

“A beautiful shot it was, and a joy to go venturing with you. I look
forward to another.”

“I don't mind,” said the deserter. “We might pick
off another dray sometime, on a quiet road, safe at night. Perhaps the next will be
carrying stores.”

Afterward Luke, Shamie, and Fergus sat about the fire, smoking coltsfoot
in clay pipes, Fergus enjoying the warmth of the pipe's bowl in his hand. The Bog
Boys had crept back into their burrows, though it was the middle of the day. The little
girl, Mary Cooley, lay with her head on Shamie's lap, her thumb in her mouth.

“You did well by us, Shamie,” Luke said.

“You might have let us keep the hare for ourselves, Luke. There
weren't enough for all. We are the leaders, after all.”

“No, we must all feed together, same rations, one and
all.”

“Well, what did it amount to? Hardly a taste for anyone,”
Shamie grumbled. “A soldier gets meat every day.”

“Do you wish you was soldiering still, Shamie dear?”

“A soldier has proper rations. Bully beef, mutton, and beer money
besides. Clothes and boots and smalls. Wish I'd never left off the
life.”

“Shamie was tumbling cabins and chasing whiteboys,” Luke told
Fergus.

“Only he never caught any, but saw some cruel
things. Then his regiment was marked for India. He heard it was Hell on the passage
— half the soldiers dying of fever and getting dropped into the sea. So he
bolted.”

“I would still go back if I could,” the soldier grumbled.
“I'd go to India in a minute.”

“No you wouldn't, dear.”

“We had rations!”

“You've rations here.”

“We had mutton! The farmers used to feed us! We'd stand guard
as they was tumbling, and they'd present us whiskey and a sheep.”

“If the dragoons capture you, they'll brand you, you said so
yourself, and flog you. Two hundred lashes. You said yourself.”

Shamie's face had gone white. He stared at Luke, mouth opening and
shutting, with no words coming out.

“They flogged Shamie once,” Luke told Fergus. “Very
cruel.”

“For parade,” Shamie croaked.

“A fly buzzed his nose when the regiment was on parade. The colonel
seen him swat it, and for that he was served twenty lashes.”

“On the triangles,” Shamie whispered. “Fetched me on the
triangles, twenty lashes, and burst my back.”

“Have you seen a flogging, Fergus? I had a friend, a gentleman, he
painted such a picture of it, I can't get it out of my sight.”

“It is the drum major whose duty it is, a flogging,” Shamie
said. “He cares for it. His name was O'Rourke.”

“They have the soldiers shape up on parade,” Luke said.
“It is very gay and musical. They form a square, facing in. The drum beats while
they march the prisoner in. They strip off his clothes. The drum major —
O'Rourke — binds Shamie on a triangle made from pikes, so he is stretched
out, so his toes barely touch the ground, and the officer reads the charge
—”

“Twenty lashes they served me! Do you know what that tastes
like?”

“Poor Shamie.” Luke shook his head.

“After six, they have your back like jelly!”

“We won't let nothing happen to you, Shamie,” Luke
reassured. “You're safe. Don't think about it. We'll never let
the dragoons near you.”

Shamie began weeping. Mary Cooley awoke and sat up
staring at him, still sucking her thumb.

Luke looked across the fire at Fergus. “He is very nervous, but
he's getting better.”

Looking into the redness of the fire, Fergus could see his parents in
their flaming bed, limbs rising up.

Life burns hot.

What do you do with the dead?

Try to forget them?

Are you supposed to live backward or forward?

He stood up, feeling very heavy, like something was trying to pull him
down into the ground. “Thanks for the feed.”