Blackstrap Hawco (42 page)

Each day, while awaiting the arrival of the doctor, the bishop stood in the foot of the valley, below Rose Cavanagh's shack, and near the edge of earth where the sea rolled onto shore, in a reverie of holy exclamation,
his arms thrown out to his sides, while the remaining residents, observing this behaviour and taking it for instruction, did likewise, tilting back their heads, in mirror of the bishop, and accepting the shit as that which they now took for a wash of resplendent light.

It was only the twisted boy whose demeanour remained unchanged in the face of the invasion of wing, paw and hoof. He stood in the outside, laughing and hiccuping at the screech of the birds that was in harmony with Rose's screech. The birds covered him in excretion until he was caked in a crust of speckled white with only his yellowed teeth and eyes hauntingly showing through. The twisted boy knew of the prodigious marks and signs. He knew of the riotous sounds of hoof and wing, for these were ever present in his eyes and mind, only now making themselves evident to the misguided flock that clucked and squawked in accord with the once lower creatures.

 

What he suspected to be the morning after the hanging, Patrick woke without knowledge of his whereabouts. The nip of cold had awoken him. He was in a room with half-burnt walls bashed open higher up and a ceiling patched with grimy rags that leaked dim light from beyond. His view of the ceiling was soon blocked by the buckled, rumbled, lumpy face of a hag that was smeared with soot and grinned openly with a mouth full of mismatched teeth, as though in putrid mockery of the gaping ache in Patrick's head.

‘Yays,' the hag was saying, dipping her chin, ‘yays, lad, ye were da fittest o' da lot.' A cackle as her shadowed face leaned back, and Patrick became aware of her nakedness, the wrinkled sag of her bosom and the lined slackness around her belly, and he sat up to face the stench of her that wafted to him as she shifted her legs. She nodded and nodded, as though her head were bobbing on water, and another female with long, straight black hair, one not so old, of what age Patrick could not exactly determine, perhaps thirteen or fourteen, although her countenance implied one more aged, rose from beside him and stared with large eyes that soon shied back down away from him, until her head was at rest again. With her steady gaze fixed on the length of his arm, she whimpered and purred and slid her thumb into her mouth.

‘She were trapped in da fire,' said the hag, hawking spittle into her
hands and swiping them together for warmth. She then sniffed there. ‘T'were no 'ope 'a rescue 'til now. Ye 'av come, avn't ye, ta tak' us?'

Patrick shut his eyes to pull together memories from the blackness yet there was not a familiar image that might bridge the gap of travelling to this place. What hell? spoke a voice barely heard in his head. What fresh hell is this? It was only the roaring cough through the charred walls that brought an inkling of memory's relief. Ferrol. These were Ferrol's people. Women he had spoken of to the men at work. Survivors gone mad from the fiery vision, their brains scalded with torment. They had taken possession of the shells of the houses left standing, just as other homeless wanderers had, until ordered out by a constable or the demolition man.

There was a mix of low coloured light in the room, the shades strained through fabric. The window, covered with a torn rag, blew in and flecks of white invaded the room, settling on the blackened floor. With that gust, the hag and the girl huddled nearer and savagely pressed into him, their fingers clawing into his flesh for blood warmth, so that he grimaced and flinched away.

The hawking and spitting and muttering of ‘fack' became more pronounced and Ferrol stood in the doorway that had been chopped through with an axe. The younger woman of the two crawled from the bed. By her step, Patrick saw the smutty markings along her back and the blackness of her soles, lifting one by one. She crouched over a bucket in the corner, all the while with her haunted eyes trained on Patrick with a look of longing that guarded against his escape.

What muddied hell? he thought.

 

It were I strung from the gallows

that snapped me kicking and broken kickless

through the drop, this wrecked place of intercourse

where I awoke with slatternly mind.

 

‘Pádraig,' called Ferrol. ‘Are ye more den a wee tad widt da living?'

Patrick remained still, his head thick and sogged. ‘No,' he said. It was all he could do to simply breathe without the back of his skull dissolving.

With three quick strides, Ferrol was upon Patrick, yanking him to his
feet. ‘Ha. We'll make our way off den 'n pretend we're still o' dis world. Dey'll never know out dere. Buckled up as dey are by da snares o' commerce.'

Tormented by the sudden movement and wavering grounded in nausea alone, Patrick watched, with paining eyes, Ferrol's indefeatable smile. ‘Off?' he asked, his mouth a wet ash bin.

‘Nuff 'a dis blood slavery. We'll run like fack'n rabbits ta da shore.' He reached into his pocket and pulled out a worn and stained note. On it was written one word: Bareneed. ‘T'was where me
dlúthchara
, Cian Shea, settled.
Nocht Riachtanas
.' And he laughed at the joke.

The girl was back from the bucket and curled and huddled into the hag. Patrick watched them shivering together until they were calm, the hag's face beside the young one's whose eyes were now closed. ‘Ye were nearer ta dead in da days past dese,
a chailín mo chroí
,' said the hag, stroking hair from the girl's cheek. ‘No more now dat yer 'ere in ruination's place.'

Ferrol watched the two naked women with a quiet sadness that bordered on the sacred, then snatched hold of Patrick's arm and dragged him around the corner to the outside.

Beyond the walls, snow fell white, the flakes large and only occasionally disturbed by a gust of wind. The snow must have been falling for some time, for it had masked a good portion of the expanse of black and fresh lumber walls of the newly erected with a welcome purity.

‘Bury da facking town in da white o' angels. Dat be me plea dis morn,' said Ferrol, slapping Patrick on the back with a vigour that rattled every thought in Patrick's head into broken bits of chaos. He found that he was staring at a lamplight pole as there was something his mind appeared to recognize. He focused and held himself still to realize the letters of his own name, spelled out in Irish with its duplicate in English beneath it. Carefully, he leaned nearer to examine what it might say, with Ferrol only now taking notice, pulling his eyes away from a passing carriage that he had been straining to see the occupants of. He muttered a few words under his breath, ‘Dat's what we be need'n,' and made nearer Patrick who was reading the poster.

Patrick struggled with the words. The notice appeared to be a warning. A time was given:
Nóin
. And a date:
Samhain 15ú
. Noon on
November 15th, 1886. The word ‘house' and ‘wife and children.' He recognized the name Limerick.

‘Wha stink o'
cac
be dis now, Pádraig?'

The name of his employer, Master Job, was stated. He had heard of such notices from the other men when he questioned why they did not run free of servitude. If a man took it into his head to disappear and did not reappear on the date specified, the courts would seize the home of his wife or relatives back in Ireland to pay off the remainder of the debt of his transport. Papers had been signed stating such, although the men knew little of what it was they had applied their name to before embarking on the voyage.

How long had he been away from work? If this notice had already been posted, then he must have been gone missing for at least a week.

Ferrol tore the notice from the pole and gave it some consideration, then he regarded Patrick's blank face. ‘Wha' be it?'

‘Nothing,' he said in a voice barely heard.

‘
Faic
.' Ferrol crumpled the paper in both fists and pitched it up into the snowfall, where it rose into the sky yet made no sound on its descent or landing. ‘We'll be needing a carriage,' he said, turning to glance at the charred house where the youngest of the two had her ruined face showing behind the jagged bits of heat-blurred glass. ‘A nice one widt red velvet tassels in da windows 'cause you an' I 'r da facking royalty 'a dis sorry paradise.'

 

When the visiting physician, Doctor Morgan, arrived at Bareneed, not only at the summoning of the bishop but also in accord with his custom of embarking on frequent humanitarian missions, he was faced with a vision that he believed to have been the exaggerated product of rumour. The sky above the village was alive with winged creatures and the land was smothered with animals. In the air, there was the faint pitch of a scream that made him poke at his ears as though to pacify an itch.

The doctor's open boat was made to wait a full hour to secure a place at the dock, as there were five ships anchored in the bay awaiting loading or offloading.

The man who had run the doctor up the coast from St. John's, a thin big-eyed fellow named Eamon Oliver, passed no comment on the sight.
With stubbly jaw opened a crack in tremor, he merely shook his head every now and again as though perplexed by the debacle.

The ships moved to a slower pace, as the crews, fascinated by the activities in Bareneed, lingered longer than anticipated, capturing live rabbits and larger creatures to take away as souvenirs, meat for slaughter, or as magical gifts for their children.

When the doctor's open boat finally managed to dock, the sun was waning in the sky, striking the blue water in a vivid fashion. To the doctor's great surprise, Bishop Flax himself was on hand to greet him. This was rarely the case, as the bishop generally sent a messenger to escort the doctor to where the bishop sat in wait.

The bishop made no reference to the astonishing sights that had overtaken Bareneed, instead plunging ahead to the matter at hand while the doctor climbed from the boat.

‘There is a pregnant woman,' stated the bishop.

‘Yes,' said the doctor, reaching back for his bag which was handed up to him by Eamon Oliver, his eyes then distracted by a moose that was ambling down toward the water. It made it nearer the shore and, with an awkward splash, dropped in and, with great head and rack raised, swam up the coast.

‘Her name is Rose Cavanagh and she is in her thirteenth month of pregnancy.'

Because the words had been spoken by the bishop, the doctor expected them to be of a serious nature, as the bishop was not one to dabble in the comedic. With eyes now fixed on the bishop's unchanged expression and, perhaps, overcome by the bizarre sights he was facing, he could not help but explode with hilarity.

No doubt, what the bishop was repeating were the words of the ignorant Irish locals, only a tad more civilized than the Beothuk savages who lived nearby, and so backward as to be unfamiliar with the correct method of something as elemental as counting. However, after collecting himself and begging to be forgiven of his ignorance, the doctor was perplexed to see that the bishop's face was now struck with a look of even harsher sternness. Was the bishop out of his wits? This was quite disconcerting, for not only had he now vexed the bishop, but a fox had nosed its way near his foot and was sniffing at it, then nibbling
at it, so that the doctor cautiously pushed it away with the toe of his other boot.

The bishop, seemingly done with conversation, turned on his heels and gave the directive: ‘This way,' to a space directly in front of himself. He led the doctor off of the wharf, where the sun glistened on the chilly blue water beyond, and up over the valley that a fitter man might have had no struggle climbing. In fact, the doctor made it without strain, weaving through the mass of life, but the bishop was breathing deeply through his nostrils when they arrived at the door to Rose's shack.

Not once, on the climb, did the bishop take notice of the silent birds overhead or the creatures that he was forced to step around, as though unwilling to give notice to this unadulterated grade of creation, while the doctor's eyes went here and there, not able to linger for too long, despite his astonishment, as another pair of creatures soon caught his attention. They were mating everywhere, as the pitch of the screech grew louder, making the doctor cringe, shut his eyes and cover his ears.

The twisted boy met the bishop in the doorway. Of all the visitors who had entered the tilt over the duration of Rose's screech, it was only the bishop who caused the twisted boy any consternation. A flailing of limbs and garbled hoots and hisses that resembled a cross between a reptile and a parrot were guaranteed.

As though in challenge, the twisted boy stood in the doorway, blocking the bishop's way.

‘He must be Church of England,' muttered the doctor, not checking the bishop for reaction, but pressing in by his side to see if the twisted boy might allow him entry. ‘I'm a doctor,' he said, holding up his bag.

The twisted boy laughed, as though it were an asinine joke, then shuffled aside, allowing the doctor entry, yet slipping back into place to secure the doorway. The twisted boy laughed again, exposing overly pink and bulbous gums that were stuck here and there with a few crooked teeth, and pointed at the bishop's face,

‘
Damnú air
!' slurred the twisted boy, sucking in air. ‘
Damnú air
!'

Knowing the meaning of what was spoken, the bishop turned away, his face burning red with rage.

Inside the tilt, the doctor, taking one look at the girth and blackened
state of Rose Cavanagh's being and grimacing from the shrillness of the screech that rang in his ears, sought then to believe the gossip, although refused to accept the pronouncement of thirteen months. Impossible, for there had never been anything of the sort. The patient might have been weeks over, even, at the absolute most, a month beyond her due date, but she could not be thirteen months into her pregnancy. A woman could not endure a thirteen-month trial.