The Law of Dreams (13 page)

“You fucked her so brutal, you know you did. Tore her up.”

“No — for love, Luke. For love. I swear.”

“If we have rope we must hang the fellow,” Johnny Grace
called.

“You used her wicked.”

“She wanted me; I was her easy.”

“Sentence of death,” said Johnny Grace.

“There isn't rope,” Luke said, not looking around, but
gazing down at Shamie and gulping each breath, her chest rising and falling.

“We can make one!”

Luke placed one foot on Shamie's chest and held the point of the
bayonet at his heart.

“Kill me, Luke. I don't care.”

“Kill him with the dagger!”

“Only do it quick, and I won't have no flogging.” The
deserter began unbuttoning his jacket. The boys stood watching, fingers in their
mouths.

Fergus sensed the direction they were going now — blood and dying
all around, and this was their way. The appetite for violence had been nurtured.

He could not stop feeling the sexual night.

Joy bit your finger like a wasp. You touched her and she was open.

Shamie held open his shirt, exposing his chest. There was a spot of blood
on the white skin where the bayonet point had scratched him.

The fire sizzled. Fergus heard a curlew crying in the fog.

“No,” said Luke.

She lifted her foot from Shamie's chest.

“Let me then!” Johnny Grace cried.

“No. Shamie's life is spare.”

She stepped back. “Get your hands red, Luke!”

She looked around at the Bog Boys. The soldier lay on his back, gasping
like a fish.

“I won't have blood on us now. Not when we are about to
venture. He is ours and ours now.” She looked down at the soldier. “Do you
get this, Shamie? You is spare, understand? You had better serve well.”

“Kill him, Luke, it's our honor.”

Luke shook her head. Jabbing the bayonet in the turf she pushed her way
out through the ring of boys and strode to the edge of the camp, where she climbed out
of the trench and set off across alone the heather.

Shamie was on his elbows, nostrils flared, breathing in shallow pulses.
Seeing Johnny Grace eyeing the bayonet, Fergus stepped forward and pulled it from the
ground.

“You snap him, Fergus!” Johnny urged. “Get your hands
red. Be our chief.”

Looking over their heads, Fergus saw Luke's slight figure roaming
the distance.

He slipped the bayonet under his belt. “Get the kettle on. Chop the
grub. We'll bury her after.”

They were so thin and faint, so malleable, they couldn't resist his
orders; Johnny Grace falling in with the rest. Weak as moths, they moved to obey.

HOWLING THE
uilecan
, the funeral cry, the Bog Boys carried Mary Cooley out across the bog
plain, then formed a hollow square and watched in silence while Fergus and Johnny Grace
dug the grave, using spades left by turf cutters, chopping through bracken, through turf
with gauze roots.

“Gently now,” Luke said.

Fergus took Mary Cooley's wrists. Luke and Johnny took her ankles.
It was still early, but the light had stalled. They swung her out over the hole. Water
had seeped in already. The bottom was shining black. They set her down without making a
splash.

No one spoke.

He picked up the spade and was about to start filling in, but Luke touched
his arm.

“Time for you all to think.” She stared into the hole for a
few moments, then looked around at the Bog Boys, studying their faces. Luke wore
Shamie's soldier jacket, her hands plunged in the pockets. “There is dead
and there is life and there is something in between,” she said quietly. “I
have been living in a strange country and somehow I want to go home again. I suppose us
all wants so. Boys, the only way is bravery.”

When she paused, he heard wind moving through the bracken. He knew the
storm was coming.

“We must take the thing in our hands,” she said. “Call
it a raid, call it a venture, and make war of it. Make a beautiful battle if they try to
stop us.”

The cold aroma of fresh turf.

Once, cutting fuel with his cousins and uncles, they had unearthed a
strange, white thing. He'd thought it was a fish, but they insisted it was the
pure body of a young girl. Later he heard them say she was a queen, with rings on her
fingers and a blue stone held tight in her fist. He did not recall seeing any such
things himself.

“This girl here,” Luke said, “it wasn't
Shamie's fucking that killed her. He is a stupid, guff fellow, but I myself have
been with fellows worse, much rougher — had them over me, using me; maybe you have
too — they were gentlemen, some of them. It hurts, but it don't kill you.
No, Mary died because she was too small to live, because she hadn't rations, just
like you. And where is the food? Where is it?”

“Where is it, Luke?” asked the Little Priest, one of the
smallest Bog Boys.

“The farmer has it. The farmer has hugged all the food of the
country. If you are looking for a murderer, why, there he is.”

“There he is,” Johnny Grace said. “You're right,
Luke.”

Fergus realized what she was doing. She had put something in the air, a
charge, he could taste it. Gunpowder.

But her plans were vapor. She had no plans, only wishes.

She had courage but no patience. Hers wasn't the temper of a
hunter.

“So, Mary Cooley,” Luke said, “here you are, girl, into
the ground.”

The Bog Boys were standing almost soldierly, their feyness and weakness
disguised behind solemn faces.

“Let your soul keep us. Keep us strong and brave, guide us as we go
for war. Make them old farmers answer —”

“Answer in blood,” whispered Johnny Grace.

“Answer in blood, for what they've done.”

“Answer in blood,” the Bog Boys murmured.

“Strength and courage,” Luke intoned. “Watch over us.
We're your soldiers now.”

Luke nodded at Fergus, and he threw the first spadeful of soil down upon
the dead girl, trying not to look at her face.

EVERY NIGHT
, as the old moon was dying, Luke would wrap
herself in the teamster's greatcoat and lie on Mary Cooley's grave until
Fergus came out and led her to bed.

They could not get enough of each other in those nights before war.

After their convulsions, he lay warmed by the heat flowing from her body.
The little scalpeen was suffused with her sexual smell.

“I am full when you're in me, Fergus,” she said one
night, idly playing with his hair as he lay across her. “Don't feel the
empties. No sadness at all. I wish we might stay connected all the time.”

In such interludes, between bouts of craving, he too was content.

“Know why I didn't kill Shamie?” she asked him one
night.

He shook his head.

“It isn't that I'm a girl and felt soft. I'd have
killed him easier than slaughter a pig. But Shamie is the only one who can load and
fire. He tried showing me the musket drill, but I couldn't follow. He gets so red
in the face — pinched, yelling — I had to laugh. But Shamie, he can put
three or four bangs in the air fast as anything. There. Do you think I'm wrong,
Fergus? Think I'm cold? Do you hate me?”

He turned on his side to look at her. It was strange how you connected
with a girl, violence mixed with peculiar tenderness. And you thought you were deep
inside, but you weren't. No one was. Other people, machines
of independent mystery.

“Fergus? What are you thinking, boy?”

“We are all cold inside, aren't we?”

Luke seized his hand and kissed the pad of soft skin under his thumb and
rubbed her cheek with it.

“We are an army,” she said.

“
TONIGHT IS BATTLE
,” Luke told them.

The old moon was finally dead. The loam sky glittered with stars.
Clutching sticks sharpened at both ends, the Bog Boys stood about the fire.

“After a battle is always a song — always. Do well, behave
strong, and we'll be sung from one end of the country to another. They'll be
a song with our names stuck in like nails.”

Don't need songs
, Fergus thought.
Need quiet. A plan.
Directness.

But they all were ready to follow her, even Shamie. Even himself.

And perhaps that was enough of a plan.

LUKE ARRANGED
the smallest and weakest Bog Boys directly
behind her, at the front of the column, where they couldn't straggle. Shamie
carried the musket, Luke a pitchfork, Johnny Grace an iron spade. The others were armed
with sharpened sticks.

Impressed with themselves, awed and solemn, the Bog Boys set out on the
night march in better than their usual disarray. Shamie brought up the foot of the
column, carrying the musket flat across his shoulder, fist around the muzzle. The Little
Priest skipped up and down the column, plucking at their sleeves.

“Will I do something mighty?” the boy asked Fergus, touching
his hand.

“I don't know.”

They were calm and easy, traveling across the bog plain — soft
ground, their ground, but he could feel the tension increasing as the column trailed
through the abandoned village at the edge of the bog, past the cabin wrecks and the
heaps of rubble marking graves.

A dove fluttered off a broken wall and the whole column froze.

“It's all right, only a bird,” Luke reassured.
“She's wishing us well. Come along now, men. Easy now.”

Moving farther and farther from the safety of the bog, the column trailed
across frosted pastures and meadows. He heard boys whimpering and pissing the ground.
Like cattle, they were uneasy on the move in strange country.

Luke finally led them out on a hard road with stone walls flanking both
sides and a grassy verge bearded with frost.

Shamie hustled from the rear of the column, breathless with protest.
“Luke! You promised we shouldn't travel on roads!”

“We can slip the walls easy enough, if we have to. We can get lost
if we need, Shamie dear. Don't worry.”

“Dragoons patrol the roads!”

“No dragoons tonight,” Fergus said, “only a few
Frenchmen.”

Shamie jabbed the muzzle into Fergus's belly. “You'd
like to see me flogged, wouldn't you? I know your kind — you're a
Feeny, ain't you? You're a Thin Boy, a rebel bastard —”

“Shamie! Get back in line!” Luke hissed.

Swinging the muzzle, Shamie pointed at Luke's chest. Fergus heard a
metallic-snap as the hammer cocked.

“What is this, Shamie?” said Luke quietly.

“What I please.” The soldier's wrists were shaking.

Luke laid one finger against the barrel. “Will you blow my heart
out?”

“No roads!” Shamie cried. “You promised we'd keep
off the road!”

“Time of war, you tell me what holds, Shamie — what
promises.” Luke spoke softly. “Rations or a fight — that's all I
promised the Bog Boys. That should be enough.”

Shamie held the gun level.

If Luke was shot, Fergus decided, he would seize a boulder from the wall
and
smash Shamie before he could reload. Break his legs, crack his
head. But Luke still would be dead.

“Do it, then,” Luke said calmly. “Go, Shamie. Get it
done, then. Fire away.”

The Bog Boys were watching, twittering anxiously, like sparrows on a
branch.

“Are you going to or not?” she said impatiently.

Slowly, Shamie lowered the weapon. “You know I'm one with you,
Luke — it's only this fellow. Perhaps he is a spy.”

“Get back in line now, Shamie,” Luke said. “You must
save any stragglers.”

“The Bog Boys we are,” Shamie groaned. “We don't
belong to no road.”

“Everyone must keep their place in line of march. I'm counting
on you, Shamie.” She looked back at the Bog Boys. “No stragglers. No voice
men. Quiet and carefully. Forward, boys.”

She led them down the road, carrying the pitchfork over her shoulder. The
column shook itself and stumbled after her. Shamie stood aside and let them pass, and
Fergus wondered if the soldier was going to desert the Bog Boys now, and slip away
across the fields. He hoped this would happen, but a few minutes later when he looked
back Shamie was there at the foot of the column, impatiently herding the smallest
boys.

THEY ENTERED
the wood where once he had hunted badger
with his dog. At night the wood seemed unfamiliar, but the cold, weird smell of a small
brook he remembered. The Bog Boys splashed across, ankle-deep, one after another, the
water biting cold, the bottom grainy.

“Take the head now, Fergus,” Luke said after they had all
crossed the brook. “It's your country, after all.”

The Bog Boys were clumsy in the unfamiliar wood, stumbling over roots,
slipping on greasy leaves. Finally Fergus had each one grab the shirt of the boy in
front. The connection seemed to settle them. Holding on to each other, the column curled
through the wood, quiet as smoke.

Looking up through networks of branches, Fergus saw yellow stars. They
came out on a lane and he recognized gouges left by cartwheels. They were approaching
the farm.

Suddenly he doubted if he could be an outlaw after all, if he had the
heart for murderous intent. A familiar whiff of manure and chimney smoke left his throat
as dry as bark. He wished he was alone and had never met Luke and could disappear.

They passed an oat field where Carmichael's cattle usually grazed on
the winter stubble, but there were no cattle out tonight.

He heard a sound and stopped abruptly. The column jammed up behind
him.