The Law of Dreams (19 page)

“If I'm alive at all, it's thanks to this Fergus
here.”

She glanced at him. Not knowing what else to do, he bowed deeply.

“Here, lend a hand,” she said. “Take his feet. Lie back
now, Arthur, and we'll lift your legs.”

They settled the navvy onto her bed, blood streaking the linen. Shea
pulled off his boots, dropped them on the floor, and began stripping his clothes. When
Arthur tried sitting up, she pressed him back. “No, stay down, you
fool.”

The navvy lay still, his eyes shut. His body was marked with dark, bloody
cuts and swollen bruises beginning to show color.

The room smelled like a flower. The walls were carved and polished and
there were chairs everywhere.

“Fergus, in a drawer over there — bandages, cotton stuff,
salve.”

Hurrying to fetch what she asked, he saw his own reflection in an oval
looking glass.

Filthy, unspeakable. A savage.

“Is he dead?” Mary had appeared in the doorway, holding her
baby and a steaming kettle.

“He isn't,” said Shea, “but one of these days he
will be. If he thinks I'll be bansheeing over his grave, he'll be
sorry.”

Mary poured the water into a china basin, and Shea dipped a towel and
began cleaning cuts on Arthur's back. Mary nodded at Fergus. “What about
this one?”

Shea glanced at him. “Give him a bath. Oil his hide or he'll
dry like an apple. Broth, bread, cabbage, but don't stuff him, Mary. Small beer,
if he takes it, and squeeze a lemon in.”

Shea gave him a quick smile and a dip of her head. “Welcome, sir,
our guest of the house.”

Once more, he bowed.

Mary snorted. “Come along, your lordship, and scrub away your
sins.”

“
WHERE ARE
we going, miss?” He was following
Mary through the house.

“You heard what she said — a bath for you. Arthur always has
come with trouble. Now he'll expect us all to die for him, which isn't my
idea.”

“Only may I have something to eat first?”

“She said you wasn't. Nothing but broth.”

“But I could eat anything. I could.”

She clucked impatiently, but after they had passed a few closed doors, she
suddenly halted. “Wait here. Don't move.”

She opened a door and slipped inside. Carrying the baby on her hip, she
crossed a room where men in clean clothes were playing cards at half a dozen tables. The
men ignored her, and he watched her fill a plate with cold meat, onions, and boiled
carrots from a side table crowded with food.

She came out and handed him the plate without a word, and he followed her
down the carpeted stairs, eating with his fingers. They passed through a noisy, steamy
kitchen where half a dozen women and girls were at work, then down a set of narrow, iron
stairs that curled around and around.

The baths were in a clean white cave. A fire glared in a stove. There were
three copper kettles big enough to stand in.

“What is this?” he asked, holding up a piece of meat from his
plate.

“Leg of chicken.”

“Is it good to eat?”

“Too good for you, I suppose.”

“A bird is it?”

“It's a chicken.”

“I've eaten birds. Used to catch a blackbird.“

“Take off your rags.” Holding her baby on her hip, she reached
to twist open one of the spigots, and water began sprouting from the pipe and roaring
into a kettle. He stared. The direct violence of water was impressive. And hot —
he could smell the steam.

“Will you get rid of them awful clothes, boy!”

He quickly finished his food and started peeling off the workhouse
clothes. “Speeding with vermin I expect,” she grumbled.

Skin of my days
, he thought, staring at the clothes on the floor,
remembering the snowy streets of Scariff, and Murty Larry.

“I won't touch 'em! Throw 'em on the fire.”
Mary removed her shawl and swaddled her baby, then hung the bundle nearby on a clothes
hook.

He stared at his rags, smoldering and smoking on the coals until suddenly
they flared up.

“You're more dirt than anything.” Reaching overhead,
Mary shut the torrent and the room fell quiet except for noise from the kitchen
overhead.

He touched the warm copper sides.

“Climb in. Hurry up, don't be such a pecker.”

He peered down through the steam. He was frightened of the heat but did
not like her to notice.

“Oh climb in, Fergus, if that's your name. Hot water
won't do you any harm. You must sit down in it and soak to get the marl off your
skin, you cowboy, that's why you're down here. Never bathed in a copper
before, have you?”

Her complacence and disdain were annoying. What did she know, all fat and
pink, with her enormous pink baby?

“Go on. Climb in. You're quite safe here.”

He swung one leg over, testing the water with his toes. It was stinging
hot and he exhaled.

“Go on,” she coaxed.

He swung his other leg over and stood in the kettle, the hot water
reaching to his knees.

“Now sit down.”

“I cannot.”

“Slowly, do it slowly.”

Gripping the sides he lowered himself inch by inch until he was sitting on
the copper bottom.

“How is it?”

She was right — it wasn't so painful, past the first sting. He
felt sweat breaking out on his forehead.

“Relax. Do you know what that means? Don't think. Let your
head go black inside.”

She was scrubbing him with soap and a soft red sponge when the door opened
and Shea walked in.

“Terrible shy he is, missus,” Mary said. “One of them
mountainy savages not accustomed to the bath.”

“You can go upstairs, Mary, I'll finish here.”

“Is Arthur alive?”

“He took a little brandy. The surgeon says there are no broken
bones.”

Mary unhooked her baby and left. Shea wore a neat blue dress, button
shoes. She rolled up her sleeves, knelt down on the towel Mary had placed on the floor,
and began soaping his chest and shoulders. He tried to relax as she lifted his arms.
Before Luke he had never let anyone own his body. Shea put down the block of soap and
began scrubbing with a thick wet brush.

Luke kissing his nipples.

The taste of smoke on her skin.

Shea took a razor from a shelf and clicked it open. He watched her stroke
the steel on a strap then test the hone on her thumb and he thought of Luke sitting on
the stones but pushed that picture away before it could grip.

The key of lightness and possibility is control of the brain. Don't
let terror in your head. If it starts, evict it.

She began to shave the matted hair that had grown on his face almost to
his eyes. The slip of the blade along his skin was a relief. He could not speak. She
rubbed more soap in his hair, sluicing it off with handfuls of water, laughing at him
when he sputtered. Her hands were strong, but tender.

A horse would not settle under weak hands. A horse knew from the touch who
to trust.

“Are you going for America?” she asked.

“Don't know.”

“That's where they're all going this year.”

“Is it far?”

“It's on the other side.”

“But this is the other side.”

“This is only England — America's another forty days by
sea.” She dumped another pan of water over his head. “Where are your
people?”

He said nothing.

Placing her hand on top of his head, she pressed down gently, and he let
himself slide under. As soon as the water enclosed him, he was thinking of the dead.

There is no guidance. Left alone, you find yourself moving farther and
farther away from them.

Stop following me.

Let me go.

I'm sorry.

He came up sputtering. Shea laughed. “Who were you talking to
— Neptune?”

“What is that?”

“God of the water, god of the sea.”

“I'm talking to what's in my head.”

Shea plunged her arms into the kettle, soaped his penis and balls and
asshole very quickly, delicately, her touch shocking his skin, his prick tingling, then
stiffening.

She stood and left the room and he slid down in the kettle, took a
mouthful of water and spat at the soapy taste, worried that he had insulted her, and
relieved when she returned, moments later, carrying a blue bottle.

“Stand up.”

She opened the spigot and warm water gushed down over him, rinsing off the
soap scum. Shutting off the water, she made him step out of the kettle, and rubbed him
fiercely with a towel.

His skin was pink, his body whining with heat. She made him sit with the
damp towel on his shoulders while she clipped his hair, then wiped his ears and
nostrils, using scraps of flannel dabbed in oil.

“You've never had it soft, have you? You're a culchie; I
hear Clare in your voice. A rugged little culchie. Are you Fergus really?”

“I'm from Dublin, missus. Come over on
Ruth
. With
Arthur.”

“It's all right, it doesn't matter where you're
from. It's where you're going, that's all that matters. Come now. Lay
yourself down. I'm going to oil you, you little beast.”

She had draped the bench with plush yellow towels. He lay down, and she
wiped steam from his face then picked up the bottle and shook fluid onto her hands.

“There's gentlemen in trade in this city would pay five
guineas to have Shea oil them.”

First she rubbed his face, stroking the bridge of the nose and under his
eyes, making circles on his cheeks, streaks of warmth along his jaw.

“Your hide is parched.”

The oil smelled like sun on hay.

“Don't think of nothing,“ she said softly. “Sleep,
little baby.” She rubbed the gullies beside the tendons in his throat. As she
rubbed his thighs, then belly, his prick climbed up stiffly. She brushed it with her
fingers, and he felt reckless and vulnerable all at once and pictured the Bog Boys
racing eagerly up the road for the farm.

Bending over, she kissed the tip of his prick then began stroking him.

Everything inside that you long to let go.

“Here it is,” she said.

It could have been a dream and it felt very close to drowning.

How a horse feels when it can't stop running.

He recalled the salt taste of Luke's skin.

Joy. Poison.

There was something he yearned to give her as she touched him — he
couldn't name it, but the exchange was the whole meaning of what they were
doing.

You carry the world, within.

He heard himself yowl like a dog stepped on. The convulsion was rigorous
and awkward and there was nothing left after.

All his bones, soft.

She cleaned him, made him roll onto his stomach then began rubbing warm
oil in his neck and shoulders, up and down the backs of his legs. She rubbed oil into
his heels. “Sleep, man, sleep.”

It was impossible to stay alive as she rubbed and crooned. He was drifting
in a glinting salmon river. Women were calling from the bank, but he was letting the
current carry him down, he was floating, he was gone.

HE DREAMED HE WAS ABOARD
Ruth
. The sea handled the ship. Green water spouted up a hatchway from the
engine room and the master raced about the deck like a squirrel. Passengers and drovers,
cattle and sheep, slid from side to side as the steamer rocked on her beam ends. Large
blue fish swam loops around the ship, snapping their lips, ready to make a fabulous
meal.

He awoke for a few moments and thought he was drowning, but it was only
spit in his throat.

HE WAS
ill for days, churning with fever, in an attic
room of the Dragon.

Once, very early in the morning, he had another vision of Luke's
body.

Small soft breasts. Her patch of sexual hair.

How they used to bang each other alive.

Testing.

The way you let her plunge, and you plunged.

It shook him as hard as anything; it hurt from his toenails to his teeth.
Unable to withstand the pressure he screamed, but no one came running. He was too
weak.

A scream like a kitten yawning.

Forget. Forget them all. Time goes up not down. Money
in your fist, boots on your feet. Get strong and hard.

Then you wouldn't be so vulnerable to the dead.

ARTHUR CAME
hobbling up the attic stairs and lay next to
him, puffing his pipe and blowing smoke rings at the ceiling.

“Are you going tramping soon, Arthur?”

“Perhaps I am.”

“When?”

“Soon as I'm ready. Stay here a little while, I suppose. Put a
pound or two by.” He drew on his pipe. “Fellow don't like to tramp
with no brass in his pocket.”

Fergus suddenly felt the blood stinging in his veins. Thin, bitter,
pungent; like gun browning. The itchy heat it caused in his muscles was intense, and he
started writhing on the bed, flailing, punching Arthur's shoulder, kicking at his
legs.

Arthur struggled to hold him down. “There, old Fergus, what's
got into you?”

He could hear himself making animal sounds. He felt curiously detached
from his body. Unbuckled, floating.

The strange fury passed gradually. He looked up at Arthur, sitting on his
chest.

“Are you better now, old fellow?“

He didn't mind so much being under the navvy's weight. He felt
safe.

“It's your old fever, I expect. The last of your fever
kicking.”

“Don't leave me here, Arthur.”

“Mike says the Scotchmen are lurking. They've a price on my
head.”

“Don't you go without me.”