The Law of Dreams (30 page)

“I've friends in Liverpool.”

“Can they help flog the watch and find a ship?”

“Shea can. She knows sailors, I am sure.”

“A sailor is only a navvy on the sea.”

He used to think the navvies were powerful, but the railway was powerful,
not the men.

Could he find his way back to the Dragon? They were the only ones who
could look at him now and not see a stranger.

The city's streets, courts, and alleys were scattered in his mind
like bits of iron shot.

Explosive Liverpool.

“Here.” Passing him the pipe, Molly lay on her side wrapped in
her cloak, facing away.

“I'll own cattle,” she said.

He touched her hair. If she felt his touch, she didn't respond. He
could hear the watch beating — regular verse of the hard new world. He wanted to
put their new relationship into words but didn't know the words. Taking off his
coat he lay beside her, pulling the coat over them both. Molly muttered and wriggled
closer for warmth, kerning her hips into his.

God, he was so near.

He lay absorbing her heat, watchful and hungry, listening to her
breathe.

WHEN HE
awoke, he knew right away she was gone. He stood
up quickly. Frost shone on the ground. The horse gone as well. The pockets of his coat
were empty; she'd taken all his pay.

Scrambling up to stand on a flinty wall, he gazed down the road.

It was empty. Mountains and empty sea. Hard wind, the
light shifting nervously.

He felt stunned. He didn't want to think. Jumping down off the wall,
he started along the road.

Anger and grief live in the throat. They're always there, always
ready.

Walk, keep walking. Crack of hobnails on stone.

An animal is all you are. And the world's just ground and light.

Keep moving. Open your mouth wide, the wind screams right in.

THE SUN
warmed the road and he stopped to drink at a
stream.

He wondered if she'd watered the horse. Probably not. She'd be
pushing too hard, going fast, breaking him down.

He smelled brine. The wind was whipping the sea, flecked with whitecaps.
The cold water he had drunk burned into his chest, and he felt it like a cut in his
belly. He started coughing, couldn't stop. He bent over longing to spit his life
on the road while the coughs racked him. But then it passed, and he wiped his eyes and
kept walking. An hour later he came to a long, sheltered stretch where the road turned
away from the sea and cut through a soft green valley with meadow on each side, dotted
with sheep. He saw the blue up ahead, eating grass under a hedge.

The horse was lame, hobbling.

No sign of her.

The horse wanted to shy away, but he managed to catch hold of the bridle.
Raising the blue's right leg he saw that the lameness was only a shoe knocked
loose by the hard surface of the road. All the nails but one were still in place. Using
a stone for a hammer, he drove them in tight. It wasn't perfect but would hold a
few more miles. He threw himself aboard and started down the road. The horse was tired,
needing rest, water, and feed.

After a couple of miles he caught sight of her up ahead, a lone figure
walking the road. He kicked his heels until the blue horse broke into a tired
canter.

She heard them coming and turned around, shielding her eyes from the
sun.

He halted when there was still a distance between them.

“You're angry, I suppose,” she said.

“Why'd you do it, Molly?”

“Thought he was gone lame.”

“Why'd you run away?”

“I don't know.” She was still shielding her eyes.
“Your horse woke me. Stood over me, he did, but quiet and easy. Before I knew it I
was up on his back. Then I was looking at you, thinking sure you'd open your eyes
— only you didn't.”

“You stole my pay.”

“It all just happened, Fergus, I swear. It never was a plan.”
She held out the coins, wrapped in a handkerchief. “Here's our stake.
Nothing I've spent. Only a shilling for some eggs. And tea. And jam.”

“Give me my money.” That she could have left so easily, so
lightly, shocked him.

Approaching the horse, she held up the bundle of coins.

“Mine — I want only what's mine,” he said coldly.
“You may keep Muck's — you go hang with Muck's. Give me
what's mine. Count it out and give it over.”

“Man —”

“I don't wish to hear your rattle.”

“It was only to be alone awhile —”

“Count me what's mine!” Even in the seethe of anger he
understood why she had fled. It stung him but why wouldn't she? She'd been
banged about by hard men, and hard she was.

Molly stroked the horse's neck. “I had my thoughts to order
— you know how it is. But I was thinking on you while I were walking, Fergus
— thinking on you quite sore.”

“Count me out mine, and clear away.”

“Don't get all harsh, man. You'd only hurt yourself as
well as me.” She touched his leg with her knuckle

“Get out of the road!” He began to cry.

“You're such a boy now,” she said softly.

“Clear away!”

“We're strong together, man, you know we are. And I was going
to stop and wait for you. I would have, sure.” She tugged his trouser leg.
“Come, Fergus, give me a lift. We're stone partners. You know it.”

A flock of guillemots were circling and howling over
the shore.

He did know it. They were stone partners. Each had tasted the world and
tried to spit out the taste and couldn't.

“I was going to sit down and wait for you, man, soon as it got a
little warmer. I knew you'd be along.” She touched his leg again.
“Come, Fergus, give me a lift. We need each other.”

Leaning over, he held out his arm. She seized it to drag herself aboard,
kicking and struggling to get a leg over.

She was dark as him, she was rough, they knew the same hard things.

Astride, laughing, she wrapped her arms around his waist. “Oh, man,
I like it up here!”

Gently he kicked, and the weary horse resumed walking.

AT ABERGELY
they paid a couple of shillings for beer,
cheese, wheat rolls, and feed for the horse. They sat with tramps on benches outside the
beer shop, eating and drinking in the sunshine. The men peppered them with questions,
wanting news of the line. Was there fever in the camps farther west? Would the work at
Mr. Murdoch's last until summer?

“Where is Muck Muldoon?” a tramp asked Molly.

Fergus flinched at the name.

“Dead,” she answered.

The tramp wore a smashed lady's bonnet and had his bundle tied on a
stick. “How did it happen?”

“Oh, he tried to clip a horse, but the horse clipped him.”

“Poor old Muck. He was a terrier.”

“Poor old Muck,” she agreed.

They boarded the horse and rode on. After they had gone a mile or so,
Fergus looked around at her. “Did you care for Muldoon?”

“What do you think? What a
gommoch
you are.”

They encountered sheep, being driven west to sell in the railway camps,
flowing nervously around the horse, pushed by fierce-looking Welsh drovers and heeled by
fanatic dogs.

“Muldoon I met on Derry quay when I was lurking there after my ma
was
transported. I was feeding off the Quakers' soup —
poor scran it was. Didn't know how I'd keep alive.

“Me and her, we used to run palsy games at the fairs, with our
bones, our shells, our playing cards. You should see me cut sixpence off a farmer when I
have got him feeling bold — how stupid men get at a fair. We hardly stole nothing
that summer, only a bit of what come our way. Then she took some tools from a fellow
making wagon wheels in Enniskillen, thinking we could sell them, and that was on account
of a debt of honor, for the fellow had been promising we could live in his house, only
he had a wife, which he didn't tell us.

“So she was hooked by the law, and the magistrate sentenced her for
being an evil, idle wretch, which she wasn't. Twelve years transportation. I
sometimes wonder where she is, lost at sea, or playing the game in Van Dieman's
Land? But it don't matter. Them transported, you never see again. They are good as
dead.

“Anyway, I was hungry. Muldoon asked, would I like a bite to eat. He
was kind for a while. ‘Machree,' he would say, ‘you were lost but I
have found you.' He had cold mutton in his pail, bread, and a little butter. A
little
poitin
jar. Gave me his hard cloak to wear, paid my fare across to
England, and said I'd be his
cailín dhas
.”

His sweet girl, his pretty.

“Do you suppose they have buried him by now?”

“They plant fellows quick before the farmers try to stop them. In
some field if the digging's soft, or under the grade. Poor old Muldoon.”

“You say so but you were frightened of him.”

“Ach, he wasn't so bad, I've seen worse.”

The horse was jogging along, iron shoes scraping the road, when Molly
tugged sharply at Fergus's sleeve. “Stop!”

He pulled the reins and stopped the horse. She had Muldoon's watch
out, holding it to her ear. Then she pressed it on Fergus's ear. “Hear
anything?”

Listening strenuously, he could hear nothing but wind through gorse, and
the horse's breathing. “No.”

“That's Muck's time has run out. Dead he is. Quite
dead.” She began twisting the knob between her thumb and forefinger. “Here,
you give it a lick. Don't work it too tight. Just go easy, easy, and fill her in
slow.”

He wound the knob, feeling resistance increase with every turn.

“That's good enough.”

Holding it to her ear, Molly smiled with satisfaction. “Now
it's our time.”

THEY STOPPED
at a contractor camp and bought hay from
the farrier. Molly asked the time and set the watch. While the blue horse was feeding,
Fergus watched a team of horses pulling a giant wooden roller up and down the grade,
compacting.

“When you die on the passage they feed you to the fish. It's
better to be buried under the line.” Molly was standing beside him. The farrier
had offered her warm water to wash in. The sun was warm, and she had taken off her
cloak. Her feet were bare, her breasts pressing the thin cotton gown. Dry, pink
lips.

He felt clumsy and vulnerable, standing so close. A swell of tenderness he
did not know what to do with.

Shea would want her, he realized.

The Dragon was softer than anything Molly knew. Safer than rocking for
Muldoon; more real than America. He ought to keep clear of the Dragon and its
temptations, but he knew he had to see his friends, and see himself in their eyes. They
were the only ones who knew him now. They were his people and he could not relinquish
them.

OUTSIDE CHESTER
, with the light fading, Molly spat into
her palm, slapped hands, and sold the blue horse to a Welsh farmer for six shillings.
Fergus stood watching as the animal was tied behind the farmer's cart and led
away.

No use trying hold on to any part of the world. Let it go, forget it, or
be demented from sorrow.

THEY HURRIED
to the station. A Southern Express stood
huffing like an important dream while passengers slipped into the carriages and navvies
swarmed the trucks. The Northern Express had already gone through, an agent informed
them. The next wasn't due until morning, eight o'clock.

“We'll doss in a churchyard,” Molly decided. “No
use wasting money.”

They bought bread, cheese, and herrings at a victualer's shop and
ate as they walked. At the churchyard, tramps scattered among the graves were already
asleep, rolled up in their blankets. Spreading out Muldoon's coat on the grass
behind a tombstone, they lay down, spooning for warmth. She held his hand close to her
mouth and he felt her breath, warm and damp, on his thumb. He could feel his prick
getting hard.

After a while she rolled onto her back and looked at him. “I know
what you want.”

Seizing his hand she drew it under her skirt.

Curious, tentative, he touched her.

“Cold!”

She seemed unable to relax her body. After a few moments, confused by her
stiffness, unwilling to be rough, he withdrew his hand.

“Do as you please!” she said. “Go on! It don't
matter! Go ahead.”

“It's no good unless you want to.”

“That's all talk.” She jabbed him with her elbow.
“Do as you please — I don't care.”

He fumbled with buttons on the front of the gown and got a few undone.
Underneath, she wore a gray woolen vest. He slid one hand under the layer of greasy,
strong-smelling wool. The skin of her breasts felt warm and soft. He started kissing her
again. She did not open her mouth. After a few kisses, she sat up, pushed him back, and
started unbuttoning his trousers.

Taking his cock in her fist, she began rubbing it briskly. As the shaft
became slippery with fluid, his hips began to buck, and he felt very close to death or
some new understanding. How angry and strange everything was, how unsettled the
world.

She took it between her lips, and an instant later he was jarring inside
her mouth.

After the last convulsion, he lay exhausted.

She spat out the junk.

“That was deadly good, wasn't it?” she said.

“It was.” But something was missing. He felt estranged,
hopeless, falling through the world.

“Is it what you wanted, so?”

“I want you.”

“Well, I'm here, ain't I?” She wriggled close,
dragging her cloak over them. “Go to sleep, strange fellow.”