Everything in This Country Must Page 2

  Mammy drove the red tractor. It went down the lane with hardly any speed at all. The headlights were off and she kept the throttle steady so as nobody would hear. She was wrapped in two coats and I had my brown duffle closed to the neck but still the wind was cold. The logs scraped along the ground behind the tractor and made a sound like they were nervous too. The logs were wrapped with chains to keep them from slipping, but still the chains rattled and I held my breath.

  The light from Daddy’s room was on. It sprayed out yellow onto the snow at the back of the house.

  Mammy said hush to me.

  She pushed the throttle forward and the tractor quickened a little on the hill. She didn’t want the engine to cut out and die. Daddy might hear something and then he would ask. The engine was like the sound of a cough rising.

  Mammy turned in the tractor seat and pulled up her head scarf to look back and see if all the logs were following. I was walking behind the logs and I gave her a wave and she smiled and turned again.

  My boots made footprints in the tracks left by the pulled wood. They were size eights that belonged once to Daddy and still they were much too big for me and I could feel the newspaper shifting in the toes.

  The snow had frozen and it crunched under my feet.

  The tractor got to the top of the hill and then, when the logs came up, Mammy pulled back on the throttle.

  All the clouds had disappeared and there was a slice of moon out that looked like a coin had been tossed in the sky. I wanted to sit on the end of the logs and have the tractor skid me along. We had a small wooden cart before Daddy got sick and he skidded us through the fields on the back of a rope. We laughed and shouted hard, me and my brothers. Sometimes he dragged us along through the mud, all the way down to the church where we had services. Once he pulled the cart too hard and we slammed into a tree. I got a big cut on my head and it bled down my chin, but I didn’t go to the hospital. Daddy said I was a big enough lad, not to cry, and he carried me all the way home. He had wide shoulders then, not hunched into himself like an old raven.

  * * *

  THE MAN WITH THE BIG CAR had called at the door three days before. He had gray hair and a gray suit and a Union Jack in his lapel. His face was very tight like someone had squished it together with pliers. I knew him from church, but couldn’t remember his name. He said that there’d been a fire in the Lodge and it was an emergency, he didn’t want to use the Kavanagh mill on the other side of town.

  Forty poles, he said to Mammy. Twenty-five shillings each. They’ll be carrying the banners. We’ll leave the wood at the end of the laneway. They’ll have to be smooth and varnished and rounded at the top.

  I was sure that Mammy was going to say no thanks. Ever since Daddy got sick she said no thanks to every other job, she said we got enough money from the checks in the post. But this time she rubbed her hands together and finally she whispered, Okay.

  Your husband’ll be all right with that, then? he asked.

  He will, aye.

  He was never mad keen before, was he?

  Mammy looked behind as if she was expecting Daddy to be listening, then she jiggled the door handle up and down.

  The man smiled and said, Next week, so?

  Aye, next week, said Mammy.

  * * *

  I LOOKED UP TO THE LIGHT in Daddy’s window and then back to the tractor. Mammy had her hands held hard now to the steering wheel as she turned the corner going close to the house.

  There was ivy on the walls and it looked like our secret was climbing up the vines to Daddy’s room.

  I ran to catch up with the logs in the courtyard. My chest rose and fell hard. Mammy was leaning back over the seat and waving her arms at me to hurry up. She was trying to say a word but there was no word coming and then she whipped her body back around.

  She stood up quickly from the tractor seat and turned the steering wheel hard left and braked. I was thinking maybe she had hit one of the dogs, but I ran around the side and saw the wheelbarrow, full of bricks. The back wheel of the tractor had just missed it. It would have made a fierce noise. I grabbed ahold of the wheelbarrow and rolled it away a few feet.

  Mammy whispered: Get you there in front of the tractor and make sure there’s nothing else in our way, good boy.

  The courtyard was empty mostly but I moved the bricks to the side of the old outhouse and then I dragged some scrap planks over to the water tank. Mammy looked stiff in the face, but then she gave a smile as I cleared the path for the tractor.

  The snow from the top of the planks sat on the sleeves of my coat and then melted and ran down to my elbows, where it made me shiver.

  I waved Mammy on.

  She put her boot down hard on the brake, releasing the lock—it clicked a loud click—and the tractor rolled forward slowly once more. The tires caught on the hard snow and the logs made a groan against the ground.

  The doors to the mill were open. Mammy drove the tractor all the way in and now the sound was different, softer, the tires rolling over sawdust. I pulled the string that led to the light and it flooded the mill and there was dust all around us. A few empty bottles of lemonade were on the workbenches, where Daddy had left them long ago. I thought about running into the house to get some milk from the fridge but Mammy said: Come on now, Andrew.

  She climbed down from the tractor and yanked her dress from where it caught on the mudguard. She closed the door of the mill, clapped her hands together twice, and said: Let’s get cracking.

  * * *

  DADDY SAYS he’s as good a Presbyterian as the next, always has been and always will, but it’s just meanness that celebrates other people dying. He doesn’t allow us to go to the marches, but I saw a picture in the newspapers once. Two men in bowler hats were carrying a banner of the King on a big white horse. The horse was stepping across a river with one hoof in the air and one hoof on the bank. The King wore fancy clothes and he had a kind face. I really liked the picture and I didn’t see why Daddy got upset. Mammy never said anything about the marches. If we asked a question she said, Ask your daddy. And when we asked why, she said, Because your daddy said so.

  I thought maybe our poles would hold a banner just like that, with the King sitting high up on his horse. I asked Mammy but she said, Hush now son we’ve got a big job to do.

  * * *

  I KNEW WHAT TO DO from watching Daddy. We unwrapped the chains from the logs. The metal links felt dead in my fingers.

  Mammy had thin little wool gloves on and she offered them to me, but I said no thanks. She took off her head scarf. Her hair fell to her shoulders, black with little bits of gray. Her cheeks were red from the cold and she looked pretty like she does in old photographs. She reached into her dress pocket, took out some matches, went across to the kerosene heaters.

  When she struck the match it looked like there was fire jumping from her hands. In a few minutes the mill was heating. We pulled the last of the chains out from under the logs and one of them rolled across the floor of the mill. It bumped into the sawhorse.

  Mammy looked out the window, but the yard was empty except for the tracks we had left in the snow. She tapped on the windowpane and the ice on the glass shook. Then she took the chain saw down off the wall and said to me: Stand back.

  Mammy fired it up and the metal teeth ripped around and around the blade. She made a vee cut at first and I put pressure on the log so it would cut quicker. She sliced the log into three long sections and there was a bead of sweat on her forehead, just sitting there, not quite sure if it was going to fall down her face or not, but she turned off the chain saw and put her head into her shoulder, and wiped the sweat away.

  How long will it take? I asked.

  A few days, she said. They need them in time for marching practice.

  I saw some bats flying outside, past the window. They dipped around and went very fast.

  We bent down to lift the piece of log into the cutting machine. The wood was wet where Mammy had sawed it and I could feel
it ooze down my fingers.

  We were breathing hard when we got the log in place. Mammy hit the switch and the sharp blade went along the middle of the log. When you cut trees you can tell how old they are by the number of rings, and I wondered if I cut myself open would I be able to tell things about myself, but I didn’t say anything because Mammy was staring into the machine.

  Do you think the pieces are too thick? she said.

  I wasn’t sure, so I said no, they were perfect.

  She gave a small smile and some hair fell down her face and she tied it back behind her head. She stood with her hands on her hips.

  Right so, she said.

  We took the first piece to the rounding machine and Mammy spent a long time making sure that everything was adjusted right: the blades, the buttons, the oil. She looked at me across the machine for a long time and said, It’s our secret, right?

  Aye.

  You won’t tell your brothers neither?

  No.

  God help me, she said in a whisper.

  Mammy turned the machine on. It clattered and she looked like she wanted to tell it to be quiet. The wood spun around and around and bits came flying off until it began to look like a pole. I started sweeping the floor. I put the bristles of the brush right down into the gaps of the floorboards just so I could get every little piece.

  There was a great smell of timber in the air. Mammy switched off the machine and ran her fingers along the wood and then she turned to me.

  Will you get the thingymajig ready there, love? she asked. She was pointing at the sanding machine. I ran across and got it. It wasn’t heavy.

  Plug it in there, good lad, she said.

  A little spark jumped out from the wall, blue like lightning.

  * * *

  WE MADE ONE GOOD POLE but Mammy said it was too late, that we’d try again the next night. We reversed the tractor out and left it in the courtyard where it was before and then we put the lock on the door of the mill. Mammy took a rake to the snow on the ground to get rid of all the footprints and tire marks.

  When we got back to the house I showed Mammy the secret to keeping quiet on the stairs, staying to the left-hand side, watching for the creak on the seventh step, then stepping real light on the eleventh and missing the fourteenth altogether.

  Mammy washed her hands in the sink so Daddy wouldn’t smell the wood and then she went in to wake him up and turn him so he wouldn’t get sores on his body.

  She does that six times a day. First she tucks her hands in under his legs and she props them up with a pillow. Then she puts her hand under his back and she rolls him over. The first few times she did it he used to moan but now he just grits his teeth and looks straight ahead at the wall. Once, when she was rolling him, my brothers and I saw his willy fall out from the gap in his pajamas. Paulie laughed first and then me and then Roger. Daddy looked at us and said, Get out boys. Mammy tucked his willy back in and pulled the drawstring tight.

  * * *

  THE DAY DADDY FELL he went down between two sawhorses. My brothers and me were playing hide-and-go-seek in the courtyard. Roger found him and shouted to come quick to the mill and I ran as fast as I could. Daddy was there with his eyes wide open. He had a piece of sandpaper in his hands and his hair was covered in dust. He was trying to move but he couldn’t.

  He was making chairs when it happened. Daddy made the most beautiful chairs in the whole of Britain. Any man or woman, said Mammy, would be proud to sit in one of his chairs. They were fit for the Royal Family and they were even fit for the Queen herself. He used to make cabinets too, and sometimes he even fired the little brass handles in the forge at the rear of the mill. They were mahogany cabinets, which was the most expensive wood and only made on special order from a man in Belfast. Every time he sold a cabinet Daddy would bring us to town for red lemonade and ice cream. Sometimes for fun he swayed in and out of the lines.

  Daddy even made the seats in our church. He said everyone should do his bit for God. Our neighbour Mr. McCracken said the seats would put the Catholic church to shame, but Daddy said there was no shame in any church, cheap wood or good wood, everyone sat in the same direction.

  Reverend Banks said in a sermon that they were great works of the Lord, and that day all the men slapped Daddy on the back and he walked out tall and proud.

  He was so tall he could grab onto the rim of the door in the mill and pull himself up ten times. He worked there all day long, last star to first, and Mammy used to bring out sandwiches to him, sometimes in the evening a can of beer.

  When he finished a chair Mammy always tested it out for him. Once in summer I saw her standing outside the mill on a wooden stool and she was reaching up in the air and laughing. Daddy was beside her, smiling. He used to smile a lot like that and his teeth were nice and white.

  The doctor said it was a stroke and when Daddy tried to say things he couldn’t. For a long time his words were all jumbled like he had too many in his mouth. He sometimes stared at his hands like they belonged to someone else.

  Mammy moved into my bedroom because Daddy couldn’t sleep right, and I moved in with my brothers.

  The worst thing was that he wasn’t able to turn the pages of his Bible anymore, but Mammy had an idea. She took out her makeup bag and put hairpins on his favorite pages so they stuck out the top. Then Daddy was able to flip the hairpins using the back of his hand, and he was happy then even though it was hard for him to smile.

  Daddy has a face that, if you don’t know it, you might think he’s angry when he smiles, but it’s like a special password, the way his mouth turns.

  * * *

  EACH NIGHT it was like we were digging a secret tunnel. I never stayed up so late before. We cut the logs until they were thin, smoothed them out, and made little round rims at the top, so they looked like the front of our banisters. That was the hardest part. Then we used paintbrushes to put on the preservative and even some polish so the logs would be nice and fancy and dark brown.

  We used up all the kerosene and we had to work fast just to keep our fingers warm. Mammy gave me a pair of gloves, Daddy’s old ones. They were yellow and I thought about the white gloves of the marching men. I could picture their nice gloves around the poles and the big shiny buttons they wear on their coats.

  We made four poles the second night and seven the third. We got so fast that we made twelve on the fourth night. They kept getting better and better. The little round pieces at the top were perfect.

  On the last night we finished the job early. We stacked the forty poles in the corner of the mill near the door. They were leaning together like a whole big forest all smoothed out.

  Mammy ran her fingers over a couple of the poles and when she got a splinter in her hand she said, Oh, sugar.

  She sanded the pole down again and then we walked back across the courtyard. She sucked the little bit of blood from her finger. It was late. There were millions of stars in the sky and the moon was smaller than before. All the snow had melted away and the ground was muddy now.

  We kicked off our boots at the front door and in the kitchen we ate some bread and butter and apricot jam.

  Mammy went to have a bath and I went to my room. My brothers were sleeping away. They were breathing at different paces and they were a bit like a caterpillar the way they moved. I thought about squashing them.

  I didn’t sleep very well. I kept tossing and turning and then I had to help Roger back to sleep because he started crying. I went downstairs to get him some hot milk but there was none left in the silver canister. Mammy was sitting there with her head in her hands. She didn’t notice me until I dropped the lid of the canister and it made a big clang. She took me over to her and gave me a big kiss on the head, which made me feel silly.

  I went back upstairs and missed all the creaky points.

  Roger cried when he heard there was no milk but at last he went to sleep and they all started breathing again in their caterpillar way.

  I pulled up the cover
s and made a tunnel underneath. I was thinking of what it would be like to go there just once, to see the men in bowler hats carrying the poles along the street. Lots of people cheering and blowing on whistles and drums playing. Ice-cream vans giving out free choc ices. All the crowd would stand up on the tips of their toes and say My oh my, look at that, aren’t they wonderful poles, aren’t they lovely?

  * * *

  WHEN I WOKE UP it was still dark like it always is in winter. The wind was blowing hard.

  Mammy was on the landing already dressed.

  We went into Daddy’s room and closed the door behind us. He had the Bible open on his chest. The hairpins were sticking out. She brushed his teeth and got him to spit into the pan and then she told him I was mad keen on shaving him in the morning, was that all right?

  Daddy said that would be all right as long as I didn’t hack his face to pieces. He was just about able to get his words out proper.

  I said, Great.

  I ran downstairs and heated some water in the kitchen and then I got the white basin that was made from old china. His blade and the soap were under the sink. The towels and washcloth were already folded on the table.

  I took a quick look out the window and Mammy had the poles stacked up in the center of the courtyard. She was looking down the laneway and waiting for the van to come and pick them up.

  I balanced the blade across the bowl and carried the things out of the kitchen. I didn’t care about the stairs anymore. I even pressed heavier so he would know I was coming. He was already waiting for me. He smelled a bit like he needed a bath. I flipped on the radio by the bed and turned it up a bit just like Mammy told me to. The news was on, there was something about queues in the petrol stations.

  Daddy was propped up in the pillows and I put a towel behind his head and he gave that funny smile he has.

  He said, Heated the water, did you?

  I nodded and dipped a washcloth into the bowl and wet the side of his face. I was listening hard under the radio for the sound of the van coming along the laneway. There was nothing but the wind blowing outside. When his face was wet I put the soap in a lather and tried to smooth it out on his face and my fingers were a little shaky.