The Law of Dreams (25 page)

“I'm showing the new man the ropes, Muck,” McCarty
protested.

“Get those nags cracking.”

MCCARTY SHOWED
him how to hitch to a string of empty
trucks. The trucks ran on iron wheels along flimsy, temporary rails that had been laid
along the half-finished railway grade.

“Drag your trucks up just below where navvies are excavating. They
like to undercut to make an overhang. You pull your trucks underneath, then they can
chop at the overhang until it breaks off and slumps and fills your trucks in one go
— that's called
knocking the legs out
. That way they fill trucks
fast, without having to shovel any.

“Soon as your trucks are filled, you pull them down the line to the
tip. Don't spare the horse; don't even try. Everything fast, remember. Tons
of ground we shift — tons! My God, Fergus, when I think of the ground in Ireland,
how we sucked and paid rent, all for a little plot of limestone soil, to raise a few
spuds. It makes you wonder. I've tipped more ground than there ever was in bloody
Ireland, I'll wager.”

THE NAVVIES
worked fast, men driven to atone for
something. If a slump broke off and filled a truck successfully they cheered, having
saved themselves the labor of shoveling. But slumps often came down bigger than expected
— he saw boulders bouncing like apples down the slopes of the cut, while navvies
and tips ran for their lives, shouting and laughing.

There was always a moment of silence and limpid, perfect calm after each
big slump. It was shattered by the screaming of horses, just as the cloud of dust
started to rise, billowing up the slope. Horses were always caught in the slumps.
Hitched to the trucks, they couldn't get out of the way fast enough.

Before the dust settled, the navvies had scrambled back to their stations,
and the rattle of picks and shovels started up again.

The horses kept screaming until Muck Muldoon came around to execute them
with a single ball in the ear.

THE TIP
was at the head of grade, a half mile up the
line from the cutting. To make a tip the horse had to be hitched offside like a tow
horse on a canal path, then run briskly until the front wheels hit the balks at the ends
of the rails with enough momentum to tip the load.

Next in line, Fergus watched McCarty start his horse then run alongside,
whipping at its flanks.

Just when it seemed the horse was going to run straight off the tip into
midair, McCarty jerked a cord, pulling a pin that disconnected the horse and the truck.
The horse turned away just before the wheels slammed the balks, and the load tipped
violently, spewing down the embankment.

Fergus's horse was wheezing, neck down, already exhausted from the
heavy haul along the grade. Muldoon was watching them, hand on his hip, hat pulled low
over his eyes.

Some men are like tools, or weapons. Minds stiff as leather.

Suffering attracts them.

Clutching the cord, Fergus cracked his horse with the halter, and the
animal threw itself against the harness. The truck wheels groaned and creaked and
started rolling.

He ran alongside, whipping with the halter strap. He could see the flimsy
iron rails flexing under the truck wheels.

The tip was approaching too fast. He gave the cord a sharp tug but nothing
happened. He jerked again, but the hitch pin was stuck. Then he stumbled, and as he fell
the cord and halter were jerked from his hands. Sprawled on the gravel, he looked up in
time to see the horse plunge over the tip then the truck smash the timber balks and
plunge over after it.

Anger you taste, on your belly in railway gravel. Purely hating
everything. Their bloody throats. You'd have murdered them all over again.

Poor Phoebe in her bed, whispering mercy.

The insides of your skull, so rotten and unkempt . . . death stored
everywhere.

The cord had cut a stinging streak across his palm. He stood up slowly. A
dozen horses and trucks were backed up along the grade. Tip boys waiting. sucking stubby
clay pipes.

Picking up his hat, dusting it off, he walked to the edge of the tip and
peered over.

Halfway down the embankment, his truck was upended, the wheels creaking as
they spun. The black horse, half buried in the spill, was scratching weakly with his
forelegs, trying to stand.

“I lose horses every day. I don't give a fuck for
horses.”

He turned and saw it was Muldoon.

“Go fetch another nag. Speed I want. Twenty tips a day.”

Muldoon stepped off the edge and started slipping and sliding down the
steep face of the embankment.

Two tip boys with sledges were already spiking in fresh balks. The hammers
made a sharp, clinking noise.

Dust had settled on the black horse, giving him the patina of something
curious and permanent.

Reaching the wreckage, Muldoon took out his pistol and began loading.

Wild and alone is the way to live.

Cold and wind to burn the thoughts off you.

The black horse was pawing weakly. No sound worked its way up the slope.
The ganger extended his pistol arm. There was a flash, a puff of white smoke, then the
report of the shot, faint and insignificant.

Fergus turned away and started walking back along the grade, feeling
weaker than ever. He caught up to McCarty who was walking alongside his horse, pulling a
string of empty trucks.

“Don't matter you lost a nag,” McCarty told him.
“Mr. Murdoch don't care. Horses are cheap. Some they only want to die. You
can't blame them.”

The image of the girl, Red Molly, slipped into his head.

Red hair, small hands, white neck.

In your hunger, a girl draws you like a fire does. You feel her heat. Feel
her light licking your face.

* * *

HE WATCHED
a blue gelding moving restlessly up and down
the fence line, tossing his ugly head. The horse was deeply galled, but there was good
action there. A bit of spring left in his haunches. The galling meant a cart horse, but
he could have been a saddle horse in his younger days, even a hunter — he was tall
and thick enough.

He showed more spirit than any of the other ghosts, flaring and whinnying,
then trotting away when Fergus tried to approach.

“Ain't going to harm you.” He followed the horse
patiently, giving him room, holding out a fistful of hay.

Perhaps it was true, that any horse chosen for the tip was doomed. But at
least the animals that were worked were fed a little oats, while the rest were left to
starve in the barren pasture.

“Why have I come here?” he said to the horse.

No longer sure why. Only knowing you couldn't go backward.

“I'm after wages. Want them gold clinkers, man —
sovereigns. But I shall care for you regular, I promise. I'll try to be
favorable.”

The horse, gradually cornered, finally extended his neck, pulling his lips
back and reaching for the hay Fergus held out. Knotting his fingers into the mane,
Fergus started leading him to the stable. The galls stank of rotting fish.

The horse suddenly bit him on the arm.

“Ow!”

The horse ignored him, ambling peacefully now. The pain was shrill.
Rubbing his arm, Fergus caught up and took another handful of the mane, wary this
time.

“Don't waste that gumption on me. Save it for
yourself.”

He watered the horse, fed him a pan of oats, then got ointment from the
farrier and rubbed it in the galls. As Fergus scraped mud from the thick legs, the horse
suddenly lashed out with a kick that would have broken bone had it connected.

He couldn't help admiring the animal's spirit.

Anger gave you strength.

Disquiet kept you going.

* * *

RUNNING HIS
first tip, the horse broke into a gallop.
When Fergus jerked the cord the pin flew, the horse leapt clear, and the load spewed
down the embankment in a tumult of dust.

The blue horse was a puller.

That first day on the works, Fergus saw horses break their legs and burst
their lungs. When they collapsed, they were dragged off the line, stripped of harness,
and left in ditches along the grade. He never saw one get back up on its feet, and
Muldoon came by eventually and shot them all.

AT THE END OF THE DAY
, the timer's bell rang. The
tips unhitched their horses and walked them back along the grade to the stable, where
they were unharnessed and fed a ration of oats. Fergus got the pot of ointment again and
rubbed it into the stinking galls before turning the horse back out into the field. He
walked through the camp with McCarty — navvies were streaming off the works.
McCarty pointed out the broken windows of the unpainted church.

“A Welsh preacher tried to convert us, only we smashed him up. In
Ireland people must give up their religion to get a taste of soup, but we don't
stand no soupers here.”

They saw Muldoon and the old navvy, Peadar, heading inside the beer
shop.

“You can get a beefsteak, if you want, for half a crown,”
McCarty said. “They take it from your wages. Do you want to stop?”

“No.”

“Myself neither. I'm saving money to buy a good
farm.”

Fires were burning, and the smoke hung low. Looking up, he could see the
shanties clustered on the brown hillside above the camp.

“Did the Moll try to sell you tobacco?” McCarty asked.

“Yes.”

“Beware. She marks it high. And don't play her at cards. The
worst of it is, she don't even keep the money she steals; Muck gets it out of her.
The feed is
good enough, though. At Muldoon's we don't
do so badly, considering. I'm saving pretty well. Not like some. That is an ugly
fellow you have.”

“Strong, though. He pulls.”

“For a while. None of them lasts.”

He wished he'd been able to give the horse better rations. The
farrier was stingy with oats, and the hay they fed was cheap old silvery stuff.

An elderly Welshman was hawking penny newspapers from a stack on a pony
cart, and Fergus was impressed to see McCarty dig into his pocket and buy one.

“I take a paper sometimes, it's improving,” the horse
boy said proudly. “You find out you're in the world. It's not all mud
and slaughter. Do you have the letters, yourself?”

“Not really.”

They started up the steep, muddy path to the shanties. Cold had stiffened
the mud, and he thought of the horses standing all night in the bald, barren field.

“I'm going to pick up a nice farm,” McCarty was saying.
“There's leases going for nothing in my country, in Fermoy. I'll have
sheep and a proper house, not a cabin —”

“The hay is bad hay.”

McCarty glanced at him. “What's that you say?”

“It's all silver — there's nothing to hay like
that. May as well feed them straw.”

“He's only a tip horse after all, Fergus. He won't last
long.”

MOLLY WAS
kneeling at the fire, stirring the kettle,
when they came in.

“Muldoon's in the beer shop, I suppose?”

“Certainement,”
McCarty replied. “That is
Frenchy for, yes, Muldoon is in the beer.”

Removing their boots, they stood in front of the fire warming
themselves.

“Will you read me some news, McCarty?” she said.

“Perhaps I will afterward — if the feed is good
enough.”

“It's too good for you.”

Fergus could smell the mutton seething but there would be no supper until
Muldoon came home. McCarty sat down in Muldoon's armchair. Lighting his
pipe he began describing Fergus's blue horse to Molly.
“A buster, he is. Vicious. A beautiful killer —”

Fergus interrupted. “Not beautiful.”

There was something particular about the horse but it wasn't
beauty.

“God, he has a yellow eye, though. He is the devil of them
all.”

“Why choose him if he's a killer?” Molly asked.

“He's strong, I suppose.”

“Do you know horses, then?”

“A little.”

“Muck says they are all broke-down.”

“Mostly they are. There's a few good ones, I
suppose.”

“I hate to see 'em. Makes me angry.”

“Why?”

“They're all going to die. They know it, too.”

To extend the mind that way, feel pain outside yourself, is troubling.
Thrilling.

It's like a dare. It opens you.

Rolling up his sleeve, he displayed the half-moon bruise the horse's
teeth had left on his arm. “My fellow has a spirit, at least.”

“So, if they're wicked, that's a great thing, is
it?”

“Well, it hurts. But at least you know you're
alive.”

“When Muck's wicked, I ought to be grateful, I suppose?”
Molly turned away and went into her sleeping room.

Fergus looked across at McCarty, who shrugged and puffed smoke. Fergus
wondered if he had offended her — but she returned, carrying an envelope that she
dropped in his lap.

“What is it?”

“What do you think it is? Your tobacco.”

“Thank you, miss.”

“It's not a present! You'll owe me on the Pay,
understand?”

“That ain't tobacco,” McCarty said, “it's
pig manure dried with bits of straw. She's a pure vessel of greed.”

“Never mind him. My smoke's a mile finer than what you'd
get in the village or from Murdoch's tommy shop.”

“How's that? You buy from the Welsh, Moll, you know you do,
and they sell you shit and shavings, since it's only for wild navvies.”

“Well,” she said carelessly, “you may buy your fill
anywhere you choose, boy.”

“The Welsh take cash money only,” McCarty told Fergus.
“There's no cash in camp between Pays, so if a fellow wants something
there's only Mr. Murdoch's tommy shop, or greedy wenches like this
one.”