Go Away and Come Back
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Go away and come back, that was always the advice. Michael was always a man for fierce rages when he felt humiliated, and that was why they called him the gander down in the town, not just for his body shape but for his manner too. He was proud, and had a certain sense of himself, and when that was questioned or undermined it would send him into a honking fury. His Dad, despairing, sent him to labour for old McCreery in the hope it would ease his temper, and it worked tenfold more than he’d hoped. It was the old man who gave him the advice, to go away and come back. He said it had served him hundreds of times. Whenever a problem seems unsolvable, just go away and come back to it. Whenever you feel a person has swindled you in business, go away and come back before you draw any rash conclusions. And, for Michael, it meant to go away with his temper, fume, then chill, and come back with a level head. Michael, out of growing respect for the old worker bee, followed the advice, and was a changed man.
Still he did not shake the nickname, which remained his appellation in the town. Neighbors never forget old embarrassments. Not that Michael knew anything about it. It was the local custom that no one was to know the feral nickname they were given. Flaherty the publican was the boar, big James was the badger. Old McCreery was once called the worker bee, for his creativity and his innovation, but no one much called him that anymore. The spirit had gone out of him. He had no nickname now. |
T.A. MORROW
grew up in the west of Ireland and comes from a farming background. Currently he works in generating novel anti-malaria therapies for use in developing countries, and his nonfiction scientific pieces have been published in international journals. If successful, this would be his first fiction publication. |
Yet there must still have been some dynamism left in the old man, for a change was coming over Michael while in his charge. Once as much a feckless time waster as any of his pals, Michael started coming home from McCreery’s farm later and later every evening, and in response to his mother’s inquiries he would rave about the prospects of McCreery’s land, the good drainage, the perfect balance of the soil chemistry, and the quality of his herd. He would explain the concept of EBI, the single number score given to every animal in the country based on its milk quality or beef quality or health profile, and how McCreery ran a higher average than anyone else in the townland. Daniel, the younger brother, sat and listened politely, glad at least that the rages were a thing of the past. After a year laboring for McCreery, Michael came home to announce he had decided to go to agricultural college, and had already completed the requisite paperwork. One day in May he went down the country to the campus, to complete the interview. Daniel drove him there on his provisional license, while his older brother sat in the passenger seat, fluttering through his reams of notes. Daniel had never seen such nerves. Arriving at the campus, Daniel parked the car outside the reception, watched Michael go in, and smoked waiting. His second cigarette was still smoldering when Michael came back out with a grin on his face.
Daniel found Michael’s newfound aspirations difficult. Whenever he came home from college and they talked over black pints at Flaherty’s, the matters turned serious with tremendous speed.
“The mart’s looking for a basic laborer, part time. Two Saturdays a month. Leaves enough time for your homework.”
Daniel hadn’t heard about that, but he said, “Sure Dad’s got enough work for me.”
Michael was unmoved. “And he can’t find another fool to watch the animal? There’s no future in that plot. We have the farmer’s blood but little else.” It was true. Their Dad fattened ten Hereford steer cattle on five crowded acres and could only stay afloat with the single farm payment, the basic government subsidy sent to all farmers regardless of income. Compared to McCreery’s lean dairy operation, their Dad’s farm was a hobby. As kids, their pocket money had in theory been earned by farmwork, but all they had done for it was go out to check the stock for their father the odd Saturday if he was busy down the mart, chatting. Their Dad’s nickname was the parrot, incidentally. But no, for their Dad farming was a point of idle pride and not a vocation. Michael once intimated to Daniel that he was a bit ashamed of their father now, having seen a real operation up close. Daniel recoiled at this filial ingratitude, and Michael said no more about it.
Occasionally, out of curiosity, Daniel asked around about McCreery. The worker bee reputation, and its loss, intrigued him. While pouring a pint, Flaherty told him that McCreery was once industrious and innovative in his youth. He had had no love but his farm. All his mind and soul went into it. Wee Lisa Stewart had spent all her wiles just to turn his head to her for a moment; she was glad to get him married and tied down before he was thirty. She was apparently able to hold his attention long enough to mother a single child, a boy named William, called the owl for his quiet studiousness. Son and father had shared no particular relationship, and William the owl had gone to Dublin for college and never been seen in the townland again. He was out of the picture, leaving the worker bee to toil on alone into premature old age. There were delicate whispers that he was suffering early onset dementia, probably brought on by overwork. Flaherty had a more subtle explanation for the decline, suggesting that McCreery suffered under the realization that his fruit of his labors would die with him, for there was no real future to pass them on to. Flaherty claimed to be conversant with the groundskeeper of the graveyard down by Strangarvey, where the long dead McCreeries were buried, and apparently the old farmer stalked the family plot often of late, meditating it seemed on past generations. Daniel listened to all this, and then opined that the tragedy sounded like it was McCreery’s own fault for not taking more of an interest in his son. This seemed to displease Flaherty, who just remarked that Daniel was spending too long in an old man’s pub for a boy of his age.
After a year Michael had his basic agricultural certificate, and found his old job at McCreery’s waiting for him. He came back bursting with new ideas, and joked that he had followed the old man’s advice, to go away and come back. The old worker bee was again rejuvenated, as remarked around the town. Whispers of dementia were no longer heard.
Michael was now a partner on the farm in all but name, and by the sounds of things he shared in all major decisions. If their Dad minded hearing about another, more successful farmer over supper, he didn’t show it, but Daniel felt Michael was being insensitive. He said nothing however, and he became gradually aware that, once he came home from the last of his school exams, he was to be enlisted to McCreery’s farm too. This was never formally announced, but by now Michael was so sure-footed and confident that he was able simply to talk about it as a done deal. Presumably he had suggested it to McCreery, and once those two had confirmed it between themselves, it was no longer a debate. Daniel, with no clear idea of his future and no applications made, meekly followed his brother’s directions.
Daniel did not immediately thrive on a serious farm. He had to leave the house with his brother at six in the morning to be there for milking at half six, and half awake and disorientated by the din of the milking machines he made many mistakes. He milked a cow with an infection on the first day, contaminating the whole tank which had to be dumped. McCreery was gracious about it, saying that they would use the spoiled milk as fertilizer, but Michael scolded his wee brother for his incompetence. Daniel found himself perking up through the day, however, supping coffee from the thermos in his car. Mrs McCreery made them dinner at noon, and they ate together in the kitchen with the old bee, boiled cabbage and roast beef. At first Daniel found this uncomfortable; he was on edge, eating with his employer, and the unease gave him stomach aches. But after a week he relaxed. Michael made things easier by taking up all the oxygen while they ate.
“Did you see the institute released the results of their stocking rate experiment?”
“Oh?” McCreery was mashing up pieces of carrot and potato onto his fork. “What did they find?”
“Any savings on land usage were outweighed by the decline in milk solids. No protein, no butterfat. The cows were making white water.”
“No surprise there, starving their animals.”
“You should have seen the cows. I saw them when I was down there. Wee rats, scruffy and unhappy. Tramping their cramped wee paddock.”
“No sense in those experiments. Tell you what you already know. But tell me, what about the Miscanthus? Aren’t they keen on growing that, down in the institute?”
“Elephant grass? Aye, they reckon it would be a power source. Biomass. Grows like weeds. For it is a weed, I suppose.”
“We could set aside a meadow for it.”
Daniel grew more used to the rhythms of the farm, and even to enjoy the milking. He found it to be programmatic. He could ease into autopilot and think about anything. He had started seeing a girl who was waiting tables in the town, Paula, and often he was thinking of her while he labored on the farm. But he was still making mistakes. He was clumsy operating the tractors, especially when he was towing a trailer, and on one occasion he took a corner too tight and knocked a hole in the end of a concrete supporting wall. McCreery inspected it, said he’d have to get someone in to fix it, but said no more about it. Michael on the other hand took Daniel to one side.
Daniel feared the return of the rages, but the scolding was more careful. It sounded prepared. Michael said, “You have to cop on.”
“I’m sorry, I, I’m just not good with the machinery.”
“Aye and you’re not good with the animals either.”
“Am I not?”
“You need to take this seriously.”
“I am taking it seriously…”
“You know we have a chance of inheriting this operation?”
Daniel took a few moments to comprehend. “Inherit?”
“Aye. Someone has to.”
“What about the son? William?”
“He’s out of the picture. He’s no interest.” Michael checked his surroundings to make sure they were alone. “Mr McCreery, I reckon he’s eyeing us up as inheritors. Now he’s giving you an awfully long rope, out of respect for me. Don’t hang yourself with it. Or, or we’ll both miss this chance.”
Daniel came better to understand his brother after that. There was no great excitement about inheriting their Dad’s plot, but the McCreery estate, that was something to be proud of. And it was true, once Daniel thought about it, that they were not unlikely heirs, with the son gone and estranged, while old McCreery’s siblings were emigrants. If the farm was to carry on being run as it currently was, then Michael would have to be the one running it. And perhaps this was why McCreery seemed so much more contented than before. Daniel thought about asking Flaherty whether the groundskeeper still saw the old man haunting his ancestors’ graves, but he never had the nerve.
Most everything changed when McCreery’s son came home. There were rumors in advance of his coming; that he had quit the college course, that he had had a nervous breakdown, that he had been somehow disgraced or even broken the law. Paula, who was one of the few in the town who had kept in touch with William all this time, rubbished these rumors. She told Daniel that she didn’t know why the son was coming home, but her diagnosis was some crisis of conscience. She couldn’t elaborate when Daniel asked her to.
The morning William came home, Daniel did not immediately realize. Morning milking proceeded the same and they carried on with their duties after that, and they never saw the owl. He was probably in his room, and they first saw him at the afternoon feed at the dinner table. He drew up a chair to join them, but no one spoke. Michael kept his ideas to himself this time. Eventually, William attempted some small talk. “You were at agricultural college, Michael?”
Michael’s eyes darted to William instinctually at the mention of his name, but then he looked back down at his plate. “Aye.”
“Was it the, the green cert?”
Michael shook his head. “No. Basic cert.”
“Oh. Would you, would you try for the green cert?”
Michael shrugged. “Probably. Takes a second year training. Could keep at the work though. Could do it part time.”
William nodded. “You must be very skilled now. At farming.”
Michael shrugged again. “Aye.”
In the afternoon, William hung around the yard looking for something to do, waiting, probably, to be instructed. But his father gave him no work, and Michael had no time to supervise him. Eventually he retreated to the house, and they forgot about him.
That evening in Flaherty’s, Michael was agitated. “What’s he looking for? What’s he come back for? What’s his game?”
Daniel suggested, “Maybe, maybe it’s, it’s a crisis of conscience.”
“Guilt? No, not guilt. He realised he was losing something. He must have worked out what the farm is worth. The money in it. And realised he might have been about to lose it.”
“Do you think… do you think this changes your plans?”
“What plans?”
“You know, what you were saying… about the inheritance?”
Michael stared off into the middle distance and sipped.
Eventually William managed by sheer persistence to involve himself in farmwork. He shadowed Michael and Daniel in evening milking, watching their rhythm. He got in their way in the narrow parlor, and Michael’s temper was always near the surface, but never boiled over. William also seemed to enjoy rounding up the herd before milking. But he chafed at the most unskilled work, stacking hay bales and clearing manure in the yard. Unskilled work was the work most suited to him, but he behaved like it was beneath him. He never did this work of his own initiative; he always had to be told, and was often quick with the excuses not to do it. Suddenly he was busy; he had a call, or a Skype, or something else.
Paula was a good listener, and Daniel was glad to vent, more quietly than his big brother. “It would be grand if he was humble about it, tried to learn. But he doesn’t like that we’re above him. That we’re the ones teaching him. He never apologizes when he gets something wrong, never thanks you when you show him something.”
Paula sat and listened, smiling. “You’re as bad as your brother now.”
“Sorry. Sorry.”
“Did you ever find out why he came home?” she asked. “Abandoned the career?”
“Michael says he thinks he came back to make sure he keeps his inheritance. Not be written out of the will.”
“Coming into his birth right then?”
“I suppose.”
“And then what? Be a farmer the rest of his life? Or would he just play the landlord, and order the two of you around?” She laughed.
“Don’t… don’t say things like that.”
“He’d probably sell the place,” she said.
But William had started making concrete suggestions to his father. Over dinner, they listened as he explained the merits of growing plant matter for biomass, until they realized he was talking about Miscanthus.
“Elephant grass?” said the old father.
William said, “Yes, yes I was reading about it. You can double your money per acre, and contribute to renewable energy…”
Michael interrupted, “No money in it.”
William looked over, and gave the appearance of being surrounded. “How do you mean?”
Mr McCreery said, “We had a go with the elephant grass. Set aside a meadow for it. Grows fast, but no one buying.”
Michael said, “We’re using it for bedding. Only thing we can do with it.”
It seemed like most of his suggestions came from casual internet research, and none of them were practical. After a few such suggestions were shot down, William’s manner changed. He still shadowed Michael and Daniel, but now instead of learning, it felt more like observation. He watched them like hawks when they were handling the animals, and any time there was any suggestion of rough treatment, he remarked on it. “You don’t have to shout at them,” he said. “Or hit them.” This in response to a light slap on a cow’s backside, just to get her to pay attention. Daniel and Michael both prided themselves on their gentle treatment of the animals, learned from old McCreery.
William became more outspoken over dinner. “We could plant the land with forestry,” he said. “We could make a better return over ten years.”
All the father said was, “Soil’s not right for forestry. The soil isn’t right.” All in a fading mumble.
Over pints that night, Michael was filled with resentment. “He’s watching us like hawks. Watching for any false move. You’d better watch yourself around him.”
“What’s he looking to do?”
“Take things into his own hands. He’ll make a mess of that farm with his braindead notions, and then he’ll sell it and be rich anyway.”
“What do you mean, take it into his own hands?”
“He’ll wait ‘til the father makes a mistake.”
“And report him, you mean?”
“Aye. Aye, that’s what I think.”
“He won’t report his own father.”
“I hear sometimes. When I’m there overnight, minding the animals outside. I hear shouting matches in the house. They’re falling out.” He paused, and then said, “Never let your guard down around him. He’s only waiting for an excuse to be rid of us.”
William kept on the forestry idea, and Daniel and Michael were an unwilling audience for the dinner table disagreements. Daniel found himself willing the father to speak up, to defend himself and his point of view, but the only defenses were muttered excuses. He seemed to be losing heart again, returning to the dejected old man he was before Michael started working for him. Daniel only really got a hint of the father’s resentment when he was invited to join him and Michael on a shooting walk. Shotgun laid over his arm, scanning for birds, McCreery walked silent until Michael spoke up. “Do you think William will turn this place over to timber?”
McCreery’s ruddy cheeks, netted with red capillaries, flushed slightly at the question. He said, “William says I haven’t been thinking of the future. That I’ve been selfish.”
“Selfish? How?”
McCreery’s answer came slow and careful. “He says that the planet is dying. I suppose he expects us to lift the world on our shoulders. But he says this way of life needs to end. For the emissions. And for the animals.”
“What about the animals?”
“He disapproves of the system. He says we pretend to care for them, to be stewards of the animals. But that we don’t care. That we send them for dog food when they’re worn out.”
“Sure what does he think we’re doing, charity? Can we afford to care for them into retirement? Or… or would he have us turn them loose? See how far they get without, without our, our feeding, and the good stockmanship…” Michael’s defense of McCreery came naturally.
They walked on a bit further, in silence, McCreery scanning ahead. Eventually he said, “There is always something owed. To generations passed. My grandfather…” He raised his free hand and waved it across the horizon. “He dug out, boulders, to level the ground. And then he broke the boulders up to line drainage channels. He burned the rest of the rubble for lime, fertilizer. And my father, God rest his soul, he had to defend this land from bandits and dissidents, during the civil war. And now I have it, and I’ve, I’ve made decisions, on how to manage it. How to nurture it, to make sure there’s something better left behind when I’m gone. Because it’s not just what you owe to generations passed. It’s what you owe to generations yet to come.”
“To William?” Michael was getting dangerously close to candid, and if McCreery wasn’t lost in his own thoughts, he might have grown suspicious.
Instead he just said, “A father owes certain things to his son. No matter who or what his son is.”
Paula loved to hear Daniel’s reports on the drama. “Your brother has the land between his teeth now,” she said, “and he won’t be letting go for anything.”
One Monday they came into work and noticed a new coldness between father and son, and Daniel wondered if there had been some big row between them that neither of the two brothers was privy to. He also wondered if Michael had been coaching McCreery to stand his ground better against his son. Whatever the reason, William’s dinner table arguments ceased. He stopped trying to change things around the farm, and seemed to lose interest somewhat. Michael for a time expected him to go back to Dublin, and forget his expectations of birth right, but for now he didn’t go. Daniel, meanwhile, was becoming more serious. He reckoned he should try for agricultural college as well, and began to make his application. Michael, when he found out, said he was proud of him.
That April Daniel took Paula to a local charity dance in Hegarty’s barn up Drumdooey way. Flaherty was playing the fiddle and they danced to Cotton Eye Joe and Wagon Wheel. Daniel danced with Paula and thought that he could have a few nights like this a year for the rest of his life and be happy. Two of Paula’s nieces grabbed her hands and dragged her away, and while she danced with them Daniel took a breather against a stack of hay bales. Flaherty was resting his arms, and he said, “You dance well together.”
“Aye, well, music was good.”
Flaherty nodded in Paula’s direction. “That one reminds me of Lisa when she was young. Spirited.”
The badger, big James was eavesdropping alongside. “Loose, more like!”
Flaherty said, “Quit that.”
James snuffled at a freshly cooked burger and said through full cheeks, “Just say, she was well acquainted with the men of the parish!”
Flaherty seemed embarrassed by the nature of the gossip, but said nothing. Daniel asked, “You mean Mrs McCreery?”
James said eagerly, “Let’s just say the worker bee was too busy making honey to notice!”
Daniel wasn’t sure what to make of all this, but telling Michael about it later was a mistake. Michael spent some time in silence, and then said, “I’ve been thinking about how to seal the deal.”
“Seal the deal?”
“Get William out of the way.”
“Michael…”
“Sure he’s probably not even Mr McCreery’s son!”
“How’d you make that out?”
“They don’t look anything alike!”
“Ah here…”
Daniel found his college interview a lot less easy than Michael had, but he passed nonetheless. He left home for campus in September, and only came home every second weekend through autumn. The longer absences helped him see changes in his brother more clearly. Occasionally while at home he did a Saturday shift on McCreery’s farm, and there Daniel noticed Michael’s demeanour around William shifting. No longer awkward and deferential to the old bee’s son, now he routinely ignored his questions and remarks, leaving William to stew in silence. The son meanwhile seemed totally unequipped to deal with even the slightest insubordination from a laborer. The problem was that his role on the farm, in its unspoken hierarchy, was unclear. He was older than the brothers, and as McCreery’s son he was theoretically senior, but he was totally incapable on the farm, and he was assigned jobs more out of pity than anything else. When a skilled laborer treated him with disrespect, he could hardly call it out without seeming petulant. So he stayed silent, as he was probably right to. And Michael grew in confidence. Daniel reckoned his newfound conviction that William was a bastard relieved him of any loyalty he might have felt was owed to a son of McCreery. Michael started referring to him in private as a cuckoo in the nest.
And Daniel assessed that Michael was probably planting seeds of doubt in the father too. Over tea, Daniel witnessed the old man tell his son, “Your hair’s falling out.”
“It’s what? No it’s not.”
“Receding hairline. You’ll be bald before you’re thirty.”
William ran a hand over his scalp nervously.
McCreery had his gaze fixed on his son, and there was poison in his eyes. He said, slower, “No McCreery lost his hair that young.”
Such was McCreery’s profound trust in Michael that he could probably be led to believe anything, if it was Michael doing the persuasion.
As winter set in and the mornings got colder, Michael’s scheme began to take shape. He told Daniel, in Flaherty’s, that he thought he could manufacture a disaster on the farm, and pin it on William. Discredit him completely. Daniel pressed him for details, but he insisted on patience. It would probably be near Christmas by the time he had the scheme outlined fully. He seemed to be feeling more urgency, for, he claimed, McCreery’s dementia was making a comeback. He was forgetting things again, and losing his train of thought more easily. On the shooting walks, he was more likely to aim at thin air, or miss a shot he could previously have made at twice the distance. Michael reckoned it was the stress about William that was killing him.
Paula was tiring of this drama, and tiring of Daniel’s attitude towards his brother. “Speak some sense into him. He’ll cause some catastrophe for the sake of his ambitions.”
“I don’t know… he never listened to me. Never.”
“Is he your brother or a stranger? If you lay out his madness before him, make him see how it looks from outside, he’ll understand, and give up this scheming.”
“But the farm is all he is now. Dreams of what to do with it. It’s all he talks about, all he wants.”
Paula looked him in the eyes, and said, “D’you know why they call him the gander and you the duckling?”
“The… the what?”
“It’s because he leads, and you follow.”
She went out for some air, and Daniel called after her, “They call me what?”
By December, Michael had settled on his plan. Daniel would be back for holidays, which was essential; Michael said he couldn’t do it alone. Apparently animosity between father and son had been building, which was good, but all the same Michael swore the old man’s dementia symptoms were worsening. They didn’t go out for shooting trips these days, and Michael reckoned it was because McCreery didn’t trust himself with a gun anymore. Michael said the only way to save him was the get the cuckoo back out of the picture.
There was a newly built concrete trough running alongside the lane that the cows took from the field to the milking parlor, but there needed to be a hanging barrier lowered partially over it when the cows were about so that they could only reach their necks in, not step their feet in and tumble the whole thing in the process. William was to bring in the cows in a few mornings’ time. Michael decided he would raise the barrier all the way, ensuring that when the cows passed by they would ruin the trough. He hoped the fiasco would undermine William at last, by tying some genuine damage to his ineptitude. Daniel was involved only as an extra pair of hands, to ensure everything ran smoothly.
There was a frost the night before their scheme, and when they arrived at the farm it was still pitch black and freezing. It was one of the last nights of the year that the herd would be sleeping outside; soon they’d be gathered into the warm of the sheds, adding further urgency to Michael’s planning. Michael made sure he and his brother arrived ten minutes early. He turned on the streetlamps to light up the yard, and before William was out of bed they had the barrier raised over the trough, leaving it unprotected. When William came out, he said good morning to them and set off without a worry in his head. The next moment was critical: Daniel and Michael watched him saunter up past the trough, with the barrier fully up, and do nothing about it. For Michael’s sense of honor it was crucial for William to actually be, at least partially, responsible; to see the problem, and not notice it. Once he was gone, Michael shut the gates at the near end of the lane, so that the cows would be stopped in their tracks as they passed by the trough, perhaps giving them an extra moment, to pause, and decide to step into the trough full of meal. The cows came strolling in not long after, and Michael watched hungrily as they wandered over to the trough and, as predicted, they stumbled over the barrier and laid into the feed. Soon Daniel could hear the cracking of concrete, and Michael said, “They’ve broken it.” Daniel was about to open the gates again, to let the cows into the parlor, but Michael stopped him. “Let them do some more damage. Sure I’ll be the one who has to fix it.”
It was then they heard William, from the far end of the animal column, yelling at them from the other side, hollering for the animals to get moving again, totally oblivious that the gates were shut in front of them. Everything happened very fast now. The cows, aggravated and afraid, started bunching up, and pressing up fast against the closed gates. Daniel raced over to unlock them, but they were pushing too hard; the cross bar was jammed by the pressure. Still William, none the wiser, was whooping at the cows. “Don’t do that, you prat…” said Michael. The cows were braying with distress now, and the gates started jostling dangerously. Michael grabbed Daniel out of the way just as one of the gates buckled, came loose from its hinges and clattered to the ground. Animals tripped and fell over it, but they were immediately up again and stampeding out. Michael and Daniel tried to keep together as animals rushed around them on all sides, and Daniel felt terrified. But the animals gave them space, never threatening to trample them.
Michael tried to take command; he started hollering himself to send them back the other way, and the animals knew him and respected him, and some of them turned tail and raced back the other way. But most kept coming, and swirling around them, and there was nowhere to go.
There was a bang of gunshot ahead of them, back at the top of the lane.
Michael froze for a moment at the sound, and Daniel watched him think it out. Then he went back to yelling at the animals to direct them away. Finally it started to work. Enough of the animals had come this way now that the pressure was off. The herd headed back in the direction of the field.
Daniel and Michael were finally safe. The animals left them. Michael, without a moment’s pause, raced up after them. Daniel took a second to pant and then he followed after. Back up the lane, he saw the wreckage of the concrete trough. He saw hoof scrapes in the mud beside, where the animals had been panicking and turning. Then he saw his brother halted, just up ahead, and at his feet, a dark mass. Daniel ran up to see it. A body, twisted and still. It was William, covered in mud. His arms and torso broken.
Daniel felt the breath shrinking in his lungs.
Michael stooped down to turn him over onto his back. They saw blood all over his chest. Michael pressed his hand into the wounds, and whispered, disbelieving, “Shotgun pellets.”
McCreery emerged into the light. He was carrying his shotgun over his arm, the same way Daniel had seen him carry it when shooting birds. He had the eyes of a dead man, and he looked down at his son’s body. “Thought he was a thief.” Then he walked away. The sun was rising now, and William was going stiff.
Daniel found Michael’s newfound aspirations difficult. Whenever he came home from college and they talked over black pints at Flaherty’s, the matters turned serious with tremendous speed.
“The mart’s looking for a basic laborer, part time. Two Saturdays a month. Leaves enough time for your homework.”
Daniel hadn’t heard about that, but he said, “Sure Dad’s got enough work for me.”
Michael was unmoved. “And he can’t find another fool to watch the animal? There’s no future in that plot. We have the farmer’s blood but little else.” It was true. Their Dad fattened ten Hereford steer cattle on five crowded acres and could only stay afloat with the single farm payment, the basic government subsidy sent to all farmers regardless of income. Compared to McCreery’s lean dairy operation, their Dad’s farm was a hobby. As kids, their pocket money had in theory been earned by farmwork, but all they had done for it was go out to check the stock for their father the odd Saturday if he was busy down the mart, chatting. Their Dad’s nickname was the parrot, incidentally. But no, for their Dad farming was a point of idle pride and not a vocation. Michael once intimated to Daniel that he was a bit ashamed of their father now, having seen a real operation up close. Daniel recoiled at this filial ingratitude, and Michael said no more about it.
Occasionally, out of curiosity, Daniel asked around about McCreery. The worker bee reputation, and its loss, intrigued him. While pouring a pint, Flaherty told him that McCreery was once industrious and innovative in his youth. He had had no love but his farm. All his mind and soul went into it. Wee Lisa Stewart had spent all her wiles just to turn his head to her for a moment; she was glad to get him married and tied down before he was thirty. She was apparently able to hold his attention long enough to mother a single child, a boy named William, called the owl for his quiet studiousness. Son and father had shared no particular relationship, and William the owl had gone to Dublin for college and never been seen in the townland again. He was out of the picture, leaving the worker bee to toil on alone into premature old age. There were delicate whispers that he was suffering early onset dementia, probably brought on by overwork. Flaherty had a more subtle explanation for the decline, suggesting that McCreery suffered under the realization that his fruit of his labors would die with him, for there was no real future to pass them on to. Flaherty claimed to be conversant with the groundskeeper of the graveyard down by Strangarvey, where the long dead McCreeries were buried, and apparently the old farmer stalked the family plot often of late, meditating it seemed on past generations. Daniel listened to all this, and then opined that the tragedy sounded like it was McCreery’s own fault for not taking more of an interest in his son. This seemed to displease Flaherty, who just remarked that Daniel was spending too long in an old man’s pub for a boy of his age.
After a year Michael had his basic agricultural certificate, and found his old job at McCreery’s waiting for him. He came back bursting with new ideas, and joked that he had followed the old man’s advice, to go away and come back. The old worker bee was again rejuvenated, as remarked around the town. Whispers of dementia were no longer heard.
Michael was now a partner on the farm in all but name, and by the sounds of things he shared in all major decisions. If their Dad minded hearing about another, more successful farmer over supper, he didn’t show it, but Daniel felt Michael was being insensitive. He said nothing however, and he became gradually aware that, once he came home from the last of his school exams, he was to be enlisted to McCreery’s farm too. This was never formally announced, but by now Michael was so sure-footed and confident that he was able simply to talk about it as a done deal. Presumably he had suggested it to McCreery, and once those two had confirmed it between themselves, it was no longer a debate. Daniel, with no clear idea of his future and no applications made, meekly followed his brother’s directions.
Daniel did not immediately thrive on a serious farm. He had to leave the house with his brother at six in the morning to be there for milking at half six, and half awake and disorientated by the din of the milking machines he made many mistakes. He milked a cow with an infection on the first day, contaminating the whole tank which had to be dumped. McCreery was gracious about it, saying that they would use the spoiled milk as fertilizer, but Michael scolded his wee brother for his incompetence. Daniel found himself perking up through the day, however, supping coffee from the thermos in his car. Mrs McCreery made them dinner at noon, and they ate together in the kitchen with the old bee, boiled cabbage and roast beef. At first Daniel found this uncomfortable; he was on edge, eating with his employer, and the unease gave him stomach aches. But after a week he relaxed. Michael made things easier by taking up all the oxygen while they ate.
“Did you see the institute released the results of their stocking rate experiment?”
“Oh?” McCreery was mashing up pieces of carrot and potato onto his fork. “What did they find?”
“Any savings on land usage were outweighed by the decline in milk solids. No protein, no butterfat. The cows were making white water.”
“No surprise there, starving their animals.”
“You should have seen the cows. I saw them when I was down there. Wee rats, scruffy and unhappy. Tramping their cramped wee paddock.”
“No sense in those experiments. Tell you what you already know. But tell me, what about the Miscanthus? Aren’t they keen on growing that, down in the institute?”
“Elephant grass? Aye, they reckon it would be a power source. Biomass. Grows like weeds. For it is a weed, I suppose.”
“We could set aside a meadow for it.”
Daniel grew more used to the rhythms of the farm, and even to enjoy the milking. He found it to be programmatic. He could ease into autopilot and think about anything. He had started seeing a girl who was waiting tables in the town, Paula, and often he was thinking of her while he labored on the farm. But he was still making mistakes. He was clumsy operating the tractors, especially when he was towing a trailer, and on one occasion he took a corner too tight and knocked a hole in the end of a concrete supporting wall. McCreery inspected it, said he’d have to get someone in to fix it, but said no more about it. Michael on the other hand took Daniel to one side.
Daniel feared the return of the rages, but the scolding was more careful. It sounded prepared. Michael said, “You have to cop on.”
“I’m sorry, I, I’m just not good with the machinery.”
“Aye and you’re not good with the animals either.”
“Am I not?”
“You need to take this seriously.”
“I am taking it seriously…”
“You know we have a chance of inheriting this operation?”
Daniel took a few moments to comprehend. “Inherit?”
“Aye. Someone has to.”
“What about the son? William?”
“He’s out of the picture. He’s no interest.” Michael checked his surroundings to make sure they were alone. “Mr McCreery, I reckon he’s eyeing us up as inheritors. Now he’s giving you an awfully long rope, out of respect for me. Don’t hang yourself with it. Or, or we’ll both miss this chance.”
Daniel came better to understand his brother after that. There was no great excitement about inheriting their Dad’s plot, but the McCreery estate, that was something to be proud of. And it was true, once Daniel thought about it, that they were not unlikely heirs, with the son gone and estranged, while old McCreery’s siblings were emigrants. If the farm was to carry on being run as it currently was, then Michael would have to be the one running it. And perhaps this was why McCreery seemed so much more contented than before. Daniel thought about asking Flaherty whether the groundskeeper still saw the old man haunting his ancestors’ graves, but he never had the nerve.
Most everything changed when McCreery’s son came home. There were rumors in advance of his coming; that he had quit the college course, that he had had a nervous breakdown, that he had been somehow disgraced or even broken the law. Paula, who was one of the few in the town who had kept in touch with William all this time, rubbished these rumors. She told Daniel that she didn’t know why the son was coming home, but her diagnosis was some crisis of conscience. She couldn’t elaborate when Daniel asked her to.
The morning William came home, Daniel did not immediately realize. Morning milking proceeded the same and they carried on with their duties after that, and they never saw the owl. He was probably in his room, and they first saw him at the afternoon feed at the dinner table. He drew up a chair to join them, but no one spoke. Michael kept his ideas to himself this time. Eventually, William attempted some small talk. “You were at agricultural college, Michael?”
Michael’s eyes darted to William instinctually at the mention of his name, but then he looked back down at his plate. “Aye.”
“Was it the, the green cert?”
Michael shook his head. “No. Basic cert.”
“Oh. Would you, would you try for the green cert?”
Michael shrugged. “Probably. Takes a second year training. Could keep at the work though. Could do it part time.”
William nodded. “You must be very skilled now. At farming.”
Michael shrugged again. “Aye.”
In the afternoon, William hung around the yard looking for something to do, waiting, probably, to be instructed. But his father gave him no work, and Michael had no time to supervise him. Eventually he retreated to the house, and they forgot about him.
That evening in Flaherty’s, Michael was agitated. “What’s he looking for? What’s he come back for? What’s his game?”
Daniel suggested, “Maybe, maybe it’s, it’s a crisis of conscience.”
“Guilt? No, not guilt. He realised he was losing something. He must have worked out what the farm is worth. The money in it. And realised he might have been about to lose it.”
“Do you think… do you think this changes your plans?”
“What plans?”
“You know, what you were saying… about the inheritance?”
Michael stared off into the middle distance and sipped.
Eventually William managed by sheer persistence to involve himself in farmwork. He shadowed Michael and Daniel in evening milking, watching their rhythm. He got in their way in the narrow parlor, and Michael’s temper was always near the surface, but never boiled over. William also seemed to enjoy rounding up the herd before milking. But he chafed at the most unskilled work, stacking hay bales and clearing manure in the yard. Unskilled work was the work most suited to him, but he behaved like it was beneath him. He never did this work of his own initiative; he always had to be told, and was often quick with the excuses not to do it. Suddenly he was busy; he had a call, or a Skype, or something else.
Paula was a good listener, and Daniel was glad to vent, more quietly than his big brother. “It would be grand if he was humble about it, tried to learn. But he doesn’t like that we’re above him. That we’re the ones teaching him. He never apologizes when he gets something wrong, never thanks you when you show him something.”
Paula sat and listened, smiling. “You’re as bad as your brother now.”
“Sorry. Sorry.”
“Did you ever find out why he came home?” she asked. “Abandoned the career?”
“Michael says he thinks he came back to make sure he keeps his inheritance. Not be written out of the will.”
“Coming into his birth right then?”
“I suppose.”
“And then what? Be a farmer the rest of his life? Or would he just play the landlord, and order the two of you around?” She laughed.
“Don’t… don’t say things like that.”
“He’d probably sell the place,” she said.
But William had started making concrete suggestions to his father. Over dinner, they listened as he explained the merits of growing plant matter for biomass, until they realized he was talking about Miscanthus.
“Elephant grass?” said the old father.
William said, “Yes, yes I was reading about it. You can double your money per acre, and contribute to renewable energy…”
Michael interrupted, “No money in it.”
William looked over, and gave the appearance of being surrounded. “How do you mean?”
Mr McCreery said, “We had a go with the elephant grass. Set aside a meadow for it. Grows fast, but no one buying.”
Michael said, “We’re using it for bedding. Only thing we can do with it.”
It seemed like most of his suggestions came from casual internet research, and none of them were practical. After a few such suggestions were shot down, William’s manner changed. He still shadowed Michael and Daniel, but now instead of learning, it felt more like observation. He watched them like hawks when they were handling the animals, and any time there was any suggestion of rough treatment, he remarked on it. “You don’t have to shout at them,” he said. “Or hit them.” This in response to a light slap on a cow’s backside, just to get her to pay attention. Daniel and Michael both prided themselves on their gentle treatment of the animals, learned from old McCreery.
William became more outspoken over dinner. “We could plant the land with forestry,” he said. “We could make a better return over ten years.”
All the father said was, “Soil’s not right for forestry. The soil isn’t right.” All in a fading mumble.
Over pints that night, Michael was filled with resentment. “He’s watching us like hawks. Watching for any false move. You’d better watch yourself around him.”
“What’s he looking to do?”
“Take things into his own hands. He’ll make a mess of that farm with his braindead notions, and then he’ll sell it and be rich anyway.”
“What do you mean, take it into his own hands?”
“He’ll wait ‘til the father makes a mistake.”
“And report him, you mean?”
“Aye. Aye, that’s what I think.”
“He won’t report his own father.”
“I hear sometimes. When I’m there overnight, minding the animals outside. I hear shouting matches in the house. They’re falling out.” He paused, and then said, “Never let your guard down around him. He’s only waiting for an excuse to be rid of us.”
William kept on the forestry idea, and Daniel and Michael were an unwilling audience for the dinner table disagreements. Daniel found himself willing the father to speak up, to defend himself and his point of view, but the only defenses were muttered excuses. He seemed to be losing heart again, returning to the dejected old man he was before Michael started working for him. Daniel only really got a hint of the father’s resentment when he was invited to join him and Michael on a shooting walk. Shotgun laid over his arm, scanning for birds, McCreery walked silent until Michael spoke up. “Do you think William will turn this place over to timber?”
McCreery’s ruddy cheeks, netted with red capillaries, flushed slightly at the question. He said, “William says I haven’t been thinking of the future. That I’ve been selfish.”
“Selfish? How?”
McCreery’s answer came slow and careful. “He says that the planet is dying. I suppose he expects us to lift the world on our shoulders. But he says this way of life needs to end. For the emissions. And for the animals.”
“What about the animals?”
“He disapproves of the system. He says we pretend to care for them, to be stewards of the animals. But that we don’t care. That we send them for dog food when they’re worn out.”
“Sure what does he think we’re doing, charity? Can we afford to care for them into retirement? Or… or would he have us turn them loose? See how far they get without, without our, our feeding, and the good stockmanship…” Michael’s defense of McCreery came naturally.
They walked on a bit further, in silence, McCreery scanning ahead. Eventually he said, “There is always something owed. To generations passed. My grandfather…” He raised his free hand and waved it across the horizon. “He dug out, boulders, to level the ground. And then he broke the boulders up to line drainage channels. He burned the rest of the rubble for lime, fertilizer. And my father, God rest his soul, he had to defend this land from bandits and dissidents, during the civil war. And now I have it, and I’ve, I’ve made decisions, on how to manage it. How to nurture it, to make sure there’s something better left behind when I’m gone. Because it’s not just what you owe to generations passed. It’s what you owe to generations yet to come.”
“To William?” Michael was getting dangerously close to candid, and if McCreery wasn’t lost in his own thoughts, he might have grown suspicious.
Instead he just said, “A father owes certain things to his son. No matter who or what his son is.”
Paula loved to hear Daniel’s reports on the drama. “Your brother has the land between his teeth now,” she said, “and he won’t be letting go for anything.”
One Monday they came into work and noticed a new coldness between father and son, and Daniel wondered if there had been some big row between them that neither of the two brothers was privy to. He also wondered if Michael had been coaching McCreery to stand his ground better against his son. Whatever the reason, William’s dinner table arguments ceased. He stopped trying to change things around the farm, and seemed to lose interest somewhat. Michael for a time expected him to go back to Dublin, and forget his expectations of birth right, but for now he didn’t go. Daniel, meanwhile, was becoming more serious. He reckoned he should try for agricultural college as well, and began to make his application. Michael, when he found out, said he was proud of him.
That April Daniel took Paula to a local charity dance in Hegarty’s barn up Drumdooey way. Flaherty was playing the fiddle and they danced to Cotton Eye Joe and Wagon Wheel. Daniel danced with Paula and thought that he could have a few nights like this a year for the rest of his life and be happy. Two of Paula’s nieces grabbed her hands and dragged her away, and while she danced with them Daniel took a breather against a stack of hay bales. Flaherty was resting his arms, and he said, “You dance well together.”
“Aye, well, music was good.”
Flaherty nodded in Paula’s direction. “That one reminds me of Lisa when she was young. Spirited.”
The badger, big James was eavesdropping alongside. “Loose, more like!”
Flaherty said, “Quit that.”
James snuffled at a freshly cooked burger and said through full cheeks, “Just say, she was well acquainted with the men of the parish!”
Flaherty seemed embarrassed by the nature of the gossip, but said nothing. Daniel asked, “You mean Mrs McCreery?”
James said eagerly, “Let’s just say the worker bee was too busy making honey to notice!”
Daniel wasn’t sure what to make of all this, but telling Michael about it later was a mistake. Michael spent some time in silence, and then said, “I’ve been thinking about how to seal the deal.”
“Seal the deal?”
“Get William out of the way.”
“Michael…”
“Sure he’s probably not even Mr McCreery’s son!”
“How’d you make that out?”
“They don’t look anything alike!”
“Ah here…”
Daniel found his college interview a lot less easy than Michael had, but he passed nonetheless. He left home for campus in September, and only came home every second weekend through autumn. The longer absences helped him see changes in his brother more clearly. Occasionally while at home he did a Saturday shift on McCreery’s farm, and there Daniel noticed Michael’s demeanour around William shifting. No longer awkward and deferential to the old bee’s son, now he routinely ignored his questions and remarks, leaving William to stew in silence. The son meanwhile seemed totally unequipped to deal with even the slightest insubordination from a laborer. The problem was that his role on the farm, in its unspoken hierarchy, was unclear. He was older than the brothers, and as McCreery’s son he was theoretically senior, but he was totally incapable on the farm, and he was assigned jobs more out of pity than anything else. When a skilled laborer treated him with disrespect, he could hardly call it out without seeming petulant. So he stayed silent, as he was probably right to. And Michael grew in confidence. Daniel reckoned his newfound conviction that William was a bastard relieved him of any loyalty he might have felt was owed to a son of McCreery. Michael started referring to him in private as a cuckoo in the nest.
And Daniel assessed that Michael was probably planting seeds of doubt in the father too. Over tea, Daniel witnessed the old man tell his son, “Your hair’s falling out.”
“It’s what? No it’s not.”
“Receding hairline. You’ll be bald before you’re thirty.”
William ran a hand over his scalp nervously.
McCreery had his gaze fixed on his son, and there was poison in his eyes. He said, slower, “No McCreery lost his hair that young.”
Such was McCreery’s profound trust in Michael that he could probably be led to believe anything, if it was Michael doing the persuasion.
As winter set in and the mornings got colder, Michael’s scheme began to take shape. He told Daniel, in Flaherty’s, that he thought he could manufacture a disaster on the farm, and pin it on William. Discredit him completely. Daniel pressed him for details, but he insisted on patience. It would probably be near Christmas by the time he had the scheme outlined fully. He seemed to be feeling more urgency, for, he claimed, McCreery’s dementia was making a comeback. He was forgetting things again, and losing his train of thought more easily. On the shooting walks, he was more likely to aim at thin air, or miss a shot he could previously have made at twice the distance. Michael reckoned it was the stress about William that was killing him.
Paula was tiring of this drama, and tiring of Daniel’s attitude towards his brother. “Speak some sense into him. He’ll cause some catastrophe for the sake of his ambitions.”
“I don’t know… he never listened to me. Never.”
“Is he your brother or a stranger? If you lay out his madness before him, make him see how it looks from outside, he’ll understand, and give up this scheming.”
“But the farm is all he is now. Dreams of what to do with it. It’s all he talks about, all he wants.”
Paula looked him in the eyes, and said, “D’you know why they call him the gander and you the duckling?”
“The… the what?”
“It’s because he leads, and you follow.”
She went out for some air, and Daniel called after her, “They call me what?”
By December, Michael had settled on his plan. Daniel would be back for holidays, which was essential; Michael said he couldn’t do it alone. Apparently animosity between father and son had been building, which was good, but all the same Michael swore the old man’s dementia symptoms were worsening. They didn’t go out for shooting trips these days, and Michael reckoned it was because McCreery didn’t trust himself with a gun anymore. Michael said the only way to save him was the get the cuckoo back out of the picture.
There was a newly built concrete trough running alongside the lane that the cows took from the field to the milking parlor, but there needed to be a hanging barrier lowered partially over it when the cows were about so that they could only reach their necks in, not step their feet in and tumble the whole thing in the process. William was to bring in the cows in a few mornings’ time. Michael decided he would raise the barrier all the way, ensuring that when the cows passed by they would ruin the trough. He hoped the fiasco would undermine William at last, by tying some genuine damage to his ineptitude. Daniel was involved only as an extra pair of hands, to ensure everything ran smoothly.
There was a frost the night before their scheme, and when they arrived at the farm it was still pitch black and freezing. It was one of the last nights of the year that the herd would be sleeping outside; soon they’d be gathered into the warm of the sheds, adding further urgency to Michael’s planning. Michael made sure he and his brother arrived ten minutes early. He turned on the streetlamps to light up the yard, and before William was out of bed they had the barrier raised over the trough, leaving it unprotected. When William came out, he said good morning to them and set off without a worry in his head. The next moment was critical: Daniel and Michael watched him saunter up past the trough, with the barrier fully up, and do nothing about it. For Michael’s sense of honor it was crucial for William to actually be, at least partially, responsible; to see the problem, and not notice it. Once he was gone, Michael shut the gates at the near end of the lane, so that the cows would be stopped in their tracks as they passed by the trough, perhaps giving them an extra moment, to pause, and decide to step into the trough full of meal. The cows came strolling in not long after, and Michael watched hungrily as they wandered over to the trough and, as predicted, they stumbled over the barrier and laid into the feed. Soon Daniel could hear the cracking of concrete, and Michael said, “They’ve broken it.” Daniel was about to open the gates again, to let the cows into the parlor, but Michael stopped him. “Let them do some more damage. Sure I’ll be the one who has to fix it.”
It was then they heard William, from the far end of the animal column, yelling at them from the other side, hollering for the animals to get moving again, totally oblivious that the gates were shut in front of them. Everything happened very fast now. The cows, aggravated and afraid, started bunching up, and pressing up fast against the closed gates. Daniel raced over to unlock them, but they were pushing too hard; the cross bar was jammed by the pressure. Still William, none the wiser, was whooping at the cows. “Don’t do that, you prat…” said Michael. The cows were braying with distress now, and the gates started jostling dangerously. Michael grabbed Daniel out of the way just as one of the gates buckled, came loose from its hinges and clattered to the ground. Animals tripped and fell over it, but they were immediately up again and stampeding out. Michael and Daniel tried to keep together as animals rushed around them on all sides, and Daniel felt terrified. But the animals gave them space, never threatening to trample them.
Michael tried to take command; he started hollering himself to send them back the other way, and the animals knew him and respected him, and some of them turned tail and raced back the other way. But most kept coming, and swirling around them, and there was nowhere to go.
There was a bang of gunshot ahead of them, back at the top of the lane.
Michael froze for a moment at the sound, and Daniel watched him think it out. Then he went back to yelling at the animals to direct them away. Finally it started to work. Enough of the animals had come this way now that the pressure was off. The herd headed back in the direction of the field.
Daniel and Michael were finally safe. The animals left them. Michael, without a moment’s pause, raced up after them. Daniel took a second to pant and then he followed after. Back up the lane, he saw the wreckage of the concrete trough. He saw hoof scrapes in the mud beside, where the animals had been panicking and turning. Then he saw his brother halted, just up ahead, and at his feet, a dark mass. Daniel ran up to see it. A body, twisted and still. It was William, covered in mud. His arms and torso broken.
Daniel felt the breath shrinking in his lungs.
Michael stooped down to turn him over onto his back. They saw blood all over his chest. Michael pressed his hand into the wounds, and whispered, disbelieving, “Shotgun pellets.”
McCreery emerged into the light. He was carrying his shotgun over his arm, the same way Daniel had seen him carry it when shooting birds. He had the eyes of a dead man, and he looked down at his son’s body. “Thought he was a thief.” Then he walked away. The sun was rising now, and William was going stiff.