A Man in a Distant Field Read Free Page B

you’re sure you want the pup?”
    â€œI’m very grateful to ye for bringing her along. Thank yer mother for thinking of me.”
    He watched the girl walk back through the salal, nimble as a young deer. What age would she be? Twelve or so, most like. The age of Grainne, he supposed. And yet Grainne had been able to read in two languages, her own Gaelic and English, she could recite from memory whole passages of poetry, fragments in Latin of the
Aeneid
, a poem they read at home. She was hungry for learning and would take a book to the byre where they kept their chickens and the occasional pig; he’d find her reading as she stirred the mash or wiped the eggs. Maire, now, that was a different tale. She could read all right and had a good brain for sums, but she’d rather be exploring the bog, searching for the nests of corn crakes in the small barley field. Bird cries were like music to her, and she recognized in them particular voices or messages. Sometimes she’d bring back an egg that hadn’t hatched and she’d carefully blow out the insides; she kept the fragile shells on the mantle. She would come to him and ...Something licked at his ankle. He’d forgotten the little dog and broke from his remembering to pick it up.
    â€œSo, Argos, we’d best find ye a bed, eh, girleen? I’ve a dry sack somewhere and we’ll put some of last year’s bracken in it to make it soft for ye. And a meal ye’ll be wanting, to be sure.”
    The pup licked his face with rapid warm strikes of her tiny tongue. He took her into the cabin and put her by the stove while he sought out the sack. Then he put a crust of soda bread into a battered dish, another relic of the bush, and poured a little milk over it. He warmed it for a few minutes on the stove and put it down for the pup. Argos had only ever fed from her mother’s body and whimpered, not understanding that this was another way of being nourished.
    â€œYe’ll learn to eat this or ye won’t grow into anything worthy at all. Here, let’s see what we can do with ye.”
    Declan crouched on the floor next to the puppy. He put his finger into the dish and then into the pup’s mouth. She sucked at the milky finger eagerly. He moved her face down to the dish, keeping his finger in her mouth. Then he eased more of the milk into her mouth until she was taking it on her own. The bread was something again. She sucked at it, unable to get it into her mouth fast enough. So she stepped into the dish with her front feet and held one end of the crust with her paw while she sucked and gnawed at the softened bread. When she had finished, she collapsed into a small black heap and fell immediately into a deep sleep. Declan moved her onto the sack and sat at his table to puzzle over the poem again.

    The tide was low. Lower than he’d ever seen it. From where his cabin stood, he could see no ocean at all, no bay, just a longexpanse of mud. It reminded him of Killary Harbour, a narrow finger of water leading from the cold North Atlantic to Leenane, a village near Declan’s home at Delphi. He couldn’t remember tides such as this although there must’ve been because the fisher-folk would collect carragheen, or sea moss, at very low tide to dry on the shore above. It made a pudding that was good when you got the fever, he recalled. Cousins who lived near the water would give them a bag of the moss for winter. A handful of the crisp fronds, eggs, milk, some sugar, and Eilis would add a drop or two of vanilla essence. The girls called it fish-slime because it had a texture that slipped down the throat, all right, but he was fond of it.
    Calling Argos from her bed by the stove, Declan took up a gunny sack and walked down the pebbly bank to the shore. The mud was very dark. It steamed in the sunshine. He walked out gingerly but found it quite firm to the boot. Gulls were swirling in the air and landing on the mud, taking up