Everything in This Country Must Read Free Page A

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