The Long Dry Read Free Page B

came down on the tin roof and the shears buzzed slightly. It was very calm.
    The three men – a father and two brothers – came only to shear the sheep. They made a living this time of year moving round the farms, taking the fleece off the sheep and taking the money per fleece. So they worked quickly. The fleeces came off and Emmy and Dylan and Kate gathered them and rolled them into bags, fastening the canvas with wooden pegs. Gareth caught the ewes, and Bill helped, while the shearers worked quickly. (His name was Gwilym, but they called him Bill.)
    Now and then the men would stop to oil the shears, or, the sheep still held sitting comically against their legs, would reach languidly behind them for iodine so they could dress any cuts, if they had made them badly. They were quick but moved easily, as if their bodies were made only for this purpose. They might have been – a long line of sheep shearers. Genetic. When they stopped to eat there was notalk. Pleasant thank yous, humble and clear, but no talk. They were men with no unnecessary thing.
    *

Chapter Three
the Ducks
    He’d got in at three in the morning and he wasn’t happy about going to get the duck.
    ‘You’ll have to go and get the ducks,’ his mother had called up. ‘The cow’s gone and you’ll have to go and get the ducks.’
    Dylan shouted and then swore at his mother because he knew his father was out in the fields – he’d heard him go out after breakfast again to find the cow. He’d sworn quietly at first so his mother had to shout up ‘what did you say?’ and then he’d repeated it at a scream because he knew it annoyed her more this way.
    He was angry but it was mainly out of habit; and he was only angry because of getting out of bed not because of having to go and get the ducks.
    Now he was in the Transit and he drove it quicker than he’d drive his own car down the busted lane and enjoyed the tuck and muffled rumping of the ducks in the bread crates in the back. With the windows down the smell was still bad but it was good to be in the Transit.
    If you’ve never been in a Transit you don’t know. You sit up high like you’re in a dining chair and there’s even arm rests if you want them. And you see things you haven’t seen before or don’t see often. You can even see more of the road somehow, and because you’re up high you’re not so scared. You’re not scared when you drive a car maybe, but you know if you hit something it will more or less hit you at eye level and it will be like being shot out of a low pipe at the mess.
    He was relaxed and happy in the Transit.
    He drove the van past the barn and down the track and into the long field. The ground was so dry you could take the van in the fields. When he got out to open the gate into the long field he did it angrily in case he was seen. He thought he should be angry because he usually would be because he had to unload all of the duck on his own; but he wasn’t angry and driving the van was good and the heat of the day was already in him and quietly he loved being in this place despite the belt of the music and the white breasts of the club last night still hefting round his mind. He had to like the club and he had to want to go away from here.
    He took the duck down to the pond.
    __
    Every year they put a hundred duck down on the pond. There are already moorhen on the pond, and coot. Other wild duck join them, and teal – small and dart-like things that are beautiful and fast and violent, not at all like ducks. They feed the ducks grain and cut down the reeds so the fox doesn’t get to them without them seeing, and they care for them deeply. Then they shoot as many of them as they can.
    This is a good thing. Ducks can be a menace.
    People are seduced by ducks; by their seeming placidity. They fall for the apparent imbecility of their smiles and their quietly lunatic quacking. But they are dangerous things which plot, like functioning addicts.
    In the local town – a