Mary Healy is a runner-up in the 2012 RTÉ Guide/Penguin Ireland Short Story competition.
Jess arrived home in the boot of the car. I lifted her out of the cardboard box, she felt soft and warm and I could feel her heart beat quickly. I brought her into the house and put her down on the kitchen floor. She rolled onto her back and wriggled under the table, wetting the flag floor.
‘Take that dirty pup out of here,’ Granny said and darted the sweeping brush at Jess.
‘She’s called Jess, Granny, Daddy gave her to me for my confirmation.’
‘Another mouth to feed, as if we hadn’t enough.’ Granny grumbled.
My father was lacing his working boots.
‘Ah leave the lad alone, it’s just a pup. She’ll come good in time’
I caught Jess up in my arms and hugged her. That summer we travelled the fields, explored under the blackthorn tree where the river ran quick and quiet over small smooth pebbles. Often we lay on our bellies and watched shoals of brickeens hide in the deep water. Everything changed around that time. Mam spent a lot of time in bed.
Summer melted into a warm autumn and tar bubbled on the road. The apple trees in the orchard dropped heavy fruit onto the burnt grass. Jess and I went for the cows each day trailing along the dusty paths back to the dairy. I went on the bus to a new school, a small boy in a big place. Coming home one day I found the animals being loaded into a truck. My father and mother were leaning against a gate in the yard.
‘TB.’ My father said in answer as he watched the cows walk slowly up the ramp. They were big and heavy, their bellies swollen with calves that would never be born. At milking time that evening I saw my father sit at the table with his head in his arms. Granny put a cup of tea in front of him. I waited for her to say the words she always said after something died, ‘better out than in’ but this time she looked over at my mother and said nothing.
The following spring Jess had filled out and her coat was glossy.
‘Jess is in pup,’ my father announced.
‘To what?’ Mother asked.
My father nodded up the road towards Doran’s hill.
‘Are you sure they’re by his dog? He never lets it out of his sight.’
Cuckoo Money
‘Ah well, put it like this; Doran didn’t have any say in the matter.’
‘That’s the dog with the grey coat? They’re a strange breed,’ Granny said, ‘with those blue human eyes.’
‘What ever they are, he gets well paid for them but we’ll give him a run for his money before too long.’ My father said.
‘What did you do? My mother asked.
‘I opened the shed door and let nature take its course.’
‘But sure that’s stealing’
‘Well, that’s the first time I heard it called that.’
My mother looked at my father with that eye she keeps for scuffles at mass. I knew Doran and my father didn’t like each other although they had been friends at one time. Granny, on the other hand, had great time for Doran.
‘Good land.’ She said to mother. ‘You could have done better, you had the pick of the parish, instead you had to make a hames of things.
‘Shhh,’ Mother said, ‘don’t let Tom hear you.’
‘A fine catch, a great farm of land.’ Granny went on, pausing in her knitting and fixing her eye on mother.
‘And he doesn’t drink.’ She jabbed her needles back into the wool ‘There’s a bit of breeding behind him. He’s after buying Cleere’s place, they said the bidding was fierce but Doran got it in the end. The Doran’s of this world get what they want.’
‘Not always.’ My mother said quietly. ‘Not always.’
Doran’s family pew was just behind ours. One morning as everybody kneeled, mother was sitting back. From the side aisle I could see Doran kneeling behind her, his head so close to hers it looked like he could breathe her breath. He closed his eyes the way my grandmother did when she prayed, working her beads. Except Doran was quietly fingering a strand of my mother’s long fair hair, he rubbed it slowly between his thumb and finger. I wondered what he prayed for. He opened his eyes and looked across at me before dropping his gaze.
After that day he sat in the side aisle among the rookery of grey coats and dark clothes of men who never married.
Around that time mother’s ankles swelled up. The doctor wanted her to see a special doctor in the city.
‘That‘ll cost a fortune, I wont be going,’ mother said.
Granny took her funeral money out of the post office and mother went to the city. They stayed the night in my uncle’s house and arrived home late the next evening.
‘Did he make you any better Mam?’ I asked
‘Yes Pet, he did.’
But somehow she didn’t seem that much better. I sat in the hall listening to my grandmother and father.
‘He wants her to stay in the hospital.’
Neither one of them spoke for a few moments, then Granny said.
‘Is there anyone ……you could ask to help out?
‘No there’s not, sure no one has any money now.’
‘Maybe Doran……?’
‘No bloody way. We have our pride.’ My father’s voice was loud.
‘Well pride you may have but you won’t have a mother for these children before long.’
My father was quiet over the next few days, mother was in bed a lot of the time, and Granny had a tight, cross face on her .The only movement in the place seemed to be in Jess as she heaved her belly from yard to shed. Her teats brushed the ground.
‘She must have a heap of pups in there; she’ll burst if she doesn’t have them soon.’
‘Any day now,’ my father said.’
One morning Jess was missing. I called my father. He nodded his head in the direction of the stick house. I ran across the yard, peered through the door and there she was, flanked with a pile of small grey and white pups. They had the clean licked look of children’s faces on Sunday morning. Their eyes were shut tight and they teemed with warm heavy life. Jess wagged her tail, tiredly. She reminded me of my mother at the last part of the day, where everything seemed to be a big effort.
‘Five, she has five.’ I shouted.’
Some weeks later we were standing near Jess’s bed, the pups were fat and sleek. Jess was tired and thin looking, her coat dull.
‘They’ll have to go soon.’ My father said, looking at the pups, ‘Put an ad in the shop window and see if you can get homes for them. Ye might get a few bob if you’re lucky. I won’t be around to train them’
That night my father took the brown suitcase from the top of the wardrobe, he put in his work clothes and some socks, and caught the bus to the city. Uncle Jim had arranged work for him on the buildings; it would tide us over until spring. Before he left he hugged us all, told us to be good and then he turned to me.
‘You’re in charge now, Sean, man of the house, mind your mother and look after her and don’t forget to feed that áilleán of a bullock.’
I put the advertisement in the shop window after Mass that Sunday hoping someone would ask about the dogs. I made sure to keep near the house on in case anyone called. By Friday I had all the weeds picked in the yard, tidied the workshop and cleaned out the hens. I still hoped someone would drive up the lane. Nobody did. Granny said,
‘They’ll have to go or else we’ll have to drown them.’
One day Doran arrived into the yard. He was dressed in a suit and his black hair was slicked down under his hat. Looking around, his dark eyes found the rusty galvanised shed, the broken sprong with the handle in two halves, the sick bullock with his ribs like corrugated iron.
‘I hear ye have pups for sale,’ he said.
‘We do,’ I said ‘Well, soon as they’re weaned.’
He walked over to Jess,
‘She’s a good breed?’
‘She is.’ I said. ‘She’s one of Uncle Jim’s dogs’.
Without turning his head, Doran’s eyes moved towards the kitchen door. Mother was there but she didn’t come out.
‘Jess can round up the cows for milking herself and she doesn’t run them. Well, she used to…….. ’
‘I heard that.’ he said quickly, ‘heard ye had a good bitch alright. She’s your dog?’ he asked.
‘She is.’
‘How much do you want for them?’ he said, nodding towards the pups.
When I said the price, he replied.
‘You’re not shy about the money anyway.’
‘She’s worth it.’
‘Aye,’ he said, ‘she is.’ He was quiet for a moment. ‘Well if she’s good, the pups’ll be good, ye can’t beat breeding. Course the dog has to be good too.’
‘Daddy says he’s the best around.’
‘Did he now,’ said Doran and he gave a sort of a smile. ‘Are you sure you want to sell them?’
‘I do.’
‘I’ll tell ye what, I’ll take the whole litter.’ He said ‘There’s one condition.’
I waited.
‘I want the bitch as well.’
I looked up at him.
‘And I’ll double the money.’
Doran looked away.
‘It’s all or nothing.’ Silence.
‘Is it a deal?’
‘It is.’ I said and put my hand out to Doran’s. Then he opened the boot of the car, and stood there. I picked up two of the pups, they fretted as they lost the teat. Jess watched as they were placed in the boot. When I took the second two pups she sat up, the last one lost its grip and began to fuss. When I lifted the fifth pup away Jess hopped out of the bed and followed me to Doran’s car. She put her paws up onto the fender and peered in after the pups, then looked up at me, wagging her tail. Doran waited for a moment, and then he bent down and lifted Jess. Milk oozed out between his fingers, dropping onto the silver bumper, onto his trousers.
‘Ah Jaysus’ Doran said ‘ye dirty bitch.’
At that point I changed my mind.
‘No.’ I said. ‘You’re not taking them.
‘Steady now, good lad.’
I shouted at him to stop and grabbed his arm. He held me back easily. Then the kitchen door opened and my mother was standing there in her slip. She had
a cardigan in her hand covering herself but I could see where her navel formed a small bubble and her breasts bulged out.
‘What are you doing?’ she said.
‘Kate…’ Doran said. ‘I’m just trying to…..’
He took a step towards her and she stepped back behind the kitchen door. Doran stopped, then he looked down at his shoes. He said to me quietly, slowly.
‘Do you want the money or not?’
‘Sean?’ My mother called.
‘It’s alright Mam, just ………its nothing.’
Mother moved back out of sight. Jess was snuffling and licking the pups and then she looked up at me, whimpering.
‘Stay Jess.’ I said
‘Right now, son?’ Said Doran.
I nodded and the boot closed on Jess. Doran sat into the car, sat there as if he had forgotten something, then he rustled out a bundle of notes, loosened a few, dug into his pocket again for change, counted it and handed me the money.
‘Don’t forget the luck money.’ he said. I handed him back a coin.
‘Good man,’ he said.
He tipped his hat towards the closed kitchen door and started the car.
by Mary Healy
