A Man in a Distant Field by Theresa Kishkan Read Free Book Online Page A

explain things in a particular way. Do ye know the meaning of the word
metaphor
?”
    Rose shook her head.
    â€œWell, it is when ye use words or phrases that everyone understands to mean certain things, ye use them to make a thing understood in a new or different way. If I told ye that sun was a globe of golden glass, well, ye’d know I didn’t really mean that it was, in fact, but ye might take another look at the sun and see it again, with fresh eyes. Do ye see what I mean?”
    â€œI think so,” she said, squinting her eyes and looking at the sun, which was making its way towards the western sky.
    â€œTo continue with suns, the ancient Greeks, whom these stories are about, would talk of the sun as something alive that was driven across the sky by a fella called Helios who had a chariot and some special oxen. That little story is a metaphor, really, to explain the passage of the sun from when it rises in the eastern sky to where it sets in the west, where we can see it, each day.”
    Declan looked at Rose to see if she was ready to hear the rest of the story. She was far away, gazing out the window. She sighed, and then turned to face him. “Mr. O’Malley, I know astory that’s a bit like the one you’ve been reading me. Only it’s true. All of it.”
    â€œWill ye tell it to me?”
    She took a deep breath. “Where we live used to belong to the Indians. They still come up the bay in their canoes sometimes because they think this part here is special. One of them, a lady called Lucy, comes to have tea with my mum and she says her people began here, like we say that Adam and Eve began in a garden called Eden. But none of the Indians have lived here for quite a long time. My dad has pigs, you’ve seen them, and when he wants an area cleared, he lets the pigs run free. They are good at clearing land because they eat all the tough leaves and vines, and they dig stuff up, roots and such.”
    â€œAye, their feet are like small spades so,” said Declan, remembering his own pig.
    â€œWell, one day a few years ago, in spring, the pigs dug up a canoe with a skeleton in it. My sister, Martha, saw it first and ran to the house to get my dad. He thought it was funny and let the pigs have the ribs to chew. He rolled the canoe over into the woods—I can show you what’s left of it one day—and took the skeleton off; we didn’t see where. Martha had nightmares about it.”
    â€œAye, she would, she would.” And then he wondered if he would also dream of the pigs at work on the long ribs of a man found dead in the earth.
    â€œWhen Lucy came the next time, my mum asked her about it and she said it must’ve been a chief from a long time ago, because sometimes they were buried in their canoes with important stuff for them to use on the way to Heaven. It made it seem so wicked that the pigs would dig it up and eat the bones. My mum never told Lucy that part. Do you think it was wicked, Mr. O’Malley?” She seemed so concerned about this that Declan reassured her, saying that the dead man’s soul would have long departed and that Lucy would have known this.

    â€œDon’t worry yerself so, Rose, but tell me more of the story.”
    She smiled at him, grateful for his understanding, and continued. “So then it was fall and my dad put our vegetables in the root cellar. Potatoes from the new area that the pigs had cleared and the other stuff we eat all winter. Turnips and beets that he buries in sand, and cabbages and onions. One dark night, well, it wouldn’t have been night really but it gets dark early in winter, he told my sister and me to go to the root cellar under the back part of the house to bring up potatoes for the supper. We hate going in there because it’s mostly underground and there are spiderwebs and even rats sometimes. But my sister took a candle and we kept together. We were leaning into the potato bin