Wild Decembers by Edna O’Brien Read Free Book Online Page A

wheels and the salesman, a stranger, at the side, Bugler on the driver’s seat with the open manual shouting out the several orders, the men pushing and sweating, trying to rock it out of its inertia.
    At dawn he had got back and slept a couple of hours on a chair and then to work. He feels cranky. A mistake to have tarried in horse country. Daddy’s girl, the lady crooner, acting the helpless maiden in the foyer of the dance hall, with no one to bring her home. Her cousin hadn’t shown. Jonathan hadn’t shown. Nearly in tears. Silent in the car. A drive of thirty-odd miles, little towns fast asleep except for the neon glare of the petrol stations, then a country road, a big front gate, a cattle grid, a stately home, but ending up in the saddle room with all the gear, the rods and the brushes and a rocky horse, things to turn a bloke on. The gee-gees. Where did a nice girl like her learn the tricks? “Oh, I started when I was twelve.”

    “You’re sure it’s not the diesel?” the Crock calls out.
    “Dead sure.
    It was the first thing he had tried, had put a rod into the tank thinking that maybe some hooligan came in the night and siphoned it off. Eventually, he ran up home to get the manual, and like a pupil calling instructions out to an adult he checked and rechecked every single thing—pistons, crankshaft, gasket, nozzles, clutch, stabiliser, bar and brackets, everything.
    “You should never have put it under a tree . . . The ground is always loamy,” Joseph says.
    “Fuck your loamy,” Bugler hisses between his teeth. If only they would push, if only they would put some brute strength into it.
    “Rock, lads, just rock,” he says. He is by turn coaxing and then abrupt. Once again he turns the ignition on, waits for the fuel to heat, and yells at them to push. As it moves a fraction, mud flies from the back wheels, flicking onto their faces, almost blinding them.
    “Push . . . Feck . . . Push,” Bugler shouts.
    “We are pushing,” Joseph shouts back, but already it has stopped and sunk with a deadliness. Bugler jumps out, tightens the axles, and says he thinks he knows what to do. It needs more pressure on the one side, it needs tilting to set it off.
    “It could swing around and do for us,” the Crock says.
    “It won’t . . . It’s rock solid.”
    “I have to go in a minute,” the salesman says. An hour of his day is wasted, and so few houses in sight, no one to sell cattle feed to.
    Bugler has slunk in under it, his legs as long again as the top half of his body, jutting out, his leather gaiters not nearly so swanky as in the dance hall, mud on them.
    “Tom-catting . . . You can tell.” The Crock whispers it. From underneath Bugler is ordering Joseph to do this, do that.
    “Hold on . . . Hold on,” Joseph says.
    “Use your eyes . . . Use your brain,” he shouts back, telling Joseph to turn the key, to turn the blasted key. Suddenly it starts to move, and as Bugler crawls out, they give a huzzah of victory. Within seconds it has stalled again, an ugly look to it, the brick-red bonnet mutely saying, “I am not moving out of this spot.”
    “We’ll tie it to the car and tow it,” Bugler says, pointing to the stranger’s very new Fiesta.
    “That’s not my own car, that’s a company car,” the man says, apologetic.
    “The company won’t know,” and turning to Joseph, he asks for a rope.
    “It’s in the shed,” Joseph says sullenly. Calves and cattle are lowing to be fed, milk has to be brought to the creamery and Breege fetched to Lady Harkness’s house with the laundry. It is something she does privately, for a bit of pin money. He thinks of the care she takes with those garments, the washing, the rinsing, the starching, and when they are ironed they look so regal on the big table in the front room.
    Bugler uncoils the rope quickly, knots the one end twice around the seat, and positions each of them so that they draw on it now like a team, like four oarsmen