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

together in a race, their cheer restored, their eyes anxious, giving a show of strength almost superhuman. They get it almost to the gate when the rope breaks, and united in their frustration they each say “Feck” at the exact same instant, as if they had rehearsed it.
    “She’ll have to go to emergency,” the Crock says, and touches the mudguard almost fondly.
    “Come on . . . Come on, Dino,” Bugler said imploringly, and strove to lift it between his knees, hugging it, remonstrating with it as if the fault was a mere moodiness, not wanting, not yet able to admit that he had been sold a pup.
    “I’m afraid I have to be off . . . I have appointments,” the salesman said.
    “Wait . . . Wait,” Bugler said, and picking up a hen’s trough he wedged it under the back wheels.
    “What good will that do?”
    “The juice isn’t getting through . . . There’s a blockage.”
    “Aren’t you working arse-wise . . . It’s the back wheels you should be jacking up,” the Crock says.
    Tempers have risen again, and he thinks of that yard of tractors, useless ones, piled on top of one another and the rotten luck of picking a goner. Rosemary’s money, or rather Rosemary’s daddy’s money, who prided himself on his wealth and his agnosticism.
    “Maybe someone wanted it banjaxed,” the Crock says with a wink.
    “Or maybe witchcraft . . . I was told of a famous witch in these parts, she had a blue bottle for cures,” the salesman says.
    “She had the power,” the Crock answers back.
    “Did you or your sister notice anything fishy?” Bugler asks.
    “We’re not your caretakers,” Joseph says, nettled.
    Conceding at last that he will have to get help, Bugler asks where the telephone is.
    “Where do you think it is?” Joseph says, irked at the thought of him going into the house where Breege is, taking her unawares.
    “It’s a dead Dino,” the Crock says once he has gone.
    “Do you have anywhere l could wash?” the salesman asks.
    “That’s clean grass,” Joseph says, and to prove his point he bends down and wipes his hands in it and the salesman does likewise, flinching. They commiserate with each other on how they have been exploited.
    “He’s not bloody up,” Bugler says, hurrying back and flinging the various tools into his bag.
    “It’s early,” the Crock says.
    “If he was in any other country he’d be up.”
    “What’s that supposed to mean?” Joseph says, resenting the gall of a man new to the place coming to conclusions.
    “They’re not on the ball . . . None of you are,” Bugler says tauntingly.
    “The sooner you take that machine out of here, the better for all concerned.”
    “It will be out of here.”
    The look that passed between them so vicious then it might have been their two dogs, Goldie and Gypsy, in one of their sparring matches.
     
    It was dark when the tractor was to be heard chugging out of the yard.
    “Good riddance,” Joseph said. All day he had been grumbling about this and that, a heifer that had got sick, a bill from the opticians that was astronomical, and his own yard a public convenience for Bugler. Earlier, when he saw her bringing out tea and sandwiches, he asked sarcastically why she had forgotten the lace tray cloth to go with it.
    “They must be frozen stiff,” she had said.
    Mattie, the mechanic, hadn’t come until after work, and they were out there working with torches, the engine stopping and stalling as it had in the morning, and then quite suddenly the sound of it no longer sluggish, strong, repetitive, chafing, ready to go again.
    When she came back in, Joseph asked if by any chance she had been inveigled to push the yoke.
    “You drank too much last night,” she said.
    “A showman . . . nothing but a showman . . . the way he hogged the limelight . . . up on the stage with the crooner . . . singing a song he only just learned. What does he know about the North or the South either?”
    “Someone put turpentine into the