6
The Dreamcatcher

The next day was a Saturday, which was just as well because it was after nine before I stirred. Old Finnegan must have let himself in through the bathroom window and now he was padding about on my bed, demanding to be fed.

As I washed and dressed, the memory of the night returned to me. Again I struggled for some explanation for that slow-moving convoy, but the logic eluded me.

After breakfast I decided to take a stroll in the direction they had gone. Of course, it crossed my mind that I might be trespassing, but what harm could I be doing by taking a little walk beside the fields?

It was another sweltering day as I skirted round the side of the farmyard and up a gentle slope lined with twisted apple trees. There were plenty of tyre marks in the cracked clay beneath my feet, and as the path levelled off in the fields, I saw the first of the high voltage towers about a quarter of a mile ahead. The closer I got, the more aware I became of the awesome scale of those pylons – almost twice the height of the ones at home. Near the base of the steel tower stood a red barn with a rusting corrugated roof, not uncommon in that part of the world. It was a large barn but it appeared dwarfed beneath that huge pyramid. The front of the barn was constructed entirely of two enormous wooden doors in the same oxide red; and in front of the doors was a flat area of cinders and compacted rubble, where twenty vehicles could park with ease.

The path continued past the barn, but from this point it narrowed so that it was barely wide enough for a horse. I concluded that the red barn was where the convoy had stopped. I pulled at the great barn doors, but although they clanked and rattled freely, they would not open.

With the sun scorching the back of my neck, I circled round the barn. Except for a hayloft way up near the roof I could see no other door; just the usual heaps of rusting metal and discarded beer bottles amongst thick weeds.

Almost hidden in a tangle of bushes I found a tiny trail – an animal track perhaps. I fancied a walk and I was curious, so with my jacket slung over one shoulder, I waded through waist-high grass alive with butterflies until the trail led me to a cluster of birch and pine trees. It was ridiculously hot and I reproached myself for coming out without a drink. After ten minutes the trail stopped and I found myself on a ridge looking steeply down into a small canyon or natural bowl. It was a little secret valley, and all along the bottom of the valley, a dry creek or river bed wound like a stony scar. It had been a long time since water flowed here, and the roots of the willows along the banks had something desperate about them, like twisting fingers grasping for moisture in the dry river-bed. And then it dawned on me that, of course, this was the Dead River.

I felt a sudden wave of homesickness as I recalled the lush green countryside of Kerry where my family had spent their holidays. I had a memory of trying to keep up with my six older siblings as they whooped and chased each other down a slope like this, to the welcoming waves at Dingle Bay. But this valley seemed lifeless, inhospitable and even dangerous. I suppose what I was feeling was the ancient dilemma of Irish people all over the globe – we go where the opportunities lie, but our hearts belong to the Emerald Isle.

I was about to turn and head home when, with some alarm, I noticed a figure crouched on the bank of the Dead River below me. It took a moment to comprehend that I had stumbled across the secret hiding place of the black-haired girl I had occasionally seen on old Zachery’s farm. She didn’t see me because she was lost in a dream, squatting silently between the roots of an ancient willow, her wide face and oval eyes fixed intently on the object in her hands. She was working on some kind of ethnic jewellery, and her slim fingers were expertly weaving and twisting a circular willow hoop around a red net. I had seen these things in souvenir stores and I realized she was making what Native Americans call a ‘dreamcatcher’.

There was something indescribably magical about that feral child working patiently with coloured feathers, beads and scraps of wire and yarn; completely focused on her task in that secret den. I suppose she was at that in-between time – not quite a woman and not quite a girl. With that gleaming hair and grubby white T-shirt, she brought to mind the magpies at home, who are supposed to collect sparkling trinkets for their nests . . . One for sorrow, goes the rhyme.

I took one step too far and she heard me. Those vivid eyes seemed to shoot up like arrows and she recoiled with fear and anger like a wildcat in a trap. I called down to her: ‘Wait a minute. I won’t hurt you. I’d love to talk . . . Won’t you show me what you’re making there? It’s the loveliest thing I’ve seen in a while.’

But my words were left floating like so much woodsmoke, because the barefoot child had snatched her belongings and set off faster than a deer across her valley. When I looked again she was gone, and all that remained was a turquoise feather hanging in the air.

A strange start to the day, and I was looking forward to a cold beer in the cool of my bungalow. But I only got as far as the dented mailbox which sits on a post in front of Dead River Farm when old man Zachery stumbled towards me with a spanner in one hand and a rag in the other.

I waited on the top step of my deck, with sweat running down my collar, and when he drew close I smiled, as is my way. ‘Hello there, Mr Zachery. It’s definitely time I introduced myself properly. The name’s Jack – Dr Jack Morrow, to use my full moniker.’

‘Y’ Bridish or summat?’

‘Well, Irish actually,’ I replied with a wink. ‘We’re a more evolved species!’

Not a flicker of a smile. And I realized he was doing that thing again – just staring at my face for so long it was embarrassing. Eventually he said, ‘Yer maighty sweaty. Thought ah saw ye headin’ up to th’ barn.’

I said, ‘Oh yes. I meant no harm. Just a little stroll. See, back home a fellow is free to wander the countryside so long as he keeps to the paths and closes the gates behind him. As a matter of fact, in Kerry—’

‘Zat so? Wal, round here a fellah is free to wander so long as he don’t maind a barrel o’ buckshot up his ass. Jes’ a friendly warnin’, maind. See, that barn belong to ma boy, Erwin, an’ he don’ take kaindly to trespassers.’

And then I made the connection! The extraordinary-looking fellow I saw occasionally in an ex-army Jeep was Zachery’s son. If you’ll forgive an old Irish expression, he scared the living crap outta me, so he did! The first thing that struck you about Erwin was his height. I mean, there’s tall and then there’s towering. I never put a tape measure to the fellow, but I reckon there was around seven foot of him from the tips of his combat boots to the top of his shaven head. Now, I’m not one to discriminate against anyone – Tolerance being my middle name – but Erwin was a brutal-looking thug. On one occasion I was working at the typewriter on my deck. He didn’t so much look at me, he glared at me, with tiny bullet eyes buried deep in his skull. He had a curious way of moving too, like King Kong or some class of prehistoric creature that might rip a small Irishman into a multitude of pieces.

If the barn belonged to Erwin, then the night drivers must be his pals. It was all beginning to make some kind of horrible sense.

Zachery conjured a cigarette from his beard and studied me a while longer. Eventually he spat on the ground, turned and walked away. Just as he reached the gates, he paused as if he’d reached a moment of enlightenment.

‘Yer a doctor, huh?’

‘Ah no, not a medical doctor . . . more of an academic. I teach at the new university.’

‘Ah wus gonna say, if yer a doctor, how come ye don’ do summat ’bout them ahs? Makes ye look laike you wus born on crazy creek . . . Snee, hee, hee!’

For the first time, his beard parted in what might have been a grin. All I noticed were the dreadful teeth within, like a desecrated graveyard.