Three Bags Full (20 page)

There was something much more terrible in the air blown from the village by the morning wind. They galloped up the hill and stood there, watching the butcher wheel his chair bumpily along the path through the fields and then right across the meadow to Gabriel.

The scythe sang a loud song, and the butcher’s wheels made almost no sound in the grass. It was possible that Gabriel really hadn’t noticed anything yet. At least, he didn’t look up from his work.

The butcher was sweating. He watched for some time as the blades of grass flung themselves into the dust before Gabriel.

Then he said, “For all flesh is grass.”

The scythe stopped in midair. Gabriel turned to the butcher and smiled his winning smile.

“The other way around,” he said. “All grass is as good as flesh once I’ve fed it to the creatures there.”

The sheep cast meaningful glances at one another. As if he had sensed it, the butcher suddenly turned in the direction of the hill and narrowed his eyes.

Gabriel looked at the butcher long and hard. “What brings you here, Ham?” he asked cautiously.

Ham was sweating from his laborious ride through the grass, and his hair, which had looked so nice and golden in God’s house, was gray and sticking to his forehead. He looked nervously to all sides.

“Are you coming to the opening of George’s will under the lime tree today?” he abruptly asked Gabriel. “At twelve noon. I just wondered if you’d heard of it.”

Ham wheeled himself a little closer to the shepherd, until he was sitting directly opposite him, looking up inquiringly at him from below.

Gabriel shook his head. “Ham. People have been talking of nothing else for almost a week now.
Everyone’s
heard about it. And everyone will come—everyone who has the use of his legs,” he added, glancing down at Ham. “Everyone who’s not dead yet. Except for Father Will, of course. He’ll be showing he’s not interested in worldly things. Won’t miss a golden opportunity like that. You didn’t come to ask me about the opening of the will. What do you want, Ham?”

Ham passed his sausagelike fingers over the wheels of his chair in embarrassment.

“I wanted to warn you,” he said quietly.

“Warn me?” Gabriel’s eyes were narrowed. “What could you want to warn me about, Ham?”

“Them.”
Ham cast a quick glance in the direction of the hill. His eyes passed nervously over the flock until they found Mopple. Mopple bleated uneasily. The paying-attention method didn’t work nearly so well when the butcher wasn’t behind a pane of glass.

“The sheep?” Gabriel lowered his scythe. “Oh, come on, Ham, we’re alone here. Never mind the veiled allusions. If you want to threaten me you can go about it openly.”

“Threaten you? Why would I want to threaten you, of all people? You’ve no idea! You’re one of the few decent people around here. I want to warn you.”

“About the sheep?” asked Gabriel.

“About the sheep,” Ham agreed. “You probably think I’m crazy. I think so myself quite often. I wonder if something happened to my head when I fell. But that’s not right, because it happened before that. The ram was there first! Don’t you see? He was there first! It’s his doing!” Ham pointed to the hill with one fat finger. “You think they’re harmless animals and you can do what you like with them. That’s what I thought too. Ha!” The butcher laughed bitterly.

“So?” said Gabriel, sounding irritated.

“I was wrong,” said the butcher. “They know just what’s going on around here. You ask Father William. They chased us yesterday! Specially that fat one. He’s a devil, he is!”

“The one at the back trying to hide behind the gray ram?”

“Exactly!” Ham mopped some drops of sweat from his brow with a handkerchief. Gabriel had just been staring at the sheep after looking the way Ham’s finger was pointing, but now something else seemed to occur to him. He narrowed his eyes again.

“You were talking to Father Will yesterday.
You?
Talking to
Will
? Well, signs and wonders will never cease!”

Ham nodded. “A sign. Yes. But what of? It’s for sure I’m not putting up with it. Look at them! There was three of them yesterday. I tell you, those are no normal sheep! See the way they’re putting their heads together? They’re planning how to trick you.”

The sheep looked at one another in alarm.

Gabriel shaded his eyes with his hand and looked at them again.

“I do believe you’re right,” he said to Ham.

A sigh passed through the flock. Now Gabriel knew. He wouldn’t disappear.
They
were the ones who’d disappear from the meadow. For all flesh was grass, and that was because all grass was as good as flesh. And that meant meat. Meat was right, God said. Gabriel had admitted it himself.

Ham looked up at Gabriel in surprise. “Really?” he asked. “You believe me?”

Gabriel nodded calmly.

On the hill, sheep’s heads sank into the grass, resigned to their fate. Only Maude still persisted in staring at Gabriel and the butcher. “Let’s try it, all the same,” she bleated.

“They’re certainly not ordinary sheep,” said Gabriel. “Unusually unprofitable, that’s what they are. Old breeds. Not good doers, don’t have enough lambs. What George planned for them is a mystery to me.”

Ham was awkwardly twisting his waistcoat button. “Maybe you’d sell me one of them? The ram at the back there?”

“The dangerous one?”

Mopple was rigid with terror. But suddenly the butcher lowered his eyes.

“You don’t believe me,” he said, resigned. He didn’t seem to want to talk to Gabriel anymore.

The butcher turned his chair and wheeled it away from Gabriel. Gabriel watched for a while as he made his laborious way back through the grass. Then the shepherd made a trumpet of his hands and shouted after Ham.

“Hey, Ham,” he called. “Are you coming to the Smartest Sheep in Glennkill contest the day after tomorrow?”

But Ham didn’t turn to him. Sweating and panting, he just wheeled the chair faster through the grass, making for the path across the fields.

As soon as Ham had turned off along the path, Gabriel began grinning. Now he’d finally got the old bastard’s measure. Right round the bend! He shook his head and raised his scythe again. But something distracted his attention. One of George’s sheep had stumbled and fallen on the grass. A Blackface sheep. Gabriel’s grin broadened. Old domesticated breed! Sure-footed! The things folk claimed! The sheep picked itself up with difficulty. After a couple of steps it fell over again. Behind it, a second sheep stumbled. A fat ram was rubbing his head on the wall of the hay barn as if possessed. Gabriel’s grin froze on his lips. His blue eyes suddenly didn’t look like ice anymore but like meltwater, murky and unsteady. The scythe fell on the grass.

“Shit!” said Gabriel. “Scrapie. Shit, shit, shit!”

The sheep were still reeling about, picking their way through the grass with shaky, unnaturally high stepping movements, long after Gabriel had stopped looking at them. They were having fun. Gabriel had whistled up his dogs at once. He tore a gap in the wire fence that he had put up with so much trouble only a few days before. The sheep now witnessed a masterly display of the art of herding. Within a few seconds Gabriel’s dogs had driven his sheep out of the enclosure in perfect order, without panicking a single one of them. A few minutes later, a cloud of dust on the path through the fields and the empty wire-fenced enclosure were all that was left to remind anyone of Gabriel and his sheep.

“We won’t be seeing him again,” said Heather happily.

“Oh yes, we will,” said Maple. “We’ll be seeing him again at noon today, when the shadows are short. Under the old lime tree. Maybe it will come out then.”

18

A Lamb Cries in the Night

“The last will and testament of George Glenn,” said the lawyer. “Drawn up and signed this thirtieth day of April, nineteen hundred and ninety-nine, in the presence of three witnesses, one being a sworn lawyer, namely myself.”

The lawyer looked round. A pair of curious eyes gleamed behind his glasses. Not only were the villagers of Glennkill keen to know what would happen next, so was the lawyer. The atmosphere under the lime tree was like the air before a summer storm: ominous and expectant. The suspense was terrible. Silent, oppressive heat, a thunderstorm brewing in their heads.

“To be publicly read on the Sunday following my death, or one Sunday later, at twelve noon under the old village lime tree of Glennkill.” The lawyer looked up at the canopy of leaves above him. One leaf had floated down and landed on his immaculately tailored shoulder. He plucked it off and turned it this way and that in front of his eyes.

“Undoubtedly a lime tree,” he said. “But is it the village lime?”

“Yes, yes,” said Josh impatiently. “That’s the village lime. You can get started.”

“No, I can’t,” said the lawyer.

“You can’t?” asked Lilly. “You make us all come here and now you aren’t going to read us the will?”

“No,” said the lawyer again.

“What’s the idea?” asked Eddie.

The lawyer sighed. Suddenly a watch glinted on his wrist. A very fine watch, like the one George had worn for working in his vegetable garden. “It’s exactly eleven fifty-six. Believe me, I’m right.” That was meant for those present who had looked at their own wristwatches. “I can’t help you before twelve.”

The humans began muttering. Annoyance, indignation, nervousness, and even a little relief crept into their insectlike voices.

Led by Othello, the sheep ventured closer. They had set off all together when the time of short shadows began, to see if the Will and Testament would reveal anything. The murderer, or at least an important clue. No one took any notice of them. Othello had drummed it into them that they must creep up to the humans as quietly and naturally as dogs. But even if they had galloped up to the lime tree bleating at the tops of their voices, hardly anyone would have noticed. The human beings were much too busy looking at their watches.

The church clock struck twelve. “Now!” the people under the lime tree whispered. But the lawyer shook his head. “It’s fast. You want to put it right next chance you get.”

Another angry mutter. Then the humans fell silent one by one. Yet again Mopple saw fear padding through their ranks with its mane blowing in the wind, rubbing around the landlord Josh’s legs like a cat, sending its cold breath down Eddie’s back, grinning as it sniffed at Kate’s black dress.

Then a muted murmur rose from the humans again. Rebecca had joined them, her dress like a drop of blood against the mourning black that most of them wore. All eyes followed her, one pair after another. Othello could see exactly what was going on: Rebecca was a feast, and the men were grazing.

The lawyer let his watch disappear again under a white cuff. He cleared his throat to get the villagers’ attention back.

The sheep were all agog. This was the first time in ages that they’d had anything read aloud to them. And George himself had written the will.

“To my wife, Kate, I leave my library, including seventy-three trashy novels, one detective story, a book of Irish fairy tales, and a book on the diseases of sheep, as well as everything else that the law considers her due.”

The lawyer looked up. “You can keep the house,” he said, “and you’ll get a small annuity too.” Kate nodded, gritting her teeth.

“To my daughter, Rebecca Flock—” A whisper ran through the crowd. George? Daughter? A little something on the side? Adultery?

“—I leave my landed property, consisting of pastures in Glennkill, Golagh, and Tullykinree.”

Othello looked at Rebecca in her bright red dress. She was like a poppy standing among the black- and gray-clad villagers. She had gone very pale, and her lips were compressed. No one was taking any notice of her. Kate sobbed. Ham looked at her with concern.

“So that’s it,” someone or other said.

“No,” said the lawyer, “that’s not it.”

Mopple could positively see muscles tensing under the people’s black clothes. Would it get out now? But if so, what was it? Mopple prepared for flight.

“To Beth Jameson I leave my Bible.”

Bible-thumping Beth, sitting in the third row, began sobbing uncontrollably with her hand over her mouth.

“To Abraham Rackham I leave my Smith & Wesson with its silencer, being of the opinion that he will need it.” Ham sat there in his wheelchair. His eyes were moist. He nodded grimly.

“I know what you are thinking now,” said the lawyer. “Not all of you but enough.”

“How can you know that?” Lilly asked him.

“I’m quoting,” said the lawyer. The expression on the villagers’ faces was blank. The lawyer sighed again. The sheep sympathized with him. Even they knew what “quoting” meant. Roughly, anyway. It was something like “reading aloud.”

“And I have considered it for a long time,” the lawyer went on, “but I won’t do it. Just go on living your lousy little lives.”

The lawyer looked up. “I expect you can make more of that than I do.”

“Is that all?” asked Josh, with perceptible relief in his voice.

The lawyer shook his head, cleared his throat, and leafed through his papers.

“The rest of my fortune, amounting at the present time to the sum of”—and here the lawyer mentioned a number that the sheep had never heard before—“I leave to…”

The lawyer was taking his time. His clever eyes glittered through his glasses as he observed the people of Glennkill under half-closed lids. They had gone very quiet. In the middle of this silence, Kate burst into hysterical laughter.

“I leave to my sheep so that they can go to Europe as I promised them.”

Kate went on laughing in the silence, an ugly laugh that penetrated the sheep’s fleeces like cold rain. Ham blinked hard, as if the same rain were falling on him too.

“Is that some kind of a joke?” asked Harry the Sinner.

“No,” said the lawyer, “it’s perfectly legal. I shall administer the money. Of course the animals will also need an authorized representative to go with them to Europe as their shepherd. That representative’s rights and duties are clearly set out in the will.”

“So who is it, then?” asked Tom O’Malley, in suspense.

“That,” said the lawyer, “hasn’t been decided yet. I am to use my own judgment in appointing one, preferably now. Does anyone present happen to want the job?”

Silence.

The lawyer nodded. “Of course you need to know what it would entail. I have prepared some details here.” And he handed printed sheets out to the villagers.

Lilly giggled. “‘The sheep are to have stories read aloud to them for at least half an hour a day’? Who’d do a thing like that?”

“The authorized representative,” said the lawyer. “All the conditions will of course be checked by a third party, namely me.”

“‘None of the sheep may be sold, none of the sheep may be slaughtered’? ‘In breeding them, a dense fleece is to be the prime concern’?” asked Eddie. “Not what you’d call economic.”

“It doesn’t have to be,” said the lawyer. “You’ll see the representative’s salary at the bottom of the page. Every time one of the sheep dies it will be decreased by a certain amount, but it still appears to me a handsome figure.”

“And when they’re all dead?” asked Gabriel. “Of an epidemic, for instance?”

“In that case there will be a small final premium in recognition of services rendered, and all further payments will lapse.”

Gabriel stepped forward. “I’ll do it,” he said.

“Very good,” said the lawyer. “Any other offers?”

The people of Glennkill looked at one another nervously. They looked at their printed sheets and then back at Gabriel and the lawyer. Some of them seemed to be thinking feverishly. A strange light had come into their eyes, and suddenly there was a faint smell of sweat in the air. Expectant. Hungry. But they looked at Gabriel, standing beside the lawyer with his hands in his trouser pockets, and they kept silent. Like with a lead ram, thought the sheep. When the lead ram has taken something on, no other sheep would dream of disputing it with him.

But then one sheep did dream of it.

“Are you sure there’s no one else?” asked the lawyer. There was a touch of disappointment in his smooth tone.

“I’d like to do it,” said a warm voice. A good voice for reading aloud in.

“Excellent,” said the lawyer, looking at Rebecca almost with a touch of gratitude. Pale but beaming, she was standing next to Beth. The sheep were relieved. With Gabriel, they wouldn’t even have wanted to go to Europe.

“And who’s going to decide which of them it will be?” asked Lilly. “You?”

“The heirs, of course,” said the lawyer.

“The sheep?” asked Ham breathlessly.

“The sheep,” the lawyer confirmed.

“Then we’ll have to go up to the meadow,” said Gabriel. His blue eyes were laughing at Rebecca.

“I don’t think so,” said the lawyer. “It appears to me that the heirs are already among us. A black four-horned Hebridean ram, a mountain Blackface, a merino, and the rest Cladoir with some Blackface crosses—the last Cladoir flock in all Ireland. An old Irish breed of sheep. It’s a shame they’re not raised anywhere else these days.”

The humans turned, first just in surprise. But then they looked down on George’s flock with undisguised hostility. Gabriel examined the sheep with a critical frown on his brow.

“Sheep?
Those
sheep?” gasped Ham, who had been sitting in the front row in his wheelchair. Now that they had turned he was suddenly in the back row, he couldn’t see, and he had no idea what was going on. No one took any notice of him.

The herd of humans and the flock of sheep faced each other. The humans’ eyes ran over the sheep like lice running over their coats. The three rams had retreated slightly, but they had no intention of running away.

“Good,” said the lawyer. “Then we’ll see.”

“See what?” asked Lilly, with some derision in her voice.

“I’m not exactly sure myself,” said the lawyer. “Since my new clients can’t talk we’ll have to try some other way. Would you,” he said, turning to Rebecca, “please stand here, and you,” he said, turning to Gabriel, “over there, please? Good.”

He turned to the sheep.

“George Glenn’s sheep,” said the lawyer, who was obviously enjoying himself, “who would you like to accompany you to Europe as your shepherd? Mr….?” He glanced at Gabriel.

“Gabriel O’Rourke,” said Gabriel, between gritted teeth.

“Or Ms….?”

“Rebecca Flock,” said Rebecca.

A murmur ran through the crowd. Even the lawyer raised his eyebrows. Kate began laughing hysterically again.

“Mr. Gabriel O’Rourke or Ms. Rebecca Flock,” repeated the lawyer.

The sheep’s eyes moved silently back and forth between the lawyer and Rebecca.

“Rebecca!” bleated Maude.

“Rebecca!” bleated Lane, Cordelia, and Mopple in chorus. But the lawyer didn’t seem to understand them. The sheep, confused, fell silent. How could they let him know what they wanted?

“Nothing’s going to come of this,” someone said in an undertone. “Give ’em to Gabriel. He at least knows how to get along with sheep.”

The villagers began to turn hostile toward Rebecca.

“She couldn’t tell a sheep from a powder puff,” someone murmured.

“Slapper,” chirped a woman’s voice.

But a simple, captivating melody sang its way through the angry whispers. Gabriel had begun murmuring in Gaelic. Once it would have totally enchanted the sheep, and even now Gabriel’s soft voice had an undeniable charm.

Othello took a step forward while the flock kept close behind him. He looked briefly at Gabriel with glittering eyes. Then he calmly turned and trotted over to Rebecca. Gabriel cooed away in Gaelic like a demented pigeon, but it did him no good. One after another the sheep clustered round Rebecca.

Maude began bleating again.

“Rebecca!” she bleated.

“Rebecca!” bleated all the other sheep.

“Excellent,” said the lawyer. “I call that a unanimous vote.” He closed his briefcase. “George Glenn’s sheep,” he said very politely, “I hope you have a good time in Europe.”

Silently, as if in a dream, the sheep trotted back to their meadow. There was a lot they had not understood, but one thing they knew: Europe. A huge meadow full of apple trees awaited them.

“We’re going to Europe,” said Zora in a daze.

“With the shepherd’s caravan. And Rebecca,” added Cordelia.

“It’s…” Cloud took a deep breath. She had been going to say “wonderful,” or “amazing,” or simply “great,” but all of a sudden she couldn’t think of words anymore. She felt a little frightened.

“It’s as if George had tipped out sugar beet and bread in front of us at the same time,” said Mopple with a wise look on his face. “And apples and pears and concentrated feed.”

“And calcium tablets,” said Lane.

Joy came over them, slowly but intensely.