Steel Strings

He seriously wanted to stomp a toadstool or two for they were as tempting as a field of landmines might be for a particularly deranged and hopeless soldier; but he restrained himself; for wise as he was and despite all his best defences the Oul Lass had stunned into him her superstitions, one of which was to avoid toadstools at all costs, for they were magical plants and ill-tempered when stomped.  Where the toad stools: stall, she used to say. She had many little sayings and poems she would regularly spout to warn him about the dangers of life in general:

 

Watch out! Watch out!

Watch inward and out!

Beasts shall come sweet

And they’ll lie through their teeth

 

The world has your address

Written down on a big sheet

Take care you don’t annoy him

He’s a world you don’t want to meet

 

It is all of it forbidden

And don’t you forget

Run a mile if I was you

From the fairy bayonet

 

Don’t go outside

It’s dangerous out there

Stay here with me

I’ve made some soup

 

But he stomped on one of the toadstools anyway.  The roof of it cracked softly underfoot like a marshmallow teacake, then a small explosion of brown dust; the stomp felt pleasurable at first but then icky and unpromising as though he had burst a pimple on a giant’s face.    

He called out for Hilda again; but again there was nothing. 

There were many unexplored areas of the wood, areas covered in leaf and vine for as long as the wood had a life.  The one area in his memory that perhaps Hilda might have gone to – which in his memory was open and well-suited to activities such as relaxing and sitting, or settling with a book or alternative reading materials, or gathering maybe to picnic or camp – was the dell where the knock-off ring of stones was located.  That said, the pig could be anywhere right now, around here, there were all flavours of sludge and dirt that she’d be more than happy to feast upon. 

As he passed each tree, every bush, he edged an ear in closer, listening for any pig-natured rustling.

He became aware suddenly of a light humming overhead.  Looking up, he noticed steel strings in the darkening sky; they were running along the tops of the trees, and some twirled through the upper branches like silver ribbons.  The councils had their fingers out doing that conniving business they did.  He might have received in previous months a government letter informing him of new telecommunication developments in the region but he normally made no delay in crushing such letters in his hands when they came to him.  Irrespective of whether he’d received notice or not, he could say beyond any shadow and doubt that all this new wiring had to be a sign of more oncoming encroachment by the bastards.    

No matter what they were given to say these days, territorial agreement remained for Moloney the most elemental code for living, a respectable system, a classical one, a foregone conclusion round these parts; honest with himself however, he knew he had no claim to these lands over the hills, but he also knew they were lands which had suffered ruthless fragmentation over the years in their hundreds.  Conquered and divided and bought and sold by a thousand cunts and their pups.  And though the Oul Lad had been an oul cunt too, his defiance of the state and its land reforms had stuck with the young Moloney.  Who was to say all these lands around here weren’t originally the dominion of historical Moloneys?  Sure maybe they had run of the whole country.

When he got to the dell, there was the stone ring: a circle of six grey tablets, five feet high, constructed from Italian marble.  It probably didn’t cost a penny for crazy Lord Chichester but surely some levy was put on the land by erecting them, for the soil had to be weeping for the loss of its fundamental dignity.  Ah, the fawnies and elites could afford to leave the shit of their vainness lying around everywhere after their festivals of Celtic whimsy.

That giant oak tree like a large many-limbed mollusc was there flailing away in the slowing sunlight.  He’d been up and all across its mighty trunks as a boy when a tree of such breadth and complexity – yet with such ease of clamber – could keep one amused for a whole day. 

There was a crackle overhead like bacon frying.  The wires.  On top of emitting electrical hiss, they were also gleaming slightly, as sparks bounced off them like errant lightning bugs.

 

Hilda!

 

Nothing.

 

He began to feel sleepy.  It was not uncommon for Moloney to nap outdoors but he would not normally have done so while carrying a weapon with him; regardless, he was so compelled to sleep all of a sudden that he disarmed himself and lay down on a clean patch placing the shotgun by his side.  It was a strange feeling of tiredness.  So strange and overpowering that he didn’t even stop to ask why it was happening.  He just got himself on the ground and closed his eyes.

 

 

 

Moloney woke some hours later.  It was dark now in the wood except for the stars and the power lines swaying above the trees, silently now, less humming off them. 

He got to his feet.  

By the oak tree, the flesh of Hilda’s bottom lurched and rocked, as bald and pink as ever.  The pig seemed happy; and why wouldn’t she be?  For there was a woman standing over her feeding her some kind of biscuit.  The woman had on a long white dress with floral patterns.

Hello, Moloney said.

The woman looked up and smiled.  He knew her face.  It was a television face.  An appealing face.  She had a penknife-bob of thick red hair and was wearing witchy eyeshadow – but the good witchy.  If he wasn’t completely mistaken or mad, he would have said it was Shirley MacLaine.  Surely it was.  From the Parkinson show.  Surely he wasn’t mad.  And he’d seen her as a hoor in one or two films.  But in those films she hadn’t played any hoor he had ever pictured, and he had pictured more than one over the years.  Hoor was a common job for funny girls in certain funny films; for sure, it wasn’t titty-flicks she was known for.   

Hi, she said, with the American accent. 

Well.

Can I have a shot?

She was looking at the shotgun.  It was still on the ground.  He hadn’t seen a woman in oh two years so he simply nodded.

Be my guest.

He thought perhaps she could handle it being an American.  He picked up the gun and held it out for her.   She tossed a load of biscuits on the ground for Hilda to finish off and skipped over to Moloney, taking the shotgun from him with much gratitude and excitement.  Up close, she reminded him a bit of the Oul Lass in her younger days.  Before the beatings took their toll, the Oul Lass was a sprightly sort, and Ms. McLaine also had that in spades. 

She aimed the firearm into the trees and fired off a few shots.

Go on, ye good thing, said Moloney.