The Gift of Stones

19

DOE AND her daughter were standing hand in hand, the child’s tiny arm a twig in Doe’s strong grip. My father rubbed his head to remind her of the night just past. But he had left the giblets of his lust for her hung up, like a screech owl’s breakfast, on the grasses and the reeds. He was entirely calm. He bent and kissed the child.

‘I could not sleep,’ he said. ‘I went down to the shore…’He would have entertained her with a greater lie. But, here, the dog began to whine and point its nose towards the distant wood. There were no braids of smoke. The gang of men who had slept there had spread themselves out in a line. Their bows were ready. Their sticks were out. They did not talk. They were advancing across the heath like heavy-shouldered wolves who’ve traced the scent of deer. The dog began to bark. It was too late to strap its jaw. It was too late to flee. The loop of men was tightening round the heath. My father, Doe, the girl, were minnows in their net.

My father — poison all discharged — was not the reckless sort. What was the point in hiding in the hut? Or looking for a stick? He might just as well throw pebbles at the tide. Whatever mayhem was in stock that day would come and go whatever father did. And so they simply stood their ground, the perfect family of the heath — my father, one-armed, a damson bruise upon his head; the woman with her daughter on her hip and her free hand resting on my father’s shoulder; the dog; their frail and reedy hut. Some way off, the wasted semen had thickened and was tacky in the wind.

It soon was clear what it was the men had come to do. The first goose that they found was struck across its spine. The eggs which it had risen to protect were smashed with sticks and feet. Its nest was kicked into the wind. The grazing birds that rose to flee were greeted in the air by flights of wooden darts. They fell like pears. Their carcasses were left. These thirty, forty men were not hunting for the meat. They came to fight a war against the nomad raiders from the sea.

At first their killing was quite calm because the birds themselves were quiet and slow to leave their eggs. The hissing, flapping geese that had quickly understood the purpose of a human delegation armed with sticks on that spring day when father was the hunter had been reduced by the observances of parenthood to docile innocents. It was not hard to lift a stick and break a goose’s back when the victim simply sat and made threats and patterns with its head. But once the men had finished with the outskirts of the flock, the absent males — alarmed by the keenings of their mates — flew in from their browsings and their uppings on the shore to stand and honk beside their nests. Some were brought down by darts before they had a chance to reach their eggs. The wooden shafts were not strong or swift enough to kill. But they could wound — and wounded geese are giddy imbeciles. The more they bleed, the more they flap like moths in fires, the more they stretch and weave their necks and shriek their plaints. Others — addled by the carnage and the noise — put down in territory not their own. They ducked their heads and spread their wings; they barked as dogs and gallivanted on the heath like headless hens. Of all the thousand geese upon the heath there was not one, except the dead or those in shells, which remained still or quiet or simply thought to leave its nest and fly away to sea.

By now the bows had done their work and the men were labouring with sticks. They whirled and struck like flail-dancers at a feast, every loop and detour of their steps ended with the carcass of a goose. They lifted and they stamped their feet like men in snow — except this snow was stained and creamy eggs, and its slush was yolk. The few who had no sticks found rocks — juice-red rocks — with which to kill the birds. The rocks and skulls fell open and apart, they crumbled into shards, the elderberry of the stone soaked by the blood of geese.

The few older, greying men were calm and concentrated at their task. For all the passion that they showed they might have been up-ending mushrooms with a switch. They turned from side to side and cut a swathe of geese with faces which declared, ‘I’ve seen this all before.’

The younger ones were not so calm. They matched the geese in noise and fever. They swung their sticks wildly in the air. They stumbled over geese. They fell on eggs. They celebrated every blow with cries of exhortation and of swank. The death of every goose was victory for them. And every death was fuel for that odd and deadly stew of temper which, in young men, is called exuberance and which in wolves is known as brutishness. They took no notice of the family standing there, huddled like lost sheep. But when the dog — uncertain if this was cause for celebration or for attack — jumped up and set about a goose, a man whose face had more spots than hairs hit out. His stick caught the dog on its side. It fell and rolled. But it did not stand again. Four men had hurried up, enraptured by the hunt. Their sticks and stones went up and down like pestles pounding corn.

Now that dogs were counted as fair game, who or what could save the hut? There were injured geese which had taken refuge on the roof. Others coveyed in the long grass at its base. Their blood was making patterns on the wall’s caked mud. Some tried to burrow and escape through the bracken fronds which Doe had placed in bunches on the ground to keep out draughts and rats. The young men gathered round. Here was unexpected fun. Only a fool would — like the dog — run up to intervene. The hut collapsed onto the geese. It fell apart and splintered like an empty husk of corn.

‘Let’s leave.’ Father lifted up the girl and picked his way between the bodies of the geese. Doe faltered for a moment at the hut. What could she salvage from the wreckage there? The young men steamed and quivered with their sticks and watched her as she turned the broken shards of pots, the ripped and trampled mats, the shells and coloured stones with which her daughter had often played, the holed and ageing fish traps that her husband had once made, the carcass of her dog. They idly clapped their hands, shouted, laughed, jousted boasts about the work they’d done that day. Doe knew that they were mad like hiveless bees. One nervous move and they’d attack. The crushing of the dog and hut had made them skittish, itching for more fun, more death. Some sex. Some drink. A rape. A fight. She did not let them see her eyes or spot the tears that made a shallow, dampened delta in the crow’s feet of her face. She did not speak aloud the thought that mostly bothered her, that now the geese were dead the summer would not come.

Doe followed father, empty-handed, as he walked towards the sea. Their path across the heath was marked by fleshy, bloodstained boulders, which feathered and which shivered, going hot and cold with colour as the sea wind smoothed and stirred.

An old man called out before they reached the beach. His face was as drawn and bearded as an ear of wheat. There was blood upon his legs and hands. ‘Here, take a goose,’ he said. ‘They’re good.’ He mimed by chewing and by ramming fingers in his mouth. ‘Good meat.’ And then when Doe and father just walked by, he called out, ‘They had to die, those geese. We’d starve if they lived on.’

They stood to hear his reasons for the massacre of birds. He and his friends were all plain farmers — that was his excuse. They had a village and some fields beyond the forest, less than one day’s walk inland. They’d slashed and burned a clearing there about ten years before. The life was good, so far. The earth was rich. The trees cut out the wind. The pigs were fat and happy just as long as there was food and sleep. The people too. There were reeds for thatching and for bedding. There was nettle thread. And, after every gale, a glut of wood.

The old man described a farming year that was as rhythmic as a drum. The first note in the spring was emmer wheat. Then six-row corn. Then beans. Then flax, the last to bed, the hater of the frost. The goats did well all year on fodder mulched from leaves. Their milk and cheese were said to taste of elm or ash depending on the forest where they fed. In autumn there were unearned gifts in mushrooms, nuts and fruit. In winter there were bacon sides and apples wrinkled like a widow’s cheek, and grain from rat-free, stilted stacks. There was a field of fat-hen, too. Each dark and fleshy leaf was cussed like a nostril hair. Each one removed would grow again with doubled strength. The new leaves, stewed, were vegetables. The old ones — picked and dried and stacked like hay — were winter feed for beasts. The fat-hen seeds made fat-hen bread. The roots made beer. Nothing went to waste. Even dead fat-hen was good as kindling for the fire.

The farmers were not rich, of course, or powerful or satisfied. There were hard times. Who could predict the rain? Or the mood of horsemen passing by? Or the vagaries of pigs? Who could ever win the war against the charlock and the couch which were the stifling siblings of their crops? But, for all their curses and their woes, their cheeks were fat, their skins were clear, their guts were tenanted throughout the year with food. Until the geese put down, that is, until the geese discovered that cultivated fields were better than the heath, once eggs were hatched and summer come and goslings trained to fly.

At first the farmers had been pleased to welcome the few geese who came to browse between the rows of fat-hen and of wheat. Goose meat was richer than smoked pork. Goose fat was good for piles. The gosling feathers made pillows which, despite the stench, were softer and more warm than straw. Besides, the geese were cheerful birds. Their calls were melodies compared to conversations held by pigs and goats. Their coats were brighter, too. But then — two years before — the nomads had arrived in strength, their numbers doubled by the young who’d hatched upon the salty heath. They’d harvested the field, these airborne slugs. They’d cropped the emmer and the beans, the fat-hen and the six-row corn. They’d coppiced charlock to the root. And then flown off, inland. They’d done the same the following year. And worse. They’d fouled the pasture. Their green and curly droppings had burned the soil, had overloaded loam with dung, had tainted all the earth. The farmers had no choice. They’d go to war against the caravan of birds. They’d arm themselves with sticks and bows. They’d march down to the heath. They’d show the wild world who was king by wiping out all geese.