The neighbours called that day for help with their threshing.
Black Mike, heading off to Doorley’s yard, barked commands at his sons, thirteen year old Mike and seven year old Liam.
“Bring in the cow and milk her, let ye! And for the love of Jaysus, watch that the bull stays put in The Hill Field!”
Mike Junior would have preferred to join his father for the communal threshing. He balked at staying home under the fretful eyes of his mother.
The bull, a restless beast, grunted in the dry ground of the Hill Field adjoining the family holding. In it, Black Mike invested all his ambitions to eventually buy out the Big Farmer Dillon and his huge herds.
That morning the bull was sleeping in the far shade of the surrounding ash trees.
Mike’s mother was busy below, feeding the hens near the gate that separated their cottage from the Hill Field. The gate was bockety and a bitch to shut firm.
Mike, in his father’s fashion, commanded his kid brother to open the gate and stand ready. Then he dandered up the incline in search of the milking cow. At a rustle from rooks in the high branches, he pulled out his slingshot and took aim. It misfired, hitting the snout of the slumbering bull.
The beast burst into life, charging down the hill. Liam leapt aside, stricken dumb in terror. The animal trundled forward, goring their mother in one fatal thrust. She slumped to the ground, blood pumping from her punctured back.
Mike watched the horror flash before him as he scrambled helplessly through the gate. In a frenzy, he grabbed a spade and lashed out at the stampeding bull, forcing him back up the Hill Field.
“Fuck ya, ya murdering bastard …!”
“And you, ya amadán,” he yelled at his shivering little brother, “could ya not have warned Mammy?”
Hours later, a horse and cart was tackled to take the body to Athlone Hospital for a post mortem. Sergeant Macken of the R.I.C. ordered that the beast be put down. Dillon, the big farmer and only licenced rifle owner in the locality, was tasked with the deed.
“Ya stupid bollox ya!” howled Black Mike, raging in disgust at his eldest son. “Curse of an angry fuck on ye all!”
Demented in grief at the loss of his wife and his prize bull, he took to the poitín with self-pitying zeal.
Lost without his mother’s gentling presence in their bereft homestead, that was the day Mike’s heart hardened. Sore to the core, he ached inarticulately at his own uselessness.
Maud Hand is a multimedia producer, broadcast journalist and educator. After 40 years serving British and Irish media and education, including the BBC, Channel 4, RTÉ and the Independent sector, Maud now writes and meditates daily, inspired and sustained by her garden and the creative community surrounding her rural Co. Galway homestead.
This short story is part of a research project on speculative historical fiction in Ireland and Spain funded by the AHRC and the University of Plymouth.
Picture credits: Kiel Murphy
THE WANDERING BARD 