The Old Man of the Barn
It was an abandoned barn. There was little of the farmhouse itself left, except for its derelict walls and nearby some old empty stables. It was in a wooded valley, sheltered on three sides by trees, with just one approach for the van. There were animals in the fields (so that there must have been another house too). Andrea heard the long low sound of cows and peered through the back window, her looking face receding from the marble plum eyes of chewing beasts. The van that brought them from the city drove straight in through the wide opened wooden barn door. Callum and Andrea sleepy from the three hour diversion-laden, false trail-laden, switch and check-laden trip and their mother awake through anxiety and fear, emerged from the back doors, the driver helping them down the steps. He then quickly closed the doors. There was a wait of one minute.
- Lieutenant? The driver suddenly said to the empty low lit barn.
There was only the briefest of pauses. After all a Lieutenant should be able to rely upon the skills of his sergeant to get a delivery done without compromising security. Clifford Shea then rose from the hay on the upper loft in the barn. He was in his work clothes. Brushing himself down, he flashed them all a smile.
- Have you brought this goat his feed then?
He stepped back out of sight into shadow, lifted up the stowed hayloft ladder and put it in its perch. As he came down backwards, Eileen was suddenly speaking to him about the consequences, and the further consequences of all this.
- Not even the weeds get messed around this much Clifford Shea.
Under the hay store a table was set out for dinner, and next to it a large settee held presents for the Children. On a little stove a kettle was sat. Clifford went to it and set it going with matches. Coming back to the table he sluiced the contents of a teapot to a large tin barrel on the floor and then picked up a white stone jug.
- You can’t get much fresher than farm milk, he said, sniffing it.
Clifford soothed and reasoned with his wife. He knew that it was her fear for him, that her anger was really a relief at seeing him again. He knew that she understood as well as he that whatever privations they were suffering it was preferable to the internecine war that would be its alternative. They talked openly about whether the problem was being dealt with, and when he could return home. He told her that ‘the old man’ was with him, a good sign. In the midst of this his tea-making hands brushed his children to their treats and he kissed them as he did so. Clifford told his wife that problems were going to get worse before they got better. That it was one thing fighting the British but resolving the kind of internal dialogue about tactics with men that had lost friends and family in the war was a deal harder. He suggested to his wife that she lay low with the children for a while, perhaps in Cork with her family. Eileen left these comments in the air. She took the food from her bags and laid out a cold meal for them all. Andrea and Callum sat on the settee with the unwrapped presents.
- This sofa is damp, Andrea said.
The cold meat meal was consumed in near silence with Clifford trying to entertain his children. The driver or sergeant was on lookout or generally excluded from the occasion. Andrea asked which. Clifford tapped the side of his nose, and then extended his hand to rub her left ear.
- Do you like the toys? He asked them.
Callum looked over to the settee where the tape machine that his father had bought lay. Next to it Andrea’s pastel drawing kit was revealed but unopened in its plastic satchel. She was not going to allow the paper to get damp she told her father.
- It has no batteries Da, Callum said.
- Your Ma will get some for you.
Clifford quietly put his hand into his jacket pocket and pulled out a pound note. He placed it on the table in front of his wife. Eileen’s face was in a state of restraint. It was clear even in that subdued light. Andrea watched her mother’s eyes alight on the money and look away. She could not meet Clifford’s eye. Andrea could see that she was frightened. But Andrea was reassured by her father’s display of bravado. He may be on the run (Andrea understood this concept even at that age of nine) but he was still going to sit down to dinner with his family. Life goes on.
At the end of the meal Eileen stood to clear up and realising where she was, realising the ridiculousness of the proposition of that routine in this setting, she sobbed. Callum did not need to be told. He took Andrea by the arm and led her over to the far corner of the barn. With one eye looking into the lights where his parents were, he began to talk with Andrea about the morning and what she might draw.
Clifford and Eileen spoke for a long while together on the sofa. Andrea began to wonder about the driver. Where had be gone?
Later when Eileen lay quiet with her eyes closed Clifford scooped his children back to the sofa and began to sooth them asleep.
- Do you know what my children? I am a generous man, he said. When I am old, and tired, with my business done I will spend my time watching just your mother and then one morning, unshaven, I call on her for one more act of writing. I will get her to write a deed. To write a promise for me which gives all my things to my children. Right there and then. I won’t need them then. I would be happy to live in a place like this. Every book of learning. Every framed printed design I have drawn – why would I need to look at them in a land like this? Every scrap of furniture and food. And all the money too. With no rules. Spend what you like, when you like. Eh? What about that?
Andrea, fought back sleep and looked at her father who was in almost complete darkness. When had he moved the lamp to the floor? She had not seen that. She made out the shape of his form against whatever background that she could find. The walls were too far away, for he was in front of the three of them on his hunches, but there was a kind of light reflection projected behind him that was moving. For a moment Andrea thought there was someone else nearby and then she looked up. It was the light from the lamp on the floor. Her father’s shadow, not crisp or clear but stretched into an elongated mist. It moved as the lamp flickered, no matter how still he seemed on the ground in front of her.
- Now here is the surprise part. This is what makes the story unique. I will give all that I own not to two children but to three, equally. To my brave son Callum and my beautiful daughter Andrea and to a new child who can only be born into a new Country. The child is not yet born, but is still with us. Though not formless, not glue, the child cannot fix a form. The child tracks us, changing as we do. I do not know if she will be a boy or a girl. We can pick a name that will allow for both. Unity we will call the child. Unity is strong. Red hair and red cheeks. A country animal. Whatever we are doing, wherever we are Unity is with us.
Andrea immediately saw Unity as a girl. She listened on to her father, substituting a ‘she’ for this sexless future child.
- She has an equal share reserved now. We have to prepare for her because we know that she is going to come on the scene. She is a source of comfort. A dream of the future. She is however old you want her to be, whenever you need it. She is a friend and a reminder of what has to be done. Now, what do you say? Shall we allow her to be invented? What do you say?
Callum stayed silent but Andrea could hear his breathing. Andrea felt unable to speak. She lacked an answer to the question. Clifford heard only two sleeping children. He lowered his voice to just a low whisper.
- Now Unity needs a kiss goodnight. Kiss the air so that is gets to her. And I will kiss my lovely children.
She would sketch her out in the morning was Andrea’s thought before leaving the smell of the damp behind her and falling asleep.
Whether it was that that thought was not enough to sustain her until the morning, or whether it was that she had heard a real sound, Andrea woke again that night and encountered her father again in the role of a story teller. Andrea lay awake and allowed her eyes to become used to the light. The lamp had burned down to a glow, but after a while it was sufficient. In the shadow she could make out Callum who had stretched his head across to their mother. She had pulled her arm around him. Andrea was free of both of them. She sat up and looked for the shadow of her father but he was not there. She wondered about the driver that she had not seen since they had arrived. Gingerly Andrea walked in the barn to search for her father. Walking around the inside of its walls she did not find him. Then she remembered the loft. She had a child’s assumption that there would be no danger in this, that the floor would be whole and support her. But in the remnants of the hay she did not find him and decided to descend again. It was then that she noticed the light outside. Walking to the back wall of the hayloft, she peered through a crack and saw the stables for the first time. A lamp was burning there. She carefully descended the wide rungs of the ladder, it taking the full force of both her arms to come down again. She felt herself to the van and went behind it to the closed door. She had no idea how to open it but found that there was sufficient play in it to pull it forward and slip through. Outside she re-oriented herself and walked the edge of the barn until she saw the stables again. They were not far though she had no idea of the land between them. The grass was uneven. In the half moonlit night Andrea descended a small ditch and put her arm out to steady herself.
For the first time Unity took her hand and helped (as two years later Andrea when she backed away from her grandfather and looked at herself in the bedroom mirror of her new London home as she considered talk on her future. And this future girl remembered about one year before, aboard the ferry, when combing her hair in front of that mirror, that the boat pitched enough to unbalance Andrea and she again would put out her hand to Unity to keep steady). Years later, in the act of adult recall, all three ages of self locked minds still to remember those stables, and remember the memory of Unity’s emergence (her un-yet birth), her lesser form. It was the beginning of Andrea’s learning too, about the extent of their father’s involvement in The Troubles.
■
As Andrea neared the barn voices were just becoming perceptible, and Andrea recognised her father’s. She first felt relief that she knew where he was. She found the door locked but at its base was a hatch big enough for she (and Unity) to crawl though. The stables were divided by sections. A lamp was burning at the other end. Her father was speaking to other men. They were in the final divide, the biggest. Andrea knew immediately that it would need to be a secret if she was not going to disturb her father. She moved slowly along the line of divides until she approached the last one containing the men. She slipped into the divide immediately adjacent and located the largest of the holes in the wooden structure that was at a height she would be able to see through.
Her father had his back to the far wall and was looking straight at her. There was a sudden movement in the divide in front of her and she would have screamed had not Unity stifled her. The men were inches in front of her on the other side of the divide, and their movement shifted the structure. They seemed to be seated on the floor. It took Andrea a while to realise what her father was leaning upon, his arms spread out. Then it was unmistakeable. It was a coffin. Clifford was still and then looked towards the floor. The gentle sounds of a farm night were sounding; wind, rustle, and the panic of birds. Breathing in, he met the gaze (as Andrea imagined) of the three men squatting immediately in front of the divide before her.
- It seems to me that there are two branches of solitude; that of an isolation in space and the other; a quiet soul, alone. Gerard Rimmon has had his share of both. He was seen, touched and heard by almost no one in the course of what he was doing. Was he alone?
The men did not answer him. Clifford’s voice was light, self questioning, almost.
- No. There is an old saying to the effect that sympathy can people our solitude with a crowd. A fisherman at sea can remember his lodgings and be warmed by its memory. A priest bears with him the best wishes of his congregation, shaken out on a Sunday afternoon. And a soldier in the belief of what he does carries with him the longing of others for his own return from campaigns, and with him also the stirrings and signs of future victory, of a unity therefore with his goal. Our soldiers carry belief; it is the true edge over the reluctant recruits that we face. Not that we live without doubts or questions, nor should we.
Clifford paused a moment, seemingly reflecting on the doubts.
- And what of that other loneliness? That quiet of the soul? It is as if we are in a crowd of indifference. We are still alone, among the glazed eyes of others who cannot see our soul; who cannot see into us; or our cause; or understand its tactics. Even if we do it on their behalf. That is more like the loneliness that Gerard lived with. The loneliness of the soul can proceed along two possible further branches. Firstly those that are self reliant can ignore it. They carry on regardless. Those are the soldiers with iron in the soul, the surgeons who cut out the cancer without shrinking from it, and even the statesmen who stay with the task no matter how unpopular they become. Such men are needed to achieve but they achieve at a cost. We might ponder that and say such men are prone to enormous defeat when they are overpowered by it. Overpowered as Gerard was when he was captured by the British police and then handed over to the unionist soldiers. In such a situation a man who was merely self reliant would have snapped. Gerard would not have been that man, for there is the other branch where loneliness goes, another response that the quietened soul can be armed with. It will seem like a contradiction.
In front of Andrea then men shuffled, settling themselves.
- For the other way for the quietened soul of the soldier is about sympathy. It is turning the doubts I mentioned earlier into strengths. The sympathetic soldier trembles to be alone, is afraid of the chill and loneliness that comes from adhering to a cause or truth that others do not yet fully accept. Yet he has enough of the first way about him to bridge the gaps between the trembles and carry on. That was Gerard. He felt sympathy and wanted it too. Oh I know. His misty eyes and tears. Yet in the sun he remained unblinking the next morning. His eyes were not cast down.
Clifford withdrew one leaning hand from the coffin and placed the other in the middle of it, as if her were finding the space above Gerard’s heart.
- He knew that he was likely to die and most likely that he would die alone. It chose him, this individual fate. I mean the particular circumstances. The ongoing struggles, the trembles if you like, will have prepared him. We should not be more horrified that he would have been. Yes. That was his solitude. That is the solitude. The inability to be understood; the necessity of solitude in order not to be discovered. So that the maximum is to be half known.
Clifford paused, using his free hand to pull at the skin on the side of his face.
- Unless it is all, is it nothing? Is that what is particular to the struggle that we are engaged in? Of necessity we hold a position that cannot be lodged in the hearts of either the two people’s that we transact with; the British or the Irish. What are we to make of them, his dying words? ‘I am alone.’ I see it as an elevation. And I think it is the elevation of Gerard to the cause, and that which separated him from the sympathy of others. Because they do chose not to act. Gerard’s act elevates him above the inaction of others, and of their lack of sympathy for this. If there were any other dynamic they would condemn themselves for not acting.
Andrea thought that her father seemed unsteady with the adult words he was speaking. He seemed to be going in circles but she noticed even then (as she would study very carefully later) that there seemed to be a rhythm in his speech; waves of the sea on the shore.
- We have dwelt on the hardship long enough. What of the beginning? There are moments in every life when the old routines of duty, obligation and belonging are not large enough. For example the parental roof becomes too low, when the catechisms of the day seem too narrow and have to be thrown aside. There are times too when events beyond the end of your own street crash in upon you and demand a response. That is the first true lonely lonely moment. When the young realize that this is an awful place to be, that this state is rotten through, and that there is no rescue plan from those who should be our allies. The moment came to Gerard at an early age. His teens. His spirit of enquiry was opened and his sense of injustice sharp. Mercifully he first discovered books before he found the rocks. He found a voice which would eventually recruit your good selves with its articulation of the issues. He devoured those books and then pointed out the sour taste in his mouth. He had bitten fruit that was not yet ripe. We still wait, in Gerard’s behalf, for that sour to become sweet. We celebrate today that his conversion renewed his soul. He used these words himself. A new child was born within himself. His action combined with his notion of possibility gave birth to unity. A new unity of purpose. He never swerved from the course despite his reasonable doubts and worries. He closed the questioning appropriately each time and carried out his engagements, but left space for it to return. So that he could reconsider it. Now, now and now. The price was loneliness, the prize was possibility. Each man must take up his life-plan alone and persevere in it in a perfect privacy with which no strangers can meddle. Until the very end. What exacting language is the language that we use.
Clifford held both hands out in front of him, towards the men.
- Each of us is in a different cell. When Gerard was tried, he was tried alone. When he was sifted by the security men, he was sifted alone. We do not know what he experienced in his last moments of loneliness. We know however, that he understood both its purpose, and its value. When the vicious is pitted against the holy it is easier. It is virtue against virtue where all the difficulty lies. And there are lies. Lies about how Gerard had the trembles in front of those security men. That he went through terrible times and was tempted from his cell. That he named names and he denied us. True, the security men would have offered him everything. You can be certain, we can be certain, that Gerard chose death rather than give up that unity. He literally turned his back on them. The bullet hole shows the blow came into the back of his heart.
Andrea noticed her own quickened breath as she imagined Gerard. She wanted to leave, she had heard enough, but she could not conceive of leaving again without noise. There was complete silence as the men listened. The low hum of voices that was there when she entered would not help her again. Unity seemed absent and Andrea, imagining that other child had become more fascinated that she, imagining also that she was stronger than she, imagined finally that she had gone round the other side of the divide to look. To look at the men’s faces as they listened. To see how they viewed the argument. Alone, Andrea gripped a nailed strip of wood connecting the upright panels of the divide. She felt uncomfortable standing and wanted to sit down. Quietly and gently she turned herself around and leaned her back against the divide. She stretched her arms out and reached for the edges of the wooden baton. Her father was continuing.
- We must adore Gerard but not pity him, not fear what he suffered. He would have known strength at the end. It is one thing to defend truth and unity when you know that your audience are already pre-disposed to the argument; it is another to go down in the majesty of darkness. Crushed and shot, but not subdued, even as the light dims in your eyes.
Andrea closed her eyes and let her head fall sleepily forward. There was silence and for an instant Andrea wondered if it was she that had silenced everything around her with the closure of her eyes. In the darkness of her near horror she heard the crack of a gun and literally felt a body slumping forward. She had become the body. She felt something pierce her back. She felt pain and cried out as she actually hit the floor of the barn herself. She heard the feet of the security men. They had no faces; they were hooded ghouls, handling her now. Their voices were all at once. They were angry and concerned. She screamed and a hand covered her mouth.
Then Andrea was in her father’s arms. She opened her eyes but she could not see him. He carried her round to the lighted side of the divide and placed her on top of the coffin. She tried to struggle free from her father, in horror, realising where she was.
- No! She cried.
- Shush, her father told her, it’s alright flower. Do we have a drink? He asked one of the men.
- We do. Here, give her a little drop of this. The child is perished.
It was the first time that one of the men had spoken. His voice was older, a little rough and unkind. The other men were all around her now. The old man put a glass to her lips and she involuntarily took a gulp of the drink. It burned her throat and she coughed.
- There, her father told her, relax flower. It’s alright. You’re alright.
- She is a regular night-walker, one of the men said.
The old man spoke again to her father as he took off his coat and, lifting Andrea from the coffin, wrapped her in it.
- They should not be here Clifford, he said.
- They will be gone in the morning, he replied, as will I.
Clifford squatted against the divide and held his daughter in his arms, swaying and soothing her. She turned her head and looked at the men. She saw that there were two young men, and the older man. They had gathered round the coffin and raised their glasses and spoke in Irish.
- Do you have some words for us? Andrea’s father asked the old man.
Clifford had his hand upon the shoulder of the old man a head shorter than him.
- A few he said.
And turning to Clifford he asked him directly, harshly.
- Are you going to stay, or do you want to get her back?
- I am here for this. Say your words.
The two young men returned to their places and Clifford held his daughter so that all was completely out of her sight.
The old man was looking away from the men and to the floor. His close cropped white hair a moon for the room. He had the face of a farmer, a man near to the elements, eyes creased from watching the scenery. In his brain he had crammed the history of all struggles. He would be no good with explosives at his age, or running, he was for inspiration and for understanding. The old man stood for a while with his hands in his pockets. He was with himself. Then he began to speak, again as if unaware of the rest of the room. How the wise, or those who would be wise, or seem wise, affect a state which only seems a concern to them.
- Know thy enemy. And forewarned, be prepared. Be entrenched in views and you will not be dislodged. We should not conceal the truth. Gerard had both the British and the Irish for his enemies. Which of us, and our men, have not? The British see him with spite and the Irish think him mad. Gerard accepts this because his cause itself contains the path to replace both positions. To get there a critical mass of energy is required. Gerard has passed his torch. Will you accept it?
There was a murmur from the men.
- A hot fire. A hot fire destroys the holding positions of both enemies so that they can perceive what is possible. Till the Irish want, and the British want, the same thing. Yes and hate the same too, but still want it. What is needed for the energy is zeal. And so to what is sapped. What is sapped by Gerard’s death is zeal. It is that which we are here to put back. We will give a little more ourselves and we will recruit.
The old man walked to the coffin and wrapped on it rudely with his hand, as if he were calling him to rise again.
- The body in the box and the journey to the ground with a stone marker is ritual, and follow the ritual we will, but we will not bury the zeal with him. The memory of it is a gift.
He stopped speaking for a moment and gently scrapped the floor with a slow boot; as if he were preparing a space in the ground. A long slow triangle. The boards shuddered gently, hay scuffed or dancing for him. The men waited for him to continue.
- There are three considerations here. Firstly the condition of the world; secondly the obligations of the movement; and third the cause of justice and unity.
He stopped speaking for the barest of moments.
- What can we say about the condition of this world? The universal experience of the former colonies of Britain is one of a suffering in transition. Is there anywhere the birth pangs of freedom have not charred and burned the hopes of the peoples who have struggled for freedom, and then achieved it? Even when the British have the sense to see sense early on they are unable themselves to prevent the mess; the historical forces are beyond their control. Persia, Palestine, India, Pakistan, Uganda, Rhodesia. The list goes on. Ireland is in there too. No wonder then that the Irish themselves do not wish to face this. We must face the truth. The Irish want to remain unchanged too. For what they have now would become dead. It is as well to recognise it. To welcome it even. Religion would be dead. Dead in religion. Dead in law. And tell me, who would want to join a land so strong in the grip of the Catholic and Apostolic religion?
One of the men let out a small protest but the old man brushed it away.
- Oh I know that you do not all agree. But you ask them when you recruit and take it up there and you will get more insight. This struggle for unity is the unity of something new. You ask them. Is it not quite right for the British people of the North not to want to be bound by a series of outmoded rituals and moral constraints of priests? The Irish state is in a condition of delusion about this and unless it is addressed unity will always seem a step backwards. British acquiescence will never come without it. And yet. There is something in the corner of my eye as I talk in the Irish homes about this. Yes something quite there, and coming. People see the corruption of the current Church institutions as much as they can see the good within individual acts. They see a need for change. I tell them, and they listen. They listen, and in portals of their ears I pour. They listen. Not in silence but with respect I think. It has been the experience of all liberated nations; it is not the notion of freedom and unity that is won, it is the changes following the act which are the more important. I mean to say that after zeal, action. Will Ireland be different from the other colonies? Perhaps if it is half liberated? People ask. They hope. I doubt it. No I do not think so. There is a strong odour of corruption about the place in the current politics which unity will need to respond to, and supersede. Yes, something there and coming. Let us drink to our understanding of the condition of the world.
Gently Clifford rose and went to the corner of the stables where the glasses and drink lay. They did not help him. Helping themselves to drink, the men drank, and Andrea moved and turned, and still slept in her father’s arms. When they had finished their glasses and were seated again, the old man continued.
- What are our obligations to the movement? This may seem an odd question when we have one representation of the ultimate obligation in front of us here. But to start with death is too fast an understanding. Gerard has died so that we increase the possibility of living differently. He is – was – not such a sufficient man as that his sole dying alone will do the matter for us. There were others, there will be others as I cannot yet see the end emerging. The whole situation has become tenser of late, and maybe one side will crack. I cannot see it yet. British stomachs are strong. Irish weak. Gerard was a tool chipping away. What were his, and our, obligations? And what life does it allow?
The old man looked at Clifford holding Andrea. Clifford met his eyes from an upturned face still cast down towards where he had been looking at his daughter. He said nothing.
- If we live at all we live an imparted life. We live because the notion of unity with our brothers, in our country, has been drafted into our lives through some carrier. It may have been injustice, it may have been righteousness, but carried it was, formless until we codified it. We gave it aims. We sifted it into emotions, understanding, into the very weave of history. It is only then when we can understand it properly. It takes a kind of devotion, a living sacrifice. Politicisation is an active personal process of sacrifice and devotion.
That same man again gave protest, with movement and a sigh, but not yet words. The old man brushed it aside again.
- Listen, all I mean to say is that once these events have occurred in us, it is utterly antagonistic with continuing with the ordinary procedures of life that were there before. We are still living, but in a very different way. That is the precursor to moving away from selfish anger towards action on behalf of others. The anger becomes a pleasure in the performance of duty for the movement. Though I have noticed that Irish pleasure often sounds like lament. Every shot fired is a pleasure. Every parcel ripped open by plastic explosive, every nail tinkling in the air is like the galloping of a hard working horse in a happy exerted motion. There is no neutrality in this war. There is clarity of not being caught in a cross-fire. There is our fire and there is theirs. The movement demands that we act militarily, and that, understanding our strategy we act to change that place where we live – or where we seek to live – to make it a land that will welcome back its soldiers. If we do not do that we will achieve change, but not the justice and unity that we want. That is our obligation to the movement. Let us drink again.
Clifford showed his hand to indicate that he would not. The men took their time, and drank again. The old man continued, an audible slur in his voice now.
- Justice is our master motive. Unity is the form. It forces us along. It carries us away with the impetuosity of a torrent. It is our inspiration in our actions now, and in our belief about what is to come. It is our obedience. It is not fear, for in fear there is no heart to it. In the history of all sacrifices, which is growing and growing, Gerard’s is another that has clung to the loved object that is justice. A father would gladly bare his breast to shield his child from danger. That is natural. A mother would gladly die for the offspring of her womb. That is more natural still. What Gerard has achieved is sacrifice that is stronger still. No desertion could affect it, nor ingratitude from the people of this island, not treachery and not death. He loved home, he loved friends, he loved letters, loved rest, and travel. It was Unity and Justice however that was his emperor. Do you know the story of Napoleon’s soldier?
The men stayed silent.
- ‘A little deeper’, said the veteran when they were probing in his bosom for a bullet that had mortally wounded him, and he was told that they had reached his heart, ‘a little deeper and you will find the Emperor’. Surely we, with death busy in the midst of us, can aim for this level of devotion ourselves. What? We can I think.
In the air outside the stables Clifford felt his head clear a little. He was warmed by his bundled daughter and tightened her to him to keep her warm. He turned to the old man.
- What are we to do with Gerard? He asked
- You will take him with you when you go back. Give him to his people.
Andrea’s awake young mind in those stables caught just the edges of the argument. She did not remember that trip to the barn in the night or the return to her mother’s arms where she awoke the next morning. She surely did go. She has faithfully tried to recall the going and coming, but it is not really real for her. The vividness is in the memory of the darkness, the voice of her father and the old man, the scrape of their movement, their discomforts and endurance of the ritual, the crack of her own fall, the sound of feet on wood, her discovery, the silence and meaning of the coffin.
James A Bullion - Excerpt from
Heard published January 2008
