Hit by Cars

Friday

He took a quick look out the door to make sure there were no neighbours lurking for the chat before popping in his earbuds. He hadn’t stretched but he wasn’t aiming for a particularly strenuous run. Just a couple of miles. Keep things ticking over. 

No dog nipping at his heels and no father shouting at him after he’d already gone out the door just to ask him where he was going. This return home had much less fanfare than usual. The dog was probably off sowing his wild oats and he hoped not to be around when whatever neighbour caught him and brought him back this time.

He was really forcing himself out for this run. He never regretted one, but it was never not a struggle when he was out of routine. Friday was usually a gym day in Dublin. He wasn’t sure if there was even a gym near home-home anymore and, if there was, he didn’t think it would be open today. He hadn’t been home-home since Christmas and hadn’t sought out the gym then for similar reasons.

He had seen his father briefly at the top of the bóithrín as the old man was pulling the rusting Skoda out onto the main road while he himself was turning in. Old man is right. It was hard to tell in the couple of seconds and through two windscreens but his father did seem more frail and ghostly than the last time he’d seen him. He was never an imposing figure but he sat particularly small and docile behind the wheel today with his hands at ten and two.

With the new Fontaines DC blasting through his earbuds to try to hype him up for the run, he jogged slowly down the bóithrín. Surely his legs would cooperate for long enough that he wouldn’t need to stretch or find a second wind. 

At the top of the bóithrín, he looked both ways. It was surprisingly quiet compared to how he remembered it but then again the holiday probably had something to do with that. He turned left and headed up the hill. He’d turn around after a mile and have the hill to bring him home when he was getting tired. It was a dull day, perfect for a longer run if he wanted.  

The drab winter feel had left the countryside since the last time he was home and was replaced by a less depressing Spring feel, with grass growing and buds popping on the trees. The hedges were a long way from the heady days of summer trimming but seeing a little color return to them was nice.  

Just as he was starting to get into a rhythm, he stopped short, his face tightening. Doubling back, he went to confirm what he thought he had just seen. There was a small animal lying in the grass verge to the side of the road. 

He could see now that it was a small dog. A small dog he unfortunately recognized. 

When he first moved to Dublin, he had left the dog with his father. He slowly poked the dog with his foot, knowing he wouldn’t be getting a reaction but silently hoping he might jump up and run away. He looked at the dog’s face. There wasn’t much left of it. Crows, or maybe a fox, had decided that was the tastiest part and made off with a chunk of it. 

The size, the little black and white pattern, the fact that the little idiot got hit by a car. This wasn’t the first or second time but he had escaped serious injury the other times. Not so this time, it seems. Had he been born a cat, he might have survived another few scrapes. 

He glanced up the road longingly as if to apologize to the rest of his route that he was to not be able to finish their run, before looking across the field to the house. He didn’t fancy carrying the dog the half mile back home but he didn’t see himself with many other options. It was the right thing to do.

Carrying him by the hind legs in one hand, like it was a duck he just shot out of the sky, he trudged back to the house. He wasn’t an old dog but he had a good run. His diet was less than stellar and he was well acquainted with the front bumper of a car. And the milk lorry once. He’d never once been to the vet in the 9 years he had been around and he was utterly useless when it came to farm work. This was something the son and the dog both shared. 

He decided he might as well bury the dog out behind the turfshed. He was pretty sure another family dog had been buried back there when he was a child so it seemed fitting. He could wait for his father to get back but then he’d only tell him he was digging the grave in the wrong spot or he was doing something else wrong. His father hadn’t been fond of the dog anyway.

The ground was soft from the incessant rain throughout the month of March and the dog was no size at all so the digging didn’t take long. He took a photo of the pup with his phone and texted it to his father with no caption before dragging the dog gently into the grave. 

As he packed the last of the earth around the fresh grave site, he found himself remembering the time they were all in the kitchen. His father was reading The Farmer’s Journal from three weeks previous, and he was scrolling on his phone. The dog was sprawled out on the kitchen floor, bloated and breathing heavily. Neither he nor his father were particularly worried about the dog but the heavy breathing did cause him to put down his phone to monitor. Maybe this was the end for the little fella. 

Just as the son opened his mouth to say something to his father, the dog let out a loud, visceral choking noise and a pool of vomit fell out of his mouth along with a lump of turf that had no business being inside anything other than an open fire. His breathing immediately relaxed and his bloat retreated.

“Been eatin’ turf again, has he?” his father said after a minute.
“Tis hard stop him,” the son replied, stirring himself to look for the sweeping brush and the shovel.

The son smiled at the memory but laughed when he remembered that the dog was licking up the pool of vomit when he came back in with the sweeping brush. He touched his cheek just below his eye and came away with a little water droplet on his finger. He looked to the heavens to see if it was raining. It wasn’t.

He leaned on the shovel for a time until he realized he was still in his running gear and was getting cold. Back in the kitchen, his father had come home and was still in his good trousers, eating an apple.

“Out for a run, was it?”
“Yeah, but more recently burying the dog.” He eyed his father with suspicion. “Did you not get my picture?”
His father took another bite of the apple and chewed it slowly.
“I left my phone at home. Hit by a car, was he?”
“Looks like it. Did you know?”
“Sure isn’t he always getting hit by cars. He’s been missing these last few days.”
“Did you not think to go looking for him?”
“He always turns up eventually.”

Saturday

“What do you think happened here?”
The son had just stepped down from the tractor to survey the damage. His father, who had been sitting in the transport box, was already there, scratching his head beneath his grey, peaked cap.

“Hard to know. Could be deer. Might have been a fox hunt. I’d put money on that prick Moriarty and his bull, though.” He took off the cap fully now to concentrate on a more intense scratch. “Harry Logan said he made a shite of a couple of his paddocks and bulled one of his heifers.” 
“Moriarty or his bull?” the son retorted with a grin.
“What?”
“Never mind.”

He swallowed down the disappointment of his joke not landing with his audience of one. He was looking forward to pints with the lads later where a joke like that would have been met with uproarious laughter.

“We need a new corner 6-footer anyway and probably three more 5-footers, do we?”
“See can we save the old corner post first or use it somewhere else.”

The son did as he was bid and walked over to the corner to pick up the wooden stake that was lying on the ground. It had obviously been there for several months of the harsh, wet winter and was starting to rot where it sat on the ground. It was also far heavier than it had any right to be, especially since it had snapped where it met the ground and stood no taller than 4-foot now. 

The son slipped the fence over the top off the post and then dragged it back towards the transport box on the back of the tractor. His father was sizing up the damage to the smaller stakes and assessing their salvageability. 

The son pulled a 6-foot post from the transport box, a much better version of the one he had just thrown in there, but still quite heavy. He held on to the top of the post and dragged it towards the corner and its new home. 

“Would you ever pick that up, you’re making a shite of the paddock,” his father said, carrying two halves of a much smaller stake to the transport box, one in each hand. 

Stooping down, the son wrapped both hands beneath the post and lifted it awkwardly, almost losing his balance as he struggled to find the right weight distribution. He carried it to the corner and dropped it.

“Sure it’s all wet now. You may be the one to pick it up again when it’s ready to go in the hole,” his father was behind him now carrying the crowbar. He sunk it deeply into the base of the hedge, right next to where the remnants of the old post were rotting in the ground. He wriggled the crowbar around in a tight circle in the ground, widening the hole slightly before pulling it free, lifting it high and sinking it deeper still into the hole. 

“Go easy or you’ll hurt yourself,” the son moved forward to try to take the crowbar from his father, who blocked him with his body.
“I’ve been doing this since I was a lad. Go and get the sledgehammer.”
“We’ll save ourselves some work and use the front loader. That hole is plenty big enough.”
“The front loader never drives them straight. This post needs to be straight.”
“The ground is soft. It’ll drive it deep and straight. You’ll make an arse of that hole.”

The father didn’t seem to listen and continued widening and deepening the hole, and the son ignored his father’s request and got into the cabin of the tractor and started the engine. His father pulled the crowbar from the hole and stuck it in the ground a few yards away before going over to pick up the post that was lying on the ground. He stuck it in the hole, straightened it as best he could and stood back.

The son rolled the tractor forward until he was just a few feet from the post and slowly lowered the front loader until the bar across its front was nearly at the same height as the post. He edged forward slightly and rested the loader on top of the post and pushed the lever forward a little more. The loader pressed the post slowly, sinking it deeply into the accepting ground. The son looked at his father now who was moving his fingers in a downward motion to signal he could keep going. He obliged until the fingers stopped moving. 

Before lifting the front loader again, he let his foot off the brake and the tractor rolled back a few inches. This pulled the now well driven stake with it. The son pushed the brake again and lifted the front loader immediately but the post was already slightly off-center. He looked to his father and couldn’t tell if he was imagining the head shake or if it was really there. He reversed the tractor back, killed the engine and got down to inspect the post.

He put a hand on the post and tried to shake it and it didn’t budge an inch.

“It’s faster and there’s no work to it,” his father spat on the ground, “but it’s not straight.” He walked back to the transport box and took a roll of high tensile wire out and brought it over to the freshly driven post. 

Together they worked silently, insulating the wire and tying it snug around the post. The son got a hammer and staple and tapped it on either side of the insulated fence to ensure no slippage when the wire was tightened in a couple of minutes.

While the father methodically rolled out the wire to bridge the gap where Moriarty’s bull had broken it, the son went back to the transport box for the wire strainer. The wire strainer was a metal apparatus that came in two parts. One piece was an adjustable parallelogram with a long chain protruding from it. Squeezed together, the parallelogram would bite into the wire. The second half was a similar shape but this one had a handle and a couple of teeth. 

The chain would be fed through the teeth and the two pieces would be pulled closer together by the handle, tightening the wire in the process. When it was tight, the user could then tie the two pieces of wire together. It was genius in its simplicity and twice as effective. When they were done here, they’d be able to strum the wire like a guitar string. 

The son went to retrieve the long length of wire that they would be attaching to the fresh wire the father had just laid. While he was doing so, the father wiped his hands on the damp grass beneath his feet.

“Where did you find the dog yesterday?” The father made a loop at the end of the wire and twisted it tightly.
“Not far from the head of the road. In the ditch.”
“And he was just lying there?”
“Well, I’m not sure you’d call it lying. He was dead, like.” The son squeezed the chain end of the strainer so that it bit into the wire.

“You’d think whoever hit him would have told us. Everyone knows that dog.” The father did the same with the handle end and they stood now feet apart waiting for each other to make the next move.

“It could have been anyone that hit him. That’s a busy road. He should have been tied up so that he didn’t run.” The son moved towards the father and fed the first couple of chain links through the teeth on his father’s side of the strainer. The father, for his part, held the wire in place. His half of the strainer was the heavier and more complex half. 

“There’s not much point in having a dog if he’s going to be shackled.”
“There is if he’s going to get himself killed.”

The father let out a hmph and stepped away as the son took ownership of the two parts of the wire strainer and slowly and methodically started to crank the handle, feeding two chain links at a time through the teeth. The two pieces of wire started to lift off the ground and come together with each crank of the handle feeding two links through the teeth.  

“I’m surprised you didn’t use the front loader for that, too.”
The son stopped cranking and fed his straight piece of wire through the loop his father had made. “For what?”
“You buried him too close to the shed.”
“Why does it matter how close he is to the shed?” Another two links and the two lengths of wire were taut now and there was enough slack to tie them together.
“He’ll get no sun where you have him.”
“He’s in the fucking ground. He’ll get no sun anywhere.” Two more links and the wire was tight now. A strum would have produced a passable D-minor.

“I don’t know why you were in such a hurry to put him in the ground. It’s not like I was far away.”
“He was starting to rot and didn’t have a face. Did you want to see that?” Two more links were fed through with serious effort. The son stopped and looked directly at the father, leaving the wire strainer hanging on the wire, ready to be connected.

The father let out a long, deep breath but didn’t respond. Instead he moved forward and took control of the wire strainer. 

“It’s tight enough,” the son said vehemently. He strummed at the wire to prove it.

“It can go tighter.” The father, slowly but with great strain showing on his face, pushed the crank away from him and grabbed two more links of chain with the claw. “See?” he said, looking his son directly in the face.

He pulled the crank towards him this time to get two more links. As he worked it past the first link, there was a loud crack and an even louder “Fuck,” as the wire loosened instantly and the strainer fell from the father’s hands to the ground.

“I told you it was too tight.”

“You’re the expert of fencing, are you? Same as burying dogs, is it?”
“You didn’t even like the fuckin’ dog?” The son threw his arms wide in exasperation. 

The father didn’t respond while he went to retrieve the hammer to free the strainer from the wire on the ground. After a few taps it was free.

“Haven’t you somewhere to be?”
“What?”
“Aren’t you going for pints?”
“Yeah, later.”
“Well, you can fuck off and get them now.”

The son stood for a second looking at his father but the father was busy looking busy. The son picked up the wire strainer which was lying in the grass and dropped it back in the transport box as he continued to walk on silently towards the house, his head swimming in confusion at what had just happened.

Sunday

The son tried to refocus on the words of the Priest but it was just monotony. His droll voice carried through the speakers and the muffled drone was being pumped directly into his unreceptive ears.  

He swallowed again. Dry again. Saliva had abandoned him. All moisture had fled his body and he was left with a dull ringing in his ears and an unrepentant churning in his stomach. He hadn’t showered and couldn’t concentrate on the cacophony of smells emitting from his person. His breath was somehow both stale and laced with alcohol. His body odour was somehow both ripe and laced with alcohol. He didn’t know how but he could also smell his own hair and he didn’t like that either.

All of these smells were mixing with the pungent smell of cowshit from the other farmers who had crept in late and were also standing down the back of the church. Francie Hennelly hadn’t even changed his wellies and looked like he walked here directly from the milking parlour. 

The son swallowed again and tasted television static in the back of his throat. That wasn’t good. He ignored it and tuned back into the priest. He was on to the part of the sermon where he explained that Mass happened on days other than Christmas and Easter and that he expected to see a lot more of them after today since they’d proven that they could pack the church out. 

After he felt like he had roundly scolded his congregation enough, he moved on quickly to getting ready for communion. The son thought that might be called the consecration but he couldn’t remember. Right now he was locked in a battle between his stomach and his throat and he was firmly rooting for his throat to hold the line.

He let out what was supposed to be a small burp but ended up stirring something deep within. He imagined tiny little seismologists who had been conducting tests in and around his diaphragm and one of them screaming, “It’s gonna blow!” and they were all now fleeing in different directions, dropping everything they own in the hope of clearing the area. 

He couldn’t wait any longer, and squeezed out past his father, who pretended not to notice so busy he was concentrating on the bells ringing on the altar. Once he cleared the double doors of the church, he ran from the entrance to the nearest grass. He didn’t quite make it but the projectile nature of the first wave of vomit cleared the last few steps with ease. 

He stopped and stood at the curb now and gagged again. This brought up another wave of puke and he was able to see what exactly was causing all of the discomfort. There were chunks of not totally digested, not even fully chewed, chips. 

The bile in the back of his throat told him they had been garlic cheese, a particular drunken weakness of his. The shavings of what was undoubtedly a kebab came as a surprise. He didn’t know of a chipper that did a kebab in town. Either that had changed since Christmas or he’d ended up somewhere else last night before landing home. He didn’t even know what time that was but he did know that he wasn’t expecting to be called to go to Mass nor that he’d actually be able to get up for it. 

In some ways he hadn’t gotten up at all. He was in last night’s clothes that he had never taken off and as he was bent over waiting to fully empty the contents of his stomach in the grass beside the car park outside the church on Easter Sunday morning, he saw a curry stain on his pants. How many fucking meals did he have last night?

The third wave of puke came and it was more angry and less satisfying than the ones that came before. It was all retching but very little in the way of purging. He spat out the remnants of whatever was left in his mouth and continued to spit until it was dry again. His stomach still didn’t feel good but he knew that it was empty, judging by the cascading volcano that he had now created at his feet. 

He needed to sit down. There was a nice little wooden bench placed at the entrance of the car park. It was too far from the church to be of any use to anyone. It wasn’t pointed towards, or the backdrop for, anything pretty. It was too out of the way of the path between the car park and the church to be a useful rest stop unless you really wanted to sit and behold the charms of an unkempt graveyard.

Nonetheless it was here for him in his hour of need. As he stumbled over to it, he read the inscription, ‘Donated by Martin and Rose Hennelly.’ God bless that man and his wellies. 

He sat on the bench for a couple of minutes. The breeze was cool and gusty. It was a wet morning but it wasn’t raining. The bench was cold against his arse and he liked that right now. He wasn’t sure if it was wet or not when he sat down but he didn’t care.

The ringing in his head was incessant and that wasn’t likely to go away any time soon but he felt more at peace than he had at any other point this morning. At any other point on this trip home really. The argument with his father yesterday had rankled him enough to drink as much as he had and now here he sat, eyes closed and breathing heavily. 

He couldn’t tell what part of the mass was currently in progress but he had to assume there’d be people sneaking out after Communion very soon. He opened his eyes, taking a moment to focus on what was in front of him. He shut them firmly again to give his addled brain a chance to catch up on what he was seeing.

What he should have seen was the church lawn with the pile of puke he had just deposited on the grass. What he actually saw, and he was quite sure that this was it, was a dog with its face buried in the pile and licking it up with great gusto. The dog was black and white and small and familiar. He opened his eyes again for confirmation and let out an audible gasp. 

The dog heard this and was interested enough to take his face out of the pile of puke momentarily. He looked at the son as if waiting for an apology for the interruption. So eagerly had he been rooting to get to the bits of kebab in the pile that his face was covered in sick. The face that was eaten on the side of the road. The dog that he buried too close to the turf shed two days ago.

“And on the third day he rose again,” the priest was pontificating directly into his ear. Bells began to chime. A light shone down from the heavens as the clouds parted to release the full power of the sun from high in the sky. 

Without realizing, the son was standing now and slowly walking towards the dog as if in a trance, arms outstretched, whole body shaking. The dog stood stock still where he was, by the now well ravaged pile of vomit. 

He stopped a few feet from the dog, who had to be sent to him from Jesus to get him to repent. The dog remained still and the son remained with arms outstretched.

From behind him, he heard his father’s voice, overlaid with an unmistakable note of concern.

“Tell me honestly, are you on drugs?”

The son dropped his arms and turned around to see his father, who had obviously skipped out of mass after Communion, or maybe even before, as he was alone. Stepping aside slightly, the son now gave the father an unobscured view of the dog. The dog immediately let out a little bark that might be better described as a yelp and bounded straight over to the father. The father, for his part, was stunned into emotion and bent down to receive the dog with open arms, not questioning how this was possible or why his face was covered in goo and kebab meat. 

“I knew it, I knew you weren’t dead.” He was openly weeping now as the dog licked his face. The son was horrified, but confusion outweighed it. 

“What am I missing here? Are you not surprised this dog has risen from his eternal resting place on Easter Sunday and is just… here?”

The father was giggling uncontrollably now and canoodling the dog for all he was worth, whispering sweet nothings in his ear. He scooped him up off the ground and stood up to look at his son now, a broad smile still beaming across his face, and tears still dampening his cheeks. “You buried the wrong dog, you eejit.”

The son looked from the dog to his father and back again, as if one of them might explain it if he stared long enough. The dog squirmed in his father’s arms, still licking at his face, leaving streaks of half-dried sick across his cheek.
“The collar? When did you get him a collar?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “So whose dog did I bury?”

The father snorted and wiped his face with the sleeve of his good shirt, not caring in the slightest. “This gasúr has a lineage Niall of the Nine Hostages would be jealous of. Jesus but his breath smells terrible. What was he eating?” 

He set the dog down and it circled once between them before pressing itself against his leg, tail beating furiously. The father rested a hand on its back, absent-minded now, as if it had never been gone at all. For a moment the two of them stood there on the edge of the car park, the morning air cool and quiet around them, neither of them saying anything, both watching the dog as it sniffed at the grass and then looked up at them again, ready to go wherever they went next.

“Are you away back this evening? The dog’ll miss you.”
“I was thinking I might stay on and go back Tuesday morning before work. We could get the fencing finished tomorrow.”
“Aye, that’d be grand.”