Free The Black Snow by Paul Lynch Page A

still sullen with him. She spoke one thing, told him to take the car on account of his lungs. He walked towards the Austin and saw the breeze dance detritus and dust at his feet in leaps little like a child’s playing. He drove determinedly, choked the car’s gears, leaned over the wheel into his thoughts, followed the main road in the direction towards the town for a half mile. The road skirted patchwork fields of cattle and sheep he saw if only by his refusal to acknowledge them. It seemed to him that spring should not keep.
    Strange these days to see a car on the road on account of the petrol rationing, and walkers or those in the fields turned to see who it was. They saw him hunched over the wheel and he wagged unseeing a finger at them. He took a turn-off where the land leaned down lazy like a barren afternoon and he turned then onto a lane. Gravel muttering under his wheels and he followedthe way made dark by deciduous trees until the doctor’s house loomed before him. A two-storey house with a small extension that led to the doctor’s surgery. He parked in the lee of the gable wall, sat in the car and did not get out. Sat there and looked up at the wall. Upon it a tree made a shadow drama of lightning invert that fired darkly without sparks towards the roof. He looked for his tobacco and rolled a cigarette, coned the smoke out his nose without coughing. Took another drag and noticed the settle in his lungs. There you go, doctor. Not a bother on me. He rolled down the window and flicked the butt out onto the stones and watched it snuff out, heard the surgery door open. He started the car quickly, clanked the gears into reverse. An old woman bending over a boy came out the door.
    He drove towards the town that rose greyly into a ragged shape upon a hill. Two-storey houses lined each side of the road in rising uniform fashion. He made his way to the centre of the town and parked where the streets converged into the shape of a warped cross. He walked past the hardware store where an old man nodded to him, the fellow sitting on a chair with his legs spread out like he had groin pain, nursing in his mouth a limp unlit cigarette. Barnabas stopped and lit it for him, stepped into the post office, fished from his pocket a letter from Eskra addressed to her mother in New York. The small black script neat as calligraphy had smudged. Would be opened no doubt by the sister. He posted it and went towards the butcher’s, stopped outside, heard the bone-snap of a cleaver, stepped in. Gag of meat smell that hit him. He stared at the floral tiles on the wall and made his order and tried not to breathe for the meat smell that persisted and wove into him its reminder of death.
    He went back to the car and put the meat on the seat androlled down the window. As he reversed the car, rain came with a sudden temper and he looked at the window and left it open. As he drove the rain sprayed his face and put a slick upon the road. Soon the surface shined and made the reflection of the car passing over it a sleek tremulous thing, the shadow of an animal fleeing half seen. In the film of rain everything that was held in it shimmered as if the shadow image of things were themselves alive—solid-stiff trees made trembling and buildings quivering as if that which was solid of the earth was not solid any more.
    He took the turn off the main road and followed the track for the half mile towards his house, parked and put on his cap and got out. He stood under the rain and listened to it make music with his hat. His eye followed the downpour towards the mountains and he saw their dark countenances near hid behind cloud. He reached into the front seat and took out the grease-paper with the meat cuttings inside and stepped into the house. He did not note the strange settle of the place, how the radio that usually hummed with music or chatter was hushed, how even the clocks seemed careful. He hung his coat on the coatrack’s curling tongue and his hat