Free Tarry Flynn by Patrick Kavanagh

down the drills while her son was driving the mare towards her. ‘You shouldn’t drive that unfortunate mare too fast,’ she said, for in her presence the son had put on a great spurt.
    He pulled up. The mother began to speak in a confidential whisper. ‘Had Eusebius any news?’
    Tarry thought that perhaps his mother had been listening to their talk about girls and was a bit embarrassed. ‘Curse o’ God on the ha’porth.’
    â€˜Aw-haw, catch that fellow to tell you anything! They tell me the grippers were up at Carlins’ again. As I said, as bad as they are I was glad the oul’ cow, the only four-footed animal they have about the place, wasn’t taken. They drove her into Cassidy’s field. They’ll be out of that before you’re much older. They’ll be on the broad road as sure, as sure, as sure. And mind you, that’s as dry and as warm a farm of land as there is in the parish.There’s a couple of fields there and do you know what it is you could plough them with a pair of asses, they’re that free. It’s a terrible pity you wouldn’t take a better interest in your work and you could be the independentest man in Ireland. You could tell all the beggars to kiss your arse. This rhyming is all right but I don’t see anything in it. Sure if I thought there was anything in it I’d be the last person to say a word against it, but – Stand over here!’
    Tarry stood facing the point his mother drew attention to.
    â€˜Who would that be?’ the mother whispered.
    They were watching someone, a man, coming at a stoop on the far side of a high hedge beyond Brady’s field. He had something on his back.
    â€˜Do you know,’ said the mother, ‘just for cure-ossity you should slip down to the corner and see who the devil’s father it is. I’ll keep an eye on Polly.’
    Tarry crossed the drills quickly and pulling a rotten bush out of a gap in the hedge went into the grazing field.
    The man with the sleeper on his back was going at a stoop on the far side of the other hedge that divided Finnegan’s Big Hill from Flynn’s farm. It was Eusebius.
    While he was developing a strong jealousy towards Eusebius who was making such a practice of stealing sleepers that they’d all be caught in the end he saw another man coming at a murderous gallop down Brady’s narrow garden. This man was not a railwayman but a small farmer from the opposite side of the railway. No normal observer of the scene would need to be told what it was all about.
    Eusebius sized up the situation for he now was shoving the sleeper through a hole in the hedge into Flynn’s field.
    Having pushed the sleeper through he saw Tarry and, never at a loss, stood his ground until Tarry came up. Then seeing the angry man approaching he climbed through the hole made by the sleeper into Flynn’s field.
    â€˜Larry Finnegan, he’s mad,’ Eusebius panted with a laugh that was much strained. Tarry listened.
    â€˜He had the sleeper ready to take away, had it over the paling and was going back for another – the greedy dog – when I snaffled it on him. Just for a cod, you know.’
    By now the angry Larry had come up but instead of turning on Eusebius he went past without a word with an injured expression.
    They hid the sleeper in some briars and Eusebius went back the way he had come.
    â€˜Well?’ asked the mother when the son returned.
    He told her the story.
    â€˜There’s no luck in a thing like that,’ she said. ‘If I wanted a thing I’d pay for it and not have people throwing it in your face. Yes, aye,’ she said about nothing at all. ‘That mare won’t take long; you’d want to keep an eye on her. Oh, an unfortunate pack of poor devils. Do you know what?’ she declared suddenly on a new and enthusiastic note, ‘I think I’ll dodge up round Carlins’ one of these