Free Tarry Flynn by Patrick Kavanagh Page A

evenings to see what kind of a place they have at all. I don’t know the day or hour I was up there. Since the Mission, they don’t get up till evening I hear. When a party quits going to Mass it’s a bad sign.’
    Tarry saw the possibilities in that move, but not all the possibilities his mother saw.
    He had already another small problem in his mind – how to slip off with that sleeper before Eusebius returned for it. He knew what he would do. He would simply change the hiding place and if Eusebius found it well and good – well and good.
    Tarry shook the clay out of the heel of his boot and pulled his sock, which had been creeping towards his toes till the heel part was half-way up, tightly on his shin.
    He watched his mother as she walked along the bottom headland, slowly sauntering along it sideways looking up the drills with all the contentment that a good crop in a bad season can give to a tiller of the soil.
    â€˜There’s a drill there,’ she shouted, ‘and what the devil happened it? You mustn’t have put any dung on it.’
    She did not expect an answer, and did not wait for one, but opened the wooden gate that led into the field where the cowswere. The gate dragged and Tarry could sense her silent criticism as she pulled it open and shut.
    About this time Molly was in the habit of coming to the well, and as Tarry had not given up hopes of seducing her in reality as successfully as he did so often in his daydreams he was hoping that his mother would not delay too long with the cows.
    A ploughman runs a risk when he daydreams in a stony field – unless his horses are extremely slow-moving and cautious.
    The mare seemed to know every turn and twist of her master’s mind; instinctively, like a woman. When she stepped over a hidden rock she went still slower. Sometimes she twisted her head round to have a good look at the driver, and sometimes she seemed to be laughing at him.
    His mother wandered slowly through the grazing field, musing on the grass.
    Tarry settled himself down to enjoy moulding the potatoes. So interested did he get in his work that he didn’t ‘loose out’ till one o’clock. He threw the harness on top of the plough and let the mare eat around the headland.
    How pleased his mother was that he hadn’t come home before the dinner was ready as he usually did, ‘coming in roaring for his dinner like a lion’, as his mother expressed it.
    He returned to work in an hour, very satisfied, luxuriating in the big feed of potatoes, cabbage and bacon which he had eaten.
    He left word with Bridie not to forget to get the paper off the breadman when she went for the bread. Going to look for the sleeper he found it missing, and this vexed him plenty.
    Thus was life, and a sensitive man bogged in it.
    The nettles, thistles and docks bloomed wildly at the backs of ditches. Life was very rich.
    A spirit still buried in the womb of emotion. Tarry hardly ever had experiences that could be named. But one evening shortly afterwards a young heifer had to be brought to the bull, and on that evening he came into contact with something that almost awakened him.
    His mother and sisters helped him with the heifer to the gate.They had intended bringing her to Kerley’s bull, the fee for which was only a half-crown, but when the heifer got out the yard gate she dashed up the Drumnay lane, and it’s a principle with the people to let a young beast go the way she chooses in a matter of this description. His mother handed him the five shillings which was the service fee for Reilly’s bull, a prize shorthorn, and Tarry was considering if he’d be able to slip back when his mother and sisters were gone into the house and ring her to Kerley’s bull and save a half-crown for himself. He had done that once before and saved not only a half-crown but the whole five bob, for he got the cow bulled by a young unlicensed bull that was grazing in