Katherine Mansfield Sparkling Prose 2024 – Second Place
one, two, three, four, five, six, seven
eight.
This is how it starts. The pots are at boiling point, and it’s a Friday, and his mother is laying the table with the Laurel and Hardy shakers, and the sugar bowl, the good one from the top shelf. His father puts down the Greymouth Star and takes out his pocket watch, squinting, and says, run down and open the gate, would you, son? And Jimmy, not Jim (not yet), runs barefoot – no matter – out the back door. Don’t slam, says his mother, but he’s gone. What did I just say? But he’s in the yard, now, past the empty clothesline, and through the yard. And out the gate, quick, and then across the shed paddock, and into the cow paddock, and the sheep paddock. The dog, barking, ahead of him, keeps an eye out for the ram. He climbs the gates, one by one, in the middle, of course, or you’ll bloody well break it. His father’s voice is in his ear. And then he’s at the last paddock, with the clover and the rye and the cocksfoot, thick and green.
The paddock, the last one before the neighbour’s, has a gate that opens onto the road. He opens it. Listens. Nothing. Just his breathing. Don’t count.
The road is the main one into town, three miles to the right. In the other direction, over the bridge and past the cemetery, is the school, three miles away. Twelve pupils. And the teacher. He walks there and back. Further along the road, twenty miles away, is the junction, where the two rivers join and the road divides. He never goes any further than the junction or into town or up to the entrance of the mine. This is his world. This road. It’s a country road with the railway line, running parallel, on the other side. There aren’t any trains at this time of the day.
Opposite the gate is an intersection. Here a narrower road joins the main road. The narrow road goes on up to the mine. He waits. Listens. Looks at the intersection. Nothing. He climbs on the gate rail and swings, legs dangling, his father’s voice in his ear again, get off, damn it or I’ll wring your bloody neck. He glances back at the house with the chimney and the smoke circling out of it, and the water tank, on its pedestal, in case. He whistles. A fantail, as black as he’s ever seen, is on the next fencepost. It can’t keep still. A bit of good luck? His mother will know. The bird’s flying off the post, now, low, wings wide, tail spread, down in front of the dog’s nose, teasing, up and down. Jimmy laughs. Across the road, by the railway line, a few hens, speckled brown, and round, scratch around in the dirt. A couple of cars pass. Mr Patterson, from the junction, in his A40, off to the RSA and Dr Manning out on his evening round, the hubs of his Standard Eight shining. They wave. The dog barks. The fantail flies off. The hens’ scatter. There’s the quiet again. He can hear the river, now, right the way down at the back of the farm, and the bleats of the sheep, and a bellbird’s singsong, and there’s a tui with its offbeat note. He takes a deep breath. His lungs fill with the beech and the coaldust and the rain, on its way. He turns to look at the hills behind him and the shade creeping up. He swipes at a sandfly.
one, two, three, four, five, six, seven
eight.
He counts. Slow. The dog sits up. The sound is faint, and then louder, closer. He can hear, now, the horses’ hooves on the gravel road. One, two, buckle my shoe, he recites. He can’t see the horses yet because of the clump of old rimus. But he can see dust rising in the air. Three, four, knock on the door. This is his cue. He picks up the stick with the flag, white, triangular, cut from his old shirt. He keeps the stick by the gate. By the time he gets to five, six, pick up sticks, the horses are over the railway line and at the intersection.
There are four of them. Bessie and Floss, and Patrick, and old Joe at the rear. He hops off the gate and strides into the middle of the intersection. Seven, eight, lay them straight. Ready or not. The horses are part Clydesdales, bitzers, his father calls them, with matching blazes and fetlocks and long feathers, once white, now grey with coaldust. Their heads are up, necks forward, nostrils flared, their eyes fixed ahead. They remind him of racehorses at the track, with the finishing line just in sight, and the crowds in the stands cheering them. They look, as they canter towards him, like they have smiles on their faces. Sometimes he says this out loud to his father, about the smiles. Don’t be stupid, says his father. They’re just animals.
They are the horses from the mine.
He watches for traffic, turning his head and body back and forth, up and down, his stick at the ready. If anything comes, a car, a truck, a pushbike, a horse and cart, occasionally, even, he’ll wave his stick, the flag flapping wildly. Sometimes the material tears, such is the force he exerts. And he has to repair it. He keeps his old shirt, with the gaps, under his bed, ready for this purpose.
The horses live all week in the mine, down in the narrowness, and the darkness, under the earth, with the drip, drip, drip of water and the trickle of earth and seam. They see daylight only for a few minutes at a time when they emerge, blinking, every hour or so up from the tunnel, the wagons behind them, heavy with coal. Then they go back down again, into the darkness, to the beat of the whip and the yells to repeat the process again and again. And in between, at crib-time, or when the miners have gone home, the horses eat chaff, dry and dusty, from nose bags, night, and day. While the rats, big as cats, gnaw slyly at the tops of their blood-rich coronets, the horses too tired or too old or too sore or too discouraged to kick the rodents out of the way. He knows about the rats because his father used to work in the mine. He will follow in his father’s footsteps, too, as soon as he’s old enough. The farm doesn’t pay enough. He knows this. It fills him with dread.
The horses come at weekends and at Christmastime. During the week, he thinks about them, particularly at night, when he wakes up in a claustrophobic sweat, with the beating heart, the thought of the horses deep. It haunts him. It stops him from going back to sleep. He wonders, as he listens to the tick of the bedside clock, the alarm set for six, what the horses are thinking. The paddock? The sweetness of the grass, and of the sounds of the birds and the sheep and even of his own voice, and of the sun and the wind and the rain, too, on their bodies? He hopes so. He closes his eyes. And counts.
one, two, three, four, five, six, seven
eight.
The train goes past. He looks at the clock. The 1.26am to Westport. Eventually he falls back to sleep.
The horses ignore him as they canter past, and through the gate, and into the paddock, every Friday. But he knows they know him, know who he is, like him, love him (he likes to think this), are happy to see him on the road with the stick and the flag. Just as the sun is easing itself behind the hills. He never mentions this to his father, of course. He knows what he’d say. The horses circle in the paddock and kick and whinny and get down on the ground and roll, over and over, and again. Then they get up and shake themselves and pause for a bit before they bow their heads and take their first gulps. He puts down the stick and shuts the gate.
On Sunday afternoons his mother opens the biscuit tin with King George’s face on the lid and he and his father pick out a Cameo Cream or a Shrewsberry or a Gingernut. Just one mind you, says his mother. And puts the lid back on. His father yawns and stretches and says, come on son. And, so, he follows his father out the back door and across the paddocks, with the shed and the cow and the sheep, and into to the last paddock where the horses are.
Along the way they stop at the shed to collect the brushes and the comb and the hoof picks and the lead ropes and the halters. The dog races ahead. The horses, bellies full, are easy to catch. He and his father tether them to the gate, all four, and brush their necks, noses, chests, withers, and legs and comb their manes, wispish, and half-chewed tails and then lift their heavy hooves and pick out the dirt and the stones from the road and the fragments of coal. Jimmy counts silently, one, two, three, as he brushes and combs and picks. The horses’ bodies are soft and warm. He puts his face close to theirs, feels their breath warm on his skin. Come on, says his father, we haven’t got all day to muck around here. And they untie the horses and let them go back to their grazing.
On Mondays his father wakes him before his alarm goes off. Jimmy peers outside at the darkness. His mother, already be up, is at the coal range, but its flame is weak, and the kindling, damp. God damn thing. He puts on his jacket and laces his boots and follows his father outside. He doesn’t bother to slam the door or to run. He unties the dog. The lead ropes and halters are in his father’s hand. They walk silently through the shed paddock, the cow paddock and the sheep paddock until they’re at the horses’ paddock.
They are hard to catch. His father yells at the dog to bloody well shut up. Jimmy counts under his breath.
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven
eight.
The dog keeps barking. His father picks up a stick. Don’t, you’ll spook them, says Jimmy. Put it down. His father, wary, drops the stick. Seven, eight, lay them straight. Jimmy’s got Bessie now and Floss too. Atta girls. He tethers them at the gate and then goes to help his father catch Patrick and Joe. Good job. His father says this to him.
And then they drag the reluctant horses out the gate, shutting it behind them, and across the intersection and over the railway line, past the hens, scratching, and along past the clump of rimus and on up the road to the mine just as the sun is rising. Nine, ten, begin again, Jimmy whispers to the horses. It takes them a long time to get up to the mine.
Lorraine Carmody lives just south of Ōtautahi Christchurch. She’s at the tail-end of a Masters in Creative Writing at Massey University. One of her stories was published in this year’s autumn edition of Landfall and another was long listed for this year’s National Flash Fiction Day Award.