What is Left When Everything is Gone (9)

The General

This instalment continues the story of life at Dergmoney House in the summer of 1977. To Calgary friends who are following What is Left, I am sorry for the delay. We shall return to Calgary next week, for the start of grade nine at Vincent Massey.

For now, I hope you will find amusement in the daily rituals of a place from long ago.

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Uncle John and Auntie Willow are already finished breakfast. Katey is taking away their dishes. Uncle John is busy giving Aunty Willow orders about what he has to do today, and she is pretending not to listen. We sit down and Katey puts big breakfasts in front of me and Warnock. Lamb sausages with mint in them, a fried egg, potato bread, bacon, beans, fried tomatoes and mushrooms. Tricia and Alison come in and everyone is making fun of each other, not in a horrible way like in my school, but in a funny way.

Tricia tells me I shouldn’t have left my red and blue jacket on the lawn because it will be full of earwigs. I tell her I don’t care.

Earwigs? Do they go in your ears? They could wiggle in so easily. Then, if they got in, what would you think or feel while they crawled around your brain?

Willow is going to drop Warnock and me off in town for the parade.

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We are in Omagh now. It isn’t like Calgary at all. There aren’t any tall buildings for one thing. Or walls made of mirror. It is like an old place, a medieval place, not some moon base like Calgary with its centennial celebration.

We are squeezing into all the people along the sides of the road as the parade passes in front of us. It isn’t a parade like for the Calgary Stampede though. The Orange Orders are marching past.

The crazy racket blows my mind. There are so many sizes of drums, big ones sideways out in front of your belly going bom bom bom, ranks of little drums flat out in front with sticks going rat a tat tat rat a tat tat, and tiny flutes singing up so high and sharp like knives, and then all the whistles blowing in the crowds at the sides of the road around us.

The parade guys are marching down the middle of the road through all the excited people at either side. They wear different uniforms and walk in ranks. Warnock says there is the Prentice Boys. They are in white shirts with white and black checkered scarves, and little black caps. The baton guy out front is twirling his stick and throwing it way up in the air.

There are old guys with bowler hats and black suits like for business or a funeral, and they have these orange sashes hanging down over their suits like they are the priests of orange and purple. There is a huge banner of King Billy coming up the middle of it all, on his big white horse and with his sword up and his heavy metal hairdo, and purple skies behind him and everyone is here because he won the battle of the Boyne for Protestants in 1690, sure it’s old but it is beautiful, the-he sash my fa-ha-ther wore.

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We follow the parade to a field where a guy in a bowler hat is up on a stand shouting into a microphone as if it was World War Two or something, he can hardly keep up with how angry he is about never blah blah never they will never never.

Thankfully Warnock doesn’t want to hang around here either, so we walk down to a stream. I ask him when we are going home, and he says we have to cross the stream to get there. We see long brown eels twisting in the rocks, but there is a way to step across stones, and then we are facing a steep dirt bank and Warnock is already at the top. When I start climbing, dirt crumbles under my hands and there are those grey armadillo things Warnock calls slaters which I don’t like because they seem prehistoric.

Warnock says Aunty Willow was planning to take us to the beach when we got home, but it is probably too late now. I shouldn’t have told him I mostly came to Ireland to see the sea I saw when I was little. He is hanging around not moving, pretending he’s not sure which way to go. I see he is a guy who likes to mess around with you, like I thought.

We are walking through fields with horses. I tell him I will just sit on him then and be comfortable if he doesn’t know which way we are going. When I go to grab him he slips under a horse’s neck, and I am afraid to pull him out of there. We pass through a graveyard with Celtic crosses then onto the Dublin Road and I can see Dergmoney over the trees.

We meet the O’Neil girls in the field with the oak trees. Warnock moves on but I stand and talk with them. They ask why was I away all day, and I explain Warnock’s trick. They say that’s just like Warnock, just the sort of thing the cub would be at. When I tell Patricia she doesn’t stop talking about something else, and Allison laughs and laughs as though it is the funniest thing she ever heard.

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Warnock and I are in bed. There is only the light between us. I have The Two Towers open on my belly. I want to see Theoden King of the Rohirrim stand up when Gandalf breaks Wormtongue’s spell, but I ask Warnock do you know any Catholics?

He says sure the ones in the yard are all wee Fenians.

Fenians doesn’t seem like an insulting name to call them, because Finn Mac Cool had the Fenians who were the greatest warriors. Proddy is worse because it makes you seem stupid.

I say but I thought you were supposed to hate Catholics?

Ach sure, we hate them aye, but it’s not an everyday thing. The lads in the yard pretend they are your friends, but they are always thinking underneath buck you and your big house Chambers, ye black bastard ye.

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There is always so much to do around here. I planned to have a lot of time to sit around thinking and maybe drawing, but yesterday was the parade, and today is the Omagh Horse Show. After breakfast we go out to the yard to get ready.

There are so many people around. They call Uncle John The General. He is standing there now with his hands on his hips watching us working, giving orders in a bossy voice. Anne McDermott and Lizzy have horses tied to iron rings by the stable doors. They are rubbing them with brushes, making the muscles gleam. Marty McDermott lifts a horse’s hoof onto his lap and screws studs into the bottom of the shoe. Then, he paints the horse’s hoof with varnish.

Now they are leading the horses up into the back of the lorry. They are so big, and they jump up the last bit, shaking everything. They tie the horse by the halter to a ring on the wall, then scooch them over sideways with a divider that wings out so they can all fit on. There are six horses on the lorry now. The first three are John’s big horses, and the next three are ponies.

We get into the lorry behind the driver’s cab where it is like a camper. There is a big bed above the driver’s cab, and a long sofa we all slump down on. There is a door to the back where the horses are, and they will walk down there behind the horses to take a piss or have a cigarette.

We get to the show and are parked among so many other horse wagons. We open the back of the lorry and lead the horses down, one by one. I stay out of the way because the horses jump the last bit off the ramp.

There is a course for the horses, with painted wooden poles on fancy posts. Horses grunt as they run up to these and jump over, then are wheeled around to run at another fence, a double or a treble.

Someone got me to hold a horse. It is High Noon, the biggest horse in Ireland. His back is way above my head. He steps forward, onto my foot. Some people try to push him off, but he just leans into them. Jack Devlin grabs the rope and leads the horse forward.

I take off my shoe to see how ruined my foot is. There is nothing wrong, but I limp a bit for effect. Everyone is saying how my second day in Ireland I got stepped on by the biggest horse in Ireland.

Warnock leads me to beneath the army base. It is a greasy black building that belongs in Dracula, with barbed wire, mirrors and towers.

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Every morning after breakfast Uncle John makes sure me’n Warnock feed the horses. Warnock puts a scoop of horse nuts in a bucket, and tells me who to give it to. He takes a bucket to another horse. The buckets are black plastic and have chew marks on the side from where the horses try to get the nuts before you throw them in the trough.

The horses are happy when you say good morning and rub between their eyes with the heel of your hand. Warnock is having whole conversations with them. We start with the big horses in the top yard, then do the ponies in the lower yard. I spend more time talking to Thunderbolt than other horses.

We go up to the loft and throw down a bale of hay. Warnock breaks the bale into slices we give to the horses so’s they’ve got something to munch on during the day. We bring a wheelbarrow along the stables and use a sort of pitchfork called a grape to lift any piles of poo the horse has dropped. When the barrow is full we take it out through the gates in the lower yard, and up the plank to the top of the dung heap, where we tip the barrow over.

Sometimes Uncle John tells us to muck out a stable. Then, you have to go in and dig out all the straw. It is heavy with horse piss and shit ground in by the horse moving round. It isn’t as bad as it sounds though, because horse shit isn’t super disgusting like a dog’s or a person’s. It’s mostly just old straw. Anyway, you are wearing wellies, and the smell is bad but sort of rich like something you would remember.

After we muck out the old straw, we throw new bales down from the loft, and they bounce once when they land. Straw is yellower than hay. We take the bale into the stable and break it open. It is clean and dry and we kick it around, trying to make a nice bed, because the horses sometimes lie down to sleep, like big dogs.

After we do all this, we still aren’t even done. Hopefully Mickey McManus has shown up by now, because we have to sweep the whole yard for any hay or straw we dropped between stables. Uncle John is maybe around giving you orders to do extra things, or watching what you are doing with a grumpy face.

To sweep the yard you need water or you can’t really grab the hay and straw with the broom so well. In the top yard one guy has the hose and the other guy the broom. Sweeping is boring but I like it. You make a music with the broom, sh sh sh sh, and it is better with two guys as the rhythms come in both your ears, from all around you.

The lower yard is easier. You just tip one of the blue barrels in the space between the two yards, and the wave spreading out from the barrel starts rolling up stray hay and straw along its edge so you are mostly just helping it down to the dung heap with your broom.

After all that, if we don’t have to hose and sweep the back of the lorry after a horse show, Warn and me can do what we want until Willow or Katey calls us for lunch.

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After lunch all the horses have to be ridden. This is when it is busiest around the yard. Jack Devlin and the McMullen brothers might be around, or big Lizzy who is so strong and loves horses. Of course there is always Mickey, Allison, Patricia, Warnock and me, but Alison lives in the granny flat with their granny, so Uncle John can’t catch her as much. Maybe the O’Neil sisters are around and Uncle John will grab them for a job just like everyone else. I think they’re the ones who started calling him General John.

We go into the tack room and grab saddles and bridles. The saddles are light and skinny, not like the big cowboy saddles Cort and Mark have. You have to lead the horse out of the stable by the rope you snip to its halter. You stand in beside its neck to take off the halter and pull the bridle over its head behind its ears, making sure the bit is in its mouth. It is tricky at first but feels good if you do it right.

You flop the saddle onto its back and reach under its belly for the strap to pull up tight and click the teeth in. You should feel under the strap with your fingers to see if it is too tight or too loose, especially when Uncle John is around because he’ll go buck raving mad as they say if you do anything wrong. Next, you most likely have to put out your hand for the boot of whoever is getting up on the horse. If it’s Patricia you feel OK, but if it’s someone else, like Christopher Waterson, I hate that. It feels like you’re some kind of medieval peasant.

The horses go out to the school and Mickey and I run around while General John is up on a horse with his crop pointing move those uprights over there, or make a double or a treble from here to here. We stand waiting to hear the hollow clunk of the horse’s knee on a pole, and its echo drop, and we hurry over to lift the painted poles back into the iron cups.

As they shuffle between horses sometimes Mickey and me have to hold horses. Sometimes we get to sit up on a horse. That is better than holding them because you don’t always have to worry about getting stepped on. We are never allowed to sit on Sasha. Nobody is, except Patricia.

On days that Christopher Waterson isn’t around, which is most days, I get to ride Thunderbolt. He is my favourite horse and we are buddies. Sometimes I hang around in his stable chatting to him. He is speckled grey and with wavy white mane and tail. His nose has big pink freckles.

Yesterday Allison rode Flashpoint without saddle or bridle, even over jumps, just holding onto his mane. She is so brave that she is crazy. When she is around in jodhpurs and helmet you need to be on your toes because she won’t think twice about giving you a whack with her crop if you happen to be in the general direction she is heading.

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We go to horse shows all the time. I try to stay out of the way when they are loading the horses. We all get in the camper between the horses and the driver cab, and off we go through the countryside.

You can watch it best from the windows around the bed on top of the driver’s cab. I’m lucky, because I get to see so many places in Ireland. We’ve been to Enniskillen, Augher, Clogher, Strabane, Dundalk and other places I don’t even know the names of.

When we get to the show we park the lorry with all the other lorries and start taking horses out. You can appreciate the effort they put into setting up the course, with maybe some water and moveable hedges. I’m not super into watching the showjumping but I like to watch when someone I know is jumping.

My cousins and Uncle John are very good, and they usually win ribbons or a trophy. They are so concentrated when they are riding, coming up to a fence and urging the horse on. Uncle John is good at it because he is strict and relentless. Allison is the best though. When she rides through the course she just seems like she is gone, like she is part of the horse.

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Sometimes they get me to sit on a horse while they are getting other horses ready. They don’t usually get me to sit on the ponies because they are too fidgety. The horse I usually sit on is Afternoon. He is almost as big as Full Noon, but he is dopey and we are buddies because I stand outside his stable chatting to him.

It is scary because you are so high up, and there are people all around. They always look at Afternoon because he is so big. Then they look up to see who’s riding him. I try to sit up straight in the saddle like Warnock does, and seem relaxed as if I’m even bored, and sometimes when I am doing this I forget for a while that I am afraid, and then I realise I am even brave.

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We meet a lot of other kids around the place, and they are the same at all the shows. When you escape the clutches of the General, you can walk around and explore, maybe get a hamburger at a little wagon, meet some guys you know, go to their lorry and hang around.

Everyone likes me because I come from Canada and I seem different. Girls often say my accent is cool. There are a lot of pretty girls, and they aren’t always trying to be sexy with poodle hair like the girls in Canada. It is nice to see them walking round with their riding crops getting ready to jump.

They laugh at my flairs because they are all into drainpipes. They like my long hair and say they couldn’t do that because of school rules.

I tell them we have school rules too. Ah juss don’ listen.

They always laugh when I say something like John Wayne, so I do that more on purpose, but it really is just the way Calgary guys talk in nature.

Where are you from?

Well, ah ain’t from round here.

They love that.

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