In the Forest by Edna O'Brien

Author:Edna O'Brien [O'Brien, Edna]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
Tags: CS, ST, Fiction
ISBN: 9780618339655
Google: jAGlPwAACAAJ
Barnesnoble:
Goodreads: 3050778
Publisher: Phoenix
Published: 2002-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

Wild Ponies

Pre-dawn, the grey woozy world, a horn of a moon going back in and rain dripping off the branches.

O’Kane wakens in the back of the car, pulls the blanket down and sits up crumpled, he looks around, feels for the rifle and listens; then he gets out.

His piss against the green lichen of the tree rises in a prolonged and steaming arc and he breathes deep and slow into the neutral greyness, allowing not even a chink of a thought, saying time to move on.

The car bounces over the narrow slash of tarred road, swaying on the bends, uphill and downhill, past the odd bungalow, a gateway, a red letter box, a caravan, cows. Another mile or so and he is on the dirt road and after that on a mountain pass, lurching and bouncing among the ruts. No guards, no lorries, no scumbags, bandit country. He is in his element, whistling, cheering, like he has won a race, a tremendous high, his energy gathered and transferred into the driving, the last drive in that rackety little yoke, soon to pass into another county, a deserted outback, the end of the little yoke, its last hooray in a whoosh of flame. He is untouchable.

When he has to slow down he thinks fuck shit and reaches for the rifle. Crazed ponies everywhere, bucking and leaping and he thinks of finishing them off, pictures their heaped bodies all over the road, then thinks the fucking car will be stuck and the scumbags able to trace it. They are Shortie’s ponies, brown and fawn and grey and striped, bouncing in the air, butting the car in ones and in pairs, neighing, wild eyed. He thinks, nothing for it but to drive them off the road and he ploughs through them with a hectic speed and they scatter towards the mountain. He stops the car on the broken bridge near where Shortie lives. His van is gone. The yard a scrap heap of junk and Shortie’s jaunting cars for gigs in the summer, hens and two foals at the front door leaving their cards and swishing their chestnut tails.

From the booth he takes some clothes and the yanked off number plate, smells the clothes, flings them in the back and then stands on the rickety bridge of iron and cement-blocks and looks down at the water that is the colour of porter and frothy like porter too. He is about to pitch it in when a whelp has come up behind him and grabbed the calf of his leg through his trousers. He roars. It is the dog from her place, looking at him with a wolf’s venom, one brown eye and one blue, not growling, not barking, just staring at him.

‘You devil,’ he says and strikes it on the snout with the metal plate but it crawls away, yelping and each time he tries to catch it it slips from his grasp like it is covered in oil or car grease. Then he tries another tactic which is to coax it, to bring it closer.

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