Page 210 of Bridge of Clay

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W

hen we got there, in the evening, he was waiting at the fence, and he called and cried at the sky. I remembered the ad from the classifieds: “Doesn’t buck,” I said, “doesn’t bray,” but Clay had flatly ignored me, and Tommy had fallen in love. The fifth of the undangerous bunch.

This time when we’d stood for a while, the caravan shifted and shook, and a man came pouring outwards. He wore tired old pants and a shirt, and a smile of camaraderie. He walked over as fast as he could, like pushing a lorry with a limp, uphill.

“Are you the bastards who’ve been feeding this miserable old bastard?” he asked, but he was grinning the grin of a kid. Was he the groom Penelope had met that first time, over the fence at 18 Archer Street? We’ll never know.

By then the evening was fading.

The man was Malcolm Sweeney.

He had the physique of a dressed-up doughnut.

He’d been a jockey once, then a groom, then a certified stable shit-shoveler. His nose was alcoholic. Despite the boyish outlook, you could swim in the sorrows of his face. He was moving up north, to his sister’s.

“Can we let the kid in, to give him a pat?” I asked, and Malcolm Sweeney was happy to oblige. He reminded me of a character in a book I’d once read, called The Sad Glad Mad Bad Glad Man—full of kindness but also regret.

“You’ve seen the Tribune?” he said. “And the ad?”

Clay and I nodded, and Tommy was already over there; over and patting his head.

Malcolm spoke again.

“His name’s—”

“We don’t need to know the name,” Clay informed him, but he was watching only Tommy.

I smiled at Malcolm Sweeney, as encouragingly as I could, then motioned across to Clay. “He’ll give you two hundred dollars to change it,” and I felt myself almost scowling. “But feel free to charge him three.”

There was a laugh like something-once-had-been.

“Two hundred,” he said, “it is.”

At the fence were Clay and Tommy.

“Achilles?” said one to the other.

“Achilles.”

At last, they thought, at last.

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With Achilles we had to think ahead, though, and there was beauty and stupidity, common sense and pure outlandishness; it’s hard to know where to begin.

I looked up council regulations, and there was definitely some sort of bylaw—written in 1946—explaining that livestock could be kept on premises, as long as they were aptly maintained. The said animals, it stated, can in no way infringe upon the health, safety, and well-being of any residents on the property itself, or those bordering the property—which, reading between the lines, meant keeping whatever you wanted, unless someone else complained. Which brought us to Mrs. Chilman: the only real neighbor we had.

When I went over she invited me in, but we stayed on the afternoon porch. She asked if I could open a jam jar, and when I mentioned the mule, she creaked inwards at first; her wrinkles into her cheeks. Then she laughed from deep in her lungs. “You Dunbar boys are terrific.” There were three or four good marvelouses, too, and a thrill to her final statement. “Life was always once like this.”

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Tags: Markus Zusak Young Adult