A Man in a Distant Field Read Online Free PDF

fell from them to the ground.
    Mrs. Neil was standing by the screen door, using a small broom to brush dust off a mattress leaning against her house. It was covered with blue and white ticking, faded and worn, but Declan could see that it promised far more comfort than the lumpy mattress he currently slept upon.
    â€œI found a couple of sheets, too, in the attic that I’d put there for winter mending and then forgot about, Mr. O’Malley. I’ve got them airing over the line now. I made a few patches, rather quickly I’m afraid, and they aren’t anything to look at, but you’re welcome to them. Two of the boys and Rose, who came for you, can help carry it back for you.” She stopped her vigorous brushing and put the broom down on a bench by the door. She called out towards the barn, and after a few moments two boys, an adoloscent and one who looked a year or two younger than Rose, came running. She introduce them as David and Tom. Declan gravely shook hands with them.
    â€œNo school, then, boys?” he asked.
    One of them, David, shuffled his feet and blushed. “Our dad’s taken the boat and we’ve no way of getting over to the school.”
    Their mother smiled and admitted she was happy to have them home to help her sort out the attic. “Help me fold thesesheets now, Rose, and the three of you can help Mr. O’Malley get his new bed home.”
    The woman and the girl held a sheet out and moved towards one another to bring the corners together. Declan had seen his own wife and daughters fold sheets that had wind-dried in the Irish morning. It was like a dance, each moving apart with an end of white cotton, then coming together to place palms against palms, a graceful smoothing of surfaces, stepping back to pull the length taut. He was moved to think that Mrs. Neil had sought out sheets for him when he had been prepared, even grateful, to sleep under coarse blankets for the rest of his days. He was taken back by the scene, somewhere, but where exactly he couldn’t say. He noticed that the bruising on Rose’s arms was fading, pale finished blossoms against the white of her skin.
    He took one side of the mattress with Rose just behind him, the sheets carefully draped over her shoulders like a shawl, and the boys grasped the other side of the mattress. Over the marsh, along the trail of logs, the four of them quiet and careful as they moved up the hill where the arbutus trees hummed with their cargo of bees.
    â€œJust so lads. We’ll put her here by the door until I can ready the room for it. I can wrestle it through the door to be sure so I’ll say thanks to ye for yer trouble. And thanks to ye, young Rose, for bringing the sheets so nicely folded. I’ll sleep like a king tonight, I’m thinking.”
    He watched the children leaving his cabin, wishing he’d had a bar of chocolate to offer them, a few pennies even. They were as shy as fish, darting away through the dappled leaves. There had been children like them in his classroom; they’d come from hill farms and smelled of turf smoke, sheep. Yet he’d seen their eyes when he’d read to them of the Irish kings and knew there were dreams in them to take them through the days of sums, little food, moving sheep from one small stony field to another. Hewatched until the Neil childen had disappeared beyond the marsh, and then he busied himself with his bed.
    Once it was arranged and organized, the old mattress put under the lean-to, Declan got out his books and puzzled over the Greek text. Some days he could make perfect sense of the words, their stern rhythms and harsh consonants. Other days he strained to remember, forgetting the tenses, the third declension. The passage he was working on concerned Nausikaa and her maidens. She had dreamed of her marriage linens and was moved to take her clothing to the river to be laundered.. How the language moved along so rhythmically and how difficult