Wild Decembers Read Online Free PDF Page A

Breege and herself can go to the city once a month.”
    “Breege,” Bugler says, the mention of her somehow jolting him, his remembering seeing her that Sunday, walking up and down the road in good shoes and good clothes, like a girl in a picture.
    “She’s very young, isn’t she?”
    “She is . . . a foundling. I’m like a father to her. You see, she came late . . . I often think it killed my mother those years later. My father died within the year. That’s love for you.”
    They walk on, and then very stiffly Bugler says, “Oh, by the way, I’d rather the engagement was kept a secret.”
    “Mum is the word,” Joseph said, and they parted as friends.
     
    Rain rushed down, its sound preceding it, not the usual rain; heavy with hail, and a wind from the four corners of the world gathering force, gusts of wind storming the treetops, branches wayward, Goldie’s plate spinning and whirling down the yard, and the two dead birds that were laid on the bonnet, for plucking, coming alive, their breast feathers unfolding as they lifted off and did a small circuit that simulated freedom, simulated life. When she caught them they felt soft and furry, like cold gloves that had been left outside.
    The place had been empty for storm, for things to be stirred up, uprooted, and put down somewhere else, the way she had been empty for something and now it was there. Her brother and Mick Bugler were friends.
    “My brother and Mick Bugler are best friends.” She wrote it with a bit of white flour on the top of the range after she had made bread. She often wrote things in that manner, to make them lasting.
     
Dear Bugler,
You asked me to tell you of some of the old customs, things our folks did and that I saw and did as a youngster. Well, my grammar isn’t always correct, nor my turn of phrase, but you will be able to cope with that. I will start with stones, because they were the bane of our lives. They sprung up in the fields like mushrooms, hosts of them, big stones, medium stones, and scutty little stones that refused to budge out of the earth. It was a menial job, but it had to be done. To put it into perspective I will go back a little and explain its place in the crop rotation. The green field was ploughed in November, so that the frost would make the soil friable and easy to till. The oat crop was sown in March and harvested in August and September. The stubble was ploughed so that potatoes or turnips could be sown the following spring. When they were harvested, wheat or barley was put in, and before the next crop, which would be hayseed, was the time to pick the stones. Once the hay grew, the stones would be disguised and break the blades of a mowing machine. The bigger stones would have been removed two years before, turned up by the plough and taken away in a horse and cart to mend a wall, to keep cattle in and other people’s cattle out. Now, some stones were too big and could not be moved, so they had to be blasted with gelignite. That was the dangerous bit and naturally the most exciting bit, so I will save that for the end. As for the smaller stones, you had to pick them up and put them in a bucket. The bucket could only be half full because of the weight of it. You couldn’t use a horse and cart, because the horse wouldn’t stand still in the freezing cold. So the stones were put in little piles and carried away in the buckets. It was torture. In frosty weather the coldest time was one hour before dark. They would stick to your fingers, the very same as putting your hand inside a freezer for a minute or longer. That was the time of year when the woodcock came, and just at nightfall my friends and myself would wait for them, then maybe go down to the village and fool around, and then back up to the woods with flash lamps to shoot pigeons. I said I would tell you about blasting the rocks. It was a tricky business. It called for great skill and great concentration. The procedure consisted of a stick of