The Black Snow by Paul Lynch Page B

match to it. If there’s one thing I know from my long years on this here earth it is that people can’t stop making up stories about things. We are natural speculators. We dream stories in our dreams and are convinced there is meaning there for us. We see our own lives as something from a book with beginnings and endings. We tell ourselves that everything that happens to us is part of our story. It’s a devil in us, this making things up. All the time people don’t know what causes things but we go on as if we do. And here’s the thing, Barnabas, we don’t even know we are doing it. Ask yourself, how often when you were sick did you tell yourself with certainty what caused it? Or where you picked it up? Or who gave it to you? As if you are privy to such information.
    She watched him staring at her. All this jumping to conclusions is dangerous business if you ask me. I’ve seen so many times that there are things in this life that are outside our purview. Yet that doesn’t stop us reaching into the dark for answers and telling ourselves they are true. You’d be better off, Barnabas,staying away from that kind of thinking. It’ll lead to nothing but trouble so it will. Ask yourself, how many times have you been totally wrong about something? How many times? All the time, I’m sure, and yet I’ll bet you don’t remember. I’ll bet you only remember the times you were right. But a stopped clock gets the time right twice a day too.
    She took a suck of her pipe.
    If I’d known I was going to get a lecture, he said.
    Unless you have hard information before you, Barnabas, there is no point trying to pin the cause of that fire on people, or ghosts, or any other things. It can only lead to pure trouble so it will.
    Barnabas sat there eyeing her intensely, but behind his tight lips he was grinding on his teeth. Oh right, he said. You’re saying just to forget about the burning down of my livelihood. That it was some sort of accident was it? And leave it at that? An act of God? Nature’s diddling thing?
    He took the glass and swirled it until it stormed circular and he sunk it whole and put the glass back down. He leaned slowly towards her, scald of whiskey down the back of his throat, and he held her eye until he saw the melt of her hard stare and in the folds of her neck a quiver.
    Let me tell you, Annie. You can tell a wild lot, a wild lot from people. The way they behave. Or the way they don’t behave. It’s in the not behaving when things are going on around them that is telling. Isn’t it? Don’t you think that’s so?
    The old woman stared at him and blinked.
    All I know is there’s some cunts behaving what I’d call strange. And there were people who didn’t come to help put out that fire even though they could see it good and rightly. People who would have good reason to hurt me so they would.
    The woman kept her silence and Barnabas stood suddenly. He shook his head and put coins on the counter. I’ve had enough for tonight, he said. I’m going home to me wife.
    She travelled the yard with her arms to her chest, her fingers smelling of apples. He did not hear her come behind him when she cornered him at the new shed, spun around to meet her as if she were the bearer of malice. She saw how he tensed and his breathing tightened, his eyes fixed quick to the points of a knife.
    You and me need to talk, she said.
    Her words sounded out of her with the relief of hemmed-in animals let loose. His brows leaned down to meet his eyelashes.
    You’re talking to me now again?
    A dour light trapped everything in that yard and he stood where he was in the shadow of her voice, heard in it a quaver of sadness, the skyfall of a child’s small kite.
    What I want to know, Barnabas. How you could have kept that quiet from me about the insurance? All that time? When you could have said something? And all the times I mentioned it?
    She shook her head as she spoke and he found himself staring at patterns of shadow on the