Grooms and apprentice jockeys all bent down, and for twenty minutes, he watched them, and when they’d dispersed he came to realize; they were trying to free her bike.
Despite every internal talking-to, and the desolate void in his stomach, he found himself gently crouching, and touching the four-digit gauge—and he knew the number instantly. She’d have gone right back to the start of things, and the horse and the Cox Plate without him: Out of thirty-five races, The Spaniard won twenty-seven.
It was 3527.
The lock came out so easily.
He pushed it back in and muddled it.
The grandstands felt much closer then; both open in the darkness.
In many ways it feels ridiculous, almost trivial—to come back to 18 Archer Street, in the time before her arrival. If there’s one thing I’ve come to learn, though, it’s that if life goes on in our aftermaths, it goes on in our worlds before it.
It was a period when all was changing.
A kind of preparation.
His before the beginning of Carey.
It starts, as it must, with Achilles.
* * *
—
To be honest, I might not have been too impressed with that dubious two hundred bucks we spent, but there was one part I’ll always cherish; it was Rory at the kitchen window, the morning we’d brought him home.
As was common for a Saturday, he staggered through the hallway around eleven, then thought he was still drunk, and dreaming.
Is that?
(He shook his head.)
What the hell?
(He wrung his eyes out.)
Until finally he shouted behind him:
“Oi, Tommy, what’s goin’ on ’ere?”
“What?”
“What-a-y’ mean what, are you shitting me? There’s a donkey in the backyard!”
“He’s not a donkey, he’s a mule.”
The query was stuck to his beer breath. “What’s the difference?”
“A donkey’s a donkey, a mule’s a cross between—”
“I don’t care if it’s a quarter horse crossed with a Shetland bloody pony!…”
Behind them, we were in stitches, till Henry eventually settled it. “Rory,” he said, “meet Achilles.”
By the end of the day he’d forgiven us—or at least enough to stay in. Or at least to stay in and complain.
In the evening we were all out back together, even Mrs. Chilman, and Tommy was going, “Hey, boy, hey, boy,” in the most loving voice you can imagine, and patting the scruff of his coat. The mule stood calmly eyeing him, while Rory was grumbling to Henry.
“Next he’s gonna take the bastard out to dinner, for Christ’s sake.”
In the night he lay smothered by Hector, and Rosy lay lightly snoring. From the left-hand bed you could hear it—an anguished but quiet muttering. “These animals are Goddamn killing me.”
* * *
—
In his running, I thought Clay might have lessened, or loosened, now that State was over, and the mule was in our keeping. I couldn’t have been more mistaken. If anything he was running harder, which somehow seemed to bother me.
“Why don’t you take a break?” I said. “You just won State, for God’s sake.”
He stared down the rest of Archer Street.
All that time and I’d never noticed it.
That morning was no exception:
It burned inside his pocket.
“Hey, Matthew,” he said, “you coming?”
* * *
—
By April, the problems started.
The mule was enigmatic.
Or more so, purely stubborn.
He did love Tommy, I’m sure of it; he just happened to love Clay more. It was Clay he let check his feet. No one else could budge them. It was Clay, alone, who could quiet him.
A few nights in particular, very late, early morning, Achilles would bray up a storm. Even now I hear those sad-but-terrifying eey-ores—a mule-and-hinge-like crying—and between them, the other voices. There was Henry shouting “Shit, Tommy!” and me saying “Shut that mule up!” There was Rory calling “Get this fucking cat off me!” and Clay, just lying, silent.
“Clay! Wake up!”
Tommy was frantically pushing him, pulling him, till soon he got to his feet; he made his way to the kitchen. Through the window he saw Achilles, and the mule was under the clothesline; he cried like a rusty gate. He stood and reached his head up, his mouth thrown into the sky.
Clay watched, he couldn’t move; for a while he remained transfixed. But then Tommy had waited enough. As the rest of us surfaced, and the mule howled out and onwards, it was Clay who handled the sugar. He took the lid off, and the stuck-in spoon, and walked out back with Tommy.
“Here,” he said firmly, “cup them,” as they stood on the porch by the couch. It was dark but for mule and moonlight, and Tommy produced both palms.
“Okay,” he said, “I’m ready,” and Clay poured all of it out, a handful, a sandful, I’d seen it once before; and Achilles, he’d seen it, too. For a moment, he stopped, he looked at them, and he ambled his way across. Pigheaded and clearly delighted.
Hey, Achilles.
Hi, Clay.
That’s quite a noise you’re making there.
I know.
When Tommy met him, he held out his hands, and Achilles got in and sucked them—he hoovered into every corner.
The last time it happened was in May, and Tommy was finally resigned. He’d looked after every animal, all of them the same, and for Achilles we’d bought more grain, more hay, and cleaned the racing quarter out of carrots. When Rory asked who’d eaten the last apple, he knew it had gone to the mule.
On this occasion, a midnight southerly; it blew through the streets and suburbs. It brought with it sound from the trains. I’m sure that’s what set him going, actually, and the mule just couldn’t be quieted. Even when Tommy ran out to him, Achilles only shook him off; he brayed onwards at forty-five degrees, and above them, the clothesline spun.
“The sugar bowl?” Tommy asked Clay.
But that night he’d told him no.
Not yet.
No, this time, Clay walked down, and a peg was against his thigh, and all he did first was stand with him, then stretched, very slowly, upwards; he halted the turning clothesline. With his other hand, he reached even slower, and placed it on the face of the mule, on that dry and crackly brushland.
“It’s okay,” he told him, “it’s over—” but Clay knew better than anyone; there are some things that never stop. Even when Tommy ignored him, and came back out with the sugar bowl, and Achilles hoovered it up—the crystals around his nostrils—the mule was watching Clay.
Could he see the outline of his pocket?
Maybe, probably not.
One thing I know for certain, though, is that the mule was nowhere near stupid—Achilles always knew.
He knew that this was the Dunbar boy.
This was the one he needed.
* * *
—
We ran a lot in that time to the cemetery, up, and in, at winter.
The mornings were getting much darker.
The sun climbed onto our backs.
Once, we ran to Epsom, and Sweeney was a man of his word: The caravan was gone, but the shack went dying on.
We smiled and Clay said, “Enyone.”
* * *
—
Then June, and seriously, I think Achilles was more intelligent than Rory, because Rory was again suspended. He edged his way closer to expulsion; his ambitions were being rewarded.
I met again with Claudia Kirkby.
This time her hair was shorter, just noticeably, and she wore a beautiful pair of earrings, formed into lightweight arrows. They were silver, slightly hanging. There were papers all strewn on her desk, and the posters remained intact.
The trouble, this time, was that a new teacher had arrived—another young woman—and Rory had made an example of her.
“Well, apparently,” explained Ms. Kirkby, “he was swiping grapes from Joe Leonello’s lunch, and lobbing them at the whiteboard. She was hit when she stopped and turned. It went down the front of her shirt.”
Already, her grasp of poetry.
I stood, I closed my eyes.
“Look, honestly,” she went on, “I think the teacher may have overreacted a little, but we just can’t keep putting up with it.”