The big man heard them pull up outside and saw the car lights catch and reflect on the mesh of the run and came out to them. The boy had a brief inarticulate awareness that his father shied a little when he saw the big man come from the house. He hadn’t seen that in his father before. The boy thought the man looked like some big gypsy.
The man leaned into the window and the dogs in the back came alive at this new presence and set off a yapping, which set off a yapping in the dog sheds beyond. The car was full of a deodoranty smell that got into your mouth.
They yelpers? asked the big gypsy.
They’re good dogs, said the boy’s father.
It stinks, said the man. It’s a girl’s bedroom.
The big gypsy looked accusingly at the boy and the boy felt himself redden. He felt the nervous flush go up in his throat.
They’re good dogs, said the boy’s father.
We can’t have them hardmouthed, said the man.
No. They’re good dogs, the father said.
We can’t work with hardmouthed dogs, the big gypsy said. The big gypsy was looking at the terriers, taking them in. The boy could feel there was a grown-man tension.
Then his father said: They’re not hardmouthed, mun. They’re good dogs.
There were three terriers in the back. One was the big Patterdale, Jip, thirteen inches at the shoulder and a solid fourteen pounds. He was about as big as you’d want for a badger dig without being too tall in the shoulder to suit the holes. It was why the man had called the boy’s father, thinking of the big boar.
What’s the pup? said the big gypsy. He nodded at the boy’s dog and the boy felt the redness on his throat again.
She’s just along, said the boy’s father. The big gypsy looked at the pup.
She’s not going down, said the big gypsy. He had to take the badger and there was too much risk the young dog would not be able to hold him.
The boy felt this shame and the crushed feeling from school came up in him.
She’s just along, the boy’s father said.
chapter two
THEY PARKED UP in the machine yard of the big farm and got the dogs out and coupled them dog to bitch with the iron couplings.
In the east a powder of light was just coming and in the barn the tractors looked immense and military. At the edges of the fields the trees were still a solid deep black.
They coupled the boy’s pup to the older dog and coupled the gypsy’s older bitch to the big Patterdale. They had to couple the right dogs. Dogs that could work together at rat could fight at a badger dig, as if they sensed the individuality of the process.
They got the tools and divided them up to carry; then they took the big five-liter tubs of water from the van and the bag with the tin drinking bowls and the food and gave them to the boy. They weighed on him immediately. It was crisply cold and with their thin handles the weight of the water bottles burned on his fingers.
They went through the gate and down the lane, letting the dogs run in front of them, passively aware of which dog took the lead of the other as they rooted in and out of the hedgeside at the dying scents laid down in the night.
Mud had gathered in the track and the overnight rain left it wet and the boy, alert and cold and overawake, took in the sucked sounds underfoot and the clinking of the coupling chains and the body sounds of the dogs as they pushed through the undergrowth of the bank. He was using the gulping sounds of the water sloshing in the tubs as a kind of rhythm to walk by.
The thin light was beginning to increase and the few bean-shaped flowers on the gorse stood out with unnatural luminosity. The men’s feet went down hard and solidly in the lane, but the boy constantly tripped on the loose stones the winter’s rain had brought down, as if he didn’t have enough weight to himself.
They went off the track and whistled the dogs in as they went over a field, the lambs prone and folded next to their mothers. Some of the smaller lambs wore blue polythene jackets against the rain and they looked odd in that first light and overprotected.
The boy could hear the ewes crunching and one or two faced the dogs and banged a foreleg on the wet ground, giving a thump that sounded like kicking a ball. He wished he could play, but he was clumsy against the other boys and this inability was just another little cruelty to him. Even now, he looked out across the lightening field and saw himself catch a high kick, the crowd of trees a fringe of spectators. But then — the school field, the ball smashing off his fingers, the laughter of the other kids. That was the reality of him and it brought up a wad of sick and anger.
They worked their way down through the topped reeds that stubbled the slope at the base of the field and stopped by the brook and the boy set the water down. They put the dogs to lead. His pup was shaking a little with excitement.
She’s got rats somewhere, he said. The sentence came out on the swell of pride and he realized it was the first time he had talked in front of the man.
The man lifted up a tub of water and unlidded it and took a rough swig.
Keep her in, he said. The bank’s snared.
The boy was made thirsty by the river and wanted to drink but he did not like the idea of drinking the water after the big man had drunk from the tub.
In the relative openness of the lane and across the field the dawn light had been enough, but here things closed in and they checked the snares with the torchlight.
Bar the one, the snares were empty. The boy heard the dogs whine with the scent of something and the man signaled them to hold back and the boy put the water tubs down and stretched his fingers. Then the boy heard the dull crack of the mink’s skull and for a while did not register what the sound was. The man had hit it with a foldaway spade.
They went on. The water had become convincingly heavy to the boy now. The scrub began to encroach the bank until it was thickened and difficult to pass and after a while they cut away from the stream. It was heavy going but somehow the big man had mobility in it and seemed to fit into the countryside in a way the other two did not.
The dogs sniffed in and out of the torch beams ahead of them and the men pushed through the sprawling holly and they drove into the wood. Every now and then they disturbed something and there was a clatter in the branches or the tearing of undergrowth as something fled. The wood thickened. Everywhere there were branches down and in the strange beams of light some looked animal and prehistoric.
•
They staked the dogs some way from the sett and poured them water and took a drink themselves. The boy had a queer feeling about the man’s mouth being on the water and still did not want to drink it.
The trees had opened up a little and you could see the light finally coming through. There was a moment of greater coldness, like a draft through a door, and the boy felt an unnerving, as if something had acknowledged them arriving there. They had made a lot of noise moving through the wood and when they stopped they heard the birdsong and the early loud vibrancy of the place.