The first thing you find out when yer dog learns to talk is that dogs don’t got nothing much to say. About anything.
“Need a poo, Todd.”
“Shut up, Manchee.”
“Poo. Poo, Todd.”
“I said shut it.”
We’re walking across the wild fields south-east of town, those ones that slope down to the river and head on towards the swamp. Ben’s sent me to pick him some swamp apples and he’s made me take Manchee with me, even tho we all know Cillian only bought him to stay on Mayor Prentiss’s good side and so suddenly here’s this brand new dog as a present for my birthday last year when I never said I wanted any dog, that what I said I wanted was for Cillian to finally fix the fissionbike so I wouldn’t have to walk every forsaken place in this stupid town, but oh, no, happy birthday, Todd, here’s a brand new puppy, Todd, and even tho you don’t want him, even tho you never asked for him, guess who has to feed him and train him and wash him and take him for walks and listen to him jabber now he’s got old enough for the talking germ to set his mouth moving? Guess who?
“Poo,” Manchee barks quietly to himself. “Poo, poo, poo.”
“Just have yer stupid poo and quit yapping about it.”
I take a switch of grass from beside the trail and I swat after him with it. I don’t reach him, I don’t mean to reach him, but he just laughs his little barking laugh and carries on down the trail. I follow after him, switching the switch against the grass on either side, squinting from the sun, trying not to think about nothing at all.
We don’t need apples from the swamp, truth to tell. Ben can buy them at Mr Phelps’s store if he really wants them. Also true: going to the swamp to pick a few apples is not a job for a man cuz men are never allowed to be so idle. Now, I won’t officially become a man for thirty more days. I’ve lived twelve years of thirteen long months each and another twelve months besides, all of which living means I’m still one month away from the big birthday. The plans are being planned, the preparayshuns prepared, it will be a party, I guess, tho I’m starting to get some strange pictures about it, all dark and too bright at the same time, but nevertheless I will become a man and picking apples in the swamp is not a job for a man or even an almost-man.
But Ben knows he can ask me to go and he knows I’ll say yes to going because the swamp is the only place anywhere near Prentisstown where you can have half a break from all the Noise that men spill outta theirselves, all their clamour and clatter that never lets up, even when they sleep, men and the thoughts they don’t know they think even when everyone can hear. Men and their Noise. I don’t know how they do it, how they stand each other.
Men are Noisy creachers.
“Squirrel!” Manchee shouts and off he goes, jumping off the trail, no matter how loud I yell after him, and off I have to go, too, across the (I look round to make sure I’m alone) goddam fields cuz Cillian’ll have a fit if Manchee falls down some goddam snake hole and of course it’ll be my own goddam fault even tho I never wanted the goddam dog in the goddam first place.
“Manchee! Get back here!”
“Squirrel!”
I have to kick my way thru the grass, getting grublets stuck to my shoes. One smashes as I kick it off, leaving a green smear across my trainers, which I know from experience ain’t coming out. “Manchee!” I rage.
“Squirrel! Squirrel! Squirrel!”
He’s barking round the tree and the squirrel’s skittering back and forth on the tree trunk, taunting him. Come on, Whirler dog, says its Noise. Come on, come get, come on, come get. Whirler Whirler Whirler.
“Squirrel, Todd! Squirrel!”
Goddam, animals are stupid.
I grab Manchee by the collar and hit him hard across his back leg. “Ow, Todd? Ow?” I hit him again. And again. “Ow? Todd?”
“Come on,” I say, my own Noise raging so loud I can barely hear myself think, which is something I’m about to regret, you watch.
Whirler boy, Whirler boy, thinks the squirrel at me. Come get, Whirler boy.
“You can eff off, too,” I say, except I don’t say “eff”, I say what “eff” stands for.
And I really, really shoulda looked round again.
Cuz here’s Aaron, right here, rising outta the grass from nowhere, rising up and smacking me cross the face, scratching my lip with his big ring, then bringing his hand back the other way, closed as a fist, catching my cheekbone but at least missing my nose because I’m falling into the grass, trying to fall away from his punch, and I let go of Manchee’s collar and off he runs back to the squirrel, barking his head off, the traitor, and I hit the grass with my knees and my hands, getting grublet stains all over everything.
And I stay there, on the ground, breathing.
Aaron stands over me, his Noise coming at me in fragments of scripture and of his next sermon and Language, young Todd and the finding of a sacrifice and the saint chooses his path and God hears and the wash of pictures that’s in everyone’s Noise, of things familiar and glancing flashes of–
What? What the forsaken–?
But up flies a loud bit of his sermon to block it out and I look up into his eyes and suddenly I don’t wanna know. I can already taste the blood where his ring cut my lip and I don’t wanna know. He never comes out here, men never do, they have their reasons, men do, and it’s just me and my dog only ever but here he is and I don’t don’t don’t wanna know.
He smiles down at me, thru that beard of his, smiles down at me in the grass.
A smiling fist.
“Language, young Todd,” he says, “binds us like prisoners on a chain. Haven’t you learned anything from yer church, boy?” And then he says his most familiar preaching. “If one of us falls, we all fall.”
Yes, Aaron, I think.
“With yer mouth, Todd.”
“Yes, Aaron,” I say.
“And the effs?” he says. “And the geedees? Because don’t think I didn’t hear them as well. Your Noise reveals you. Reveals us all.”
Not all, I think, but at the same time I say, “Sorry, Aaron.”
He leans down to me, his lips close to my face, and I can smell the breath that comes outta his mouth, smell the weight of it, like fingers grabbing for me. “God hears,” he whispers. “God hears.”
And he raises a hand again and I flinch and he laughs and then he’s gone, like that, heading back towards the town, taking his Noise with him.
I’m shaking from the charge to my blood at being hit, shaking from being so fired up and so surprised and so angry and so much hating this town and the men in it that it takes me a while till I can get up and go get my dog again. What was he effing doing out here anyway? I think and I’m so hacked off, still so raging with anger and hate (and fear, yes, fear, shut up) that I don’t even look round to see if Aaron heard my Noise. I don’t look round. I don’t look round.
And then I do look round and I go and get my dog.
“Aaron, Todd? Aaron?”
“Don’t say that name again, Manchee.”
“Bleeding, Todd. Todd? Todd? Todd? Bleeding?”
“I know. Shut up.”
“Whirler,” he says, as if it don’t mean nothing, his head as empty as the sky.