Cillian closes his eyes and breathes loudly once thru his nose. “Todd–” he starts, his voice a bit lower.
“Where’s Ben?” I say.
His face hardens a little more. “Lambing starts in a week, Todd.”
All I do to this is say again, “Where’s Ben?”
“You get the sheep fed and into their paddocks and then I want you to fix the gate to the east field once and for all, Todd Hewitt. I have asked you at least twice before now.”
I lean back on my heels. “‘Well, how was your trip to the swamp, Todd?’” I say, making my voice go all sarcastic. “‘Well, it was fine and dandy there, Cillian, thank you for asking.’ ‘Didja see anything interesting out there in the swamp, Todd?’ ‘Well, funny you should ask, Cillian, cuz I sure did see something interesting which might explain this here cut on my lip that you ain’t asked about but I guess it’ll have to just wait till the sheep are fed and I fix the goddam fence!’”
“Watch yer mouth,” Cillian says. “I don’t have time for yer games. Go do the sheep.”
I clench up my fists and make a sound that sounds like “awwghgh” which tells Cillian that I just can’t put up with his non-reason not for one second longer.
“Come on, Manchee,” I say.
“The sheep, Todd,” Cillian calls as I start walking away. “The sheep first.”
“Yeah, I’ll do the ruddy sheep,” I mutter to myself. I’m walking away faster now, my blood jumping and Manchee’s getting excited from the roar of my Noise. “Sheep!” he barks. “Sheep, sheep, Todd! Sheep, sheep, quiet, Todd! Quiet, quiet in swamp, Todd!”
“Shut up, Manchee,” I say.
“What was that?” Cillian says and there’s something in his voice that makes us both turn around. He’s sitting up by the generator now, his full attenshun on us, his Noise coming right at us like a laser.
“Quiet, Cillian,” Manchee barks.
“What does he mean ‘quiet’?” Cillian’s eyes and Noise are searching me all over.
“What do you care?” I turn again. “I got ruddy sheep to feed.”
“Todd, wait,” he calls after us but then something starts beeping on the generator and he says “Dammit!” again and has to go back to it tho I can feel all kinds of asking marks in his Noise following me, getting fainter as I head out to our fields.
Blast him, blast him and all, I think, in more or less those words and worse as I stomp across our farm. We live about a kilometre north-east of town and we do sheep on one half of the farm and wheat on the other. Wheat’s harder, so Ben and Cillian do most of that. Since I was old enough to be taller than the sheep, that’s who I’ve taken care of. Me, that is, not me and Manchee, tho another one of the false lying excuses why he was given to me was that I could teach him up as a sheep dog which for obvious reasons – by which I mean his complete stupidity – hasn’t worked out to plan.
Feeding and watering and shearing and lambing and even castrating and even butchering, I do all these things. We’re one of three meat and wool providers for the town, used to be one of five, soon be one of two because Mr Marjoribanks oughta be dying from his drink problem any day now. We’ll fold his flock into ours. I should say I’ll fold his flock into ours, like I did when Mr Gault disappeared two winters ago, and they’ll be new ones to butcher, new ones to castrate, new ones to shear, new ones to put in pens with ewes at the right times, and will I get a thank you? No, I will not.
I am Todd Hewitt, I think, the day just keeping on not making my Noise any quieter. I am almost a man.
“Sheep!” say the sheep when I pass their field without stopping. “Sheep!” they say, watching me go. “Sheep! Sheep!”
“Sheep!” barks Manchee.
“Sheep!” say the sheep back.
Sheep got even less to say than dogs do.
I’ve been listening out for Ben’s Noise over the farm and I’ve tracked him down to one corner of one of the wheat fields. Planting’s done, harvest is months away, so there’s not so much to do with the wheat at the minute, just make sure all the generators and the fission tractor and the electric threshers are ready to start working. You’d think this would mean I’d get a little help with the sheep but you would be wrong.
Ben’s Noise is humming a little tune out near one of the irrigashun spouts so I take a turn and head across the field towards him. His Noise ain’t nothing like Cillian’s. It’s calmer and clearer and tho you can’t see Noise, if Cillian’s always seems reddish, then Ben’s seems blue or sometimes green. They’re different men from each other, different as fire and water, Ben and Cillian, my more or less parents.
Story is, my ma was friends with Ben before they left for New World, that they were both members of the Church when the offer of leaving and starting up a settlement was made. Ma convinced Pa and Ben convinced Cillian and when the ships landed and the settlement started, it was my ma and pa who raised sheep on the next farm over from Ben and Cillian growing wheat and it was all friendly and nice and the sun never set and men and women sang songs together and lived and loved and never got sick and never never died.
That’s the story from the Noise anyway so who knows what it was actually like before? Cuz then of course I was born and everything changed. The spacks released their woman-killing germ and that was it for my ma and then the war started and was won and that was it for pretty much the rest of New World. And there’s me, just a baby, not knowing nothing bout nothing, and of course I’m not the only baby, there’re loads of us, and suddenly only half a town of men to take care of all us babies and boys. So a lot of us died and I was counted among the lucky cuz it was only natural for Ben and Cillian to take me in and feed me and raise me and teach me and generally make it possible for me to go on being alive.
And so I’m kinda like their son. Well, more than “kinda like” but less than actually being so. Ben says Cillian only fights with me all the time cuz he cares about me so much but if that’s true I say it’s a funny way to show it, a way that don’t seem much like caring at all, if you ask me.
But Ben’s a different kind of man than Cillian, a kind kind of man that makes him not normal in Prentisstown. 145 of the men in this town, even the newly made ones just past their birthdays, even Cillian tho to a lesser degree, they see me at best as something to ignore and at worst as something to hit and so I spend most of my days figuring out ways to be ignored so as I won’t get hit.
’Cept for Ben, who I can’t describe much further without seeming soft and stupid and like a boy, so I won’t, just to say that I never knew my pa, but if you woke up one day and had a choice of picking one from a selecshun, if someone said, here, then, boy, pick who you want, then Ben wouldn’t be the worst choice you could make that morning.
He’s whistling as we approach and tho I can’t see him yet and he can’t see me, he changes the tune as he senses me coming to a song I reckernize, Early one mo-o-rning, just as the sun was ri-i-sing, which he says was a favourite of my ma’s but which I think is really just a favourite of his since he’s whistled and sang it for me since I can remember. My blood is still storming away from Cillian but I immediately start to feel a little calmer.