The Gloaming

The mountains are meat and the rivers blood. The sun broods above the valley and a swatch of black forest brushes the hills.

Hamilton Weir steps from the rutted track. His cudgel is endowed with a greasy knob and metal grieves protect his legs from dogs. His hand fiddles with his black cracked lips. The napping of his jacket is torn and fluffed. From its interior bulges a packet, a wad of documents for which he holds great value. A sack worms against his back; made from an antique tablecloth, white grapes on red, one torn ear is embroidered with a date: 1848. At its swollen bottom, suspended from a clutch of grapes, a bead of blood.

“Back already, my love?” Hamilton says, speaking to no one.

Barking echoes from the village as the horizon blues. White wood smoke rests in the hollows. Night is lifting and autumn is the crispiness of dawn. A mare nickers in alarm. Something answers from the crest of the hills.

He rights his head, squints into the indigo light. He tips his umber cap at an approaching villager tarred with age.

“Morning, Aesop. Anything for Master Ham?”

Aesop’s tools chime together as he walks. His straw hat is aslant and hatched with holes, a belt of twine stretches around the waist of his trousers, the zipper busted, the cloth marked with patches of dung and straw.

As Ham erupts from the underbrush, Aesop says, “Number 43, Master. The man is kind.”

The houses are packed tightly against one another, biscuits of timber and stone. Each property extends from the road, a house, yard and barn, then the orchards and gardens in strips that then blend into the meadows and forest that are the natural border of a village with one road.

Aesop stops and spits. He stinks of schnapps and his look is dull. His nose is bulbous, cracked at its seams. Aesop wrinkles his face.

He can feel Ham fingering his thoughts and salting them.

Ham’s tongue clicks over his exceptionally intact teeth, his fingers curl in his palms.

A cart lurches along the rock-strewn road. Brass bells sing from the raw shoulders of the chestnut horse; its halter is decorated with a charm of red yarn. The peasants nod between gulps of smoke, hats and kerchiefs pulled over their coarse faces.

“Good appetite, master,” they mumble in subservient tones.

The cart passes, a squeaky burr of planks and iron.

Aesop shivers in his vest of salvaged leather patches. To think this beggar is their lord.

“Good hunting?” he asks.

“A hare.” Hamilton gestures with his staff, stained with dry blood.

Aesop speaks with a sly look in his eyes: “We live with the forest. Like you, Master Ham.” Aesop risks brooking Hamilton, who can be met in any circumstance or hour, who talks to livestock and wild animals alike, who extorts pathos and charity with the threat of his poverty and reputation.

But it feels good to hate him and they need to. The villagers subsist on brandy, curd, soup and grits, holding on to the land that has been contested and returned, re-aged by what was left of their beliefs. Now they are frail, their children have vanished to the cities, and Hamilton’s lair is among them. Yet they know he always has been here.

Hamilton’s visage is drawn and his heart angered, for Aesop is insolent, of which Hamilton is a fair judge.

“A lesson, Aesop?”

Aesop bows, his black eyes glimmering, undeterred. “No, master. Last winter I was a beater and nearly met my end on the bear hunt. But for you I wish the best of appetites.” He wants his freedom from this black-bellied man who has eaten his donkey and his mice.

Hamilton’s face blooms. His cheeks draw back over his teeth that hang so doggedly in his mouth and ejects a hot, acidic foam on Aesop’s face.

The divots of Aesop’s boots screw in the dirt. He rushes away carrying his scythe and rake. Among many things, Aesop is a maker of hayricks, practical, consoling fodder that will last from Michaelmas to Whitsun. Yet Aesop chuckles. Hamilton fears him.