The Púca’s Share, Part Two
Part two of a short story by Monica Corish
Welcome back to Thrutopia! This post contains part two of a short story by Monica Corish. If you need to catch up, you can find part one here. Enjoy!
The Púca’s Share by Monica Corish
(Part two of two, in which the Púca hitches a ride in a car, and the ideas begin flowing. We pick up where we left off, with farmer Vinny telling his daughter, Maeve, that he’s thinking of giving up the farm.)
“My carbon emissions have barely shifted, and I can’t do what Jim’s doing. It would stick in my craw. Maybe it’s time I got out.”
Maeve was stunned into silence. The tune came to an end. She turned off the radio.
“There’ll be a carbon tax on farms before long, and a cull on herds with high emissions. I give it another year, two at the outside. I’d rather be gone out of farming than see that happen.”
Maeve steered toward the hard shoulder. Púca leapt into her mind. Keep driving, don’t wake him out of the dream.
She blinked, drove on. “I could do it.”
“What?”
“I could bring the emissions way down. It would take me two, maybe three years.”
Vinny stared at her.
“Don’t look so surprised, Da. I’ve tried to talk about this before, but you never wanted to listen.”
“You mean well, Maeve, but –”
“You’d listen if I was your son.”
“Ah no, pet, that’s not true.”
“It is true. It’s true as far as the farm is concerned.”
“Maybe so.” Vinny shifted awkwardly in his seat. “We were always glad of you, Maeve. You know that, don’t you?”
“I know.”
A car came toward them, weaving over the white line, headlights blazing. Maeve slowed to let it pass.
“A young woman shouldn’t be tied to the land,” Vinny said. “It’s not natural.”
Maeve threw her eyes to heaven. “Nonsense. There are plenty of successful women farmers.”
“That aside, you’d never make it work financially. If you were to go all green, you’d be bankrupt within a few years.”
“Jim isn’t bankrupt.”
“No, but Jim’s farm is different –”
“I keep the accounts, Da. I know it can be done. There are lots of grants available, if you know how to work the system. If the farm was in my name, I could study for the Green Cert and qualify for the Young Farmers’ grant.”
“Now that’s a fine idea.” Vinny looked at her admiringly. “I could transfer the deeds to you, but we could manage it together.”
“That would absolutely not work. You’d be grumbling over my shoulder the whole time.”
You’re well named, Púca thought. You remind me of Maeve in all her queenly glory.
“So what would you have me do, in this grand scheme of yours?”
“Reach out to Mam.”
“You’re away with the fairies, girl. She’d never take me back.”
“She might, you know. If you –”
Vinny crossed his arms over his chest. “And anyway, she’s not the woman I married.”
“No, she’s not. Everyone changes, Da. Everyone except you. You expected her to stay frozen in time.”
A fox ran across the road, its tail feathery in the light. Maeve swerved.
“Did I hit it?”
“No, you’d have felt the thump.” Vinny stared through the windshield at the veiled moon. “So that’s me, is it? Frozen in time?
“That’s you, Da.”
They rounded a bend and saw blue lights flashing. A Garda checkpoint.
“Are you under the limit?” Vinny asked.
“Of course.” Maeve slowed and rolled down her window. “Goodnight, Sergeant.”
“It’s yourself, Maeve.” He stooped to look in the window, tipped his hat to Vinny. “Evening, Vinny.”
“Evening, Sarge.”
“Be careful on the road, Maeve. There are a few mad lunatics out tonight.”
“I will. Thanks, Sergeant.”
The lights of another car shone in the rear-view mirror. Maeve accelerated and pulled away.
“Bloody drink-driving laws,” Vinny grumbled. “They’re draining the life out of the countryside.”
“The problem with you, Da, is that you want everything to stay exactly as it was when you were young.”
“That’s the problem with me, is it?”
“It is. You don’t argue about climate change because you don’t believe in it, you argue about it because it’s forcing you to change, and that’s the one thing you can’t stand. You used to be king of the castle, but there’s a new game now, and you don’t know how to play it.”
Púca leapt back into Vinny’s mind. A chessboard of castles and kings, all crumbling into dust. Worms and windmills. Sand between his toes, a long beach and a blue sky, his wife by his side.
“You really think she’d have me back?” Vinny asked.
“She might. You’d have to court her again.”
“And what, live in Wexford?”
“You love the house in Wexford.”
“I do.”
“You could play golf, and fish, and tell tall tales in the pub.”
Vinny grinned, then frowned. “If she won’t have me back, I’d be in the house with you.”
“I’d never talk to you about the farm. Jim would let me set up a desk in his office. He’s got plenty of room.”
“You like him, don’t you?”
She nodded. “We’re good friends. I admire what he’s doing.”
“If you and Jim got married, you could join the farms and more than double the yield. Economies of scale, that’s the way to go.”
“Da!” She screeched off the road onto the hard shoulder. “Stop it, right now!”
“What?”
“Listen to me. If you want out, you either sell the farm to a stranger, or give it to me as my inheritance, whole and entire.” She set the hazard lights blinking. “And if Mam won’t have you back, because you’re an argumentative gobshite, then I’ll build a wee bungalow for you. At the far end of the long field.” She glared at him. “I mean it.”
Vinny held in a smile. Ever since she was a little girl, smiling at Maeve’s anger only added fuel to her fire. Púca conjured the new game in his mind. Windmills for ladders, worms for snakes, untidy meadows, a field of solar panels.
“You feel like you’re being made to change,” Maeve said. “I don’t, I want to change. More than anyone else, we farmers have a chance to make a difference. It’s not just about reducing emissions, we could –”
She lifted her hands off the wheel, grasping for words. Púca fed her a vision.
“We could leave it better for everyone, for people and midges and corncrakes and dragonflies. Between me and Jim, we could set up long corridors for foxes and hares and pine martens. If there were enough of us, we could criss-cross Ireland with corridors of wildness.”
Vinny burst out laughing. “Corridors of wildness, is it? If that’s the way it’s going, then I’m glad to be a dinosaur.”
The full moon broke through the clouds.
“Look,” Maeve pointed. “The hare in the moon.”
“Don’t be daft. It’s a man.”
“Sometimes it’s a hare, Da, and sometimes it’s a man, and sometimes it’s both at once.”
Vinny’s heart swelled with love. “I’ll do it,” he said. “I will. I’ll call the solicitor in the morning, and I’ll write to your mother. I’ll go down for a few days. I’ll stay in the hotel in Rosslare.”
Púca flew up and landed on his forehead.
Vinny swatted. “Damn fly.”
Maeve opened a window.
Púca flew out and landed on the long acre. She became a hare, ears erect in the moonlight. The red lights of the car disappeared around a bend in the road. Púca nibbled on a dandelion.
Thanks for reading! Just a reminder that if you’re looking for part one of the story, it’s here. Next week, Monica Corish will talk a little about the inspiration for the story and Thrutopia more generally. In the meantime, if you have any comments, we’d love to know what you thought.