Wild Decembers by Edna O’Brien Page B

people asking for Maxie, the hotelier, to come forward with the bloody prize.
    “It hasn’t come yet,” Derek said, and was shouted down, all agreeing that Maxie was too bloody mean and so was Maxie’s missus, and why wouldn’t they be, being foreigners.
    When a car pulled up at a hectic speed, Derek jumped over the counter in answer to the horn being hooted repeatedly. The crowd waited, then Maxie in his chef’s hat and Mrs. Maxie beside him came in carrying something in a blanket. Mrs. Maxie turned out the lights as she always did when carrying a birthday cake or even a slice of birthday cake, while her husband followed slowly, singing some song from his own country. At first people speculated that it was a little piglet as Maxie found his way between the tables, opening the blanket a fraction, and then he stood before Joseph and the lights were turned on. It was a fawn greyhound with black spots like inkspots all over its body, its snout moist.
    “Cripes,” Joseph said, abashed.
    “The compliments of Heidi and myself.”
    “Oh, Breege,” Joseph shouted to Breege in the corner as if calamity had occurred to them.
    Then slowly Maxie pulled the blanket aside like a blazoned toga and stood the little hound on the counter for everyone to see. It looked so pristine, the fawn of its body fading into a paler fawn and the smudged ink markings the very same as if they were dripping, its eyes looking out at its new world and the column of people.
    “It’s too much altogether,” Joseph said then.
    “You mean Heidi and I can keep it?” Maxie said, and made as if to present it to Heidi. Derek, unable to hide his feeling for it, crumbled a few salt nuts from the end of a packet and set them down on the counter along with a saucer of water. The hound looked, sniffed, then decided on the water, and drank daintily, spilling out the last few drops. Its eyes were a pale green from which the darker pigment had been drained and they were shaped like almonds.
    “Boy or girl?” someone called.
    “Girl,” Cahill, the old man, said swiftly. He had known greyhounds all his life and he had bred greyhounds until they broke him, but he loved them still.
    “What will you call her?” someone shouted.
    Names were suggested, names that were usual for dogs, then fancy names, names of tennis players and film stars, and even one of a saint, which was booed out.
    “I’ll call her Cecilia,” Joseph said, turning to Miss Carruthers, who had been such a stalwart on his team.
    “Oh no,” she said, stricken with embarrassment and rising with tears in her eyes.
    “Why not call her Violet Hill . . . Where she’s come from,” Maxie said.
    “Is that okay, Breege?” Joseph said, then running his hand down the foreleg of the hound, he lifted one of her paws and brought his face close to it and christened her Violet Hill. The crowd applauded. Stroking the delicate bone of her back, he thought he had not felt so happy or so popular in years, maybe never. Looking at him Breege thought, He’s happy now . . . He’s proud, and looking towards Bugler in the doorway, she thought that he was thinking that too.
    “You’ll course her first,” Cahill said, and everyone waited and deferred to him, because he always kept silent until he had something to say.
    “You’ll help me, Cahill?”
    “I will so . . . We have to blood her . . . Let her taste blood, because that’s what she wants. That’s what they want.”
    “Is that what you want, Violet Hill?” Joseph said, and snuggled her to himself as if she were an infant, and felt her trembling within.

 
     
     
     
    I T WAS RUGGED TERRAIN , the tractor bouncing and hacking its way through a wilderness of briars and bushes, all tangled together, fighting for life, fighting for light, the branches scraping the bonnet, scraping her face, wisps of old man’s beard clinging to her hair, the wheels slurping in the mud, then spitting it off and ploughing forward.
    She sat in the back,