DILUTE TO TASTE

“For the last time, I don’t want to know!”

“But Da’, please…”

“I said, no!” Meirion’s heavy, dirty paw thumped down onto the oak table, clattering their empty plates and cutlery, “you’ll stay, do you hear me?! You have a duty to me and this family.”

Alun knew from experience when to shut up. A bruised rump, a swollen ear, a cut to his neat black-white tail; he didn’t fancy a repeat. He just sat silently, his head hung as he played a bored and frustrated paw about the rim of his glass. He could feel his father staring at him from across the table, cutting through the candlelit gloom of their cold home. That sour old maw was muttering angrily, punctuated by that irritating guttural slurp that gurgled from his disgusting habit of drinking the cawl from the bowl’s dirty chipped edge.

Meirion shoved his chair backwards and heaved to his feet, hobbling through to clatter the bowl to the enamel sink.

“Pan ‘ych chi’n mynd i ddysgu pan i ga’ dy geg”, another mumble echoed like a rat’s scurry through the cold air, before the voice hovered closer and bore down on the young collie sat at the table, “just like your Mam. Never knew when to quit.”

Alun said nothing. The dark shadow of his father’s imposing fat form mixed with a musty rotten scent of wet leather and unwashed fur, a waft that was enough to bring tears to the eyes. That horrid panting breath hung there for a second, before Meirion padded away up the stairs, leaving Alun alone in the small cold kitchen. His blue-merle muzzle flickered with the fading smoky candlelight, those bright heterochromic eyes glazed, tired and tearful.

The young dog’s senses filled with a ringing silence, something of which he’d long grown bored. And the surroundings too… my god they were dated. Before climbing into bed – the makeshift one near the hearth that is, as his father took control of the ample upper floor - he’d always linger by the tiny sash window cut deep into the clom wall, and gaze out into the night, smiling fondly at seeing the orange glow of the city in the far distance. Amber pinheads in a blue-black cushion sitting between the mountains, serried rows of life, noise and prospect. How Alun wished to be a part of it all. Paws warmed by the dying embers, scents of dust, wood smoke and old cawl filling his nostrils, he’d lie across the settle and pull his tail up to cuddle close. It was all he had to keep him warm. His father had even confiscated a small plush wuffie that he’d bought on a rare trip to the town, Alun later noticing the tarred and burnt stitched smile gazing lifelessly from the ash of the fireplace.

“We need nothing of theirs. You need nothing that we don’t have here already, you understand me?!” That was the only response to a tearful protest.  

It hadn’t always been this bad. He’d lived with his father at Crug-y-Dagrau, a white lime washed Welsh longhouse cut into the slopes of Mynydd Menyn, since he was just a pup. Alun knew little of his Mam (Eleri) as she’d died a few months after his birth, prompting his father to move the family to their current abode from just around the mountain. Alun guessed his Dad was trying to escape the bad memories of losing Eleri. He never asked. It was too much like hard work and it was already difficult to come up with enough excuses to explain away the bruises when he was allowed out. Not that that was very often. Meirion was an old dog obsessed, and had a grip on his sweet young son comparative only to the one he had had on his late wife.

Alun grew up happy and independent (too much so in Meirion’s eyes), enjoying his mountain home. He quickly learnt the family’s successful sheep-rearing trade and took over the majority of the herding and livestock duties from his aging father. It wasn’t all work for the youngster though. From long hot summers spent lying in the sweet-scented pastures to exploring the ancient hedgerows in the cool blue of autumn dusks, Alun learnt about his surroundings and more from friends who came from the city of Rhyddfraint just down the valley. And this was when everything started going downhill. His father hated it, and kept an obvious and, at times, embarrassing distance whenever his son had company. It made Alun feel unloved and unwanted, and whenever he asked after it, he always got the same answer.

“They don’t belong here. You shouldn’t listen to them. You shouldn’t be around them.”

The number of friends poor Alun lost through his father’s paranoia was innumerable. It would only get ever worse and ever more strange. Meirion would pad out into the fields, his fur matted and unkempt in the bright daylight, and intricately inspect the pasture, almost as though he was concerned after every single blade of grass. The old collie eventually gave up his crook and told Alun in no uncertain terms to do the same with his. And when Alun refused – his was a beautifully carved ash staff that had been a gift from a friend in Rhyddfraint – Meirion had simply waited until his son was at school before finding it and snapping it in half. Distraught with finding his stick broken, Alun, who was only 13 at the time, confronted his father, only to have the indignity of being grabbed and hit repeatedly with the snapped crook. The splintered end slit and cut at his young tail, his black-white rump sore for weeks afterwards.

And his father would never say why. Why no sticks and why the obsession with the mud. That really was embarrassing. Whenever it rained, Mynydd Menyn would, where the grass was thin, get very muddy and cut up. And over the last few years, Meirion had flown into a rage whenever he saw it. Poor Alun would always get the blame. Not that that was the only scenario in which it happened. Any time the young collie would come back in from tending to the sheep with muddy footpaws and tail, his father would be at the door with a bucket of freezing (and usually dirty) dishwater and a bar of off-white industrial soap. He wouldn’t hear the last if he didn’t get every speck of dirt out of his fur. Alun would just comply tiredly, but would become very uncomfortable as Meirion would decide to watch him before snatching the bucket away and padding out up the fields.

“Da’ where’re you goin’ now?”

“I’m going to undo what you’ve done.”

His heavy musky leather coat that hugged about his obese figure had pockets full of grass seed, Meirion’s short scruffy tail sprinkled with the grey specks, a careless and eerily obsessive ritual. He had become possessed by these neuroses, driven by a hidden force that Alun could not ascertain or relate to. Sheep farming was their life, and indeed it was relatively profitable. But this was going beyond ridiculous. The fields were patched like a wounded cub, the mud replaced like missing blood. And what of Meirion’s sodden paws when he’d often return from the highest pasture on the mountain? Soaked up beyond the wrist, his black-white forepaws damp with water and patches of alluvium. The first time Alun noticed was only when Meirion clipped him harshly around the head for inquiring. Any further questions were dispelled with that usual grunting quiet that spewed from his father’s gruff greying muzzle. He was always in a huff. Nothing ever seemed to change. 

Alun guessed he’d settled for a poor stupor of a life, and went through the motions day after day after day. Autumn was already upon them, although the weather was still clear and bright. The collie was up and about early, dressing and padding out across the cobbled inner yard and clambering over the rusty tubular aluminium gate into the fields. The sheep trotted over curiously, Alun smiling as a few curious noses wandered and snuffled through the pockets of his dark jacket. Greedy things they are, always looking for a snack. The collie padded away up the gentle slope to the head of the old hedgerow, spidery and tangled blackthorn scratching at the blue sky, a set of aged pickled trees providing a dry shelter for the sheep. It was a good thing it had survived the previous winter too, as Alun had nowhere else to hide his brand new crook from Meirion. Bowing down and entering into the shady heart of these squatting trees, he reached a paw up into the splaying branches and brought it down from its hiding place. It always brought a smile of both comfort and revenge to have the treacly knotty staff back in his paws.

His nostalgia was short as he heard the sheep begin to shuffle away quite quickly in a baaing bag of nerves, ushering Alun to investigate. Sheltering his eyes from the glare of the sun with his left paw, all the young collie could see was a figure stood on the very top horizon. It didn’t move, only the wind whistling about it, cutting up and over the mountain’s lip. Concerned that it was a trespasser, Alun padded up across the field, his blackthorn crook in his right paw prodding intermittently against the grazed carpet-like grass. As he drew closer he realised it was a female collie, dressed in a long dark blue dress that rippled gently like a flag in the breeze. She was stood at the head of a spring, where the mountain was cut by the water and a stream appeared on the surface before slinking back underneath the pasture. Alun had never seen this stream before, nor had he ventured this far up their land. He came to a stop but feet from the strange collie who seemed unmoved and actually happy at seeing Alun.

“Umm… who are you? You know, this is private property”

There was no answer. She reached a paw out to caress Alun’s muzzle, but the dog pulled away, his footpaws damp now with the stream’s marshy boundary. There was no reaction to his reluctance, only a turn of the head and a paw pointing around and behind her down towards the opposite face of Mynydd Menyn. It was another place he’d never been. It was another place where Meirion had told him never to go. But Alun was curious, and followed behind this graceful figure who seemed to drift over the grass and the wildflowers without even damaging them. It wasn’t long before they had padded over the short summit, and were gradually wandering down the gentle opposite slope. And it was then that it hit Alun. It had seemed normal all along. But then he had looked down. The grass was brown, black even, the gorse dying and rotten, the bleached white collar bone of a long dead sheep nestling in a morbid sunburnt cradle of bracken and hemlock. There was a corresponding spring just like the one he’d passed, only this one was polluted, dead and the rocks coated in a thick sludge of black-green algae. There were cracked skulls everywhere, a carcass exhausted half way through a wire fence, the sheep’s head stuck in its tight grasp. It was a deserted damned place overlooked by a ruinous longhouse with windows that yawned and cried with overgrowth, ivy and bindweed hanging from their splintered lids. And still the figure walked on, around the back of the quiet and desolate building and drifting through a tall, suffocating swathe of bracken that hid a small slate and shale cairn. Before Alun could even speak, he’d lost the figure amidst the undergrowth and was left alone, standing before this pillar of stone as the clouds started to gather and the wind began to pick up. His fur starting to shiver and shudder with the cold, he knelt down by the cairn and touched a paw to the stones’ rough surface. Alun didn’t know why, but he felt the need to know what lay beneath and began to inch each shallow block from its mossy resting place. His black-white paws covered in lichen and dust, he eventually made part of the cairn collapse, only to struggle away from the sight that lay within. He slung himself away, back into the comforting bracken, coughing and feeling the sputum rise in his throat. Lain buried under the stones was the body of a young female collie, still in her long blue dress, her paws tied in front of her, a blood-stained rope wrapped around her neck. Little left but sparse merle fur, gaping decay ravaging a once bright muzzle, Alun braved the sight and saw, clutched to her chest, a rag of white linen that had something written on it. With tears streaming down his muzzle, he inched over and took the square of material away, reading over what was there.

Eleri Jones. Given to the mountain by her love, so that her family might live and prosper. A sacrifice appreciated. MJ

Alun went numb. He dropped the rag and rustled backwards across the grass, his eyes trained on the cairn and the distressed outline of someone he once knew. His paws were stung by surrounding nettles as he inched backwards shaking his head, his tail catching on the brambles and the thorns. The weather broke as Alun tore away, his rush ripping a clump of his own black-white fur from the depth of the skin as he did so. Carrying his crook as he stumbled and hurried back up the slope, Alun never looked back and ran for the rest of the way, the rumble of thunder echoing through his floppy merle ears. The whole place was quickly dark and cloaked in a veil of a storm shower, the collie’s fur soaked in seconds, his coat and his bloody tail heavy with the payload. His pace only slowed when he started to descend the slope to Crug-y-Dagrau, seeing a soft pillar of smoke snaking its way into the air from the wattle chimney.

Remembering the little spring, he crouched down to its head, the small gurgling pool pattered and pitted by the incessant fall of raindrops. It was only as he squinted through this dull evening light that he caught sight of something resting between a rocky crevice, a pan of some sorts, rusted to one end like a harvest moon reaching out of the night. Alun took a hold of it and soon realised it was a well-used prospecting pan, scratched and beaten with age, concealed from young eyes for all theses years. The collie grew angry, his sodden paws gripping at the sides of the pan as though to compress them, his eyes screwed up and searching between sadness and rage. And there, shimmering dull yellow out from under the tiny shallows, were rich veins of gold spilt across the stones like a thick treacle, specks of metal resting in the silt and glinting, almost blinking. Curious, constantly tearful eyes that looked out from the fecund submarine earth, washed and innocent gifts from their mountain home. Alun got to his feet and, slinging the pan into the waters and watching as it washed away into an underground course, the collie padded forlorn and bedraggled down the rest of the hill. He had a pounding headache, his fur was soaked and his tail was throbbing and sore; but there was now a hot flush of determination inside him. Leaving the sheep to their own devices, Alun padded around the catslide roof’s join with the earth and into the inner yard. He didn’t bother to wipe his footpaws on the brushes, nor did he think to hide his crook. The click and pad of his progress was overheard by Meirion, who appeared at the door with his usual cleaning instructions. As their oxblood-red oak panelled door creaked open, Alun remained stood in the centre of the yard to face his father’s rage.

“What… what the hell is this?!” Meirion threw the bucket with a crash across the inner porch, “you come home like this, crwt!”

“I’m leaving” Alun murmured calmly, resting both paws atop his blackthorn crook.

“You’re.. oh no you’re not my boio. You’re staying and you’ll start by cleaning those disgusting footpaws and getting rid of that stick.”

Alun was starting to shiver with cold, the rain dripping in long sabres down from his sopping black-white head fur, curtaining over his nervous eyes.

“No” The youngster remained firm, his heart thudding, all the pain forgotten for this moment, “I know what you’ve done Da’. I know you killed Mam. I know what you’ve been hiding, and where we’ve really been getting our money. You’ve lied all this time.”

Meirion went quiet, a sudden vicious and cracked grin pouring across his fat old muzzle. He padded out from under the shelter of the house, his broad footpaws pressed to the cold cobbles, the thin fur grazed and pristine. He used wire wool on his. The old collie, his large dirty black torn ears wet in the rain and his stinking breath evaporating into miniature grey clouds as he wheezed huskily, came right up to Alun. The smells of woodsmoke were putrid on his threadbare checked red and green shirt, splashes of dirt, of silt and soup staining the material.

“And where would you go huh? Tell me that! Blood is thicker than water, cofiwch dy gwa’d.”

“Yeah well perhaps a little dilution would do us good.” Alun stood strong, withstanding his father’s short but imposing figure, and turned to pad slowly away towards the track to Rhyddfraint. His tail bounced a little higher now, knowing he was free, a trail of watery blood dripping from the flesh tear still ripe with embedded thorns.

He heard no more of Meirion, the gruff old farmer left standing there in the downpour as he padded away to the front gate. The air was heavy, musty and mild, the clouds beginning to take on a shade of night in their aqueous volume. Two breaths hung and panted silently to the air, one progressing further and further away from the other. Suddenly the peace of the rain shower was shattered by a gunshot that echoed around the valley, scattering blackbirds roosting in the nearby oak in a haze of black-feathered sentient smoke.

And now there was only one. Two harsh dark green eyes gazed righteously down the length of the barrel, a wisp of tart gunsmoke gathering in dripping cold nostrils. With the black metal barrel of the shotgun gazing down and spent like a broken periscope, one rough clawed and scabby footpaw rolled the body over. An oily red flow was seeping across the shiny acorn brown cobbles, bubbling into the drains and washing into the weeds that poked through the yard’s face. Those eyes stared up to the sky almost in a shock, a paw gripping still at the treacly black length of his crook, a soft drip of blood eking from the side of a dead maw.

Meirion stood over him, watching as the raindrops faded and washed into the huge wound on his son’s chest, a fleshy fatal patch that was the end to dissent.

“No one leaves me” he muttered, grinding and grating his teeth, biting his overgrown yellow claws on his dirty paws.

Undoing the cuff buttons on his shirt, the collie dragged Alun’s body over to the tractor bucket and dumped him unceremoniously into the black steel container. Emotionless and calculating, he drove the tractor away and up the field into the rain shower, the tracks digging into the mountain side, the mud splattering as he spun the huge black rubber tyres on more than one occasion. He reached the crest of the hill and the spring where he’d panned the mountain’s gold for a secret self-gain for years. The mechanical clunk of the tractor arms were followed with the clang of the bucket releasing downward, a lifeless body flopping into the shallow pool, the stream carrying it away into its underground course. The crack of a skull against the rock and the rush of the water pushing against the young collie’s lifeless form was drowned out by the machine’s reversing and its throaty diesel engine, Meirion driving back to the farmyard with a sick satisfaction coursed across his muzzle.

The day closed out into a jaundiced morning, the old collie sat alone in the longhouse with a gaze cast towards a single slab of stone on the kitchen floor. It had been under his son’s paws the whole time. He guessed that was what made it all the more satisfying when he crawled over the dusty tiles to inch his grip around the loose, layered edge of the slate. The collie slid the stone away, but his maw was aghast. Meirion collapsed back against the near rotten table leg in shock, sitting back on his ragged tail and hitting his head back against the turned wood.

Where once was a nest of gold nuggets, a vicious putrid smell rose to the kitchen’s air. The haul that Meirion had gathered over his years of deceit had turned to rancid butter, the collie lunging forward with disbelief and paddling his paws desperately through the hole. They became coated in that off-yellow curdled liquid, searching frantically for any sign of his treasure. He started to scream and yell, scratching through to the bed rock but to no avail. It had all gone. Again.

He got to his feet and rushed out into the chill dawn air, hobbling up the land and over the soaking pasture, parting the sheep as he did so. There was a distinct off-colour to the grass too. The trees’ leaves were already turning, as though winter had come overnight. Tears of anger came to Meirion’s beady little eyes as he almost flung himself to the grass at the foot of the spring, hoping and praying that it wasn’t repeating itself. He dipped a paw into the water, and withdrew it to lean it to the light, an awful black algae bloom dripping in a syrupy slow tear back into the now fetid pool. Each sheep was now lying dead. The grass about him was now black as though burnt.

“This is Radio Rhyddfraint, and now for the afternoon news at three. I’m Ffion James. Prynhawn Da. A murder investigation is underway after the body of an unidentified male was spotted floating in the Afon Perchyll at 9 am this morning. The deceased had sustained a gunshot wound to the chest. Police are appealing for information. In other news…”

And as for Meirion? No one ever saw him again. Some say he was snatched away by his dead son and dragged to his death in the pool. Others say that if you ever wander up the road to Crug-y-Dagrau and gaze through the ruins of the longhouse, you’ll see Meirion’s ghost scrabbling in vain at the floor tiles, still looking for his gold. His cries of anguish echo about the ruins as he drifts about the yard, then disappears across the fields.

But if you do venture there, look for the blackthorn tree that has grown from a discarded crook. Its thorns are said to drip with blood on every anniversary of that dreadful murder; because after all, blood is thicker than water.