Chapter 14 The Man with the Case

The man with the case came in the spring, when the lane was hard with the first frost of the year, and he did not come with the van but on foot, the way the auctioneer had not come, and he wore the clothes of the city and had the case of a man who carries a thing of value, and he stood in the yard and called out that he had an appointment with the boy who keeps the house, and Eamon went out to him with the lamp still burning in the kitchen because the men of the town had been at the boards that evening and the work of clearing had not been done, and the man looked at the house and did not look at the house, the way people do when they have a thing in their head that is not of the place they are in. His name was Declan, and he was a dealer, and he had heard of the table from the man with the copper pots, who had seen it on a Thursday evening and had said the thing to the man at the gate, and the man at the gate had said the thing to the dealer, and the dealer had driven up from Carra with the case under his arm and the measure in his head, and he would not go into the kitchen, and would not sit at the boards, and would not touch the grain, and stood in the yard with the case in his hands and said, I want to put a figure on it, and Eamon said, You can put a figure on the tin, because the tin is what I sell, and the dealer said, The tin is not the table, and Eamon said, The tin is the table, and the dealer said it the way the auctioneer had said it, in the flat voice of a man who has a number and wants to say it, and the number he said was the number of the auction, three times what the tin had held, and the three times had stood in the yard between them while the lamp went low in the kitchen and the men of the town slept on their beds and did not know that the figure of their Thursday evening was in the hands of a man with a case, and Eamon said, Not today, and the dealer said, Not today is not a price, and Eamon said, Not today is a keeping, and the dealer looked at him the way his mother had looked at the man who had sold him the idea of the table, which was the way a person looks at a thing that is not for selling, and turned and went down the lane with the case, and the case did not come back, because the case was not what came back, what came back was the figure, and the figure was in the dealer's head, and it did not fit the kitchen of Gort, and he had put it in the case and taken it to the gate, and the gate held it the way the grain held the count, patiently, and without resolution. The man did not come back in the spring, and did not come back in the summer, and came back in the autumn with a second figure that was twice the first, and Eamon went out to him at the gate the way he had gone out to him at the gate before, and the dealer said, It is not the price, it is the keeping, and Eamon said, It is the price, and the dealer said, Then you are keeping it from the town, and Eamon said, I am keeping it for the town, and the dealer stood in the yard with the figure in his mouth and the grain in his head, and said the thing that the town would say to him in the lane the next Thursday, that the keeping is not the thing but the thing kept going, and Eamon said, You are the town now, and the dealer said, I am a man with a case, and Eamon said, No, you are a man with a figure, and the figure is not the table, and the table is not for a figure, and the dealer looked at him with the face of a man who has come to a place and found that the place is not what he came to, and he put the case on the ground in the yard and said, Then I will wait, and Eamon said, You cannot wait at the table, the table is not for waiting, it is for keeping, and the dealer said, I will wait at the gate, and Eamon said, The gate is not the table, and the dealer said, I know, and he went down the lane with the case, and the case did not come back, and the figure did not come back, and the gate held the keeping, and the keeping held the town, and the town held the table, and the table stood in the kitchen of Gort with the lamp lit and the grain running to the sea, and the count of the family went on in the end grain, patient and unhurried, like a river seen from a hill, running on to the far end where the chair stood empty and the light reached it and went no further, because that is how far the grain runs, and that is how far the keeping reaches, which is to the end of the boards, and no further, and no less. The man with the case did not come back in the winter, and did not come back in the spring, because the case was not what came back, what came back was the figure, and the figure was in the dealer's head, and it did not fit the kitchen of Gort, and he had put it in the case and taken it to the gate, and the gate had held it the way the grain held the count, patiently, and without resolution, and the gate had held the keeping, and the keeping had held the town, and the town had held the table, and the table had stood in the kitchen of Gort with the lamp lit and the grain running to the sea, and the count of the family had gone on in the end grain, patient and unhurried, and the dealer had gone down the lane with the case, and the case had not come back, and the figure had not come back, and the figure had stood in the dealer's head at the far end of the boards, at the place where the grain ran to the sea, and the dealer had looked at it the way the men of the lane looked at the Thursday evenings, which was the way of a person who has come to a place and found that the place was not what he came to, and the place was not for a figure, the place was for a keeping, and the keeping was the thing, and the thing was kept, and the dealer had stood in the yard with the case in his hands and the figure in his mouth, and had said the thing to the gate, that the figure was not the table, and the gate had not answered, because the gate did not answer, the gate held, and the keeping went on, patient and unhurried, like a river seen from a hill, running to the sea at the far end of the boards where the chair stood empty and the grain ran on.