Hooks Before Lamps

Fergal Brack came along the old road at first light with a bucket of iron hooks, thumbing every hook they passed.

Most were straight, each with last night’s lamp still burning on it, pale in the morning. Fergal liked this hour best. Nobody looks up at a hook while the lamp on it is lit, and that is how a post-mender knows the work is good.

The next post was humming. Fergal laid a palm on the iron and felt it buzz, as so many posts have buzzed this autumn. The hook at the top had bent in the night, a finger out of true. Fergal took the small hammer from their belt, laid the hook flat on the post top and tapped it twice.

“There,” Fergal said. They always say it to a hook.

In the inside pocket of their coat, wrapped in a rag, was one more hook. It was the straightest hook Fergal ever made, and it never went in the bucket. It was for the first of the Sedge Posts, out along the south fields, on the night the lamps come back there. Most mornings Fergal checked it through the coat with two fingers.

A few posts on, the lamps stopped, and the road went flat and pale. That stretch has been dark for days. Scout came out of it in their trucker hat, talking loudly to nobody.

“Morning, Fergal,” Scout said, just as loud. “The avenue’s sending walkers in tonight, in pairs, a lamp each. The whole stretch gets lit, if there’s anything to hang them on.”

Fergal looked in. The first hook was bent flat against its post, and the second post had no hook at all. Fergal counted the bucket and did not like the answer.

It was Fergal’s hour for bed, and Fergal was afraid of dark stretches. In there a Beast wants, very badly, to sit down.

Fergal picked up the bucket and walked in anyway.

The wanting came at once, heavy in the knees. Scout walked the first three posts beside them, talking at the top of their voice about soup and a radio and a lamp that started life as a teapot. Then Scout turned back for the avenue, writing as they went.

Fergal laid the bent hook on the post top and tapped it twice.

“There,” Fergal said, louder than they needed to.