Patterjacks by Benjamin Myers

To mark publication of Jay Griffiths’ new collection of essays, Nemesis, My Friend, she invited artists and writers to respond to some of the themes in the book. This piece is by the novelist Benjamin Myers.

They ran two teams of two dogs. Each one had an elder and experienced pure Patterdale, accompanied by one of the younger pups that had some Jack Russell stirred into their genetic mix for an added layer of tenacity. A bit more snap. You need a dog that can lock on, but which can be trained to let go too.

The men were father and son. I took them across the yard and around the back to the old chicken sheds. The terriers were straining on their leads but the two men kept uttering quiet but firm instructions to the dogs that were more like throaty noises rather than actual words, gruff curt orders and curdling growls born out of a human/canine hybrid cant.

Now and again both father and son would also give the leads a swift tug to keep the dogs in step and focused on the forthcoming task, for the shared pack energy was already turned towards blood.

One of the older dogs had marks across its snout, scars gained in previous killing sprees, and he walked with a haughty, hungry strut, the neat muscular mass of his compact shoulders bred for fitting through small gaps as well as yanking and tearing. Shredding.

I pointed down to the corner, to the hole by the drain and the rotten boards.

‘They’re down under there,’ I said. ‘I’ve seen them poking their heads out, and one or two scurrying about but I’m sure there’s more. Loads more.’

‘Where there’s two rats, there’s likely two hundred,’ said the father.

The son nodded and grunted in agreement but said nothing.

‘It’s not so much the grain I mind them taking, but they’ve been at the eggs and chicks too. I can’t risk putting down poison and my rifle got taken off me.’

The son looked at me sideways with a renewed interest and what I detected may have been curious admiration, but still he didn’t speak.

‘This lot will soon let us know,’ said his father, then added, rather ominously: ‘We’re giving the pups their first run but the other two’ll show them the way. Often on a first showing it can messy, but they need to learn.’

‘Messy how?’

The father shrugged.

‘These nippers know they want to catch rats even before they’ve even seen one; it’s in them, buried deep in their DNA. But rats thrive for two reasons: one, they breed and adapt. Two, they rarely go down without a fight. When a pup’s only used to a fur toy on a bit of string, a snarling rat can be quite something.’

He paused for a moment.

‘Ever heard a cornered rat shriek?’

I shook my head.

The son briefly smiled and snorted in a way that was ambiguous.

The dogs were already whining and pointing when the son went over to the boards and crouched there. He cocked his head and listened, and for a moment the cool morning was perfectly still and silent. The wind had dropped, the rain had stopped spattering the petrol-scented puddles of the yard. There was peace.

Then, when he was satisfied that he had either heard or not heard something – it was difficult to tell, and though a taciturn lad, I sensed he was enjoying the showmanship of the ritual – he nodded and his father unhooked the dogs. At the same time the son lifted the first board, and then everything was chaos.

Beneath it was a squirming mass of rats suddenly stunned by the daylight. Exposed and under threat, they made a break for it in all directions. The older dogs were straight upon them, each snatching a rat up in the air, shaking it vigorously so that their necks or spines snapped in an audible instant, before darting straight to the next rat. The younger pups were overcome with excitement. Like children at a pick ‘n’ mix counter they were presented with too many opportunities at once, so instead ran here and there, overcome by possibility, the stubs of their tails that had been docked at birth for this very occasion now protruding like antennae, their brains not fully able to compute that the rats were living things, rather than the toys the father had mentioned. The brindle-coloured Patterjack of the junior pair involuntarily urinated with excitement.

The older dogs didn’t have to run far. Some rats were scooped and flipped into the air, and managed to break free from their jaws, but the hounds simply had to turn and grab another. There were scores of rats fat from months of doing little but eating grain and fresh eggs and breeding. Hundreds, even.

It was thrilling. The rats squeaked but the dogs were too deeply immersed in their own individual kill zones to expend energy on noise, and instead were swift and merciless in their dispatching of the rodents. Many of the rats were large, with long, leathery shoelace tails and fur matted from mud and rainfall, but there were younger ones too, who were fast on their feet and might just survive to live another day.

One made a break for it with a sense of purpose that was impressive, and I was almost upset when the son jabbed a spade which I wasn’t even aware he was carrying straight into it, splitting the young rat clean in half to reveal the brightness of its spectacular inner workings. His father did the same, but with a fork, and somehow managed to spear not one but two on its steel tines in quick succession. Burst them. Then, like a soldier raising a flagpole on a battlefield, he held the newly-adorned implement above head height and the two rats wriggled there, death projected onto the tiny black screens of their frantic eyes, claws scratching furiously at nothing but air, and he laughed. He laughed loudly, half-drunk on the glorious slaughter of it all.

One of the pups stopped and regarded him for a brief moment, fresh blood smeared across his maw, clipped stub of a tail wagging, and the rain started up again. It fell softly on the quiet corner of a world, my world, the one that few ever get to see.

***

Benjamin Myers’ books include The Gallows Pole, The Offing, Male Tears, Beastings and the non-fiction work Under The Rock. His latest novel The Perfect Golden Circle is out now, published by Bloomsbury. He lives in the Upper Calder Valley, West Yorkshire.

The illustration at the head of this piece is by Charlotte Rowley, who works mainly with papercut, lino print and watercolour. Click the image to see the full illustration. See her work on Instagram.

Nemesis, My Friend by Jay Griffiths is out now.