His father always used to say that whenever you saw more than seven hooded crows gathered together, they had come to gloat over a human tragedy.It was tragedy weather, too. Curtains of rain had been trailing across the Nagle Mountains since well before dawn, and the north-west field was so heavy that it had taken him more than three hours to plow it. He was turning the tractor around by the top corner, close to the copse called Iollan’s Wood, when he saw Gabriel frantically waving from the gate.John waved back. Jesus, what did the idiot want now? If you gave Gabriel a job to do, you might just as well do it yourself, because he was always asking what to do next, and was it screws or nails you wanted, and what sort of wood were you after having this made from? John kept on steadily plowing, with big lumps of sticky mud pattering off the wheels, but Gabriel came struggling up the field toward him, still waving, with crows irritably flapping all around him. He was obviously shouting, too, although John couldn’t hear him.As Gabriel came puffing up to him in his raggedy old brown tweeds and gumboots, John switched off the tractor’s engine and took off his ear-protectors.“What’s wrong now, Gabe?
