he January day was<br >to rest on the hedge<br >Kevin Hurley was digging<br >cold with a grey sky that seemed<br >at the end of the unploughed field.<br >a drain. He was wrapped in a grey<br >overcoat in the narrow tractor cab， a dirt-caked sack on the<br >metal seat beneath him， tentacles of cold exploring his legs<br >inside his mud-splashed Wellingtons. His father s legs were<br >also cold， blue-veined shanks frozen stiff from toe to knee.<br >Cold gripped the surrounding hedges and the small animals<br >they sheltered， and the gap-toothed wind that came down<br >from Slieve Bloom in the north broke twigs off trees and<br >hissed at the loose door of the cab. The warmth of his life<br >seemed to have evaporated forever. Summer and autumn had<br >made way for winter， and yet he was only in his fortieth<br >year. Cold weather， cold clothes， cold flesh， cold clay. His<br >father would fail to wake from sleep one morning， and then<br >he and Maureen would be alone.<br > A solitary crow rose over a hedge and dipped twice as it<br >fled before a whirring tail wind. In this same field on a warm<br >