by Kevin Barry
The Dom was a busy-faced lardarse who walked a soft-shoe shuffle, and as he came padding across to the Long Fella’s table, already he was muttering sadly, as if the machinations of life in the city had become too much for him. Dom fed on an all-meat diet and he had the high colour of it. He carried with him a small glass of moscato wine and the following morning’s proposed editorial comment. He laid the copy before Logan, took a seat, removed grandly a silken handkerchief from inside his three-quarter-length autumn coat, and mopped his bone-dry brow.
‘Oh my angina,’ he sorrowfully wheezed.
Impatiently, the copy was brushed aside.
‘Summarise for me, Dominick.’
The fat newsman leaned forward and allowed on his features a moist, hammy scowl.
‘I’m after comin’ out bullin’ against the plan for a Beauvista tram, Mr H.’
He sipped at his moscato and winked broadly. Tiptoed his fingers across the tabletop and onto the saucer of pumpkin seeds – Logan swiped the fingers away, and Dom winced, blew on them, and adopted a look of brutalised innocence. Logan couldn’t but grin.
‘Your rationale, Dom?’
‘I’m sayin’ the las’ place that need a tram is Nob Hill, sir.’
Beauvista was always referred to thus in the Vindicator’s common-touch argot.
‘I’m sayin’ the Bohane Authority would be far better off spendin’ the bucks on improving the El train and serving the dacent ordinary people…’
With chubby fingertips Big Dom mimicked a tiny violin.
‘… of the Northside Rises.’
‘Good man, Dom. We want the Rises kept well buttered.’
‘Of course, we just got to be seen to be sayin’, like. There ain’t no fear the Authority will pay the slightest bit o’ notice, Logan. The Beauvista tram?’
He fisted a soft palm happily.
‘She’s a lock, sir.’
‘Happy news, Dominick. We won’t have to lug our old bones up that bastard of a hill.’
The newsman was also established, naturally, in a Nob Hill manse, and he shuddered his relief.
‘Lungs are like broken stout bottles in me on account of it, Logan.’
‘Oh you suffer, Dominick.’
‘Don’t be talkin’ to me, sir. The latest is I’m after gettin’ a class of a shake in the mitt, are you watchin’?’
Dominick held up his left mitt and quivered it dramatically.
‘Could it be an excess of self-abuse, Dom?’
The newsman’s eyes popped in outrage.
‘If I threw ya tuppence, would ya lower the tone?’
Big Dom sat back then, and he sighed as he let his piggy little eyes swivel about the cafe. In the sigh, there was his blunt opinion of things: that this place would be the end of him yet.
‘What I wanted to ask you, Mr H…’
‘Yes, Dom?’
‘Is regardin’ the Cusack situation.’
‘Oh? Is there a Cusack situation, Dominick?’
The Dom chuckled.
‘What we’re wondering, Logan, is there any hope at all that, ah… that… things might hold off for a stretch yet?’
‘Who the we, Dom?’
Gleeson glared indignantly.
‘I’m speakin’ on behalf o’ the Bohane people, Mr Hartnett!’
Logan leaned forward for a low-voiced confide:
‘I ain’t the one sending martyrs of young fellas across the footbridge, Dominick. I ain’t the one rousing the flatblocks.’
The Dom showed his palms. He moaned, softly, and he let his eyes roll up in his head until all that could be seen was the whites – this to signify the delicate politics the city required, and the weariness such work exacted from an honest soul.
‘I know they’re wall-bangers to a man, H, an’ feckin’ uppity with it. But all we’re sayin’…’
‘The we again, Dom?’
‘Okay, Mr Hartnett. Truth be told, I’m carryin’ representations from the Authority.’
‘Ah, I see now.’
‘Bohane Authority is at a critical stage in negotiations with the NB, Mr Hartnett.’
NB, in Bohane cant: the Nation Beyond.
‘So I believe.’
‘NB tight enough with the aul’ tit this year, H.’
‘I understand it’s the way.’
‘So the last thing we need is one half o’ the town tryin’ to ate the other half. This place got a bad enough name as things stand, Logan.’
‘You’re saying that the Authority wishes for the Calm to persist, Dom, until such a time as the NB tit has been successfully massaged?’
‘That’s very nicely put, Mr Hartnett.’
Logan knit his elegant fingers beneath his chin.
‘I’m reasonable, Dom. I wouldn’t be fouling the air still if I wasn’t. Our only problem is we got a loolah up on the Rises and he has a horn on him for a massive fucking ruck. And I can’t be seen to back off.’
‘I’m knowin’ this all too well, Logan.’
‘And! I’ve got a fucking maniac outside on Big Nothin’ and he’s working his own plan.’
‘You’re talkin’ about the Gant Broderick.’
‘I am indeed, Dominick. So here’s what I’d say to you. If ye want the Calm to stretch for a while, I’ll play my part but on a particular condition.’
‘Name it, sir.’
‘Get me a bead on the Gant.’
The fat newsman soul-wrestled for the cheap seats.
‘Ah, Logan… The Gant’s a man with a quare stretch o’ history to his name outside on Nothin’…’
‘You’ve contacts out there, Dom.’
‘I have, but…’
‘I’m sending my boys out. And your very best contact is to meet with them. And they better be given the Gant’s precise whereabouts, Dom. Whatever fucking rock he’s hiding under, we need to know it.’
Dom trembled his jowls.
‘Mr Hartnett? Peoples got long memories in Bohane. If the Gant got hurted…’
‘I want a bead drawn on the big unit, Dom. Do you hear me clearly?’
‘Cathedral bells, Mr Hartnett.’
‘Good. Have we any other business?’
They smiled, and they shook, and the newsman took his leave. Logan reached for his jacket, removed from its breast pocket a red handkerchief, and wiped his hands. He ate seeds, then, and he drank joe, and he examined the reach of his manipulation. He smiled for the young gents of the Fancy. They watched him with the usual regard, awe, puzzlement.
The day they could snag a read on him would be the day he would lose them.
6
Big Nothin’ Rendezvous
Was the day following a pair of hombres by the name of Wolfie Stanners and Fucker Burke took to the High Boreen. The Boreen is the main passage across the Big Nothin’ wastes – a double-width cindertrack passable in most weathers. Smaller tracks lead from it into the hills and onto the bog and down briary laneways peopled by haggard souls in cottages that sag with damp, and loss, and sadness. The rain fell hard as the boys grimly walked, and rain was no surprise to the place. A low bank of cloud had moved in from the Atlantic and broke up when it hit the foothills of the Nothin’ massif. The bog was livened and opened its maw hungrily for the rain. The boys squelched along and eyed with disgust the effect of the mud on their high-top boots. The rain ran in fresh silver freely down the gullies of the hills and fed the patient lakes and the poppy fields also were sated. Even in the midst of the rain, sunlight flashed from behind the cloudbank – it peeped out for a few seconds at a time, skittish as a young thing, and showed the colours of the rain. The yellow of the high-summer broom had faded in memory of that summer. There was a thick silence from the direction of the pikey reservation – ‘the rez’, as it is known in the Bohane cant – a most sinister silence, and the boys were watchful of the pikey lands, easterly. Never know what could come flyin’ at you from that direction.
‘I’m tryin’ to get this straight in me noggin,’ said Fucker.
‘Here we go,’ said Wolfie.
‘The fuck how we gonna find the big unit, Wolf?’
‘We’re gonna have a bead drawn, Fucker.’
‘Hey but Wolf? We don’t know fuckin’ Nothin’ from fuckin’ no place, y’heed me?’
‘Shut up, Fucker.’
These boys were the roaming lieutenants of the Hartnett Fancy. The mood was not good.
‘But seriously, Wolfie? I mean there’s a whole heap o’ Big fuckin’ Nothin’ out here, y’sketchin’?’
Indeed, it was a rude expanse. The reeds that fringed the wee lakes swayed but barely in a light breeze. Big Nothin’ is a place of thorn and stone and sudden devouring swamp-holes. It has an infinity of small wet fields. The fields are broken up by rough and ill-formed drystone walls that tend to give out altogether about two-thirds of the way across a field. A lazy job, the walls. It wasn’t Presbyterians put up those walls.
‘What we know about the big unit?’ said Fucker.
‘The Gant Broderick,’ said Wolfie. ‘Halfways pikey, halfways whiteman. Been gone outta the creation since back in the day. Was the dude used to have the runnins before the Long Fella. Use’ t’do a line with the Long Fella’s missus an’ all, y’check?’
Fucker’s jaw lolloped.
‘Say she was a proper lash in her day, like?’
‘She ain’t too bad now, Fuck.’
‘Ain’t, like.’
‘Wouldn’t kick her outta bed for atein’ anchovies, like.’
‘No way, Wolf. The way the eye be class o’ turned in on her, like? Bit tasty.’
On a stone wall Wolfie and Fucker paused to rest a while. They smoked, and they savoured a spectacle. In the near distance, a scraggle of country lads cantered around a small field. Polis trials were coming up, and to get a start in the Bohane polis, a lad is expected to be able to lep over a sixbar farm gate of the type made by the sand-pikeys who live on the dunes oceanside of the city. The lads jogged in a staggered line around the irregular perimeter of the field and in sequence one of them would break off from the stagger, take a sprint for the field’s gate and have a lep at it. Knees, elbows and chins were taking punishment down there. The Bohane polis was spud-ater to a man.
‘Smart-lookin’ crop,’ said Wolfie Stanners.
‘World-beaters,’ said Fucker Burke.
Wolfie and Fucker were by their nature city boys. They were not built for the wilds. If he had his way, Fucker would have been sat on a bollard of the Bohane front, with a pipeload of herb on the draw and a dangerous glare trained on the river traffic. If he had his way, Wolfie would have been patrolling the Trace and S’town in the Fancy’s cause – with concrete under his feet – and bustin’ the heads of Norrie scuts.
‘Got the fuckin’ spooks up in me, Wolf.’
‘Well, that’s Big fuckin’ Nothin’ for ya, ain’t it, Fucker?’
The boys bitterly climbed to their feet and hit again along the High Boreen. Went deeper into the Nothin’ wastes. They came to a particular turn and took it and it led to a ridge path that skirted a granite knoll. Made a harlequin spectacle out on the bog plain, these boys.
Fucker wore:
Silver high-top boots, drainpipe strides in a natty-boy mottle, a low-slung dirk belt and a three-quarter jacket of saffron-dyed sheepskin. He was tall and straggly as an invasive weed. He was astonishingly sentimental, and as violent again. His belligerent green eyes were strange flowers indeed. He was seventeen years of age and he read magical significance into occurrences of the number nine. He had ambition deep inside but could hardly even name it. His true love: an unpredictable Alsatian bitch name of Angelina.
Wolfie wore:
Black patent high-tops, tight bleached denims with a matcher of a waistcoat, a high dirk belt, and a navy Crombie with a black velvet collar. Wolfie was low-sized, compact, ginger, and he thrummed with dense energies. He had a blackbird’s poppy-eyed stare, thyroidal, and if his brow was no more than an inch deep, it was packed with an alley rat’s cunning. He was seventeen, also, and betrayed, sometimes, by odd sentiments under moonlight. He wanted to own entirely the city of Bohane. His all-new, all-true love: Miss Jenni Ching of the Hartnett Fancy and the Ho Pee Ching Oh-Kay Koffee Shoppe.
‘Get ’round the far side o’ that hill,’ said Wolfie, ‘an’ we should see the place, yeah?’
‘Like I know the fuckin’ bogs from fuckology,’ said Fucker.
They were headed for a low tavern out at Eight Mile Bridge. A tout was to be met there. They walked on through the damp air.
‘If yer askin’ me?’ said Fucker.
‘Well, I ain’t,’ said Wolfie.
‘If yer askin’ me,’ said Fucker, ‘Logan H, he gone seriously fuckin’ para, like.’
‘Logan H, he always been para, Fucker. You don’t land the runnins o’ Bohane without bein’ seriously on the fuckin’ para side, y’check me? S’how y’keep suckin’ wind.’
Fucker waggled his beanie head in puzzlement.
‘But what’s this old Gant cunt gonna go and do on him? Who got the juju over Logan, like? He’s well protected, the Long Fella.’
‘Ours ain’t to reason why, Fucker. We’s oney the boys, like. Yet.’
They came upon the Bohane river. Feeding directly off the bog, it was a tarry run of blackwater, and it burbled its inanities. Fucker listened as they walked, and was antsy, and he ran the tip of his tongue across his cracked, nervous lips. He let free a nagging worry.
‘You an’ the Jenni-chick gone kinda serious lately, Wolf?’
‘We’s a lock, Fucker.’
‘Knew I ain’t been seein’ you around the place so much of an evenin’.’
‘Missin’ me, Fucker?’
‘Aw she’s a wee lash an’ all, like. I wouldn’t blame you, kid.’
‘Breed a bairn off her quick as you’d look at me.’
‘You would? A Chinkee gettin’ bred off a ginge? Weird-lookin’ fuckin’ baba, no?’
‘Stow it, Fucker.’
The river ran, and the Nothin’ massif loomed in a grey haze, and swaying briars scraped at the boys’ noggins, and Eight Mile Bridge was at last reached.
‘Spud-ater Central,’ said Wolfie Stanners.
A scatter of inebriates hung out beneath the great stone arches of the bridge. They sucked at their sacks of tawny wine. Misfortunate souls in beanie hats, ragged-arsed trews, ancient geansais. The boys eyeballed them hard as they passed.
‘Awful to see fellas let themselves go,’ said Fucker.
‘No self-respec’ is the prob,’ said Wolfie.
They went down a short fall of carved stone steps to the old tavern: the Eight Mile Inn. The inn was set low on the river’s bank to dodge the hardwind’s assaults. It was lit only by turf fires and the boys squinted in the gloom as they entered.
Door creaked shut behind, and slammed, and wisps of steam like spectral maggots rose from their damp coats in the inn’s fuggy heat.
Their eyes adjusted. They picked out their man at a far corner. As was arranged, he read a copy of the Vindicator. Gestured with it as the boys entered. He was a nervy-looking old-timer with milk-bottle shoulders. Mug of brandy before him. A few old bogside quaffers in flat caps were slung about the dim corners but they kept their eyes down. Wolfie and Fucker crossed the room and slid onto the high stools either side of the tout. Wolfie called a pair of amber halves off the fat-armed Big Nothin’ wench behind the counter. She served them, and was all slow and lazy-eyed about it – a lass, no doubt, with notions of being carted off to the city some day. The boys pointedly ignored her. At length, Wolfie addressed the tout in a sidelong whisper.
‘Understand,’ he said, ‘that the man from the paper put word to you?’
‘Mr Gleeson, he did.’
‘Know why we’re here so?’ said Fucker.
‘It’s about a bead wants drawin’.’
‘You the man to draw it for us, cove?’
‘The man ye’re lookin’ for been seen awrigh’, like.’
>
‘Seen when and where?’
‘Would it mean somethin’ t’ye if I said, like? Ye know Big Nothin’, ye do?’
‘Said when and where?’
‘He oney comes out on night walks.’
‘Comes out where, cove?’
‘Comes out. Walks abroad.’
Fucker snapped.
‘Fuck’s walks a-fuckin-broad mean, fuckface?’
‘He walks Nothin’.’
‘There’s a whole wealth,’ said Wolfie, ‘o’ Big fuckin’ Nothin’ out here, in’t there?’
‘Where’s it he’s kippin’, cove?’
‘That ain’t known.’
The boys threw their hands up. Consulted each other quietly. They were tempted already towards a spilling of blood but wary of the report that needed making to Logan Hartnett. The spud-ater knew this well. Spud-aters – they can be as cute as shithouse slugs.
Fucker sat on his hands and bit his bottom lip. Wolfie, more the diplomat of the pair, changed tack.
‘You’d be a fella who’d take a turn ’round Smoketown the odd time, sir?’
‘Now,’ said the spud-ater, ‘we are talkin’ decen’ cuts o’ turkey.’
‘An’ what’d have an interest for you ’cross the footbridge, sir?’
The old-timer’s eyes sparkled.
‘I’d lick a dream off the belly of a skinny hoor as quick as you’d look at me.’
Wolfie nodded soberly, as though appreciative of the spudater’s delicate tastes.
‘Draw a bead and you’ll have your pick o’ the skinnies,’ he said. ‘Could have a season o’ picks.’
‘A season?’
‘Cozy aul’ winter for ya,’ said Fucker. ‘Buried to the maker’s name in skinnies and far gone off the suck of a dream-pipe, y’check me?’
The old tout sighed as temptation hovered.
‘Oh man an’ boy I been a martyr to the poppy dream…’
‘An’ soon as you done with the dream-pipe,’ Fucker teased some more, ‘there’d be as much herb as you can lung an’ ale to folly.’
‘All dependin’,’ said Wolfie, ‘on you drawin’ a bead on the man’s berth for us, check?’
Spud-ater considered the dregs of his brandy.