by Donal Ryan
When bedtime came he was glad to say goodnight to Mother and retreat upstairs to think. A man couldn’t think about things with his mother in the room – it was hard enough thinking of things to say to a woman who had hardly any words left for the world, only lonesome thoughts and muttered prayers.
The cross one in the tight jeans had looked a bit like the girls in Dwyer’s dirty magazine. Johnsey couldn’t believe they were fully real, them wans. How could a part of a woman look so strange, like an alien’s face, and yet make you not be able to stop looking at it?
JOHNSEY LIKED thinking about the stories Daddy used tell him before he went to sleep. A rake of his great-uncles were priests in Scotland and America and Canada. They joined the priesthood and exiled themselves as penance for taking the lives of so many Black and Tans years ago during the War of Independence. Daddy’s father was only very young, the youngest of six boys and a girl, and he and his sister would be warming blocks all night and placing them in the lads’ empty beds, down low where their feet would be if they were not patrolling the countryside shooting Englishmen, so when they came home and tore their clothes off and jumped into their beds, their feet would warm quick enough so that if they were raided, their mother would shout Sure look, sir, feel those boys’ feet, they’ve been in their beds since sunset, for they’ve all to be up at cockcrow. And sure enough the rotten bastard would beat them from their beds with the butt of his dirty English gun and line them up for his inspection and they would act like they’d just been dragged from the deepest of sleep and their toes toasty, and that trick saved many a young rebel’s life.
The English officer would leave them their lives but before they went away he’d let the Black and Tan bastards loose about the place and they’d try to flush the Blessed Virgin down the toilet and they’d take the holy picture out to the yard and fling it on the ground and piss all over Our Lord and God only knows what other depravities were visited upon holy things before finally the great-uncles won their war and John Bull and his savage legion fecked off home out of it. Johnsey thought of their bravery and boldness and wondered why had he not the same daring. Hadn’t he the same blood? Those great-uncles he never met would have no trouble talking up for theirselves or getting girls to do the things described in Dwyer’s American magazine. They’d beat the head off of the likes of Eugene Penrose for sport.
And what about Granddad? Sure didn’t he grow up just as brave, but by then the Free State had been established and the Irish had turned their guns on each other and then made up again, kind of, and his brothers had scattered to the four winds. He drove his motorbike across Lough Derg once, when the lake was iced over completely, from Youghal Quay the whole way across to County Clare, just to see could it be done without a fella falling through, and he made it clear across, where he drank a brandy and smoked a fag and doubtless talked to a load of Clare girls and turned around and flew it the whole way back and was hailed a hero. Maybe you had to have brothers to be brave; they would knock toughness into you. Granddad married a woman so beautiful that people – men and women – stood and stared at her with their mouths open, wondering could such a creature really be real. And Daddy was another hero, loved and feared in near equal measure by all who knew him. And what about Daddy’s brother, Uncle Michael, who was long dead and nearly never talked about? He fell off of scaffolding beyond in London and was killed and he only twenty-one. He was beautiful, Mother said once. That was a funny thing to say about a man. He could have charmed the birds right out of the trees, by all accounts.
All about him in that house were the ghosts of heroes, and here lay he, a lonesome gom, letting them all down.
February
JANUARY WAS LONELY and slow and drawn out as a rule, no matter what Mother said about it. The first day of February is the first day of spring, Daddy used to say, as if you could dictate to a season when it was to start. More would contend spring began in March, but the way Daddy used to say it, looking up at the sky as if to see was God listening, to remind him to send the new season, his words would nearly make the world warm up.
The calving would always start in earnest at the start of February. One year, when he was only a small boy, five or six, Daddy and Johnsey and Mother gave half a night outside in the barn with a cow whose calf was coming and the calf was breech. That meant she was turned the wrong way. She was trying to reverse into the world, Daddy said. Daddy reached right in to the poor roaring heifer’s insides and pulled her calf out by the legs and set it gently on the hay. She shook and wobbled and tried to walk, and then she lay down and died. She was too early, Daddy said. Johnsey cried for the little early calf but Mother told him that calf was steeped lucky. A certain number of calves had to be brought up to heaven each spring because God had a beautiful farm above around the stars where they could live and play and never know cold nor hardship and that had made him feel better.
THE AIR WAS COLD but soon the sun would get over the effort of climbing up from behind the mountains and would start its short day’s work before slipping back down below the earth again. Johnsey liked the way the world looked and felt on a cold, clear early morning: crisp and clean and seemingly emptied of all other life. On his walk to the village Johnsey often imagined that he was the last man left alive after some mad professor let off a bomb that made every other human dissolve into dust and there was only himself left and a handful of young girls like the ones on Home and Away. Johnsey would have to save them from the animals that had turned wild from hunger. He’d march about the place with Daddy’s shotgun strapped to his back and the cartridge belt around his waist, and the young ladies would follow behind him and adore him, their saviour.
Daddy’s shotgun was still kept just inside the attic trapdoor at home, asleep in its leather holder, on a soft bed of insulation. You could smell a mixture of wood and metal and oil off of it when you picked it up. A Winchester, under-and-over, two black sideways eyes. A cold and heavy thing, you could nearly feel its dark weight through the ceiling. He often thought of the shotgun these days. Daddy had showed him how to fire it properly when he was fourteen, gripped firm, snug against his shoulder. Then he had taken him to the river field and pointed out a rabbit, cocked up on top of a rise, sniffing the air. He had helped him with his aim and told him be steady, to aim for the head, to take his time. When they collected the dead rabbit and Daddy congratulated him on his fine clean shot, he’d have given the whole world and everything in it to go back three minutes in time and leave that little rabbit to his lovely happy spring day in the meadow.
Mother knew well, when they arrived back to the house. She felt the pain in his heart, just as if it was her own; Look at him, Jack, for God’s sake, he’s as white as a ghost. He’s not cut out for that type of thing.
Sometimes you didn’t know how you would feel about doing a thing until you went and did it. And then it’s too late; you can never ever undo it.
THE JOHNSTON BROTHERS who delivered fruit and vegetables to the co-op were there before him, one of them hopping from one foot to the other and clapping his hands together like it was feckin Antarctica or something and the other sitting in the cab of their big green lorry smoking a fag. The hoppy one had a nose that no man’s face should have to support. His back was bent, as if the burden of that massive snout was forcing his head forward and down towards the ground. Johnsey often caught himself staring at it. Then he’d realize his mouth was open and the big-nosed brother had stopped talking and a blind man could see Johnsey had been staring at his nose, but there was a word for the effect that that nose had, Johnsey knew … hypnotic! That was it. Imagine being hypnotized by a nose!
If Daddy had ever seen that fellow’s big auld Dublin nose, Johnsey knew, he would have made a great skit out of it. He would have said something to Johnsey like I bet that lad nose a lot about vegetables! And he would have dug Johnsey with his elbow and said it again, and then Johnsey would have gotten it and he would feel weak from laughing. And then at home Daddy would have to describ
e the nose to Mother and the way he would describe it would be so funny, Johnsey would get to have the whole big laugh again.
The other lad was lanky and sneaky-looking with a head of tight curls and long fingers gone yellow from the fags. He would always try to make a fool of Johnsey and would say things like he needed a loan of a skirting ladder or a glass hammer or a sky hook and would Johnsey ask Packie for him, but Johnsey was wise to all of them by now, he’d heard it all before. While he was talking and trying to cod him he’d be looking over at Bignose and winking and Johnsey would try to laugh with them but really it wasn’t that funny.
When Packie arrived in he was like a dog, ranting and raving about the government and he straight away started pulling and dragging at the four-stone bags that Johnsey had stacked up lovely and neat. Those sneaky bollixes are trying to pull strokes, did you weigh them bags, no you didn’t, sure what do you care, you get the same pay no matter what, take out them weighing scales, throw those bags up one by one, Lord it’s a sin to have to pay you good money to stand there like a gorilla scratching yourself.
Packie was forever going on about the wages he was forced to pay Johnsey and the terrible injustice that was being perpetrated on the small business with this minimum wage malarkey. Well if it came in he could sing for it, Packie said. There was a thing in there in that law that said lads without their full faculties weren’t entitled to it, anyway.
Johnsey wasn’t exactly sure what faculties were but he knew there were no bits missing off of him on the outside, so it must be something inside him that Packie thinks is not right and stops him from getting the minimum wage. Johnsey knew what minimum meant: a point, below which you could not go. There weren’t as many flies on Johnsey as Packie made out. He knew all about the new law coming in. But what about it, Packie knew no law only his own, and points below which you may not go would not apply to Johnsey.
THE DAY DRAGGED on and on like Tuesdays often do – it’s a nowhere day, Daddy used to say – it’s not at the start of the week or in the middle or the end, it’s just the long day before the hump. The hump is Wednesday. Wednesday always made Johnsey think of a little bridge that you had to run over to get from one end of the week to the next. Johnsey’s weekdays were nearly all the same: up in the morning, in to work, lunch in the bakery, back to work, finish work, get dog’s abuse on the way home from work, try not to cry, home, eat the dinner, look at television with silent Mother, up to bed, read his book, fall asleep thinking about Daddy, or girls, or hearing back his own thick words, and off we go again, dead tired and full of emptiness.
At lunch he would go to the Unthanks’ bakery and Himself would give him a lovely roll still warm from his oven and he’d put ham and cheese in it, and give him a Danish pastry for after, or a jam doughnut. The thought of the bakery made the day slow down even more; the warm bread smell and the little tables set out with the red and white tablecloths, the look of the Unthanks, and they smiling at him from behind the long wood counter, the pictures on the wall that hadn’t changed since Johnsey’s childhood and the feeling of gentleness that was always there. Even when the place was full and people were sitting drinking their tea and eating their sandwiches or cakes or buns in every seat and all along the window on the high stools and there was a big queue at the counter as well for the fresh warm bread, there was always somewhere to sit for Johnsey, because Herself would bring him in to her own kitchen and always make a big song and dance of him. It was never like the chipper, where sometimes fellas jumped in front of Johnsey and once, after Johnsey had paid for his burger and chips and was walking out the door and his mouth was watering just thinking about the treat ahead of him, a lad kicked his bag from his hands and it flew through the air and landed in the middle of the street and his chips were everywhere, all over the ground, and a dog ran straight over and ate his burger in one big gulp.
THERE WAS an old girl who worked in the bakery who was a bit daft – Mother called her Mary with the Cod Eye – she never looked in your face when she was talking and her voice was squeaky and small and reminded Johnsey of a cartoon mouse. Now she didn’t have all her faculties, Johnsey was certain. He didn’t think the Unthanks would roar at her about the minimum wage, though, and how she could sing for it.
Johnsey was sitting at the Unthanks’ kitchen table and Mary with the Cod Eye brought him in his roll and his tea. There was a beaded curtain between the kitchen and the counter area and an opening in the long counter directly across from the curtain. Johnsey could see out to where the tables were. People couldn’t really see back in, because it was darker in the Unthanks’ kitchen than it was outside in the shop.
Old Paddy Rourke was sitting at a small table on his own. Every time he lifted his teacup to his lips, it shook and clacked against the saucer as he put it back down. It looked like a toy teacup and saucer from a doll’s house in Paddy Rourke’s big hand. Johnsey wondered why he didn’t ask Mary with the Cod Eye for a mug altogether, like some of the louder men did. She should have had the cop on not to make him ask, anyway.
Paddy Rourke was attacked once, at home in his own yard. A van pulled up and three fellas got out and ran in around his yard and house and started to load machinery into their van, a cement mixer and a chainsaw and a few other bits. They must have known Paddy had no phone, Daddy said. When Paddy came out and let a roar out of him, one of them hit him in the face with a shovel and they must have all had a go at kicking him. He was inside in the hospital for nearly two months. Daddy said Paddy’s big mistake was coming out to them without his gun. He should have gave them both barrels, Daddy said. He should have come out shooting and let the law be damned. Towards the end of the summer where he faded away and died, Daddy said to Johnsey to always look out before going out to a visitor and never to go out to the yard to a tinker without his shotgun, loaded and locked. Johnsey didn’t know would he be able to point a gun at a man, though. What if it went off and blew your man’s head off by mistake? And then it turned out he was only selling frozen meat or something?
Paddy looked smaller ever since he had gotten that beating off the tinkers. He always looked kind of embarrassed now too, as if he thought it was a failing, a shameful thing, almost, to have been beaten like that. Until the cancer and the tinkers came, Daddy and Paddy Rourke were big, tough men. They wouldn’t have allowed themselves to be tormented daily by the likes of Eugene Penrose. It took three big buck tinkers to fell Paddy Rourke, and he was now standing again, and three kinds of cancer to do for Daddy: he got it in his stomach, lungs and brain. Three kinds imagine!
And he nearly bested them too.
EUGENE PENROSE’S campaign started in primary school, and then went on through secondary school, even though Johnsey went to the Tech for the last two years and Eugene Penrose to the Christian Brothers, as the Tech gave Eugene Penrose the road for constantly acting the little prick. They still had to get the same bus home from town. Then when they were all finished with school Johnsey’s trials were temporarily ended by Eugene Penrose’s disappearance. He went to England to work for his uncle as a plasterer. There was talk of him having to go on account of trouble inside in town one night where a girl got interfered with. But he arrived home after a few years (not even his own uncle could stand the rotten little bastard, Mother said) and Johnsey’s heart broke to see him bowling down the middle of the village with his big red head and his vicious smile.
He got a job in the meat factory over in Kill, but that place ground to a halt two years ago and ever since he seemed to spend his days hanging around the IRA memorial in the village with a small crew of gougers, spitting and shouting and making Johnsey run a daily gauntlet as he passed. Eugene Penrose seemed to hate Johnsey even more now that he had a job and Eugene Penrose hadn’t. Johnsey wondered how big a sin it was to want someone to be dead, and worse, to actually want to be the one to kill them? He imagined himself getting an arm around Eugene Penrose’s throat and squeezing him in a headlock until his mouth was shut forever.
The wor
st thing was, they had all been great old pals as small boys, starting off. In Junior Infants and Senior Infants and First and Second Class it had been Johnsey, Dwyer, Eugene Penrose, Seanie Mac, Murty Donnell, Billy Hassett, Cookie Ryan, Joe Counihan, Conor Quinn and a few more. Then divisions started when blow-ins arrived from town and the boys started to listen to what was being said at home and to look at each other differently. So the sons of bigshots started to pal around just with each other, and the sons of labourers and the blow-ins from town formed their own, separate groups. Dwyer was the most gammy and so occupied a group of his own. Johnsey felt sorry for Dwyer but not sorry enough to be his champion. He had enough troubles of his own being the biggest and clumsiest and mumbliest.
MOST LADS their age had women now. Johnsey would see them around the place, driving cars with girls in them, walking through the village holding hands, all going to the pub together after matches in big happy groups – some lads were even married. One fella who had been a year behind Johnsey in school had a big huge house built abroad in Roskeeda, but his father was a bigshot who bought and sold huge tracts of land like another man would buy and sell cattle or sheep.
They were all the one with the piseogs, that crowd, Mother said. Sure, they came from nothing. It’s no bother to have it all on this earth when you give yourself over to the devil. Johnsey wondered did Mother really believe that, or was it just the way she had a bee in her bonnet always about the bigshots. But Johnsey had heard stories of distant relations who had broken eggs left in haycocks and their store of hay would rot, and turned milk thrown around milking parlours and cows would only issue sourness, and stillborn lambs left against back doors and whole herds would fall to disease and have to be destroyed. One old relation beyond in Holyford had to go to the Land Commission years ago it got so bad, to be given an idle farm miles from his home. He had to leave his birthright to the neighbours who were in league with the devil and had forced him out with their dark tricks.