Arm chucked him on the cheek, very lightly, attempted the same on Ursula. She slapped at his hand and scowled.
‘No offense meant,’ he said.
‘What are you doing here?’ she said.
‘Your mam told me where you were.’
The rider and her horse were coming over. The rider stepped down from the saddle and approached the fence.
‘Hiiiiii Jack,’ she said, and turned to Arm, ‘the boxer.’
‘How do.’
‘Hi,’ she said to Ursula. ‘You’re Jack’s mom?’
‘Yes,’ Ursula said.
‘Rebecca. I’m the horse lady.’
‘And you’ve met Douglas here?’
‘Douglas? Yeah, he’s been here before. He’s been around.’
Ursula looked at Arm.
‘I’m taking an interest,’ he said.
Jack was reaching towards the horse, outstretched fingers writhing in acquisitive agony, as if the animal was a toy he could pick up. The horse turned to the open field. It twitched an ear and considered the middle distance; clouds in boil about the peak of Nephin. The uncles’ farm was situated in a cloistered ruck of lowland not far from the foot of the mountain, and when he squinched his eyes Arm was convinced he could make out the buildings from here.
‘You want a go, Douglas?’ Rebecca asked.
‘Ah, I’m alright.’
‘Go on,’ Ursula said.
Arm looked from woman to woman, their faces identically resolute, deadpan. Just like that, they had allied against him.
‘Looks like my mind is made up for me,’ he muttered and got up over the gate.
Rebecca laughed and tugged the rein, bringing the horse around.
‘Okay, now, get on up on the side here . . . One foot in then throw yourself over. Don’t be afraid to take hold of the mane.’
‘She won’t mind?’ Arm asked.
‘You can tug the shit out of it, it’s fine,’ Rebecca said. She had a calming hand on the horse’s long jaw as Arm futzed to get on.
He toed his left foot into the stirrup on his side and stepped down until the strap went taut. He clutched a hank of horse hair and drew himself up towards the saddle, paddling air with his right leg until he’d groped it down the far side of the horse’s flank. Then Arm was solidly astraddle, and gripping the pommel he pushed himself upright in the hard leather of the seat. In the transition from ground to back the horse seemed to have grown to twice its original size.
‘Alright. I’m going to take you round, at walking pace first,’ Rebecca said. ‘I’ll guide her with the reins, you just hold steady and relax. And don’t fall off.’
‘Look, look at your daft daddy,’ Arm heard Ursula say.
Jack had his teeth sunk in the wooden fence. His eyes flicked dispassionately across the half-horse-half-daddy creature steadying itself in front of him.
Rebecca led Arm and the horse into the patchy turf of the open field. Arm was sent rocking, side to side, on the barrel of knit muscle beneath him. Then the horse began to move faster.
‘Okay we’re speeding up a bit now!’ Rebecca shouted.
Arm watched her bouncing head of curls, saw the crooked white line bisecting her crown where the part in her hair naturally opened. Then the rein was not in her hand anymore. The horse’s shoulder shot passed her. Its stride opened out. Arm bounced and bounced, skewing from side to side in the saddle. He tried to get his head up. Rebecca was gone, somewhere behind him. The reins were a loop of flimsy leather flickering along the side of the horse’s straining head. Nephin Mountain hiccupped violently up and down in the air in front of him.
Arm pressed his face into the long swinging neck. He could smell the velvet mustiness of the creature’s hide, the sweetness of the pulverised grass and black earth as it cut up under the thrumming hooves. ‘Stop,’ Arm was moaning, ‘stop, stop, stop.’
He thought of Fannigan, pale as any apparition, a body riding the current to sea.
They were heading towards the fence on the far side, and it was only at the last moment that the horse banked and swung around in an arc, shooting back the way it had come. Rebecca was standing in the middle of the field, arms up and out, furiously flagging them down. The horse beelined for her and decelerated to a choppy trot.
Rebecca snatched the dangling reins and pulled the horse’s head down. This had an effect as instantaneous as putting a car into neutral. Now the animal ambled at a desultory clip, and after the burst of speed it felt to Arm as if he were floating. He was loose-boned, adrenalised and softly tittering at a high, wretched pitch that sounded like it was coming from somewhere else. The bolt into the wind had driven tears from his eyes.
‘What was that move? You shot off there like the Lone Ranger!’ Ursula exclaimed, her hand on the back of Jack’s neck. He still had his jaws locked into the fence.
‘Fuck, sorry man,’ Rebecca said. ‘She just spooked.’
‘I didn’t do anything,’ Arm exclaimed, to both women.
‘You didn’t mean to,’ Rebecca corrected him, ‘I shouldn’t have had you up there. Normally it’s only me or the kids on her. You smell and weigh like a different species. Sorry, Douglas. Get on down.’
‘It’s alright,’ Arm said, ‘I’m fine.’
And dignified as he could, he poured the shook jelly of himself off the beast.
‘You could’ve broken your neck,’ Ursula mused brightly.
Arm winced at her, then rested his elbows on the fence and tipped his forehead onto his crossed wrists. In the little hollow comprised of his arms and head and chest he listened for his racing heart to come back down to an even keel. Arm knew if he raised either hand out flat in the air it would be shaking. A tear loosed itself from a lash and hit his cheek, running down his skin in a hot stripe.
Rebecca was somewhere behind him, near. Arm could feel her looking at him.
‘You ever get knocked out in the ring?’ she said, as if she was following exactly his thoughts and wanted to change tack.
Arm shook his head where it lay.
‘I didn’t think so,’ she said.
‘Lots of hits,’ Arm said, swabbing his eyes. ‘But I was never truly put out.’
‘I’ll get him home, if you want,’ Arm said to Ursula. ‘I’ll take him up to Supermacs for a Coke and burger first.’
‘Shouldn’t be encouraging him to eat that shite,’ Ursula said.
‘Well. He’s a little boy. They like rubbish.’
Rebecca was patting the horse’s grey face. ‘I got to get this brat fed and watered,’ she announced. ‘We have a convoy coming in from the retirement home just after lunch.’
‘Good luck with that,’ Arm said. ‘Hope that fecker doesn’t throw you.’
‘She won’t,’ Rebecca said, ‘I’ll see you next week, Jack.’
Jack pulled his mouth away from the fence. There was a blotch of saliva, a bracelet of bite marks worried into the wood.
Arm shepherded Jack up the main street. Jack knew where they were going and was getting excited, yipping and wanting to scramble ahead. Arm kept a finger snagged in the collar of his jacket.
‘Walk,’ he urged, ‘Walk.’
Dympna rang.
‘How’s the head, soldier?’
‘Not bad,’ Arm said. ‘Just out with the boyeen.’
‘I’ve a soft skin on me today, myself. Jesus Christ, we were milling through that whiskey like it was water,’ Dympna chuckled. He sounded supine and pleasantly shattered. Dympna enjoyed stewing in his hangovers, and often passed entire afternoons in a recuperative fog on the living-room sofa, duvet crimped around his neck like a barber’s bib, downing two-litre bottles of Fanta and watching box set after box set of DVDs.
‘Out with Jackie boy, is it?’
‘Correct,’ Arm said.
‘When’s that done up?
’
‘Shortly.’
‘Cool, cool, sure I can drop down and grab you.’
‘It’s okay.’
‘I know its okay, it’s no bother,’ he said. ‘We’d best get out there, get things squared up.’
When Arm did not respond Dympna said, ‘Sorry, fuck. Look. Take your time with Jackie.’
‘I didn’t say anything,’ Arm said.
‘You have grades of brooding silence, Arm,’ Dympna said, ‘I can tell I pissed you off, or else you already were. Either way I’m not adding to it. We both have enough shite on our plates.’
‘And sometimes you have to eat it up,’ Arm said.
‘Exactly,’ Dympna said. ‘And speaking of which. Fannigan. Don’t sweat on that.’
‘I wasn’t,’ Arm said.
‘The uncles we can bring round. We can get them to see what’s best in the long run.’
‘You didn’t think so last night.’
‘Ah, I was drunk. Letting fretfulness get the better of me,’ Dympna said, like it was all nothing. ‘So. Will swing down your way for four, will we say? Give you plenty a time with the lad.’
‘Okay.’
‘I know,’ Dympna sighed, ‘it just goes on and on, doesn’t it?’
‘It does.’
Arm still had his finger hooked in Jack’s coat collar. They were at the zebra crossing. A modest stream of traffic was emptying down the main street. Cloudbanks blotted the sun above the post office and the air was laced with a salt foretaste of rain.
Jack lurched forward, impatient to cross. He could not see or register or interpret the flashing bodies of the passing vehicles, they were not even ghosts to him.
‘Nyyhhh,’ Jack was moaning. ‘Nyyhhh, NYYHHH.’
He was building up a head of steam, and slapped himself, openhanded, on the side of his head.
‘Stop,’ Arm said, and put his hand over that part of Jack’s head. Jack slapped again, hit the buffer of Arm’s hand, then dug his nails into Arm’s skin. After five seconds whatever possessed him subsided, he pulled his nails free, and within ten he was burbling happily again.
In Supermacs Arm and Jack took the booth nearest the entrance, the booth they always took. It was Saturday but the place was swarming with convent girls—they were in doing weekend study, Arm guessed, and had descended here on their lunch break, and now they milled and ate and chatted in a chaos of perfume and high voices, a chorus of mobiles chirping and bleeping around them. Jack ate his chips one by one, as he always did, before attending to his burger. Six girls were squished into the adjacent booth, practically spilling into each other’s laps. A couple of them were shyly watching Jack. He took the top bun from the burger, held the inside up to his face and, moving it circumferentially in front of his gob, licked every last particle of ketchup and grease from it, then replaced the bun back on the untouched patty. And that was that, that was Jack’s version of eating a burger. Arm heard the girls laugh then stop themselves, and without eyeing the culprits he managed a smile. Arm wanted them to know it was okay; they had permission to find Jack funny. Because he was, he was a funny fucker.
Arm told Ursula he would take Jack to the horses next time, to watch the boy ride firsthand. They were in the kitchen, Ursula smashing eggs against the porcelain lip of a mixing bowl, seesawing the yolk back and forth between each shell-half until the clear glop had run off.
‘I bet you will,’ she said.
‘Did I or did I not get up on that beast? I want to see Jack do it.’
‘Uh-huh,’ she said. ‘Standing there silent, with the legs out,’ she braced her hips and mimicked Arm’s stance. ‘You think you’re a solid block of charm, huh?’
Their exchange was accompanied by a succession of muffled bangs going off around their heads. Jack had shed his trousers, scaled the washing machine and was now taking a tour of the countertop that ran along two walls of the kitchen, skipping adroitly over the cutting board and microwave and toaster, attempting to pry open the safety-locked door of every wall-mounted cupboard and press.
‘Got to head,’ Arm said, ‘bye, Jack.’
Bang on four Arm was at the usual pickup spot, the pebble-dashed wall of the petrol station at the foot of his estate. He rested his tailbone against the wall, plugged in his headphones, and watched the road for the shitbox. After a while it appeared, the inimitable lump of Dympna’s silhouetted head rocking to and fro in the windshield. Dympna pulled up, popped the passenger door and sunk back into the driver seat. He was wrecked, scalp shining, cheeks mottled with lividity. A half-empty bottle of Fanta was wedged at an angle between the front seats, behind the hand brake. Dympna lifted it, took a guzzle, violently massaged his eyes and brow.
‘Sorry I’m late,’ Dympna lamented, ‘a drained head on me and then them women start up. Them women. Don’t even ask me to get into it. There’s always something.’
‘No worries,’ Arm said.
‘I’m in no humour for this,’ Dympna said. ‘But then I guess no humour at all is the best humour to be in to deal with these fucking Indians.’
They were clear of the town within minutes. They sped past the red-roofed, white-walled barns and holds of the farms just beyond the town limits, past lopsided fields where sheep drifted like flocks of grounded, flea-bitten clouds.
‘Maybe,’ Arm said. ‘Will Hector be back?’
‘From throwing the monthly length into the woman? Doubt that now.’
‘So it’ll just be the other fella.’
‘That’s what the maths’d tell us,’ Dympna said, letting rip a bassy, gaseous belch. He drove in the typical townboy manner, seatbeltless and slouched back in his seat, the heel of a palm propped against the wheel while with his other hand he alternated between palming open his mobile to check for texts and taking regular hits off the Fanta.
‘They’re gearing up for another bout of being difficult,’ he said. ‘Like fucking teenagers. Volatile.’
‘You might be right.’
‘That’s what the Fannigan business is about. Like they give a shit about Charlie or any of us. It’s an excuse to start up on me, on us. With that in mind, you might come in.’
‘Into the house?’
‘Yeah, sit down there with me and Paudi. Give him what you call a show a solidarity.’
‘You scared?’ Arm said.
‘Scared? Of a couple of auld lads?’ Dympna laughed. ‘Arm, you are the scariest man I know, considered coldly. You could put me in a coma, bare-handed, in two minutes flat, and most everyone else around. But I’m not scared of you, how could I be?’
Dympna glugged his Fanta.
They were beyond the farmsteads now, into reefs of bogland infested with gorse bushes. Bony, hard-thorned and truculently thriving, the gorse bushes’ yellow blossoms were vivid against the grained black sheen of the sump waters, the seamed bog fields. The sky was clearing itself of clouds. The day was on its afternoon wane, already.
‘It’s getting on,’ Arm said.
‘Just sit there and say nothing,’ Dympna said. ‘Just sit there and be, y’know, intimidating.’
‘I can manage that.’
The road into the farm was a narrow length of rutted dirt sunk low between haggard ditches. They had to crawl over the track, the shitbox pitching up and down as they went. The farm itself backed out onto a hill thick with heather. The house was a T-shaped unpainted wooden bungalow with a sagging front porch. A wrought-iron gate, hingeless, was tethered by an inordinate quantity of blue rope to the porch’s frame, though the gate still hung at a limp angle.
They parked in the clearing out front.
Paudi came round the side of the house. He had a baseball cap scrunched down over his head and his beard was as lush as ever, a streaked dark thicket that devoured his neck and three quarters of his face. He was standing in rakey profile, watching the car and cleaning h
is hands with the end of his T-shirt.
Dympna slapped the roof of the shitbox as he got out.
‘Well, Unk,’ he said, ‘fine cunt of a day and no mistake.’
‘Come see this,’ Paudi said, turning and disappearing back behind the house. Arm looked at Dympna, shrugged his shoulders. Dympna popped the shitbox’s boot, slung the satchel containing the uncles’ cut over his shoulder.
Behind the house a courtyard of cracked concrete led to the cattle shed. The shed was decently cavernous, a three-sided, aluminium-walled structure with a gated front and a corrugated roof. It was no longer used to house livestock, but was now a repository for an accumulation of all manner of weathered and defective shite—a capsized washing machine, two fat-backed cathode TVs with their screens smashed out, yards of dismembered PVC and metal piping, tyres of varying circumferences and vehicle type, cardboard trays containing broken, esoterically shaped glassware and fertiliser bags full of a mixture of wood shavings and small brown pellets of what might have been animal feed but could’ve been anything. To the rear of the shed was the cellar door that led down, Arm knew, to the nursery, and beside that door was the pair of wire cages in which were kept the Alsatians. One sprung to its feet and pressed its shining muzzle against the mesh, beads of slaver dropping from its teeth onto the mesh’s squares. The other creature remained curled into itself in the corner of its cage.
‘Look at this poor bastard,’ Paudi said.
The dog’s snout was buried under its front paws, its breath coming in rapid, shallow rasps. It was lying on a bath mat, the mat’s ends filigreed with chew-marks.
‘What’s up with it?’ Dympna said.
‘He ate a wasp. It’s a habit they’ve had since they were pups. Wasps do nest up in the eaves of the porch every summer, and after me or the other fella get round to killing them these boys love to snuffle round the deck and eat up the bodies. Think he ate one he thought was dead wasn’t dead. Stung him, it did, inside in his throat or deeper down. His tongue is all fucked up and he’s been wheezing and stuck lying there since yesterday. Can dogs be allergic?’
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