Kevin Barry - City of Bohane

The breath came hard and jaggedly in him as he made it to Ol’ Boy Mannion’s longhouse. It was set in a valley’s dip, and as he quietly came on the place, he saw that its door was open. This was as expected – Ol’ Boy in the summer was by long habit to be found at his Nothin’ residence. The Gant stuck his head inside the door. He leaned against the jamb to slow his breath.

‘Benni,’ he said.

Ol’ Boy looked up from a settle in the dank and fly-thick shade, and he showed not a flicker of surprise.

‘You been settin’ the world on fire, Gant?’

The Gant raised his eyes. Ol’ Boy stood and shook his head woefully.

‘So who’s responsible for this masterpiece?’ he said.

‘By mine own fair hand,’ the Gant said.

‘Ah, come in out of it, would you? Before you frighten the fuckin’ ducks.’

The Gant sat in the shade of the longhouse and at length he took his breath back. Ol’ Boy asked no questions. Just waited it out.

‘E’er a notion where a fella could lay his achin’ bones, Benni?’

‘You’ll have to let me see about that.’

Ol’ Boy busied himself. On the stove he mixed up a bowl of pinhead oatmeal and he added a measure of Jameson to the pour of cream. He made a place at the table for the Gant and watched as he came slowly across the flagstones.

‘S’either yer gone rickety before yer time or there’s a story worth gobbin’, G?’

The Gant grimaced.

‘Y’lie down with dogs,’ he said.

As the Gant ate, Ol’ Boy examined the shoulder wound. He took a bottle of evil-smelling fluid from the high shelf and dabbed it on a wedge of cotton and applied the cotton to the wound.

‘Landed just a lucky stretch shy of a lung, Gant,’ he said. ‘And it have the look of a cratur who’s came at ya with a rusty blade, boy?’

‘Y’get off the peninsula,’ said the Gant, ‘and you find they got no class.’

Ol’ Boy salved the wound as best he could and shook another measure of the fluid onto it, for badness’ sake, and the Gant hissed a startle of pain. Ol’ Boy blew on the wound.

‘Trust me,’ he said, ‘I’m a nurse.’

He dressed the wound neatly. He was dainty about his work. He’d patched up more than a few go-boys in his day.

‘An’ you’re back here why, Gant Broderick, precisely? What bizarre fucking notion has weaselled itself into that sorry noggin o’ yours?’

He rapped his knuckles on the Gant’s head. The Gant laid down his spoon and thought a moment.

‘You’d find there’s a quare aul’ draw to Big Nothin’,’ he said.

‘An’ what about to Bohane city?’

‘Maybe we need to talk about that an’ all, Mr Mannion.’

Ol’ Boy’s opinion, which he transmitted in a single, sharp glance, was that Bohane wasn’t the same place it had been twenty-five years back.

‘S’pose it’ll be interestin’ whatever happens,’ he said.

The Gant agreed that it would be.

‘I need a place out here, Benni. Gather me thoughts, you know?’

So it was that Mannion had set him up with the trailer home. Told him to lie low a while and keep his snout to the wind: see how she blew.

Trailer was a hard find even to an aborigine like the Gant. It was located in the lee of an old quarry’s wall and it had that shelter at least from the evil of the hardwind. The trailer sat across an expanse of bog from a small lake. You’d barely drown a child in it, as they say of such a lake out on Nothin’. The lake’s waters were dark and cloudy and thatched at the verges with an accumulation of broken reeds. The Gant had settled to this place, and he watched the summer fade into autumn, and heard the hardwind rise, and he knew that winter was on the soon-come.

He walked the October night its length through. He came into a white space of mind and it was restful. He circled the plain. Towards dawn, he walked across the splintered boards of an old jetty by the small lake – the boards gave and groaned as he walked, the boards sang – and he crouched there, and he felt the looming presence of the Nothin’ hills beyond. Dark shadow of mountain against the waking sky. He felt a presence; he felt it as a great tenderness. And then he heard its voice.

‘Oh Baba?’ the Gant pleaded. ‘Oh Sweet B?’

Girly Hartnett lay in bed at the Bohane Arms Hotel. Eighty-nine she was, and bored. The boredom she sung with a frequent sighing. Her top-floor suite’s black velvet drapes were as always drawn – Girly had seen more than enough of Bohane city to last her a frigging lifetime. She was on a diet of hard booze and fat pills against the pain of her long existence. She was regally arranged on the plump pillows of a honeymooners’ bed. Girly’s days were slow, and they ran headlong into her nights, and she lay awake most of the nights, and yet she could never quite place the nights once they’d passed. Could never quite get a fix on the fuckers. As often as the hotel had juice enough to run a projector, she watched old movies on a pull-down screen. Girly liked old movies and menthol ciggies and plotting the city’s continued derangement. The Hartnett Fancy held the runnings of Bohane, and there were those who’d swear the steer was Girly’s yet as much as Logan’s. She could identify every knock on her door and she cried an answer now to her son’s.

‘Get in to me!’

The worry in him she read before he had his long bones folded in the bedside chair.

‘How we now?’ he said.

She raised a brittle hand to her throat, Girly, and let its fingers fraily rest there.

‘Not long for the stations, boy.’

‘So you been saying.’

They did not kiss nor lay a hand to each other. The Hartnetts were not touchy-touchy people. The Hartnetts were Back Trace: blood and bone.

‘Time you callin’ this anyhow?’

‘It’s gone seven alright.’

‘Was goin’ to get onto the morgue,’ she said. ‘See if they’d ta’en in any long pale-lookin’ fuckers.’

‘Been busy, Girly.’

‘Busy gowlin’ around,’ she said. ‘Bring me flicks, y’did?’

‘Did, Girly.’

He passed over the reels and she examined them.

‘Y’got me nothin’ with Tab Hunter an’ Natalie Wood, nah?’

‘They didn’t have anything.’

‘Arra Jay.’

‘I tried, Girly.’

‘Tab and Natalie made some beautiful pictures.’

‘You been saying.’

‘Word was they were doin’ a line.’

‘Go ’way?’

‘There’d be photos at premieres.’

‘We got uptown aggravators working a caper, Girly.’

‘Natalie in a class of an ermine wrap. Tab in peg pants and a knit shirt. Beige! ’

‘Cusack says he got the flatblocks stacked, Girly.’

‘Course the wan o’ the Woodses was hangin’ offa every-thin’ in kecks. Man-crazy.’

‘I said Eyes Cusack, Girly. Word I have? He has families behind him. He has the McGroartys, the Lenanes, the Sullivans…’

‘They said filth about Tab, of course. I never believed a word o’ what they said about Tab.’

‘It’s good word, Girly. We’re talking three families at least weighing in with the Cuse. And that’s a wealth of fucking headjobs, no?’

‘Ferocious the muck they threw at Tab.’

‘I think he’s about to throw a shape, Girly.’

‘You know I wouldn’t repeat what they said about Tab? Wouldn’t soil the roof o’ me mouth with it.’

‘What way should I play it?’

Girly reached for the bedside bottle of John Jameson and poured a decent measure to her tumbler. She offered him the bottle. He shook his head, closed his eyes, and massaged with bunched fingertips the space between them. He swung his booted feet onto the bed. Soon as they landed she batted them away.