Kevin Barry - City of Bohane

Beat – a weird pause.

The pause suggested to Wolfie that confidence might not be all it should be among the ranks of the Cusack mob. But Eyes reached for the envelope then, and stuffed it in the waistband of his kecks, and from the arse pocket of same he took out a filthy scrap of paper that had been folded over twice, and he passed it to Wolfie.

Wolfie opened it out to find a drawing so crude as to be done by a child’s hand. It showed a skinny stick-man in crayoned colours with a cock-and-balls attached to his forehead.

‘The receipt,’ said Eyes Cusack. ‘See if yer man spot a likeness.’

Wolfie nodded most politely and with Fucker in tandem he turned to go.

‘I’ll let him know Feud’s accepted,’ he said.

‘Do that, boy-chil’,’ said Eyes Cusack. ‘An’ we’ll see ye down there, check?’

‘Time o’ your choosin’, Cuse. All the same t’us, like.’

They walked again the pocked avenues of the Rises. There was a heat up in them now. There was a great thrumming on the air. There was going to be a Feud the size of which Bohane city hadn’t seen in fucking yonks, y’sketchin’?

The Ho Pee Ching Oh-Kay Koffee Shoppe, a whistle after midnight, and three steaming bowls of black crab soup were carried from the back kitchen by a wordless, scowling Ching uncle.

These were set with grave ceremony before:

– Mr Logan Hartnett, aka the Albino, aka the Long Fella, and he was sat there, breezing on the moment, and with a toothpick he worked lumps of cashew from the gaps between his yellow teeth. He was all got up in a wowser of a straight-cut grey vinyl suit – its sheen catching the Ho Pee’s fairy-light glow – and there was a matching grey vinyl mackintosh laid over the back of his chair. Dapper motherfucker.

– Miss Jenni Ching, boss-lady of the Ho Pee ever since her black-mooded momma had tossed her small demented bones into the Bohane river (just a quick headlong dash from the caff), on account of dog-fight debts, some said, or because of a persistent strain of Ching family madness, according to others, and Jenni regarded the fatty, creamy soup her uncle offered with an as-if glare – on my hips? – and she pushed it aside. She was in a white leather jumpsuit up top of hoss-polis zippered boots, with her fine hair let down, and her hair was streaked and worn this season in a blunt-cut fringe that she blew aside with regular, rhythmic spouts of tabsmoke.

– Mrs Macu Hartnett, née Simhao, born to the Café Aliados, the queen of the Back Trace Fancy, with any amount of a cashmere jersey dress worn in a clingy fit beneath a thin crinolene duster coat (cream) that didn’t cost her tuppence ha’penny in whatever high-faluting New Town boutique she scored it in, and she was eyeballing Jenni hard, and she was eyeballing Logan hard, and she was thinking: I’m forty-fuckin’-three and I’m sat around talkin’ fuckin’ gang fights ?

‘Many families Cuse gonna send down up top o’ his own?’ said Jenni.

‘I’m guessing three tops,’ said Logan. ‘He’ll have the McGroartys, sure enough. McGroartys are born latchiko. McGroartys would hop into a Feud on account of two flies fucking. He’ll have the Lenanes also. That’s a cert, coz the Lenanes can be bought, the Lenanes have always been bought. After that, well…’

Logan flapped a hand in the air, dismissively, to illustrate the thinness of the Rises’ alliance.

‘That’s sure a lot o’ chanters they got hollerin’ for a three-family descent,’ said Macu.

‘If you wanted to be of a negative set of mind, love-o’-my-heart, you might think so,’ said Logan.

In truth, he could not but hear them: the high bluffs of Bohane city were raucous with Norrie Feud-chants.

‘A quare rake o’ bonnas burnin’ an’ all, Logan? Saw ’em an’ I comin’ down from the house.’

Strings of fires all along the bluffs – Norrie families on a war footing was the message.

‘They can light their little fires all they want. And remember this much for me, Macu, please – you never once in your fucking life had a good feeling the night before a Feud, check?’

‘Maybe a time comes when there be one Feud too far, Logan, y’heed?’

He glared at his wife, but kept silent his anger, and he twisted it instead to aim coldly, smilingly at his girl-chil’ lieutenant.

‘Jenni-gal,’ he said, ‘I understand you’re becoming quite a regular ’cross at the Bohane Arms?’

Jenni Ching didn’t so much as flutter an eyelash.

‘I’m findin’ it’s the kind o’ spot you’d hear an interestin’ yarn about the Bohane los’-time,’ she said.

‘Oh yeah?’ said Macu. ‘Concerning’?’

‘All kin’ o’ caper,’ said Jenni. ‘’bout how peoples come up and ’bout how they goes back down again.’

‘My dear mother would have the sketch for you there sure enough.’

Jenni eyeballed Macu hard.

‘An’ ’bout where it was peoples come from. Originally, like.’

Laminate posters on the Ho Pee wall showed roosters, pigs, rats. The fairy lights were strung from wall to wall above the Formica tables and they burned a lurid note. Logan was smiling now as he spooned up his soup – he liked a catfight.

Macu, polite as the seeping of a poison, said:

‘An’ where’s it the Chings is boxin’ out of original, Jenni-chick?’

Jenni from her tit pocket yanked a stogie, clipped and lit it, sucked deep and blew a brownish smoke.

‘Chings in Bohane goin’ back an’ again beyond the los’-time. S’town built offa Ching blood. We goes way back. We ain’t in off the las’ wave at all, missus.’

A motion she drew in the air then, slowly and looping, with her cigar hand, to indicate the wave, and the smoke made signals indeciperable atop the Ho Pee’s dreamy glow.

‘Ye sure ain’t,’ said Macu. ‘Chings been snakin’ aroun’ them wynds long as I got the recall. Gettin’ the reck on everyone’s business, like.’

‘Ladies,’ said Logan, ‘please.’

He pushed back his soup. He knit long fingers across his slender belly. He always enjoyed the eve of a Feud. He knew that Eyes Cusack would not for long keep his mongrels leashed, and his mood was high and expectant. When you were running a Fancy, regular demonstrations of rage were needed to keep the town in check and, just as importantly, the Fancy boys in trim. Too much sweetness and light and they got fat, unpleasantly smiley and over-interested in the fashion mags.

Jenni Ching looked from Logan to Macu and back again.

Jenni Ching raised her brow and blew smoke to the tapped-brass ceiling of the Ho Pee.

Jenni Ching was thinking: This is what’s runnin’ the Back Trace motherfuckin’ Fancy?

‘Colours to be raised?’ she asked.

‘Absolutely,’ said Logan. ‘If we’re going do it at all, we’re going to do it properly.’

‘Colours a pain in the fuckin’ gee,’ she said. ‘Fuck we wanna be marchin’ with flags for, H? This the Paddy’s Day fuckin’ Parade or what, like? Just get the fuck out there and reef the scutty fucks! Flags and fuckin’ colours ain’t gonna make no differ to the gack we welt outta the Rises filth no-how, y’check me?’

Logan sighed, was sweetly paternal.

‘Jenni?’ he said. ‘We’re not savages. If there’s young fellas gonna be planted in the boneyard tomorrow, they ain’t going down without knowing who’s responsible. Fancy’s colours will be raised.’

‘S’the kin’ o’ mawky shite that gets my melt off,’ she said. ‘Flags an’ fuckin’ banners…’

‘I’m hearin’ Girly talkin’,’ said Macu.

‘True enough,’ Logan smiled.

Girly Hartnett was long noted for nose-thumbing at tradition. Girly’s reckon was that Bohane was far too sentimental a town. Of course, it didn’t stop her spending a quare chunk of clock travelling to the lost-time.