Kevin Barry - City of Bohane

Truth of it – this was as suave an old dude as you’d come across in the whole of the Bohane creation.

He went to Eight Mile via the hills. It was his tactic always to keep to the higher paths. Ghost around the place as best as you can – that was the way to stay alive out on Nothin’. His shadow as he climbed the hillsides was long and needling in the white winter sun. He was not at all immune to the dark magic he walked through.

Nothin’s colours in low December:

The soft gold of the withered reeds – pale as an old wedding band’s gold.

The bluish mica glint of the stone knolls – the same precise glint as a gull’s eye’s.

The purples, discriminating, of the sleeping gorse.

Ol’ Boy walked on and the winter light came across Big Nothin’ slantwise and grudgingly – the bog plain was a whole heap of distance from the sun, and it had all the odour of that distance. It was a grave’s wet musk.

Mannion chewed on his thoughts. His hope was that the Feud sparked up fast and was over as quickly and that it would have the rejuvenating effect of a gorse fire. Then he could go back and pad a downtown prowl. See how things settled.

He walked the high reaches and skirted the boundary of the pikey rez and wondered what messages those sombre folk had been reading lately in the arrangement of cloud-fall and the scattering of the stars.

The pavee kind knew sure enough when there was Trouble a-brew.

He began a descent towards Eight Mile and walked for a time on the river’s high bank and was mesmerised by its remorselessness. He came at length to Eight Mile Bridge and he crossed the great stones of it and the Bohane thundered for the city. He waved to the scatter of inebriates beneath the bridge’s arches: the red-eyed habituals of the scene, suckin’ tawny, and these were intimates of Ol’ Boy, too, but then who wasn’t?

He descended the three stone steps to the inn and pushed through the door.

Turfsmoke, hidden nooks, ale fumes.

He went barside and nodded to the innkeeper. She was a stout-thighed widow with a game eye on her and she gave him the flash of it sure enough.

Ol’ Boy caught a kiss as though she had blown one and gently caressed it onto his cheek and winked.

‘Pour me an amber, sweetness,’ he said, ‘an’ pour it slow so’s I can have a good aul’ lamp at ya.’

She laughed for him, huskily.

‘Ya never lost it, Boy Mannion.’

Ol’ Boy had made his parade of life without ever knowingly failing to flirt with a serving lady. Even if they were plain, he viewed it as a necessary courtesy. If we do not have manners in this life, we do not have much. He took the glass as it was served to him and slapped down a shilling piece. She moved her hand for the coin – a shiver of lust in the auld dear yet, though she must have been pushin’ forty – but he slapped his hand over the coin at the last moment and hers fell onto his. Let the moment sit, did Ol’ Boy, and he winked for her once more.

‘Ne’er a sign o’ that runner-child, missus?’

The innkeeper took on a look of fright and crossed her arms across her bosom and allowed one hand to rise and clutch hungrily her throat – this was a peninsula woman’s semaphore to indicate troubled times.

‘Sure ain’t we all waitin’ on the same young fella, Mr Mannion?’

Ol’ Boy took his glass of beer, and winked again, and he skulked about the premises. The usual Big Nothin’ quaffers lurked in the smoky corners. There was a good crowd in for this hour of the morning – all knew that word was expected on the Bohane situation. Ol’ Boy took a seat by the fireplace nook and sipped at the bitter Phoenix ale and he waited.

Sipped.

And he waited.

Listened.

He sipped.

And just before noon the door fell in and a welt of hardwind in a flash filled the room and raised smoke from the fires and as the door was kicked closed and the turfsmoke settled again everyone turned to see if it was the runner-child who had arrived but indeed it was not – it was Big Dom Gleeson.

The fat newsman stood in the middle of the floor in an emerald frock-coat and knee-high patent boots and closed his eyes and shook his great jowls in distress and sounded a bull-elephant’s moan.

‘Oh!’ he cried.

Staggered – staggered! – over to where Ol’ Boy sat and collapsed – collapsed! – onto a chair beside him and he let his frail, pudgy fingers reach for Ol’ Boy’s arm and he trembled.

‘Oh…’ said Big Dom.

‘I know, Dom,’ said Ol’ Boy, ‘your angina.’

The innkeeper brought a bowl of brandy for Dom and he wept – wept! – thanks to her and clutched her hand and lay it against his brow.

‘Yes I know, Mr Gleeson, I know,’ she said.

As she departed, raising her eyes, Ol’ Boy raked a knowing look over Big D, and he smiled.

‘So you been inside watching the ructions?’

‘Indeed I have not,’ said Big Dom. ‘They ain’t seen my arse for dust in that horrid, horrid town!’

‘You got out awright then?’

‘I did, Mr Mannion,’ he said, and he patted with a wink his stout legs. ‘Early yesterday, I took to me getaway sticks. I thank you kindly for sending the word, sir.’

Ol’ Boy sipped.

‘So if you ain’t been inside watchin’ the Feud, what explains your distressed condition? Don’t tell me, Dom, that you’ve been hiding out in some Ten Light knockin’ shop?’

Ten Light was the village of the Nothin’ hill country where the rural hoor-parlours clustered.

Dom shut his eyes in mortification, and grimly nodded.

‘Let me guess, Dom… Suckin’ on a dream-pipe… skullin’ French brandy… an’ buried to the maker’s name in buxom jailbait?’

‘Oh I’m a weak, WEAK man!’ cried Big Dom.

The door fell in again, and the hardwind again set the smoke from the turf-fires billowing, and it settled as the door was kicked shut and this time, true enough, a biteen of a young fella was revealed: it was the runner-child.

Child at once dropped flat onto his back in the middle of the flagstone floor.

Child stared hard and with great derangement at the ceiling and had terror in his eyes.

Child went into a trembling fit.

Ol’ Boy went to him and he knelt and cradled the child’s head in his hands and he cried out to the innkeeper.

‘Slug o’ the Beast there, missus, an’ lively!’

She brought from beneath the counter a bottle of illicit green spirit – the Beast – as was brewed in the high reaches of the Nothin’ massif by a pair of retard brothers who had the gift. Everyone in the inn gathered around the child. Innkeeper passed to Ol’ Boy the bottle and he uncapped it and he filled the cap with the noxious fluid and he held it to the child’s trembling lips. Drizzled it down carefully. The child gasped and spat and retched and then swallowed a wee sip and brightened just a shade. He opened his mouth for another drop or two. Ol’ Boy allowed him some. The runner-child it was clear had been witness to Dark Events.

Big Dom most professionally – grant him that – slid from the inside pocket of his frock-coat a spiral-bound notebook and licked the nib of his pencil.

‘Easy now,’ said Ol’ Boy. ‘And try and tell it for us, yes?’

As the Beast went to work, it brought slowly some colour and strength to the child. He tried to shape a word and everybody leaned in closer.

‘Bo…’ he said.

Silence was deathly in the room as the child struggled with the word. A little more of the Beast was drizzled into him. Fire of the spirit lit the word.

‘Bo…’ he said, ‘… hane!’

‘Very good,’ said Ol’ Boy, drily. ‘But what of it, child?’

‘Bohane,’ said the child, ‘is gone… to… to… to the Sweet Baba!’