Kevin Barry - City of Bohane

This is the end Logan. You are too sick now. The jealousy is poison. How could you do such a thing to that poor man? He came here tonight and if you could see him it would break even your sick fucking heart. I can’t be with you any more. I can’t hear your voice any more. I don’t know where I’m going to go but I’m going and I would say do not try to find me but I know you’ll try to find me. You’ll have your boys come looking for me just like they did the last time just like they follow me always. But this is the end Logan. Do not try to find me. You cannot change my mind no more. You must leave me alone now Logan. Please will you just leave me, Logan?

The longest night simmered, and the Feud raged, and the hunchback Grimes pelted about the wynds of the Trace and laboured under the weight of a medieval Leica.

The hunchback, Balthazar Grimes, watched the great surge of the Fancy as it ran into the waiting lines of the uptown aggravators, and fearlessly he shot the clash.

The hunchback, Balthazar Mary Grimes, lensman supreme of the Bohane Vindicator , had worked a share of Feuds in his day but few to match this one for belligerence.

When it was all but done he took from the Trace on his short, quick, twisted legs and he darted through the polis cordons on De Valera Street.

Took the smirk of a fat polis:

‘Tasty one, Balt?’

Shook his head woefully, the hunchback, and he kept running – there was a thirty-two-page special on the cards for sure, and it wanted filling.

The offices of the Vindicator were located on a New Town street, a block of stout Edwardiana in prim greystone, and Balt Grimes descended to its basement along the rusted iron stair.

Shut the door of his darkroom behind him and leaned back against it and felt the lightness of relief and the pride of an assignment completed.

He set about unspooling the reels and soaking them.

From the pools of developer – brought in from the Lisbon route now, most often – a succession of images rose from the blue fluid. The images were lifted from the pool and pegged along the line. The hunchback Grimes walked the line, thoughtfully, as the photographs dried, and he made notes for the captions.

He saw:

– The Fancy’s mobbed ranks enter the Trace… their gobs violently agape as they hollered (per tradition) random names of the Back Trace dead… interesting… the way they had the look of young crows out for a feed.

– The boy Wolfie Stanners as he led a squall of followers into the 98er Square, his hackles heaped like a rabid dog.

– A Norrie line, barechested, as they hissed and cawed… oh and a lovely detail: the way their tongues were held as bits between their teeth to make the sound… and upon their scrawny chests crude renditions in charcoal of starlings, their symbol.

– Close-up: what looked like a Cusack–McGroarty crossbreed – the hunchback Grimes squinted – giving the come-on to the Stanners kid directly, with his eyes rancid and herbshot, a scrunchy look to him, a classic Norrie scobe.

– Close-up: same boy on his knees, a moment later, with his face busted open by the sling of a chain, and Wolfie whispering to him as he prepared with a scimitar dirk to slit his throat. (Just a boy he was – sixteenish?)

– A scraggle of shit-faced McGroartys in a wynd’s shadow looking none too sure of themselves.

– Wolfie appearing to hover in the filthy air – prime shot, page lead – as he made for the McGroartys in a lung-busting dash.

– A broken face.

– A gaunt Norrie lad with a dislocated shoulder: lovely, the way his features were caught in a rictus of animal pain.

– Distant shot of Trace women and bairns on the rooftops as they roared encouragement – no good, too fuzzy.

– A gouging.

– A kicking.

– A shkelping… this one too much… the spilt innards visible… bin it.

– Wolfie, again, so low-sized, and neck-deep now in Norrie gore.

– A sand-pikey, his dreadlocks flailing as he went hand to hand with a Lenane bro’ – there was only going to be one outcome.

– The boy Burke – Fucker, known as – with an Alsatian on a battle leash, in the 98er Square, fending off a pair of Norries with his boots as the Ala feasted on a gore spill.

– The Ching gal – prime shot, page lead – as she lands a flying kick to split open the noggin of Eyes Cusack hissel’ with a steel toecap.

– Close-up – page lead – Eyes Cusack, bleeding, as reality dawns.

– Close-up – Logan Hartnett… the Long Fella… the ’bino – a page lead – leaning back against the wall of a wynd, arms folded, a rope coiled and waiting on his shoulder, and not a single fucking hair out of place. Smoking a tab.

– Wide-shot: cackling sand-pikeys chase down a gang of fleeing Norries.

– Close-up: Fucker, a hank of hair in his paw, looking… sexual. Bin it.

– Close-up: Angelina drooling.

– Ching gal – prime shot – with Eyes Cusack in a headlock.

– Wolfie bricks a scuttling Norrie weasel on the back of the noggin – a comic turn, page… 6?

– Triumphant Fancy lads doing a natty-boy skank in the 98er Square – lovely, a double-page spread.

– Close-up: Fucker’s forehead raw and scabbed from headbutting.

– Close-up: the Long Fella, stony-faced beneath his top hat.

– Jenni Ching arriving into the 98er Square – prime shot – with Eyes Cusack before her, a shkelp to his throat and his hands tied behind his back.

– Peach: the high arc of the Smoketown footbridge, its shape beautifully embossed on the dark of night, just as Fucker and Jenni hoist Eyes Cusack over the railings, while Logan makes the knot, and Wolfie waits.

– Peach: Wolfie slips on the noose, delicately, and this one’s an interesting study, his expression is almost… saintly – one for the portfolio, certainly, coz Eyes maintains a dignity too. Fair dues to him.

– Wide-shot: along the dockside, the ranks of hoss polis as they keep their mounts discreetly turned. Lovely.

The hunchback Balt Grimes came to the end of the line and wryly he smiled. Norrie bluster, it seemed, was of a moment’s lasting, and Back Trace class was permanent.

– Front-page shot: Eyes Cusack is hung by the neck from the Smoketown footbridge.

Each of them ashen-faced, each with bloodshot eyes and trembling hands, the twelve members of the Bohane Authority sucked on high-tar tabs and drank a dose of filthy coffee from paper cups. Talk ran madly the length of the conference table as the Feud’s aftermath was reckoned.

‘What’re we talkin’, boys?’

‘It’s lookin’ like a dozen dead.’

‘An’ twice that lamed, blinded, or generally crippled.’

‘SBJ wept! As if our fuckin’ name wasn’t bad enough!’

‘Oh those bastards outside in the Nation Beyond will be laughin’ up their sleeves tonight!’

‘It’s the end of a Beauvista tram!’

‘Think the NB tit was gone witchy on us b’fore? It’ll be witchy on us now mos’ certain!’

‘Ne’er a sign o’ Mr Mannion, nah?’

‘They’re at it again! That’s what they’ll all be sayin’! One half o’ Bohane tryin’ to ate the other half!’

The Authority men were desperate and ill-paid souls who lived as peaceably as they could in the modest terraces that ascended towards (but did not reach) the Beauvista heights. They kept always to the New Town side of De Valera Street. They went nervously about their business in an animal town. Their business was to keep the place in some manner civilised. It was a job of work.