Kevin Barry - City of Bohane

‘It’s this place, you know?’

Ol’ Boy’s read: the way the Gant trained his stare on the black surge of the river was a worry. Mesmerised, he seemed. And not in a good way. Ol’ Boy trickled some beads of soft talk from his velvet bag.

‘A place ain’t gonna be the cause of all your woes ever, Gant. Y’hearin’ me sense now? And a place ain’t gonna solve your woes neither. You been puttin’ too much faith in–’

‘A dream is what you’re sayin’.’

‘We all dream of being young again, Gant! Dancin’ in the pale moonlight and claspin’ a pawful of fresh fuckin’ arse! Fact it ain’t gonna happen makes it all the sweeter! But don’t let yourself drown in that old stuff, boy. Get over it! I mean to say, Gant, you were with the bint three fuckin’ weeks! But you’ve come sluggin’ down the Boreen with a fixed notion on you and the mad little eyes all lit up inside your head–’

‘She jus’ didn’t want to know, Ol’ Boy.’

‘Ah, Gant, what did you expect?’

‘But that ain’t the cruellest of it.’

‘Oh?’

‘The cruellest of it? I didn’t even want her.’

‘Coz it’s been twenty-five fuckin’ years! Ya plum fuckin’ ape! A lot happens, Gant. A life happens. A girl don’t stay girl in Bohane for long. An’ then, you know, we gotta make… arrangements with ourselves? Else how can we put up with the things we done, choices we made? Likes a fuckin’ Bohane… ah look… this is a hard town… it’s a place… an’ okay, okay, I know. Here I am sayin’ just the fuckin’ same…’

The Gant slyly winked for Ol’ Boy then.

‘You think I came back o’ me own volition?’

Silence played a long beat as Ol’ Boy weighed this.

‘Sayin’ what to me, G?’

‘You think I’d ha’ been given the pass?’

A chill of recognition for Ol’ Boy.

‘What you’re sayin’…’

The Gant shoved off from the warehouse and aimed his toots for the Trace-deep night.

‘Sayin’ I got work to do, Benni.’

Looked back with an evil smile.

‘But don’t worry, Mr Mannion, sir – things to occupy me… I’m workin’ a plan, y’sketch?’

Ol’ Boy smiled at the very notion of a plan – as if the Mad-Town of Bohane was amenable to design.

‘You wanna make me laugh, G?’ he said. ‘Then just go ahead an’ tell me those plans o’ yours.’

Watched him go:

A big unit, with the splay-footed gaatch of an old slugger, and he turning down a Trace wynd… the carry, the burliness, the country shoulders rolling. But even a creature as canny and brave as the Gant could not make Bohane concede to his wishes, and Ol’ Boy felt a darkness imminent.

Sadness was the breeze that came off the river and warmed his face.

And then, despite himself, he fingerclicked a snare beat, for the clanking of the meat wagons worked nicely as percussion to the shimmer of a calypso rhythm that travelled from De Valera Street.

A pack of wannabe Fancy boys – fourteenish, hormonal, all bumfluff ’taches and suicide eyes, with the wantaway croak of bravado in their breaking voices – traced the hip-sway of the rhythm outside the calypso joint, drew circles in the air with the winkled tips of their patent booties, passed along a coochie – eight of ’em drawin’ on it – and they kept watch – so shyly – on the Café Aliados down the way.

You might see Wolfie Stanners pass through those doors, or Fucker Burke with his prize Alsatian bitch, Angelina, or – swoon of swoons – the killer-gal Ching from the Ho Pee.

These were the legend names on the lips of the young ones in Bohane as the spring of ’54 came through.

And the spirit of the humid night at a particular moment caught the boys, and the badness (the taint) was passed down, and they broke into an old tune that worked off a doo-wop chorus – it fit nicely up top of the calypso beat – and they sang so hoarsely, so sweetly, and their young faces were menacingly tranquil.

Yes and the song carried to the old dears hanging out washing on the rooftops of the Trace, and they paused a mo’, and smiled sadly, and sang croakily the words also: ‘ It’s a bomp it’s a stomp it’s a doo-wop dit-eee… it’s comin’ from the boys down in Bohane cit-eee …’

And a whisper of change travelled on the April air with the song, it went deeper and on and into the Trace, and the ancient wynds came alive with the season.

Dogs inched their snouts out of tenement hallways and onto the warming stoops.

Upon the stoical civic trees in the Trace squares a strange and smoke-streaked blossom appeared, its flowers a journey from sea grey to soot black, and the blossom was held to work as a charm against our many evils.

Beyond the city, the sea eased after the viciousness of springtide and softly, now, it drew on its cables – its rhythms a soft throb beneath the skin of the Bohane people.

Night in the Back Trace shimmered with dark glamour.

The Gant passed through the Trace, and he turned down a particular wynd, and he entered there a grog pit. He met in its shadows, by prior arrangement, the galoot Burke, who was hunched traitorously over a bottle of Wrassler stout.

Sidled in beside.

Eyed the kid.

‘Been havin’ a little think about what I said to you, boy?’

Fucker nodded.

‘We can go a long way together,’ the Gant said, ‘if you got things to tell me?’

It came at a great surge then the Judas testimony of Fucker Burke:

‘Long Fella, he come ’roun’ the dockside evenins, late on, I mean you be talkin’ pas’ the twelve bells at least when he come creepin’ the wharf, an’ that’s when you’d catch him cuttin’ Trace-deep, an’ he walk alone, sketch? An’ it’s like maybe he head for Tommie’s – you know ’bout the supper room, sir? I can make a map for ya – or if mood take him maybe he haul his bones ’cross the footbridge, stop in at the Ho Pee, that’s the Ching place, he might suck on a dream-pipe, coz Long Fella a martyr to the dream since the wall-eye missus took a scoot on him, and the Chings is known for the top dream, like, but o’ course you mus’ know ’bout the Ching gal, Jenni, the slant bint that been workin’ her own game, if you askin’ me? An’ she got my boy Wolfie in a love muddle ’n’ all, and that ain’t like Wolfie, no sir it jus’ fuckin’ ain’t, like, and the way I been seein’ it, Gant, what’s goin’ down with the Back Trace Fancy, or I mean say what’s on the soon-come with the Fancy, if it all plays out the way I’m expectin’…’

Mercy, the Gant thought, there’s no shutting the kid up.

Logan Hartnett on an April morning walked the stony rut of his one-track mind:

Where does she sleep now?

The shadow of his disease was beneath every inch of his skin. Since she left him, in the winter, he had realised the true extent of it. She had left him when he tested her, and maybe he had designed it just so. Maybe he wanted his sourest fictions to come to life.

Where does she sleep?

He crossed the S’town footbridge. He walked the Bohane front. He was dream-sick in the morning, and his nausea fed on the squalling of the gulls, the slaughterhouse roar, the clanking of the meat wagons. He turned onto De Valera Street. Blur of the street life, the faces indistinct and greenish. He aimed for the Bohane Arms Hotel. The street people still dropped their eyes as he passed but a questioning note combined now with the fear.

His jealousy had weakened him.

A night of fever-dreams and half-sleep was behind him at his berth above the Ho Pee Ching Oh-Kay Koffee Shoppe. He didn’t climb the Beauvista bluff any more – he couldn’t face those lonesome walls. He just sent Jenni now and then to fetch some fresh clothes.