Kevin Barry - City of Bohane

There was more interest in the goat. The crowd gathered around Ol’ Boy, the puck was expertly inspected, and compliments were passed on the fine bearing of the creature.

‘…an’ this majestic beast afore us now has in the great tradition of August Fair been taken from the gorsey wilds o’ Big Nothin’ by a member o’ the Mannion family and here beneath this glorious Murk that is our curse and favour let it be said that…’

Four stout sons of the city – slaughterhouse boys – stepped forward as the puck was tethered to its platform on the tall stilts. The creature was raised slowly into the night sky, and great applause broke out, and whoops and hollers and roars, and the procession set off, in medieval splendour, towards the snakebend roll of De Valera Street.

Puck didn’t bat an eyelid.

Wolfie Stanners crossed into the S’town night and he met with the Gypo Lenihan and he was led by a tangled course down past the dune end’s pikey watches.

They ghosted through the night, the pair, and went unseen.

Came at length to a particular alleyway and the Gypo arranged the boy carefully in its shadows.

‘Wait here, Wolf. It’s where he come up for air from the grindbar yonder, y’heed?’

‘You’re sure?’

‘I’m sure.’

Wolfie was left alone, and waited, and he was bare-chested against the hot Murk as it came down freely now as a weird, greenish rain.

Felt for the bone handle of his shkelp, its heft.

Long Fella threw a sconce along the dockside. The judder of the hook-up generators was a memory jolt from adolescence. Diesel tang was sharp memory of the lost-time. The youth of Bohane balled through the Merries. The youth were in rut heat; for Logan, it was a careful parade through the fun.

He smiled for the old familiars of the town. The smiles he took back were as scared and respectful as always but they were weighted with emotion, too. Smiles were as though to say…

We’ve made it, ’bino, we’ve made it to August Fair again.

Since he was a child, Logan Hartnett had not missed a turn around the Merries on the night of Bohane Fair. The sights of it never changed:

Sweatin’ lunks of spud-ater lads in off Nothin’ took turns to slap the hammer at the test-your-strength meter.

Chinkee old-timers threw five-bob notes in each other’s faces at the dog fight.

Face-offs erupted between fiends for the affections of particular tushies, the shrieked challenges as old as time in Bohane:

‘Said c’mon!’

‘Mon way out of it so!’

‘Said c’mon so!’

‘Mon!’

Dreary-voiced yodellers up on Tangier orange crates howled death ballads. Knots of SBJ devotees from the Norrie towers knelt on the stones and joined hands to pray against the evil of the Bohane frolics but they were as much a part of them as everyone else. The lights of the Merries were a gaiety against the darkness that had descended over the Bohane front. The whirligigs turned young lovers through the air, and the screams of the girls spiralled, wrapped around, twisted.

A strolling brass band played lost-time waltzes.

A pikey rez sound system set up on the back of a horse cart spun rocksteady plates.

A transex diva hollered Milano arias from atop a bollard.

At the rodeo an eight-year-old Nothin’ child stayed the course and rode an epileptic Connemara pony into the dirt and great hollers of approval rose – the kid had a future.

And the girls’ screams twisted, turned in the air.

Bets were hollered, notes counted, palms spat on. There were fire-eaters from Faro, sword-swallowers from Samoa, jugglers from Galway. Pikey grannies read palms, stars, windsong.

Shots of primo Beast were offered at a fair price by the infamous retard brothers from the Nothin’ massif and the polis turned a blind eye having made off with a couple of crates theyselves.

There were stabbings, molestings, stompings.

Bohane city rose up on the spiral of the girls’ screams as they twisted in the air.

And Logan came upon the boy Cantillon then. He sat alone on the harbour wall – the fishmonger’s orphan, his glands swollen with quiet rage. He was lit gaudily by the lights of the revel and he looked at Logan as if he knew him from somewhere but could not quite place him.

The smile the boy gave was faint and murderous.

Logan raised an eyebrow in soft questioning but it was not answered. He approached but the boy hopped from the wall, and walked a little ways ahead, through the Merries’ crowd, and he took the same stride as Logan, precisely, with his hands clasped behind his back – this was a mockery.

He turned once and winked, the boy Cantillon, and then he disappeared into the throng.

‘Mon so!’

‘Said c’mon way out of it so!’

‘Said c’mon!’

And Blind Nora gave voice again to her old song:

The Gant walked off his nausea but not his bitterness. He settled into a circuit of the Trace and De Valera Street, a ritual circling of the old city, and all the while he watched for her. He saw her slip into the face of every young tush he passed by, and the drums of Bohane city carried a rhythm and a message both.

Maybe he would never walk himself clear of… Macu… Macu… Immaculata.

Girly Hartnett, on the occasion of her nintieth Fair, stood before a full-length mirror in her suite at the Bohane Arms Hotel. She wore stockings, a suspender belt, a bodice and a scowl. Mysterious injections from a whizz-kid Chinkee sawbones were keeping her upright. She laid a frail hand across her belly and sucked in deeply. She eyed herself dispassionately. She made a plain and honest read of the situation, and it was this:

She wasn’t in bad fuckin’ nick at all.

A particular knock sounded. She cried an answer to it. Jenni Ching entered. She wore a white leather catsuit up top of silver bovvers, and this outfit Girly now considered.

‘Choice,’ she said.

Jenni raised a moscato bottle, found it empty, and instead poured herself a slug of John Jameson from the bottle on the bedside table.

Downed it in one, and lit a cigar.

‘Who breaks the news to him?’ Jenni said.

‘That ain’t your worry, child. Now c’mon an’ get me dressed.’

Jenni went and slid the door of the mirrored wardrobe and flicked through the frocks that were piled there – many of them dated back as far as the lost-time.

‘You decided, Girly?’

Girly sighed.

‘I’m wondering if I shouldn’t go with a class of an ankle-length?’ she said. ‘Maybe the ermine trim? Kinda, like… Lana Turner-style?’

Jenni fetched it and unzipped it. As she offered it, she asked of her mentor quietly:

‘What do I do later, Girly?’

‘You jus’ got to show yerself.’ Girly took the old frock and sniffed it. She passed it back. She raised her feeble arms above her head.

‘Now strap me in,’ she said, ‘and alert the authorities.’

A line of hoss polis came along the cobbles towards the S’town footbridge.

Sand-pikey taunts sounded cross-river.

From the Merries, dockside, Logan watched and listened.

He lingered a while by the dog fights.

Winked at the old bookmaker there – an Afghan off the Rises.

A pair of bull terriers went at it, their great muscled necks hunched, their hackles heaped and muzzles locked, the blood coming in spurts.

‘Who’d ya fancy, Mr H?’

Logan carefully regarded the dogs – he let a cupped palm take the weight of his chin.