Kevin Barry - City of Bohane

‘Who the we , Dom?’

Gleeson glared indignantly.

‘I’m speakin’ on behalf o’ the Bohane people, Mr Hartnett!’

Logan leaned forward for a low-voiced confide:

‘I ain’t the one sending martyrs of young fellas across the footbridge, Dominick. I ain’t the one rousing the flatblocks.’

The Dom showed his palms. He moaned, softly, and he let his eyes roll up in his head until all that could be seen was the whites – this to signify the delicate politics the city required, and the weariness such work exacted from an honest soul.

‘I know they’re wall-bangers to a man, H, an’ feckin’ uppity with it. But all we’re sayin’…’

‘The we again, Dom?’

‘Okay, Mr Hartnett. Truth be told, I’m carryin’ representations from the Authority.’

‘Ah, I see now.’

‘Bohane Authority is at a critical stage in negotiations with the NB, Mr Hartnett.’

NB, in Bohane cant: the Nation Beyond.

‘So I believe.’

‘NB tight enough with the aul’ tit this year, H.’

‘I understand it’s the way.’

‘So the last thing we need is one half o’ the town tryin’ to ate the other half. This place got a bad enough name as things stand, Logan.’

‘You’re saying that the Authority wishes for the Calm to persist, Dom, until such a time as the NB tit has been successfully massaged?’

‘That’s very nicely put, Mr Hartnett.’

Logan knit his elegant fingers beneath his chin.

‘I’m reasonable, Dom. I wouldn’t be fouling the air still if I wasn’t. Our only problem is we got a loolah up on the Rises and he has a horn on him for a massive fucking ruck. And I can’t be seen to back off.’

‘I’m knowin’ this all too well, Logan.’

‘And! I’ve got a fucking maniac outside on Big Nothin’ and he’s working his own plan.’

‘You’re talkin’ about the Gant Broderick.’

‘I am indeed, Dominick. So here’s what I’d say to you. If ye want the Calm to stretch for a while, I’ll play my part but on a particular condition.’

‘Name it, sir.’

‘Get me a bead on the Gant.’

The fat newsman soul-wrestled for the cheap seats.

‘Ah, Logan… The Gant’s a man with a quare stretch o’ history to his name outside on Nothin’…’

‘You’ve contacts out there, Dom.’

‘I have, but…’

‘I’m sending my boys out. And your very best contact is to meet with them. And they better be given the Gant’s precise whereabouts, Dom. Whatever fucking rock he’s hiding under, we need to know it.’

Dom trembled his jowls.

‘Mr Hartnett? Peoples got long memories in Bohane. If the Gant got hurted…’

‘I want a bead drawn on the big unit, Dom. Do you hear me clearly?’

‘Cathedral bells, Mr Hartnett.’

‘Good. Have we any other business?’

They smiled, and they shook, and the newsman took his leave. Logan reached for his jacket, removed from its breast pocket a red handkerchief, and wiped his hands. He ate seeds, then, and he drank joe, and he examined the reach of his manipulation. He smiled for the young gents of the Fancy. They watched him with the usual regard, awe, puzzlement.

The day they could snag a read on him would be the day he would lose them.

Was the day following a pair of hombres by the name of Wolfie Stanners and Fucker Burke took to the High Boreen. The Boreen is the main passage across the Big Nothin’ wastes – a double-width cindertrack passable in most weathers. Smaller tracks lead from it into the hills and onto the bog and down briary laneways peopled by haggard souls in cottages that sag with damp, and loss, and sadness. The rain fell hard as the boys grimly walked, and rain was no surprise to the place. A low bank of cloud had moved in from the Atlantic and broke up when it hit the foothills of the Nothin’ massif. The bog was livened and opened its maw hungrily for the rain. The boys squelched along and eyed with disgust the effect of the mud on their high-top boots. The rain ran in fresh silver freely down the gullies of the hills and fed the patient lakes and the poppy fields also were sated. Even in the midst of the rain, sunlight flashed from behind the cloudbank – it peeped out for a few seconds at a time, skittish as a young thing, and showed the colours of the rain. The yellow of the high-summer broom had faded in memory of that summer. There was a thick silence from the direction of the pikey reservation – ‘the rez’, as it is known in the Bohane cant – a most sinister silence, and the boys were watchful of the pikey lands, easterly. Never know what could come flyin’ at you from that direction.

‘I’m tryin’ to get this straight in me noggin,’ said Fucker.

‘Here we go,’ said Wolfie.

‘The fuck how we gonna find the big unit, Wolf?’

‘We’re gonna have a bead drawn, Fucker.’

‘Hey but Wolf? We don’t know fuckin’ Nothin’ from fuckin’ no place, y’heed me?’

‘Shut up, Fucker.’

These boys were the roaming lieutenants of the Hartnett Fancy. The mood was not good.

‘But seriously, Wolfie? I mean there’s a whole heap o’ Big fuckin’ Nothin’ out here, y’sketchin’?’

Indeed, it was a rude expanse. The reeds that fringed the wee lakes swayed but barely in a light breeze. Big Nothin’ is a place of thorn and stone and sudden devouring swamp-holes. It has an infinity of small wet fields. The fields are broken up by rough and ill-formed drystone walls that tend to give out altogether about two-thirds of the way across a field. A lazy job, the walls. It wasn’t Presbyterians put up those walls.

‘What we know about the big unit?’ said Fucker.

‘The Gant Broderick,’ said Wolfie. ‘Halfways pikey, halfways whiteman. Been gone outta the creation since back in the day. Was the dude used to have the runnins before the Long Fella. Use’ t’do a line with the Long Fella’s missus an’ all, y’check?’

Fucker’s jaw lolloped.

‘Say she was a proper lash in her day, like?’

‘She ain’t too bad now, Fuck.’

‘Ain’t, like.’

‘Wouldn’t kick her outta bed for atein’ anchovies, like.’

‘No way, Wolf. The way the eye be class o’ turned in on her, like? Bit tasty.’

On a stone wall Wolfie and Fucker paused to rest a while. They smoked, and they savoured a spectacle. In the near distance, a scraggle of country lads cantered around a small field. Polis trials were coming up, and to get a start in the Bohane polis, a lad is expected to be able to lep over a sixbar farm gate of the type made by the sand-pikeys who live on the dunes oceanside of the city. The lads jogged in a staggered line around the irregular perimeter of the field and in sequence one of them would break off from the stagger, take a sprint for the field’s gate and have a lep at it. Knees, elbows and chins were taking punishment down there. The Bohane polis was spud-ater to a man.

‘Smart-lookin’ crop,’ said Wolfie Stanners.

‘World-beaters,’ said Fucker Burke.

Wolfie and Fucker were by their nature city boys. They were not built for the wilds. If he had his way, Fucker would have been sat on a bollard of the Bohane front, with a pipeload of herb on the draw and a dangerous glare trained on the river traffic. If he had his way, Wolfie would have been patrolling the Trace and S’town in the Fancy’s cause – with concrete under his feet – and bustin’ the heads of Norrie scuts.

‘Got the fuckin’ spooks up in me, Wolf.’

‘Well, that’s Big fuckin’ Nothin’ for ya, ain’t it, Fucker?’

The boys bitterly climbed to their feet and hit again along the High Boreen. Went deeper into the Nothin’ wastes. They came to a particular turn and took it and it led to a ridge path that skirted a granite knoll. Made a harlequin spectacle out on the bog plain, these boys.