Colin Barrett - Young Skins - Stories

Dympna glugged his Fanta.

They were beyond the farmsteads now, into reefs of bogland infested with gorse bushes. Bony, hard-thorned and truculently thriving, the gorse bushes’ yellow blossoms were vivid against the grained black sheen of the sump waters, the seamed bog fields. The sky was clearing itself of clouds. The day was on its afternoon wane, already.

‘It’s getting on,’ Arm said.

‘Just sit there and say nothing,’ Dympna said. ‘Just sit there and be, y’know, intimidating.’

‘I can manage that.’

The road into the farm was a narrow length of rutted dirt sunk low between haggard ditches. They had to crawl over the track, the shitbox pitching up and down as they went. The farm itself backed out onto a hill thick with heather. The house was a T-shaped unpainted wooden bungalow with a sagging front porch. A wrought-iron gate, hingeless, was tethered by an inordinate quantity of blue rope to the porch’s frame, though the gate still hung at a limp angle.

They parked in the clearing out front.

Paudi came round the side of the house. He had a baseball cap scrunched down over his head and his beard was as lush as ever, a streaked dark thicket that devoured his neck and three quarters of his face. He was standing in rakey profile, watching the car and cleaning his hands with the end of his T-shirt.

Dympna slapped the roof of the shitbox as he got out.

‘Well, Unk,’ he said, ‘fine cunt of a day and no mistake.’

‘Come see this,’ Paudi said, turning and disappearing back behind the house. Arm looked at Dympna, shrugged his shoulders. Dympna popped the shitbox’s boot, slung the satchel containing the uncles’ cut over his shoulder.

Behind the house a courtyard of cracked concrete led to the cattle shed. The shed was decently cavernous, a three-sided, aluminium-walled structure with a gated front and a corrugated roof. It was no longer used to house livestock, but was now a repository for an accumulation of all manner of weathered and defective shite — a capsized washing machine, two fat-backed cathode TVs with their screens smashed out, yards of dismembered PVC and metal piping, tyres of varying circumferences and vehicle type, cardboard trays containing broken, esoterically shaped glassware and fertiliser bags full of a mixture of wood shavings and small brown pellets of what might have been animal feed but could’ve been anything. To the rear of the shed was the cellar door that led down, Arm knew, to the nursery, and beside that door was the pair of wire cages in which were kept the Alsatians. One sprung to its feet and pressed its shining muzzle against the mesh, beads of slaver dropping from its teeth onto the mesh’s squares. The other creature remained curled into itself in the corner of its cage.

‘Look at this poor bastard,’ Paudi said.

The dog’s snout was buried under its front paws, its breath coming in rapid, shallow rasps. It was lying on a bath mat, the mat’s ends filigreed with chew-marks.

‘What’s up with it?’ Dympna said.

‘He ate a wasp. It’s a habit they’ve had since they were pups. Wasps do nest up in the eaves of the porch every summer, and after me or the other fella get round to killing them these boys love to snuffle round the deck and eat up the bodies. Think he ate one he thought was dead wasn’t dead. Stung him, it did, inside in his throat or deeper down. His tongue is all fucked up and he’s been wheezing and stuck lying there since yesterday. Can dogs be allergic?’

‘You have me there,’ Dympna said. ‘This happened yesterday?’

‘Correct. Did Hector not tell you?’ Paudi took ahold of one of the longer curls depending from the end of his beard and rolled it between his thumb and forefinger.

‘No,’ Dympna said.

‘Well fuck that goon,’ Paudi said, starting back around for the front of the house.

Paudi led them into the front room.

‘You put in a word to the vet yet?’ Dympna asked.

‘We’ll see,’ Paudi said. ‘Sit down.’

The front room was tiny. There was a fireplace in the wall, a copper bucket brimming with ashes by the hearth, a metal shovel sunk free-standing in the ash, so thick was the deposit of it. The flock wallpaper had warped and bubbled in the corners, like the room had been parboiled. Paudi’s chair had a layer of old newspapers tucked around the lining of the seat; the papers served as a kind of supplementary padding and crackled as he settled himself.

Dympna scooted onto the leather fainting couch, leaving Arm to a puny, three-legged wooden stool. Arm turned and descended upon it. Achieving a tremulous emplacement, he found he had nowhere to put his arms but heaped atop his thighs.

Paudi looked at him, snickered.

‘Sometimes a big man can’t do nothing but sit there and be fucking big, hah?’

The table was a small, fold-down plastic number. A shopping bag containing the latest consignment of weed sat on it. Dympna placed the satchel on the table, next to the shopping bag. Paudi did not unzip or otherwise inspect the satchel beyond giving the leather a gentle squeeze. He looked at Arm.

‘Is your boy better?’ he said.

Dympna raised his hand but said nothing. His eyes darted from Arm to Paudi, then back to Arm.

‘My boy?’

‘The little lad. Your little fella. The one can’t talk.’

‘It’s not a case of him getting better.’

Paudi considered this.

‘But he’s trainable, yes? If that’s the word.’

‘He is, I suppose.’

‘He’s a great lad,’ Dympna said blandly.

‘You never brought young Armstrong in before,’ Paudi said, addressing Dympna, ‘that’s a new thing.’

‘And what’s it matter?’ Dympna said.

‘It’s an observation,’ Paudi said. ‘Yes sir.’

Then he said, ‘I cannot believe Hector did not tell you about the dog. All that man cares about is his little bit snuck away in Ballintober.’

‘Women,’ Dympna muttered.

‘She has him under her spell,’ Paudi said. ‘He thinks he has her under his. But it’s the other way round. His brain is turning to mush, you know. The man has an unconscionable stack of sprays and perfumes sat in there by the bed.’ A horizontal crease spread in the middle of his beard. Paudi was smiling. ‘He baths himself every second day. He has these little nail clippers. He wants nothing to do with the silage. He forgets to feed the fucking dogs,’ he concluded coldly.

‘But sure the one out there will be fine anyway,’ Dympna said. ‘They eat anything, they have constitutions of iron.’

‘I will have to take it for a walk up the heather it if does not look like she’s improving,’ Paudi said. ‘It’s a pity. But that’s fucking that.’

‘That’ll be too bad,’ Dympna said.

‘But what’s this development about though?’ Paudi said. His hand returned to the satchel. He pinched a fold of the thin imitative leather between his yellow fingers. ‘You know I’m up here on my own. And in you bring the Arm.’

‘He’s just my lad,’ Dympna said. ‘A loyal skin.’

‘Loyal skin,’ Paudi repeated. ‘Loyalty among thieves, isn’t that the saying?’

‘Is it?’ Dympna said. ‘Well, say whatever you like, Paudi, consider me him and him me when it comes to our business.’

‘Speaking of projects, Valentino was on to you yesterday, yes?’ Paudi shifted his weight in his chair, the papers crackling around his thighs. ‘What’s the story with the molester?’

‘You mean Fannigan?’ Dympna said.

‘Another loyal skin, no doubt,’ Paudi smiled again. ‘You’re drowning in loyal skins, nephew.’

‘Fannigan is dead,’ Arm said.

Dympna laughed, a single dry bark.

‘Just so you know,’ Arm said.

Paudi tweaked the curl in his beard.