Donal Ryan - The Thing About December

His face was kind of twisted, his lips were pulled back from his teeth and his eyebrows had arranged themselves in a V shape that made his eyes look even madder. He was wicked-looking. Why was it Johnsey always had to get the brunt of this wickedness?

Some fellas, if confronted with the likes of Eugene Penrose’s big auld snotty beak, would draw back their arm and swing a fist into his puss so fast he’d be out for the count before he knew what had hit him. Or they’d butt him right on the snout with their foreheads. He’d seen a lad one time, a lad younger than Johnsey himself, pulling the helmet off of one of the Toom boys during a hurling match and boxing the face off of him. Johnsey had never been able to draw a kick or a swipe. There was something always stopped him. Probably it was that big yellow streak that had somehow, against all the grains of nature and breeding, found its way into his soul. What power did a yellow streak have? It could paralyse a man’s arm and leg and though his head would tell him lash out, that streak of yellow would make him cringe and draw inwards and turn into a hedgehog, a little shivering ball in front of the wheels of a car.

Eugene Penrose was saying Look at the cut of you, you fat fool. What do you be at above on that farm, anyway? Do you get your hole off a different sheep every night? The townie boy hooted. The trick was to just keep trying to walk to his left or right and if he pushed you back to just kind of lean against the push so that you kept making forward progress, and eventually, with the help of God, he’d tire of the game and you’d get past him. Today he was pushing harder, though, and with the third push Johnsey was knocked to the ground. The wind was knocked out of him. His legs had lost any will to help him out. He looked up the road; there was nobody. He looked to his left; the dole boys were putting their cans down on the wall around the pump. He knew they were going to give him a hiding.

He could tell the two with Eugene Penrose weren’t as interested in this carry on as their leader, but they would go through with it out of fear of him. The townie was a different story. He was smiling ear to ear and laughing in a screechy, high-pitched way and was clearly planning on planting one of his dirty runners in some part of Johnsey’s body. Tackies them boys call them. All he could do now was curl up in a ball and cover his head as best he could. The last time something like this had happened to him was shortly after the meat factory had closed down and Eugene Penrose had kicked him in the stomach one day so hard he couldn’t breathe for ages and after he stood up he felt so weak he nearly fell again and he got sick on the side of the road just before he reached home. When he went inside, Mother told him he was white as a ghost. He said he wasn’t feeling great and she ran him a bath and gave him soup and said if he was the same in the morning she would ring Packie Collins for him and tell him he was sick and would not be coming to work. The memory of Mother’s tenderness tore at his soul.

WHEN JOHNSEY WAS small he’d had the same dream over and over again for one whole summer. It was the summer that Bonesy Donnell died and his sawmill was closed up and locked. Bonesy had always frightened children, not on purpose, but just by being humped and crooked and having arms that were longer than was natural and hands that had thick hair on the backs of them and a kind of a mad smile that made his kindness seem more like a desire to eat you without salt. A few nights Daddy had had to come in to him, and once he lifted him gently from his bed and carried him down the hallway to their room and Mother kissed him and tucked him in between them for the night. That only happened the once, though, that he could remember.

In the dream he would be walking past the high gate of solid wood at the sawmill yard. It would always be locked, with a big padlock that you could see was unbreakable. He would hear noises behind the gate, like someone was using the big circular saw inside but not properly — he could hear a noise like someone was trying to saw through something less regularly shaped and wetter than wood. Then the screaming noise of the metal being sawed would change to a human screaming as the padlock burst in two and flew off in different directions and the sawmill-yard gate swung inwards and he would be rooted to the ground, just standing there, unable to move as a humped black shape grew from the shadows and then he would see that the black shape had lifted the circular saw and the whole bench from the ground and the screaming blade would be coming straight at him and he would wake with his breath gone from his lungs and his covers would be on the ground and his sheet would be wet with sweat and once his pyjamas were soggy with pee.

WHEN JOHNSEY CAME to he could not see. He was still on the ground; he could feel that his hand was in a puddle of water and he could smell rain and something else that was damp and dirty, like there was a wet dog somewhere near him. There was a taste of metal in his mouth. He could just make out a pulsing light and someone was saying You’re okay, good man, in a soft voice and then he felt himself being lifted and then doors slammed and an engine started and he slipped away. He had the dream again, and this time the black shape had a face and it was the townie fella’s face and it was roaring out of the sawmill yard at him that he was a faggot and a fat cunt and even Eugene Penrose was a bit shocked-looking and wasn’t joining in any more and was saying Ah fuck it, come on, leave him to fuck.

THE NEXT TIME he woke he was in a bed. It wasn’t his own bed, it was harder and there were metal bars either side of him. They were cold to the touch. He could smell something like Dettol mixed with shit. He was fairly sure his eyes were open, but still he couldn’t see. Then a young woman’s voice, soft and soothing, said Did you wake up? and called him love and said Don’t worry now, you’ll be fine, the doctor will be in to you in a few minutes. Then she said some words that he didn’t understand and she click-clacked away into the distance.

He spent a few minutes trying to have thoughts one after the other instead of all together. He was in hospital, obviously. He had a clear memory of being knocked down on his arse by Eugene Penrose. There had been a townie lad with Eugene and the boys and Johnsey had a memory of the townie lad descending on him in a whirling cloud of punches and kicks, but it was like he was looking at what happened through the glass of a toilet window. He remembered thinking this fella was going to murder him and he’d be on the news and they’d show the pump with a yellow tape all around it and a little bangharda minding the murder scene and there’d be a bunch of flowers left by the Unthanks and they’d interview random villagers who would say Sure he never harmed anyone, his parents were lovely people, he always kept himself to himself, isn’t it a fright to God that this could happen in our lovely village?

There were little pinpoints of light flashing on and off and that was all he could see. They must have kicked him in the eyes. Could you kick a man’s eyes out of his head? It didn’t seem likely. Still, Mother always said them townies were fit for anything. He remembered feeling like something was exploding in his head every time that ratty lad’s runner connected with him. He should have covered himself up better. But he remembered that feeling of letting go and falling apart that came over him and it must have been after that that his defences crumbled altogether.

He was in some stew now: no mother or father to mind him and he as blind as a stone. Would he be able to manage to get a cartridge into Daddy’s shotgun even? Knowing his luck he’d miss his useless brain and blow half of his face off and he’d spend the rest of his born days being a blind monster, sitting on a chair somewhere with people lining up to scare themselves by looking at him. Some would be brave and they’d come up right close and poke him. Others would only be able to look at him through their fingers — the women mostly. Children would cry and try to run away, but parents would make them look and they’d say Now, look at what’s waiting to come for you if you’re bold, he’s the bogeyman and he eats bold children. And he’d sit there, unseeing, with one old Cyclops eye left and a mad, useless eyeball rolling around inside in it.