Donal Ryan - The Thing About December

Will you eat a Twix, Johnsey?

I will. Thanks.

A Twix was easy ate.

THE GUARDS had come, of course. A fella with a beard in a shirt and tie — a detective no less — and a skinny lad in a uniform, the Lovely Voice had told him. That was shortly after he had come round. They had asked him what happened and he had told them he didn’t remember too much except the bit of pushing and shoving and he was knocked and a fella he didn’t know with birds on his neck had taken an awful dislike to him, it seemed. The guards laughed a bit at that. They told him don’t worry, they’d come back when he had his sight back and he could look at a photo and formally identify the bird-neck lad, but he had been questioned already and so had his three mates and they had been told in no uncertain terms that they were to stay local. Johnsey told the guards he’d rather they fucked off to be honest and they laughed again and Johnsey nearly felt good about himself for a second or two.

There was a doctor who was a specialist in eyes. He came in most days for a look under his bandages and he’d let a hmm or two out of him and he’d go away again about his business. He sounded foreign. His name was Doctor Fostiwaw or Fastibaw or something quare like that. One day, the Lovely Voice told Johnsey that she just called him Doctor Frostyballs and he laughed so much he could feel his cat eater nearly slipping out. A real card, Daddy would have called her. What would he do when he could see again? When his eyes were right and there were no more worries about his swelled head or his bruised kidneys or his cracked arm, he’d surely be given the road. He wouldn’t be left malinger in this bed, that was for sure. And there’d be no Lovely Voice breezing in and out of the rooms of his cold old house.

PACKIE COLLINS came in to inspect the patient in his bed and Johnsey imagined him with his face scrunched and his nose all wrinkled up and he looking down through it like a fella would look at something that was stuck to the bottom of his shoe. He wanted to know what in the Jaysus was he at, fighting on the street like that? Johnsey didn’t answer him. He there and then made a decision: he would never again darken the co-op door. He’d minded his little job long enough. That must be the secret to making decisions — don’t think about them beforehand, just do whatever makes you feel most like a proper man. Like Daddy in the mart deciding on a beast or your man in ER deciding to leap up on the operating table and ram his hand down a lad’s throat to save his life.

Packie said he’d had to get a little lad in to give him a digout. Things was gone fierce busy. There was going to be a lot of building starting up around and the co-op yard was going to be a sort of a staging area for the builders. A little foreign lad, he is. A good little worker now, mind you. Packie must have gotten over the powerful aversion he had to foreigners. Johnsey said You may hold on to him for good, Packie, I won’t be back to you any more, and the minute he had the words said he started to disbelieve that he had really said them; he listened for an echo of them in his brain and waited to feel them settling back down on his face like the fine mist you’d feel off of that waterfall beside the hotel where Mother’s cousin got married that time when he was a small boy. He started to think he hadn’t said them at all when Packie said Well! Well, well, well. Well, that’s the solid Jaysus finest! Oh begod, don’t worry at all! Sure I was only being foolish thinking Master Cunliffe would appreciate my holding his post open while he recovered from his injuries!

It was easier be brave when you couldn’t see your bravery’s result. You could probably punch a lad in the face a lot quicker if you hadn’t to see his eyes while you did it. He could hear Packie take a step back. He was taken aback . That wasn’t just a saying, then. He’d be below in the co-op afterwards reading Johnsey to all who’d listen. He’d label him a blackguard and an ingrate and he’d have a wounded puss on him, but inwardly he’d be rejoicing. You hadn’t to pay foreigners as much — everyone knew that. Packie said Well, well a few more times, and then he was gone.

Well, well.

Good luck so. You auld bollix.

AUNTY THERESA paraded in at three- or four-day intervals, giving out stink to all before her. She dragged her husband in with her half the time and poor little mousy Aunty Nonie the spinster the other half. Daddy used to call Frank that poor fucker and Mother would let on to be insulted on Theresa’s behalf but she’d smile in spite of herself. Daddy used to say about Aunty Theresa that you had to have a business in town and a farm outside town before she’d look at you. There wasn’t many measured up to Theresa’s test of respectability. Even Our Lord Himself had only the carpentry business and no land. Signs on the only ones who’d be pals with Him when He walked this earth were the fishermen and prostitutes and lepers. The likes of Johnsey and his terrible predicaments were sent as a trial for poor Theresa. It was a penance for the few old sins she’d committed, to have a nephew like Johnsey making a solid show of her by getting into such common scrapes. God knows they weren’t much to write home about, them few auld sins she committed that were being held against her still, but some are given a bigger burden than others and all we can do is suffer on and not give out.

Aunty Theresa said he had their hearts broke. They expected him every Sunday but he was below with them Unthanks constantly. He hardly looked at them above at Mass! He was all that was left of their lovely Sarah and now look at the cut of him! Uncle Frank or Aunty Nonie would tell her whisht but you couldn’t whisht that one up. It was just too much; it was too much to bear , all this constant heartache. One evening she was in full flow about how awful it was about Johnsey fighting with bowsies and what have you and in walked Doctor Frostyballs and she all of a sudden sounded like one of those horsy Protestant ones whose lips don’t fit down fully over their big front teeth who come in to the co-op for feed now and again. She said Hellooo Dawk-tur, but old Frostyballs only gave his usual few hmms and shagged off fine and quick. He hadn’t time for mad Irish aunties to be wedging their tongues up his hole. Aunty Theresa said he’d be a very high caste now, you know, in India.

He would I suppose, said poor old Frank.

THERE WAS only one other bed in the room. It was a semi-private room. He was in the VHI, and he hadn’t even known it. That meant you got special treatment because some crowd above in Dublin or somewhere would foot the bill. You would get the best of stuff. Imagine that: his mother still had to sort things out for him and she dead and gone. She wouldn’t have liked him to be in a big old ward, anyway; you wouldn’t know what kind of quare-hawks would be in it, Mother would have said.

One time, when Daddy was bad, he’d been rushed in and given new blood and afterwards they’d wheeled him into a big ward full of auld fellas so they could keep an eye on him. Mother and Johnsey were left stay with him for fear he’d die without company, and a nurse pulled a plastic curtain around them. There was no room available, only the big old ward, stinking of old men and piss and shit and whatever dark medicines were used to try to hold Death at bay. Daddy was dead to the world, drugged to the solid eyeballs. Halfway through the night an auld fella took a figary and leapt out of his bed and threw their curtain back and stood there looking in at the three of them and he without a tooth that was ever known and his bit of white hair standing straight up on his head and shining eyes on him like a greyhound inside in a trap and his old wrinkly mickey peeping out through his pyjamas. Mother hopped out of her chair and made a grab for the old rogue but he sidestepped her and he was gone in between the wall and the side of Daddy’s bed and next thing wasn’t he going at Daddy’s face and Mother was trying to drag him off and a nurse and an orderly ran in and got him back into his own bed and they strapped him to it for a finish and through the whole thing Johnsey had just sat there like an imbecile, looking out of his mouth.