Donal Ryan - The Thing About December

PACKIE COLLINS’S yard and it full to bursting with blocks and timber and bags of cement. Dermot McDermott’s offer to buy the land. Eugene Penrose’s talk of Johnsey’s millions. They had all been a mile and a half ahead of the Unthanks. Mother had always maintained that the auld sneaky ones always had news before anybody. Some, the cuter ones, would keep it to themselves and more would go around telling all they knew to anyone who’d listen. They’d spread news that wasn’t even news yet. If there was nothing to tell, they’d make something up.

Like the time years ago the whole place had it that Paddy Rourke had belted the head off of Kathleen and she only after getting a black eye from a rejected calf she was bottle-feeding who butted her by accident. Once a thing was said, it could never be unsaid. Paddy was blackened after that in many minds. Some people believed what they were told regardless of who it was doing the telling and wouldn’t be waiting around for hard evidence. The Unthanks weren’t that way; this was officially true and therefore could be discussed as fact. You couldn’t be ruining it for them by telling them that it didn’t matter one shite if Our Lord Himself wanted to buy land off of Johnsey to build houses and hotels and shops on — Johnsey’s land did not belong to Johnsey — it was not his to sell or to allow people to build things upon.

MUMBLY DAVE was more inclined to talk properly after a few days. They put a hinge in that auld wire in his jaw and gave him a new mouth of temporary false teeth in case the world missed something important out of him. After a small bit of practice, the mumbling was replaced by a non-stop flow of words. Johnsey had envied him his wired-shut jaw; there was no pressure on a man with a wired-shut jaw to be saying things to people. How well it was his eyes had been broken and not his jaw. Then he could see the owner of the Lovely Voice instead of just imagining her and he wouldn’t have to be trying to think of things to say back to her. Not even being kicked in the head could go right for him.

Mumbly Dave felt no such pressure in the talking department. In fact, talking seemed to be his way of releasing pressure. It was as though thousands of words were squashed up together inside in his head and couldn’t wait to rush out of his mouth like a crowd out of the tunnel under the stand below in Semple Stadium after a Munster final. He thought it was a great big laugh that neither of them could see a screed in front of them. Mumbly Dave would say, I used to see no evil, speak no evil, now I only see no evil, ha ha ha! Hey, did you hear that, youssir, I said I used to …

He was all talk about the big news about the rezoning of the land. He wanted to know how many brown envelopes Johnsey had left inside in the civic offices, hoo hoo hoo. He wanted to know was Johnsey related to Oliver Cunliffe beyond in Latteragh, Oh are you not and Oh sure your father was Jackie, I knew him, he used to hurl with my father, sure they played Junior B until they were gone fifty, ha ha ha, they were tough yokes, Oh that was your mother so who died not long ago, sorry for your trouble, go on anyway, how much did you leave inside with that shower of crooks?

Was it you got the hiding off of Eugene Penrose and that fella from town and those other two apes? Penrose got an awful fright, you know. He nearly shat himself apparently, when your man went to town on you. He doesn’t know who he’s mixing with, there. That lad is deadly dangerous. He’s a pure knacker. He wore a pool cue off of one of the Comerfords and you know how tough them boyos are. Penrose is like a child with a new toy whenever a bigger knacker than him turns up. Do you work below in the co-op? Oh ya, I was thinking. You get dog’s abuse there some days off of Penrose. I seen him at it a few times. And the other two fools with him. If Penrose opened his mouth you’d see their four cod eyes looking out at you, they’re so far up his hole.

Begod Packie Collins wasn’t long about replacing you! That feckin Polish lad was in like a fly on shit; I’ll tell you one thing, you can’t turn your back on those boys, they’d take the eye out of your head, I can’t wait till this swelling goes down and I can open my feckin eyes, I’d say that nurse one with the nice voice is flaking, hoo hoo, hey youssir, I said I can’t wait till this swelling goes down and I can open my feckin eyes, I’d say that nurse wan is flaking, I can’t wait to get a good look at her, whoo boy I could sure do with a ride, ha ha ha, sure she sounds like she’s gorgeous but we have to be prepared for an awful shock, she could have a face like a bag of hammers, ha ha ha, sure any port in a storm, maybe we’re as well off if she’s a right manky-looking yoke, not to be lying here with two horns on us every time she walks in, hey, how does that work with these tubes in our mickeys, anyway? Have you a tube in your mickey too? Isn’t that an awful liberty? I don’t know about you, boss, but them nurses can take as many liberties as they want with my mickey, ha ha ha ha ha!

MUMBLY DAVE made the Lovely Voice laugh. That was the thing about Mumbly Dave that really tormented Johnsey. How well he had to go and fall off his ladder and break his stupid face. How well he couldn’t have broken his neck instead. How well they couldn’t have left that old clamp on him another while. He was full of old sugary shite, that Mumbly Dave. Sure, he was a gas character. Ha ha fucking ha. How could he have a new joke or bit of smartness ready every single time the Lovely Voice came near them? You’d be heartsick, pretending to laugh. If he didn’t hear a laugh out of you, he’d say the same stupid thing over again, only louder. He’d wear you out, so he would. If this was the alternative to loneliness, he’d sooner be lonesome forever. People could be quare hard work. He’d never known that before.

Another thing about Mumbly Dave was he kept farting . Johnsey had a pain in his stomach most days from trying not to let off. He had his arsecheeks clamped shut half the time. It had gotten to the stage where the farts didn’t even bother trying to escape any more; they got as far as his hole and turned back. Then they’d be all knocking around his insides and fighting with each other for space. It couldn’t be good for a man having all this pressure building up inside. Anything was better than filling a room with fumes, though, and having the Lovely Voice or one of the other nurses walking into a stinking cloud. Mumbly Dave thought it was the height of craic. He’d let rip day and night and then for devilment he’d put the blame on Johnsey. Once or twice his great big smelly farts coincided with the Lovely Voice entering their room and just as she did the rotten fucker’d say Jaysus, Johnsey, you’re a bad yoke, would you not try and hold it in and a lady in the room and then he’d mar dhea apologize on Johnsey’s behalf, the dirty, rotten bastard! The Lovely Voice would laugh and say Don’t worry, I’ve smelt worse, and there was nothing you could say then; you couldn’t be denying the fart and sounding like a young fella in primary school. Then after she was gone Mumbly Dave would be woohoo-ing and laughing away to himself and saying Jaysus, youssir, I caught you a beaut, and all you could do was lie there and imagine yourself sneaking over to his bed in the night and ramming a stolen fork into his mouth with all your strength. That’d soften his cough.

Some days the Lovely Voice would come in and close the door to the corridor and sit down and she’d tell them Say nothing, Sister is on the warpath, I’m safe in here with the blindman buffs, God I’m knackered; so boys, any news? And Mumbly Dave would be out with something smart straight away like asking was she out the night before and was she up late or what and the two of them would take off laughing and it felt like they were ganging up on him and he hated Mumbly Dave more than he’d ever hated Eugene Penrose or Dermot McDermott or Packie Collins or the townie lad who’d kicked his face in or any of the cool lads who’d mocked him in school. Why did Mumbly Dave have to come along and wipe his eye? The Lovely Voice was his bit of pleasure; she used to have private jokes with him , it wasn’t fair that the first proper woman to ever whisper in Johnsey’s ear and send a bolt of electricity down his neck and along his arms and into his balls and down his legs as far as his toes was now being taken over by a big, fat, stupid bullshitter.