Donal Ryan - The Thing About December

He was starting to feel the pain in his body that the doctor had warned him about, behind his eyes and down the side of his face and in his ribs and down along his freed-up, knitted-together arm. He said he wouldn’t give him a prescription for any painkillers but Johnsey was to go to a chemist and get himself something the name of which he couldn’t remember but it was written down on a bit of paper and anyway it was probably going to be a damp squib after the stuff they pumped into him at the hospital because anyone could walk in off the street and buy it without a prescription from a doctor. There was nothing on the telly only your man of the Kyles roaring at English bowsies about using condoms and that big black American lady that makes all the bigshot white women cry. The telly during the day would often depress you more than entertain you.

He thought about Packie Collins with his sour auld puss and wondered how was the little foreign lad getting on below with him. He was still a small bit shocked at how he had been able to tell Packie where to go. That’s one thing you can say for having great violence done to you — it gives you a bit of toughness. To hell with Packie Collins and his rolling eyes and angry auld jowls, he could make little of the little foreign lad now instead and see whether he’d take it as quietly. That box of papers upstairs would surely realize enough for a man to live in comfort while he thought about things a bit more and tried to see would he sooner stay or go. Anyway, wasn’t he a millionaire on paper as people kept telling him? What reception would he get in the next life, he wondered, if he entered it landless? Would Granddad and Daddy and the great-uncles and beautiful Uncle Michael be above waiting, wanting to know what sort of a blackguard was he? Would Mother even bother with him? Lord save us and guard us, it’s a solid fright knowing nothing, not even how to feel.

THE TICKS AND TOCKS of the old clock were day by day starting to turn back to drips and drops that might for a finish become those Chinese hammer blows bonging through his brain. Was it Monday or Tuesday? What use of names had his days, anyway? You only need put names on days when you have places to go and things to do. I’ll collect you to go hurling training on Tuesday evening so. We’ll go for a few pints on Friday night. Will we go in to the cinema on Sunday? It seemed as though having a break from being lonesome made it ten times worse when you were once again lonesome. Being in the hospital was like the time Daddy was in remission from the cancer. That means it went away for a while. But then it came back and killed him.

The house felt quare again. It felt even emptier than it had once Mother’s funeral was done and dusted and the last of the biddies had flapped away and the relations felt they had given enough of themselves to warrant at least a couple of indulgences. It was probably the first time in several lifetimes that the house had been completely empty for more than a few days. It was as though the air had congealed, like a bowl of gravy that was left stand undisturbed too long. The Unthanks had tightened up before he arrived, but still there was a staleness about the place. Maybe it had been there before, but he hadn’t noticed. Now his nose was used to that sharp hospital smell and his healing eyes were used to clean whiteness. He longed to be back in the hospital. He didn’t want to go up the stairs. He felt like he was being watched, and the watchers weren’t kindly ancestors but vengeful spirits who had taken occupancy of the empty house and were raging over his return. He slept on the couch with the telly on and the telephone ladies gesturing out at him with their pouty lips and winking eyes. He dreamt of Siobhán and woke with the sound of her in his ears. Outside, the door of the slatted house was still broken and stuck ajar, and the look of the darkness within felt as familiar and safe as a mother’s womb must feel to her little unborn baby.

A PERSON WALKED across his view one hot, still day and gave him such a fright his heart nearly leapt from his chest and his arse lost its grip on the hard edge of the old couch and he fell sideways onto the floor. Old Paddy Rourke was abroad in the yard! Johnsey had never before felt such happiness at the sight of a visitor. Normally, his heart would sink at the prospect of small talk. Now he wanted it more than anything. People weren’t as inclined to be sympathizing with you over getting bet up as they were over your mother and father dying. Violence embarrassed people. They didn’t know the words to use for it. He nearly ran out through the door to meet him.

Paddy wasn’t a man for niceties or how’s yourself or any news or talk about the weather or the price of milk or beasts. He was looking about the yard and in through the crack in the door of the slatted house. The cloud of shame that Johnsey now understood a bit better seemed to have been lifted from him. Probably he had no regard for Johnsey, anyway, and so would not be ashamed opposite him.

He was as clane and tidy a farmer as you’d ever meet, your father was, God rest him. That was as small as Paddy’s talk got. Paddy was stooped and wrinkled and the bit of hair he had left was wispy and white, but you could sense the toughness off of him, it was in his eyes and his voice and the way he clenched and unclenched his fists while he talked. Paddy walked to the wall that ran from the near gable of the slatted house to the front-right edge of the proper house and leaned against it, looking out into the haggard, empty now of all but thistles and briars. He started to speak without turning his eyes from the haggard and the clump of old oak trees beyond it.

Jackie would turn in his grave, lad, if he thought you were going to give the rest of your days letting yourself be blackguarded. He thought the sun rose from behind you and set before you, you know. He made you soft, mind you; he never let you out from behind him. That was one great disservice he done you. You see, he thought his toughness would be poured directly into you. That’s not the way it always goes, though. God is heavy-handed with that auld jug for some and then goes easy for others. You can’t time him. The finest bull and the fattest heifer often made a wobbly auld meely-mawly of a calf that could hardly stand on its own legs. He had a right to leave you off at times to run and fall and get into scrapes and get the bangs and knocks that hardens young fellas. But he’d let no one look sideways at you. Lookit, there’s no sense in that talk, those wrongs can’t be righted now. I’m old, Johnsey, and too shook to be going after lads. I’d only make a show of myself, and end up tied to a bed beyond in the county home. They’d take me for an old madman with that old timers’ disease, you know, where fellas and wans go pure soft and have to be fed their dinner and it all mashed up like a baby’s pandy and they don’t know their arses from their elbows any more. But you have rakes of time left. Years and years where you can be a man and live happy or you can die a thousand deaths.

Now, every little sneaky prick in the country is watching to see what’ll you do about the land. Well, Johnsey, while they’re all fixated on the land, and counting money they haven’t yet got and might never get, you have a right to take down your father’s gun, load both barrels with duck-shot cartridges and bowl down to that pump for yourself and riddle them fuckers that gave you that hiding. Bang, bang. That’s the only language they know, boy. Duck shot won’t kill nobody, you know. Twill blister the fuckers, though. Twill sting like holy hell. I’ll give you it. They’ll think the divil himself rose up and whipped the legs off of them. They won’t forget it in a hurry, that lesson. Aim low, son, and central. There’s woeful spread in duck shot. Two cartridges will pepper the four bollixes. The guards told you there wasn’t one thing they could do to them fellas after the hiding they gave you and you nearly dead after it. Well, they can tell the same thing to those boys while the grand nurses beyond inside in the hospital is plugging their holes: Jaysus, sorry for your trouble, lads, but we has no evidence. Not a screed, boys, terrible sorry. Otherwise you’ll be forever more regretting you left them away scot-free. Regrets like that never leave you, son. Regrets like that are like cancer , the very same as your father got. They eat you from the inside out.