Donal Ryan: The Thing About December

But Johnsey followed Eugene Penrose and little Mickey Farrell with his slanty eyes (Mother had asked Daddy one Sunday coming from Mass, Is that little lad of the Farrells a Mongol, and Daddy had laughed and said No, he’s a rat like his father) over to the memorial where all the cool lads were and a few girls acting like they were disgusted with the cool lads but you could tell they weren’t, really, and a couple of nervous-looking spastics standing to the side, like bits of auld watery broccoli beside a plate of steak and chips.

Hey, lads, Penrose declared, pulling him by the arm to present him to the rest, Look at Cunliffe’s jumper — I’d say his mother knit it and glued a golfer on it!

I’d say his father bought it off the tinkers, someone else volunteered. Johnsey could see his fellow spastics were guffawing away with the cool lads, feeling safely ignored for the minute and trying to gain ground while they could.

Hey, Johnsey Cunt-Lick, don’t shit in your pants now, it’s only a small bus!

We’ll put the fucker in the boot!

Someone grabbed the back of his jumper and yanked the label out and roared Penneys!

Johnsey knew his mother hadn’t bought his jumper in Penneys; she’d gone to a right expensive place in the city. He knew because he’d heard her telling Daddy it was an awful price and Daddy said Sure what about it and she said It’s true, what about it. Then he heard a rip and the two buttons on the shoulder of his jumper landed on the ground. He bent down to pick them up but the jumper-grabber behind still had a grip and there was another rip. Now the neck of his jumper felt too loose and it was slipping down over his shoulder and he wondered how would he explain to Mother and Daddy how his new jumper that was an awful price got destroyed.

Paddy Screwballs arrived and Johnsey’s torment, for the moment, was at an end. Surely to God he would be left alone on the bus, with an adult driving it. He sat at the very top, as close to the driver as possible. The other two harmless lads sat across from him. They looked a bit ashamed.

But his sanctuary was soon destroyed: Eugene Penrose landed down beside him, and put a big mar dhea friendly arm around his shoulders, and Johnsey had to shove in for him, and little ratty Mickey Farrell and the fair-haired lad landed in the seats behind him and when they started tormenting him again and trying to pull his jumper off of him, old Paddy Screwballs just turned a bit sideways and said Hey, go handy there, and sort of smiled and Johnsey could see he had only three teeth in the front of his stupid old head and he wheezed and coughed and so did the bus and he rammed it in to gear and drove off.

Someone actually lit a fag towards the back of the bus! Even Eugene Penrose was a small bit surprised. But he wouldn’t be outdone in the badness stakes. He looked for a fag off of the lad smoking and came back with it lit and started to jab it in Johnsey’s face, making him hop the side of his head off the window of the bus every time he flinched. Yerra call a howlt, said Paddy Screwballs, and laughed and coughed. Johnsey could feel the heat of the top of the fag near his skin. He thought of Mother and Daddy asking how he got burned, who did it, and Daddy roaring off in the jeep to Eugene Penrose’s house and tackling Eugene Penrose’s father over it and there being a big fight and Eugene Penrose calling him tell-tale-baby-fucker all day Monday and probably kicking the shite out of him.

Instead of making a hole in Johnsey’s face, though, he made a hole in the new jumper. Right in the front, and the place where he touched the fag to the material actually went a bit on fire for a second and that got a great laugh altogether; there were screeches and whoops of delight and when Johnsey jumped up and was beating himself to put out the little flame his fiver escaped from the pocket of his new corduroy trousers and flew away on him and Eugene Penrose grabbed a hold of it and claimed the money as his own. Someone said Ah give it back to hell, but Eugene Penrose said What are you going to do about it? And that was that.

Johnsey imagined Mother in the shop buying him the new jumper, and probably asking the fella working there was it a cool jumper now and was it the type all the young lads wore, and his heart broke to think of her thinking so much of him and how happy she’d been over him heading off, all kitted out, like a normal fella.

When they finally arrived at the parish hall where the disco was being held, Johnsey slipped away from the queue. One of the other harmless lads asked where was he going. He didn’t answer. He headed for the darkness at the back of the hall where there was a copse of thick-branched trees. He stayed there all night until the disco ended and he heard Paddy Screwballs grinding up the hill. He’d had to retreat further back into the shadows a couple of times because lads came out holding hands with girls and they were kissing each other in among the trees and Johnsey tried to hold his breath and be part of the darkness, because he could imagine if they saw him how the girl would scream and the fella would call him a pervert probably and give him a box.

He heard Bon Jovi singing ‘Living on a Prayer’, his favourite rock song, and everyone singing along with it, and the DJ was turning off the music at the chorus and it was just the boys and girls at the disco singing and they were nearly louder than the music had been. Then he heard the national anthem and after that they all spilled out and onto the bus. He never had to talk to any girls that night, nor never got to drink a Coca-Cola at the bar like a real man. He threw his burned jumper into the dark among the trees. No one looked at him on the way home, they were all roaring up and down the bus about who felt whose arse and who got a shift and one of the other spastics whispered Where were you all night? and he just told him fuck off.

DWYER HAD GIVEN him a loan of the dirty magazine when they were pally, years ago. Johnsey had kept it for way longer than Dwyer had meant him to. For a finish, Dwyer had started to get a bit thick over it, but not too thick. A lad in Dwyer’s position couldn’t afford to be getting too antsy — his heart was in worse shape than his crooked leg by all accounts. He upped and died before Johnsey ever got to give him back his magazine. His heart just stopped beating one night while he was asleep.

His mother and father had been mad about him. Sure why wouldn’t they have been mad about their little crathur , Mother said to Molly Kinsella the day Dwyer died and a few of the ICA biddies had gathered in Johnsey’s mother’s kitchen to pick at the tragedy like crows picking at a flungaway snack box. Molly Kinsella allowed that she supposed, throwing her old hairy eyebrows and her witchy chin towards heaven, as much as to say a lad like that couldn’t be loved the same as a lad that would be fine and tall and handsome, like Dermot McDermott, and out hurling and having young girls huddled in the bit of a stand mooning over him in little giggling bunches.

Johnsey saw Dermot McDermott kicking his own dog once, above near the Height where the McDermotts’ big farm met Daddy’s little one. Johnsey had been up foddering but he had left the tractor in the near field and walked a forkful up. He’d heard shouting, a girl’s voice calling someone a prick, but by the time Johnsey got a view across to the McDermotts’ top field, Dermot McDermott was alone with their old border collie. A collie was a dog that would love you without fail or compromise. Johnsey saw Dermot McDermott deliver a kick to that lovely old bitch’s flank that nearly toppled her and she limped off, crying. He pictured some young lady, after fighting with Dermot McDermott, and she storming off down past their house in a temper, and his people only laughing at her inside in the house as she ran through the yard and he only shaking his head and going on about his business with his big experimental crops that they do be all congratulating him over in the co-op and all questions and telling him he’s great. Was that the way with all men and women now?