Donal Ryan - The Thing About December

THERE WAS only three or four lumps of coal in the bucket by the fire, and nare a log. How’s it he never thought to fill the log box to the top and bring in a couple of buckets of coal while he was at it? Daddy always had a plot of turf in the bog out towards Cloughjordan. Your back’d be broke turning and footing and bagging and piling it on the trailer and dragging back all the miles home with your wobbly load and then lugging the bags into the shed and emptying them and stacking the turf up nice, but it saved you burning too much coal when winter came. Coal goes in and gets red-hot real fast and burns itself out in no time. It’s brilliant while it lasts, but it never lasts long. Turf burns gentler and lasts longer. He’d ring your man in Clough in the spring and see about getting a plot again. How hard could it be? Surely be to God he could organize something as simple as that. He’d book the plot and your man would ring when the turf was cut and ready to be turned and he’d give it a few days and he’d foot it and Siobhán could give a hand if she wanted but she probably wouldn’t in fairness, young wans would hardly choose to give summer days to breaking their backs in the bog.

Siobhán kept saying Oh my God , oh my God , oh my God .

Yerra shut your face, he felt like telling her. Just shut your face. If you hadn’t made little of him none of it would have happened. He’d never say that out, though. You’re as well off keep your powder dry when you’re that cross, for fear you’d say things you can’t take back. Anyway, it was he was responsible. Women can’t help rising rows. He was here like a prick looking out of his mouth at Siobhán and grinning at her like a fool while she danced around the kitchen to the radio and drank vodka with Coca-Cola in it and smoked fag after fag and told him he was very closed off , he was very mysterious , he was very deep , not like them dicks inside in town. And he lapping it up like an auld hungry dog getting fed scraps while his only pal drove around the countryside in pure-solid temper and finished up making bits of himself.

Did it take him long to die? Was he panicking and shaking and trying to draw air into his bursted lungs? People always say people in accidents were killed outright, but you knew half the time that was only as comfort for them that’s left behind. How did anyone ever know? Maybe Mumbly Dave sat strapped in to his yahoo car, still with all his senses while his insides bled, thinking about how Johnsey had let Siobhán say all them things and how his pal had turned his face away from him and never even tried to defend him or stop him from leaving.

He’d lain in his bed chancing the odd look over at Siobhán who snored like them auld fellas that used be in Daddy’s ward inside in the hospital. She never even went near his mickey. He’d seen her in her knickers, though, at least, as she hopped into the bed. They were light blue with white frilly bits at the edges. She’d kissed him once on the lips and said You’re lovely , forget about Dave, he’ll be grand, he has a hide like a rhino, and she smelt like fags and liquor and perfume and she turned away and fell asleep and she took all the duvet and most of the mattress and he lay there like a gom with his arse hanging out over the edge of the bed, trying to keep his horn from poking into her. And at some stage while he was doing that, imagine, Mumbly Dave met his lonely death.

NOT LONG AFTER Siobhán had left, Dermot McDermott had come to the door. Johnsey spotted him over the haggard wall from the room above, where he’d been smelling Siobhán off of a pillow and starting to get sorry about leaving her go like that, in a wicked temper with tears in her eyes. He’d told her he’d sooner be on his own and when she went to give him a hug he’d pulled back from her and she said Oh right, be that way, so. I’ll miss him too, you know. You will in your arse, he thought. Or did he say that out loud? It was hard to know. Whichever, she’d fecked off, in a right auld strop for herself.

Johnsey had the Winchester down from the attic before Dermot McDermott made it across the yard and up to the front door. It felt cool to touch and its heaviness was like an anchor. It fit lovely in to his shoulder, like it was made especially for him. He hadn’t picked it up since that February day long ago. When he got as far as the kitchen, Dermot McDermott was looking in the window with his hands cupped around his eyes. There was an envelope or something in one of his hands. Johnsey stayed by the door where he couldn’t be seen. Dermot McDermott walked back along the yard and looked up at the gap between the slatted house and the near shed out to the big yard. Then he started back towards the house. Johnsey drew the sight on him, so that his curly, cute hoor’s head sat bobbing on the bead, getting bigger and bigger as he progressed towards the window.

Johnsey felt the power of death over life, just like your man in that song about the fella that accidentally on purpose killed the lone rider. How a thing as small as a tightening in a muscle in your finger can do a thing so big! He’d never do it, though. But it was no harm to have a weapon close at hand in this day and age. It’s funny how he’d never thought of keeping it close before. Maybe a shock like he’d gotten brings clarity to the mind. If them boys that went at Paddy that time ever rolled into the yard, or if them ratty-faced lads from the newspapers ever came back around the place, or any of the Penroses, he’d lose valuable minutes running upstairs and foostering about with the attic door and putting in the cartridges. Best to keep it downstairs for good.

NOW THERE WAS a quare fella abroad at the gate and every now and again he’d lean in around so Johnsey was able to just about see him and he’d roar into a bullhorn. He sounded like the same lad who’d rang his mobile earlier. How had they his number? When it had rang, he’d thought it was Mumbly Dave. Imagine if it was! Well, youssir, bejaysus it’s grand up here, your father said to tell you stop acting the bollix and put away his gun before you hurt yourself. And your mother says You’re a dirty scut for letting that little strap sleep inside in your bed with you. Your mother says she’s an awful trollop, that lady! Not my words! Don’t worry, youssir, it wasn’t your fault. Once that wan got her claws in I was back to having notten, anyway. Hadn’t we some craic, though, for a while? Don’t worry, boy, no one blames you for notten. All you are is a victim of circumstance.

But it was a lad he didn’t know and he had one of them quare accents and he was talking all friendly but the way his words were coming out put Johnsey in mind of a fella in one of them plays they put on sometimes inside in town in the Scouts’ hall, like the words was all wrote down by someone else and learnt off by heart but the sayer of the words was meant to convince the hearer of them that they were his own, and for a finish he must have gotten sick of getting back nothing only silence and he said I’m going to pass the phone now to someone who’s worried about you and just wants to see that you’re okay. Okay? Okay.

And it was Himself and he sounded slower and quieter than normal and he asked Johnsey how was he and Johnsey felt that old painful hardness in his throat the very same as if there was a stone in there, dry and unmoving, blocking the words from coming out, and Himself was still talking and he was telling Johnsey how it was a fright altogether the way they weren’t being left in to see him on account of there was police here to beat the band and you wouldn’t see a squad from one end of the year to the next besides Jim Gildea in his auld crock of a Renault van and where was this lot when poor Paddy Rourke was getting bate up? And you yourself nearly killed stone dead below in the middle of the village? And now it seemed they was all in the one place together and they all to a man had the same sort of an auld notion that he was up to devilment inside in the house with Jackie’s shotgun and did you ever hear the bate of it? Lord God. And Himself laughed and it was a hoarse and whispery thing and maybe not really a laugh at all.