Donal Ryan: The Thing About December

THERE WAS an old girl who worked in the bakery who was a bit daft — Mother called her Mary with the Cod Eye — she never looked in your face when she was talking and her voice was squeaky and small and reminded Johnsey of a cartoon mouse. Now she didn’t have all her faculties, Johnsey was certain. He didn’t think the Unthanks would roar at her about the minimum wage, though, and how she could sing for it.

Johnsey was sitting at the Unthanks’ kitchen table and Mary with the Cod Eye brought him in his roll and his tea. There was a beaded curtain between the kitchen and the counter area and an opening in the long counter directly across from the curtain. Johnsey could see out to where the tables were. People couldn’t really see back in, because it was darker in the Unthanks’ kitchen than it was outside in the shop.

Old Paddy Rourke was sitting at a small table on his own. Every time he lifted his teacup to his lips, it shook and clacked against the saucer as he put it back down. It looked like a toy teacup and saucer from a doll’s house in Paddy Rourke’s big hand. Johnsey wondered why he didn’t ask Mary with the Cod Eye for a mug altogether, like some of the louder men did. She should have had the cop on not to make him ask, anyway.

Paddy Rourke was attacked once, at home in his own yard. A van pulled up and three fellas got out and ran in around his yard and house and started to load machinery into their van, a cement mixer and a chainsaw and a few other bits. They must have known Paddy had no phone, Daddy said. When Paddy came out and let a roar out of him, one of them hit him in the face with a shovel and they must have all had a go at kicking him. He was inside in the hospital for nearly two months. Daddy said Paddy’s big mistake was coming out to them without his gun. He should have gave them both barrels, Daddy said. He should have come out shooting and let the law be damned. Towards the end of the summer where he faded away and died, Daddy said to Johnsey to always look out before going out to a visitor and never to go out to the yard to a tinker without his shotgun, loaded and locked. Johnsey didn’t know would he be able to point a gun at a man, though. What if it went off and blew your man’s head off by mistake? And then it turned out he was only selling frozen meat or something?

Paddy looked smaller ever since he had gotten that beating off the tinkers. He always looked kind of embarrassed now too, as if he thought it was a failing, a shameful thing, almost, to have been beaten like that. Until the cancer and the tinkers came, Daddy and Paddy Rourke were big, tough men. They wouldn’t have allowed themselves to be tormented daily by the likes of Eugene Penrose. It took three big buck tinkers to fell Paddy Rourke, and he was now standing again, and three kinds of cancer to do for Daddy: he got it in his stomach, lungs and brain. Three kinds imagine!

And he nearly bested them too.

EUGENE PENROSE’S campaign started in primary school, and then went on through secondary school, even though Johnsey went to the Tech for the last two years and Eugene Penrose to the Christian Brothers, as the Tech gave Eugene Penrose the road for constantly acting the little prick. They still had to get the same bus home from town. Then when they were all finished with school Johnsey’s trials were temporarily ended by Eugene Penrose’s disappearance. He went to England to work for his uncle as a plasterer. There was talk of him having to go on account of trouble inside in town one night where a girl got interfered with. But he arrived home after a few years (not even his own uncle could stand the rotten little bastard, Mother said) and Johnsey’s heart broke to see him bowling down the middle of the village with his big red head and his vicious smile.

He got a job in the meat factory over in Kill, but that place ground to a halt two years ago and ever since he seemed to spend his days hanging around the IRA memorial in the village with a small crew of gougers, spitting and shouting and making Johnsey run a daily gauntlet as he passed. Eugene Penrose seemed to hate Johnsey even more now that he had a job and Eugene Penrose hadn’t. Johnsey wondered how big a sin it was to want someone to be dead, and worse, to actually want to be the one to kill them? He imagined himself getting an arm around Eugene Penrose’s throat and squeezing him in a headlock until his mouth was shut forever.

The worst thing was, they had all been great old pals as small boys, starting off. In Junior Infants and Senior Infants and First and Second Class it had been Johnsey, Dwyer, Eugene Penrose, Seanie Mac, Murty Donnell, Billy Hassett, Cookie Ryan, Joe Counihan, Conor Quinn and a few more. Then divisions started when blow-ins arrived from town and the boys started to listen to what was being said at home and to look at each other differently. So the sons of bigshots started to pal around just with each other, and the sons of labourers and the blow-ins from town formed their own, separate groups. Dwyer was the most gammy and so occupied a group of his own. Johnsey felt sorry for Dwyer but not sorry enough to be his champion. He had enough troubles of his own being the biggest and clumsiest and mumbliest.

MOST LADS their age had women now. Johnsey would see them around the place, driving cars with girls in them, walking through the village holding hands, all going to the pub together after matches in big happy groups — some lads were even married . One fella who had been a year behind Johnsey in school had a big huge house built abroad in Roskeeda, but his father was a bigshot who bought and sold huge tracts of land like another man would buy and sell cattle or sheep.

They were all the one with the piseogs , that crowd, Mother said. Sure, they came from nothing. It’s no bother to have it all on this earth when you give yourself over to the devil. Johnsey wondered did Mother really believe that, or was it just the way she had a bee in her bonnet always about the bigshots . But Johnsey had heard stories of distant relations who had broken eggs left in haycocks and their store of hay would rot, and turned milk thrown around milking parlours and cows would only issue sourness, and stillborn lambs left against back doors and whole herds would fall to disease and have to be destroyed. One old relation beyond in Holyford had to go to the Land Commission years ago it got so bad, to be given an idle farm miles from his home. He had to leave his birthright to the neighbours who were in league with the devil and had forced him out with their dark tricks.

As bad as it would be to have dealings with the devil, how much could it jeopardize his immortal soul to just know if there was a way of making Eugene Penrose leave him alone for once? He had even been at Daddy’s funeral. He shook Johnsey’s hand at the removal and his hand was limp and sweaty. He just smirked at Johnsey and said nothing. His father followed behind, red-faced with small, darting eyes. Daddy used to give that man work, years ago. But Daddy would never have a man feeling beholden. Fair was fair. The likes of the Patsy Penroses of this world, though, you could give them your last penny and they’d come back for your purse. And while they were drinking the wages you gave them, they’d be cursing you to your neighbours.

DADDY HAD BEEN riddled by all accounts. Johnsey had heard one of the ICA biddies saying it in the front room. When he went in with the stomach pains last winter, they opened him up, took one look and closed him again. Sent him straight home. Nothing they could do. He was riddled, the auld crathur. He. Was. RIDDLED.

You could be riddled with bullets if you were in a Western. An old chair could be riddled with woodworm. And you could be riddled with cancer. If you were riddled, you could put your head between your legs and kiss your arse goodbye. Johnsey imagined Daddy’s insides, black and full of holes. He had smelt Daddy’s breath towards the end — it was like rot. Daddy was like a chestnut someone had opened. A conker that was peeled, it looked fine and hard for a while but then got hollow and dried out and shrivelled up and dead-looking.