Donal Ryan: The Thing About December

MOTHER ALWAYS SAID January is a lovely month. Everything starts over again in the New Year. The visitors are all finished with and you won’t see sight nor hear sound of them until next Christmas with the help of God. Before you know it you’ll see a stretch in the evenings. The calving starts in January and as each new life wobbles into the slatted house your wealth grows a little bit. It’d want to — you have to try and claw back what was squandered in December on rubbish that no one really wanted. The bit of frost kills any lingering badness. That’s the thing about January: it makes the world fresh. That’s what Mother used to say anyway, back when she used to have a lot more to say for herself.

EUGENE PENROSE and his pals were sitting on the low wall in front of the IRA memorial again. Isn’t it a fright to God to say a man can’t walk home without being tormented by yahoos every single day? A few times lately Eugene had clipped Johnsey’s heel as he walked past them and he had stumbled and nearly fallen. How could they be always there anyway? The dole is great, Mother says. It allows thugs to live like little lords. How’s it he couldn’t be a proper man, besides creeping along like a red-faced child, afraid of his own shadow, with tears of shame stinging at his eyes? Daddy wouldn’t have put up with it, that’s for sure.

People used to be afraid of Johnsey’s father. He’d give ground to no man. He loved a good row at the mart or at a match or above in the yard about the worth of a player or the price of a beast or anything you could imagine men might argue about. But he was as well known for his kindness as for his fury. His kindness was never taken for weakness, though: Daddy was a tough yoke. He’d shouldered many a big forward into the middle of next week in his days playing hurling; Johnsey had often heard that said or something like it. Once he had worn a hurley off of a lad in pure-solid temper and the same lad was never again right after it. Johnsey had only heard that said once, and when the man saying it saw that he was listening, he stopped talking and looked into his glass of whiskey and turned red.

IF HE THOUGHT about something else while he walked the hundred-odd steps from the start of the low wall to the far end of the churchyard he could nearly cod himself that they weren’t there at all, watching him coming, looking forward to making little of him. Like the deep pool in the stream down past the weeping willow at the far end of the river field as you start towards the Shannon Callows where he and Daddy used to swim. Sometimes Johnsey wondered what would it be like to lie down under that water and, when all the breath in his lungs was gone, just stay down there and breathe in water instead of air. Maybe a miracle would happen like the ones that happened below in Cork years ago where the statue of the Virgin Mary came alive and said hello to everyone and cried blood over the state of the world. Mother said it was the state of the hairy mollies gawking up at her that made her cry. Wouldn’t you cry too if you had that shower roaring the holy rosary up at you night and day? Maybe, instead of drowning, he’d discover he had superhuman powers, that he was able to live under the water and could control the streams and the rivers and the sea and all that lived there, and he could live there himself and be a king, with a deadly-sharp three-pronged fork, and loads of beautiful mermaids swimming around with no bras on and making him his dinner and kissing him.

Maybe when he gets home Mother will have a tart made for after the dinner, and she’ll be just taking it out of the oven when he arrives. He’ll eat a huge cut of it and she’ll stand behind him with a mug of tea (just a tiny drop of milk, otherwise it’s ruined, Mother says) and tell him how them apples were still growing outside not even an hour ago. He’ll tell her it was a lovely dinner and she’ll say Was it, pet, I hope it was, you need a good dinner after your hard day. These days, though, nearly always, she would have his dinner left in the oven and it would be blistering hot or freezing cold; she sometimes left the oven on too high or forgot to leave it on at all, and she herself would be above at the Height where Daddy was buried, saying prayers and cursing at the weeds. All the prayers she was saying for him, he must be getting no respite above in heaven. Father Cotter said at his Mass that there would be a fine house ready for him above and he’d probably start a fight with the angels over the design of it and want it knocked and built again to his own specifications. The neighbours all laughed at that. Some of them even looked at each other and smiled knowingly; sure he was a divil for exactness, you couldn’t do a job right for him.

Mother wasn’t home. There was a shepherd’s pie in the oven, at a proper temperature, covered in tinfoil, and cutlery on the table. He ate it fast, and gulped a glass of milk. There was that thing on telly at seven about holidays, and that blonde lady would be on it. Sometimes if it was quiet enough, if Mother was out and there was no cat scratching and meowing at the window, he could imagine she was talking to him, she was his girlfriend, over in some hot place with palm trees and he was going to be going over to join her once he’d finished building their big mansion of a house. They were talking on a special phone with a big video screen. She was describing it to him, the place where they would spend their holidays. You couldn’t watch her properly when you were eating your dinner, you had to keep looking down at your plate, and then you’d miss whole seconds of her standing there with her shiny blonde hair, in her clothes that only barely covered what needed covering and, sometimes, clear blue water lapping up around her bum in lucky little waves.

Just as it finished, thank God, Mother arrived in. She wanted to know was it busy below, what kind of form was Packie in, any word of the Scottish lady? Packie’s eldest daughter was supposed to have eloped to Scotland with a foreign fella. She was now referred to as the Scottish lady. Like a man who went to work in America for a year or two would forever more be known as the Yank. Packie’s daughter used to hang around the co-op some Saturdays, letting on to be helping. All Johnsey ever saw her at was inspecting her fingernails and chewing gum and pressing buttons on her mobile phone. She never really looked at him or talked to him, except once she offered him a Rolo and he said okay (why did you say okay, you spa?) and she held the packet out to him and the blasted Rolo got stuck in the packet and his hand shook like crazy and the Rolo was nearly melted before he got it out and now he could feel his cheeks burning hot again just thinking about it.

Packie had had no time for foreigners before the big elopement, but now he had a special hatred for them. You could nearly feel a heat off of it as it burned inside in him. You’d see them now sometimes, brown-faced people, or even proper blacks, driving through the village, on their way to town to cheat the system, according to Packie, sure tis a great country. If they were outside the co-op at the time, bringing in a delivery or something, Packie would nudge him and point with a tip of his forehead. There’d be a wicked shine from his eyes and it was then you could nearly feel that heat, like Packie’s soul was already burning in eternal fire for the sins he was committing in his mind. The foreigners might look back, but you could see nothing in their eyes to give away what they were thinking. They’re probably Hoo-Toos , Johnsey, Packie would say. He’d spit the words out like you would something you coughed up from your lungs. Probably they killed a rake of Tootsies and they’re over here now, hiding. Johnsey would laugh and agree away with him, and a picture of the dole boys laughing at Eugene Penrose’s stupid jokes would form in his mind and he’d feel sad and ashamed of himself. What in the name of God were a Tootsie and a Hoo-Too, anyway?