The Thing About December

by Donal Ryan

  Daddy always said that that man did what he did out of avarice, and Johnsey believed that then, because when Daddy said a thing it was invariably true. But now, Johnsey was not so sure. Maybe he did it to have somewhere warm to sit of an evening, with someone familiar to look at and be silent beside in comfort. Maybe he knew that was worth more than a farm of land or a big pile of second-hand money, covered in the dirty prints of other men’s hands.

  April

  DADDY WOULD LEAVE the cattle out of the slatted house at the start of April. They’d think they were going to be milked and they’d queue up like fools at the milking-parlour door. Then Mother and Daddy and Johnsey would hunt them up the yard towards the long acre and they’d be looking back with their big scared eyes as much as to say Are ye sure? Are we really allowed out here? Mother would say Look at the auld eejits, go on, ye auld dotes, and the three of them would watch as one brave auld campaigner would mosey off in to the grass and the rest would get courage from her and follow on. Friesians are pure gentle auld crathurs. If they were Limousins, Daddy would say, they’d trample you to get to the field. They’d knock the feckin wall!

  DERMOT McDERMOTT called up to the house at the start of that April. It was a Monday evening. Johnsey brought him in to the kitchen. When you came in through the front porch and into the hall, you could turn left into the kitchen or right into the front room, the good room. There was no way that curly prick was tramping his dirty rotten boots in around Mother’s good room that she fussed over for so many years and was forever tightening up for fear anyone would call. He’d probably sneer to himself at the pinkness and frilliness of the cushions and the lacy yokes Mother put over the backs of the couch and armchairs. And the picture in pride of place on the wall above the fireplace of Daddy and Mother and Johnsey, taken when he was a small boy by a professional photographer inside in town, with his hair all combed back and his good-wear clothes on him. Dermot McDermott would probably have a great time describing it all to his bigshot people. But then, they’d probably all done their fair share of nosing about the place when Mother and Daddy died. They’d surely been in the stream of people that had flowed in and out to offer their condolences and pay their respects. Johnsey couldn’t properly remember; those two sets of days were like dreams you only have a half a hold of when you wake.

  What kind of dealings would he be made part of? Would he have to make a decision or give permission for something or talk about the lease on the land or agree to a right of way or some such adult thing that Daddy or Paddy Rourke or even Mother would be able to sort out with a wave of a hand and a few small words? When they spoke that way the unaccustomed listener could go away thinking nothing much had been said, but in those brief conversations not a word was wasted, each utterance contained a world of meaning. Dermot McDermott had never said a bad word to Johnsey – he had never said many words to Johnsey at all – it was a way that he had of not looking at you, or looking around while he was talking to you, like you were not quite deserving of his attention, so he would examine the countryside all about until you were gone away and had stopped usurping his precious time. At least he wouldn’t be bullshitting about calling up and calling down and doors being always open and other such lies people think are truths while they’re saying them.

  This must be the way those fellas in wars felt before the little prick of an officer blew his old whistle and they had to climb up over the top of the trench and run at the enemy. Here was he feeling that same terrible fear over a conversation. The thought of talking to a fella his own age from over the road was the same as running towards a load of mad Germans who were firing machine guns at you! Imagine that. He’d have been shot as a coward for sure. Maybe running and firing a gun and trying to avoid being blown to bits were easier things than talking, though. It was surely less complicated. If you survived, you probably wouldn’t be lying awake that night thinking did I look like a spastic running through that field of barbed wire? Are all the other soldiers laughing at me?

  DERMOT McDERMOTT wanted to know could he buy out the land.

  Johnsey was caught on the hop rightly. All he could do was stand there with his mouth hanging open, staring at Dermot McDermott like an unadulterated gom, while the words hopped around his brain like them balls in the Lotto. Dermot McDermott told how their milk quota was going to be doubled shortly and they wanted to be sure of the land, like. How’s it he couldn’t just tell him to go on away and have a shite for himself, there was no one going buying out his father’s land? For a finish he told Dermot McDermott that he didn’t know, he’d have to ask. He’d have to ask! Imagine saying that. Who would you have to ask? Dermot McDermott’s eyes darted left and right and his bushy eyebrows furrowed together, as if searching for this phantom that needed to be consulted about the land. Maybe the ghost of Mother or Daddy would appear from the fireplace and say Go on out in the yard now, son, we’ll take care of this little bit of business. They would probably be better at this dead than he was alive.

  WHY COULDN’T CANCER have minded its own business about Daddy? Why couldn’t Mother have toughed it out without him another while? Wasn’t it a solid fright to say that a chap could be left high and dry, with neither dinner nor bed made for him, and having to have dealings with sneaky neighbours over land and what have you? It was a fright to God and that’s for sure. Every word he had said he could hear back, clear as day, echoing around his thick skull, making him want to just turn off the lights and cover his head and never set foot in sunlight again. I’ll have to ask. Oh. Mother. Of. God.

  Having a conversation like that, out of the blue, when a chap wouldn’t be prepared, could take it out of you. You had to let the thoughts about it just come and go by themselves. There was no point forcing yourself to think things or not to think things. You could do yourself damage trying to work things out too quick. There was no way he could sell the land. It wasn’t his, anyway. Uncle Michael who fell and was killed beyond in London, Granddad, Daddy, the IRA great-uncles – they were all still knocking about the place, Johnsey knew, keeping an eye. He was the end of their line, imagine. They must be browned off over that. Selling the land would be the last straw. You could be so much of a letdown and get left away with it by virtue of being a gom and not having full use of all of your faculties. To sell their land and give the rest of his born days sitting on his hole looking at the television, landless as well as friendless, that would beat all for badness.

  JOHNSEY LOOKED AROUND the kitchen. It wasn’t the last word in cleanliness, but he had had it tightened up fairly okay. Dermot McDermott couldn’t be going back to his witchy old mother and telling her it was like a pigsty beyond, sure he wasn’t half capable of managing by himself. Imagine, though, if he was a bad yoke and he sold up to hell. Imagine the stuff he could buy! But there was money in a bank account belonging to Mother that belonged to him now. It was what she was paid by the insurance when Daddy died. There was also a big pile of money in the Credit Union below in the village belonging to him that Mother had put away over years. One of the aunties had told him all about it and how to go about getting it if he needed it, but what would he need it for? All that stuff to do with money and deeds and what have you was safely above in Daddy’s little office and there it could stay until some space in his brain could be freed up for such matters. Anyway, you couldn’t sell what wasn’t yours, and the land would never really be his. He could live on it and walk across it and for years he’d helped farm it, or at least he’d traipsed around behind Daddy and did his best not to balls anything up, but he was not of it the way that Daddy was. If he took money to let the land fall from Cunliffe hands he’d be a traitor and a blackguard.

  Daddy had often talked about money as though it was only a nuisance of a thing that you had to pay heed to only the odd time. Mother berated him over his attitude – it was lacks-a-daisy-kel. You wouldn’t see the McDermotts or the Flynns or the Creamers beyond not minding their money. Or them Grogans below in the village, they grigged Mother no end a
nd they having the grocery and the post office and the drapery and the hardware and the undertakers and the bar and the bed and breakfast and the garage and a farm of land and three or four more farms of land left to them (that people knew about!) and the board of the Bank of Ireland couldn’t so much as fart without Herbert Grogan’s permission, he had so much money stuffed into their accounts and he claiming expenses, imagine, every time he scratched himself because all the goms around the place kept voting him back onto the County Council and do you think for one second that Herbert Grogan would do in a month the work your father would do in a day? He would in his eye! He had cuteness coming out of his ears, though, that was the difference. He’d put legs under hens for you, that chap.

  Why, Mother would demand, would a man who worked so hard have so little store in the bit of money his work made him? Daddy used to lay blocks as well as farming the land. He took what them auld builders gave with no argument. He never thought to up his rates. Was it unmanly to want to be paid properly for the pain in your back or the sweat of your brow? He had tried to show Johnsey how to lay blocks, but he just wasn’t tasty. You had to be quare tasty to excel in that line of work. Your plumb line had to be right, your hand sure with the mortarboard, your eye sharp so that you sat the block just right. Johnsey could hold a block in one hand fine, but he couldn’t lay his mortar at the same time. Or he could lay mortar but not if the other hand had to do something else. For a finish Daddy would grab the board and the block off of him and tell him go on away and tidy up, they were going. If Johnsey looked back, as a rule, he’d be shaking his head.

  Mother often said to him to mind his bit of a job, it would stand to him. You had to have a job to get a job, she said. If you hadn’t really the aptitude for farming or for a professional career, you had to be punctual and conscientious and hard-working. You had to make the most of what you had. What had Johnsey? A big thick head into which travelled only black thoughts of how much he hated being here on this earth alone and a big pair of hands that were good at nothing only lifting bags of fertilizer and spuds and a heart that was cowardly and broken. How could you get past all that and into a place of reason and happiness and ease? Could your mind ever be at peace when you had to be afraid every minute of the next bark from the old dog Packie or the next smart remark or jostle or put-down or kick from Eugene Penrose? How could you call yourself a man when you came from a family of men who would face down the devil himself and you unable to face down a cross old bollix or a little smirking squirt?

  THE NEXT DAY came wild and windy. A breeze that would skin you made short work of the softness that had been in it the last few days as it whipped around the high walls of the front gate, doing its level best to push him back inside. Nobody had told this wind Hey calm down, it’s nearly summer. It battled him the whole way to the village and then, just as he reached the old pump, the heavens opened and an almighty shower of icy rain landed on him. He had the jacket without a hood, of course. And you couldn’t be seen with an umbrel unless you were a woman or very old. If he bowled up the street holding an umbrel it would surely be grabbed off of him and he’d be tormented for being a queer.

  Packie thought it was great sport that he landed in frozen and drowned wet. He laughed and shook his head as much as to say you could expect no more from a fat eejit only to be caught out in the shower and told him go stand in front of the Dimplex. The Dimplex was no great shakes in the drying-off department: the co-op was like a huge damp cave and the Dimplex was old and tired and probably as sick of Packie giving out about it as Johnsey was. Before the warm air had even settled on his sodden legs, Packie got sick of his own charity and Johnsey was sent packing to the yard. He threw a poncho at him at least. Johnsey slipped it over his head and its plasticky skin made him feel colder again.

  Packie wanted space cleared abroad in the yard for a big delivery. It was a full day’s work if not two days’ were you to do a right clean job. Some places had forklifts; Packie’s co-op had a big donkey called Johnsey Cunliffe. The delivery would be arriving at four, so tough – four was the deadline for a cleared yard. There were rakes of pallets to be moved one by one to the side wall; there were bags and bags of feed under a huge canvas to be uncovered and brought inside and space to be made for them; there were racks of shovels and forks and garden implements that Packie had bought long ago in some quare figary he had gotten thinking people would travel out from town to buy gardening tools in a small country co-op. Packie thought he’d be the height of fashion. Even Johnsey could clearly see that Packie Collins would never again be the height of fashion. Maybe he was a big draw one time, when your family having the co-op meant you were a fierce big deal.

  The great delivery came a half an hour late. Lucky thing too, as the clearing was only barely finished when the lorry rumbled up the road and squeaked and puffed to a stop outside the gates of the yard. Packie was like an old biddy at a jumble sale; flapping around and trying to act like he didn’t give a damn what was coming, but you could see the redness creeping up his neck and his eyes bulging out of his cranky old head a bit farther than usual. The lorry was full of timber, two-by-four and four-by-four and what have you in long, clean planks.

  The next day, just before lunch, two huge blue skips were dropped from two lorries that had great swinging arms and chains for the job of picking things up and leaving them back down. These skips were to be filled with the wooden racks that Packie had once stocked with plants and flowers in the days of high fashion and with all the other unused, unwanted, out-of-date and broken things that lived in Packie’s yard. Johnsey half expected to be told to climb in himself, such was the mercilessness of Packie’s purge. Packie even took an axe to the racks himself but his glasses fell off after the first few swings and he cursed and spat and soon rolled the sleeves of his smock coat down and retreated back inside behind his counter.

  The next delivery to come was of concrete blocks. They were deposited in the yard by a ferrety-looking fella who had a forklift that had been stuck to the back of his lorry. He moved quickly and placed pallets of blocks side by side along the back wall with vicious exactness. He made Johnsey nervous. Neither he nor the yard were used to such frantic noise and activity. Packie was rubbing his hands together a lot. Even old Biddy, Packie’s hairy-faced wife, arrived for a look at the big consignment, all lined up now like a rank of giant, grey, alien soldiers. She looked like a cat that had been fed too well. Johnsey could imagine her licking cream off of her whiskers.

  Then came a delivery of bags of cement. The cement had to be placed in dryness for fear that it would start to set. Johnsey could hardly believe the massive, dead weight of the bags. He had pains in his legs and arms after it. His back was okay, though; Packie had insisted on showing him a video one time about how to lift heavy things without blackguarding your spine. You had to put all the weight on your legs and hold the burden in close to your body.

  EUGENE PENROSE and the dole boys were lying in wait at the pump that day. They had set up a new camp, it seemed, closer again to the co-op so that they would not have to wait as long in the evenings for him. It must be thirsty work, tormenting your fellow man: they were all drinking cans of Harp. Johnsey wondered what it would be like to give a whole day drinking cans of Harp. Would it be great craic? It must be great sport being on the dole because Eugene and his pals were always laughing. There was a new lad with them today – he was a townie, Johnsey could see: he had his tracksuit pants tucked into his socks. Those townie boys always did that. You would see gangs of them inside around the market if you travelled in with Daddy, all with their tracksuit legs inside in their socks. Maybe it was so their tracksuit legs wouldn’t get caught in anything when they were running away from the guards.

  Eugene Penrose said Here’s auld Cutehole Cunliffe with his big farm of land worth millions and a grand job as well and the whole fuckin parish on the dole. See this fella, lads? He has millions, boys, and he goes in every day to the co-op to be a fuckin gimp for Packie Collins!
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  The townie boy was harder-looking than the other three. He had one of them sharp, ratty faces that a lot of townie boys had, and there were three blue birds tattooed on his neck. They were flying up towards his ear. His head was skinned. He was looking at Johnsey and smiling madly like a child would look at an animal in the zoo that he’d never seen before. He had to look at his new friends to be sure that they were seeing the same thing; that he was really real, this fat, soft-looking farmer’s son, who had just bowled up the road to provide him with sport.

  Johnsey didn’t think the whole parish was on the dole. Plenty of lads had trades, more had jobs inside in town, and plenty more had fecked off altogether and were professional people above in Dublin and other big places. It was the lads that had run straight from the school gate to the meat-factory door that were all on the dole now. The likes of that place was never going to last, Daddy said. You could only rely on them Arabs for so long to want all that beef, and there were rakes of countries queuing up to sell it to them cheaper.