The Thing About December

by Donal Ryan

  THE TICKS AND TOCKS of the old clock were day by day starting to turn back to drips and drops that might for a finish become those Chinese hammer blows bonging through his brain. Was it Monday or Tuesday? What use of names had his days, anyway? You only need put names on days when you have places to go and things to do. I’ll collect you to go hurling training on Tuesday evening so. We’ll go for a few pints on Friday night. Will we go in to the cinema on Sunday? It seemed as though having a break from being lonesome made it ten times worse when you were once again lonesome. Being in the hospital was like the time Daddy was in remission from the cancer. That means it went away for a while. But then it came back and killed him.

  The house felt quare again. It felt even emptier than it had once Mother’s funeral was done and dusted and the last of the biddies had flapped away and the relations felt they had given enough of themselves to warrant at least a couple of indulgences. It was probably the first time in several lifetimes that the house had been completely empty for more than a few days. It was as though the air had congealed, like a bowl of gravy that was left stand undisturbed too long. The Unthanks had tightened up before he arrived, but still there was a staleness about the place. Maybe it had been there before, but he hadn’t noticed. Now his nose was used to that sharp hospital smell and his healing eyes were used to clean whiteness. He longed to be back in the hospital. He didn’t want to go up the stairs. He felt like he was being watched, and the watchers weren’t kindly ancestors but vengeful spirits who had taken occupancy of the empty house and were raging over his return. He slept on the couch with the telly on and the telephone ladies gesturing out at him with their pouty lips and winking eyes. He dreamt of Siobhán and woke with the sound of her in his ears. Outside, the door of the slatted house was still broken and stuck ajar, and the look of the darkness within felt as familiar and safe as a mother’s womb must feel to her little unborn baby.

  A PERSON WALKED across his view one hot, still day and gave him such a fright his heart nearly leapt from his chest and his arse lost its grip on the hard edge of the old couch and he fell sideways onto the floor. Old Paddy Rourke was abroad in the yard! Johnsey had never before felt such happiness at the sight of a visitor. Normally, his heart would sink at the prospect of small talk. Now he wanted it more than anything. People weren’t as inclined to be sympathizing with you over getting bet up as they were over your mother and father dying. Violence embarrassed people. They didn’t know the words to use for it. He nearly ran out through the door to meet him.

  Paddy wasn’t a man for niceties or how’s yourself or any news or talk about the weather or the price of milk or beasts. He was looking about the yard and in through the crack in the door of the slatted house. The cloud of shame that Johnsey now understood a bit better seemed to have been lifted from him. Probably he had no regard for Johnsey, anyway, and so would not be ashamed opposite him.

  He was as clane and tidy a farmer as you’d ever meet, your father was, God rest him. That was as small as Paddy’s talk got. Paddy was stooped and wrinkled and the bit of hair he had left was wispy and white, but you could sense the toughness off of him, it was in his eyes and his voice and the way he clenched and unclenched his fists while he talked. Paddy walked to the wall that ran from the near gable of the slatted house to the front-right edge of the proper house and leaned against it, looking out into the haggard, empty now of all but thistles and briars. He started to speak without turning his eyes from the haggard and the clump of old oak trees beyond it.

  Jackie would turn in his grave, lad, if he thought you were going to give the rest of your days letting yourself be blackguarded. He thought the sun rose from behind you and set before you, you know. He made you soft, mind you; he never let you out from behind him. That was one great disservice he done you. You see, he thought his toughness would be poured directly into you. That’s not the way it always goes, though. God is heavy-handed with that auld jug for some and then goes easy for others. You can’t time him. The finest bull and the fattest heifer often made a wobbly auld meely-mawly of a calf that could hardly stand on its own legs. He had a right to leave you off at times to run and fall and get into scrapes and get the bangs and knocks that hardens young fellas. But he’d let no one look sideways at you. Lookit, there’s no sense in that talk, those wrongs can’t be righted now. I’m old, Johnsey, and too shook to be going after lads. I’d only make a show of myself, and end up tied to a bed beyond in the county home. They’d take me for an old madman with that old timers’ disease, you know, where fellas and wans go pure soft and have to be fed their dinner and it all mashed up like a baby’s pandy and they don’t know their arses from their elbows any more. But you have rakes of time left. Years and years where you can be a man and live happy or you can die a thousand deaths.

  Now, every little sneaky prick in the country is watching to see what’ll you do about the land. Well, Johnsey, while they’re all fixated on the land, and counting money they haven’t yet got and might never get, you have a right to take down your father’s gun, load both barrels with duck-shot cartridges and bowl down to that pump for yourself and riddle them fuckers that gave you that hiding. Bang, bang. That’s the only language they know, boy. Duck shot won’t kill nobody, you know. Twill blister the fuckers, though. Twill sting like holy hell. I’ll give you it. They’ll think the divil himself rose up and whipped the legs off of them. They won’t forget it in a hurry, that lesson. Aim low, son, and central. There’s woeful spread in duck shot. Two cartridges will pepper the four bollixes. The guards told you there wasn’t one thing they could do to them fellas after the hiding they gave you and you nearly dead after it. Well, they can tell the same thing to those boys while the grand nurses beyond inside in the hospital is plugging their holes: Jaysus, sorry for your trouble, lads, but we has no evidence. Not a screed, boys, terrible sorry. Otherwise you’ll be forever more regretting you left them away scot-free. Regrets like that never leave you, son. Regrets like that are like cancer, the very same as your father got. They eat you from the inside out.

  JOHNSEY HAD nearly forgotten about the guards. It was hard keeping things in line inside your head. The same two as had originally visited full of auld shapes had called back to him again in the hospital the morning after the day of Siobhán’s special visit to let him know that that fella with the three initials you’d often hear talked about on the news – the Dee Pee-Pee – had sent them back their auld file because it was no good, there was a lack of evidence and therefore Eugene Penrose and the townie lad and the other two goonballs would be left away with their crime. The news hadn’t bothered Johnsey as much as it had Mumbly Dave, who gave the rest of that day giving out stink about the great injustice that had been perpetrated and the Dee Pee-Pee may as well have kicked you in the head himself and what he’d like to do to lads who went four-on-one and they were only scum and them fuckin guards were no use anyway and Johnsey had had to nearly pretend to be more cross about it than he actually was because without the hiding there’d have never been a Lovely Voice or a Mumbly Dave.

  He couldn’t be saying that to Paddy Rourke, though. He was rightly up in arms. There were two little clouds of white froth at either side of his mouth and when he looked straight at Johnsey his eyes were shining like something was burning behind them. The best thing about Paddy was you hadn’t to say much to him, ever. He would pour out his few words, there’d be no milk or sugar added, only a big cup of scalding truth and you could drink it or refuse it, it was all the one to Paddy. Johnsey got the impression that Paddy would sooner he just kept completely silent and reached into the attic for the under-and-over and went down to the pump a-shooting, like Clint Eastwood at the end of Unforgiven.

  Imagine if he did! There’d surely be no more secret favours from lovely nurses then, that was for certain. Only big old criminals covered in scars and tattoos to share a little cell with above in Mountjoy and doubtless they’d go at him like those fellas went at your man Andy Doo-frane in The Shawshank Redemption
. If it was certain that he was going to fall into the darkness in the slatted house for good, then he could for sure try and put a few holes in them boys, if only for Paddy’s sake. It must be easier shoot a man than hit him; you could do it from a distance. Doubtless it would warrant a few more years in Purgatory, but how bad could that be? As far as he knew all you had to do was float about the place feeling sorry for your sins and for throwing the life God gave you back in His face and saying Acts of Contrition and wait to be admitted to paradise. And wasn’t it full of little baby angels who had not survived on this earth long enough to be christened? Or was that Limbo? Or were they the same place? Or hadn’t the pope released all them little innocent souls into paradise lately? Something like that had happened, he was sure. How’s ever, he’d surely never be consigned to hell over a few holes in them bowsies.

  Paddy still looked vexed. It looked as though he was going to wait for Johnsey to say something after all. But he didn’t. He turned away from the wall and made shapes as if to leave, then he stopped and turned and started talking again.

  One other thing, boy, and listen to me now. Once that auld lease is up, don’t give it to them again in the name of Jaysus. Them McDermotts is fuckin snakes. They’ll take thirteen leases, they’ve already had four, and they know you’ll have notten wrote down about leases nor rent because they knows well you’re the same as your father that way – and next thing they’ll grab all inside in the courthouse by making out you’re soft in the head and they had the use of the land for twelve year under no agreement nor never paid no rent, and the law abhors wasted land and twill be given them because of adverse possession you see. That’s a fancy name they put on squatters’ fuckin rights! Tinkers does it wholesale, Johnsey. And you can be sure them McDermotts will do it too. Clear them now and farm your own land or sell it or sell some of it but in the name of Jaysus don’t leave it to them rats beyond. How it is them Unthanks haven’t all this said to you is beyond me. Poor Sarah hadn’t her right mind after Jackie died; I don’t blame her for leaving things go to pot.

  He turned away again and swatted the air once with his hand as he walked as much as to say to hell with this, you’re only a gom, I’m wasting precious time trying to talk sense to you. With a hawk and a spit he was through the gap and gone. Johnsey felt like running after him and grabbing his arm and imploring him to stay a while, to at least drink a mug of tea and maybe tell more about the plans for shooting yahoos and clearing McDermotts and maybe he’d explain the secret of filling lonesome days for years on end and Johnsey could in return reveal his secret about Siobhán and surely Paddy Rourke would think more highly of him if he knew he’d had relations with a beautiful nurse and he might take back some of what he said about Johnsey being like a meely-mawly of a calf. But he knew further talk would only make him feel more foolish. Better to accept that men like Paddy started conversations, had them and ended them with no need of input from the likes of Johnsey Cunliffe, the disgraceful end to a long line of great men. Men like Paddy said their piece and shagged off and wouldn’t countenance backchat.

  Johnsey longed for Siobhán and Mumbly Dave. He wondered if he fell and split himself open would he land back inside in his grand semi-private room and would she be there to receive him and would Mumbly Dave still be inside, bullshitting out of him and smiling and laughing non-stop and slagging the nurses and being forward and annoying and forcing people against their will to like him? More likely he’d be consigned to the mental ward if he kept up this auld cribbing and moping about the place.

  The morning sun was fairly beaming down and all the trees were heavy with green and there was a haze of flies and bugs and butterflies about the land and all he could do was think about how some lives are full to bursting with people and work and sport and children and fun and his own was all empty spaces where those things ought rightly to be, were he the kind of a man that could close his fist around opportunity and keep a tight howlt of it rather than shrinking from it and hiding inside in his parents’ house nearly too scared to even peep out for fear of failure and ridicule. Why couldn’t he have been born with a full quota of manliness?

  HE WAITED until Paddy’s words settled softly on the cracked ground and the air was again still. There was a coldness around the door of the slatted house, despite the sun’s best efforts. The door let out a sigh as he pushed it inwards, as if giving out about his return. He stood in the opening with the sun warming his back and the darkness inside cold on his face. He remembered how he had tried to work out how best to fasten a rope to the crossbeam, how to get himself up to the required height, how to fashion a noose properly, whether it would be best to jump outwards a little off the edge of the enclosure or just drop his whole weight straight down. He remembered thinking first about Mother and then about the Unthanks and even about the aunties and the biddies and how it would upset them in different ways; some would be truly sad and more would be embarrassed, and once or twice he pictured Eugene Penrose and the yahoos and how they’d be smirking about the village as he was waked and letting on to be reverent and full of sorrow as they sniggered with their heads bowed and they crossing themselves as his little cortège passed on its way to the Height and no one who walked behind the hearse would realize he was being mocked even as he was being carried to his place of rest, in between Mother and Daddy in the warm earth.

  He backed out into the sun, away from the sharp, cold stink. He resolved there and then that there would be no further considerations of mortal sin in the slatted house. He decided to go upstairs and look in the famous box of papers in Daddy’s office. That’d give things to think about besides them old black notions surfacing and whether or not he’d ever clap eyes on Siobhán again let alone feel her lovely soft fingers gripping him and whether he really wanted to go to a pub with Mumbly Dave, it would surely only lead to more embarrassment and situations he would be unable to fit himself into and it was all the one anyway, that fella had no notion of calling up for him no more than the man in the moon.

  Dermot McDermott was doing the second cut of silage abroad. Johnsey could hear the big John Deere beyond, roaring over and back across the river field, Daddy’s favourite field of all. He wouldn’t have cut silage in it and upset the lives of the creatures of the riverbank; he always had the few dull acres down towards the village set aside for silage. No sign of that shagger back looking to buy the land; he knew he was caught out in a lie about milk quotas and what have you. The McDermotts knew all about this rezoning business long before Johnsey and had planned to pull an awful stroke. Let them, to hell. Money is their god, Daddy would have said, and they may as well enjoy it now. It’s easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. That was one of Daddy’s excuses for his lack of cuteness. Them McDermotts would manage it, though. They’d stand above at the Pearly Gates and bamboozle Saint Peter with their wounded faces and assertions of righteousness, the same way they do be cocked up above in Mass directly in Father Cotter’s view, looking like the church was built around them. He headed for the front door and the famous box of papers with the whooping cough of the John Deere being rammed into gear in pure crossness grinding against his eardrums.

  THAT BOX HAD nothing in it only confusion. Bits of letters and yokes from banks and insurance companies with big words and lists of figures and two Credit Union books, one with his name in it and one with Mother’s and Daddy’s names together. God only knows how a fella would go about converting these things into cash-money. He had a card and four numbers Mother had made him remember and he was able to use that at the hole-in-the-wall below in the village to take out money that Packie Collins had put into his account every week, but he had rarely bothered before Mother died and now he only used about thirty or forty quid a week for the few bits to have in the house, like milk and ham and biscuits and them frozen yokes that was easy do in the microwave.

  Now that he had given himself the road out of his bit of a job, Packie’s money would soon
er or later run out. He’d have to make proper shapes at them auld bits of paper then. There was a button you could press that said balance enquiry on the hole-in-the-wall. He’d have to see about pressing it one of the days. Feck it to hell, this auld box was too much trouble. He had a right to listen months ago when these things were being explained besides sitting there like a gom and wondering how long would it be before he could stop nodding and saying Oh right, grand.

  He walked down as far as his own room for a look out of the window at the yard. It was hard not to look out and harder again not to expect to see Daddy swinging in on his bicycle or Mother chugging through the gate in the Fiesta, barely clearing the piers. One of them teachers inside in the Tech had explained one time what seeing really was. He’d thought about it a lot when he was blind. When you look at a thing, the light of the sun bounces off of that thing and into your eye and a message is sent from your retina on along up the optic nerve to your brain, which then tells you what it is you’re seeing by forming a picture for you. So you don’t really see a thing as it is, only your brain’s version of what it is. Johnsey learnt all that stuff off by heart and wrote it out in an exam one time and still only got a D. D for dunce. He’d memorized the seeing stuff so well he’d left no room for the other bits. What about it, it was all the one now. His detached retina was attached again and it was working away the solid finest and it was now sending light up along that old optic nerve to his bit of a brain which was showing him a picture of a person in rolled-up shirt sleeves and important-looking trousers and a fine, shiny, bald spot coming in along the yard. It was that man of the Grogans who owned the shop and the undertakers and what have you below in the village that used to grig Mother something awful. Oh Lord, what now?