The Hunter

Ten

Occasionally Lena has mild second thoughts about not having children, mainly when the even predictability of her life starts to chafe at her, but today she’s thanking God for it. Trey isn’t even hers, and she still has Lena’s head melted.

Something is happening in Trey’s world. Lena assumes it was Johnny who hit her and hurt Banjo, but from the way Trey was talking, it wasn’t just a drunk tantrum; it had something to do with Brendan. Lena has gathered the gist of what happened to Brendan, though she’s been careful not to know the details, but she can’t make any of it connect up with Johnny or his Englishman or their gold. She was almost hoping Banjo’s paw would get worse overnight, so she would have the drive to the vet’s and back to take another shot at talking to Trey, but by this morning the swelling had gone down and he could put weight on the paw, although he still felt he deserved extra fuss and food as compensation for the experience. Trey showed up before Lena left for work and took him away, with barely a word beyond a careful thank-you speech that she’d obviously been practicing. Lena had no idea what to do about her.

This is a skill she’s never learned. She loves her nieces and nephews, she’s played with them and listened to their troubles and given the odd opinion if they asked for one, but any tricky bits of handling they require fall on their mothers, or occasionally their fathers. Probably she could have done more if she had chosen to, but she never did. It never seemed necessary: their parents had things well in hand. Whatever things are going on in Trey’s life, no one has them in hand.

Lena is, at last, unsettled. Trey put the capper on it, but it’s not just Trey. It’s Cal, electric with edginess, anger smoking under his calm; and it’s Rushborough, who stopped her to make small talk about scenery when she was out walking the dogs, and whom she liked even less than she expected to. Waiting and watching aren’t enough any more. She bit her tongue and rang Noreen to make amends for their spat the other day, but Noreen, while her fund of conjecture and rumor is considerably more impressive than Lena’s, had nothing solid either. So, against most of her own instincts, Lena is headed to the one place where she might get a hint as to what the fuck is going on. She’s fairly sure that this is a bad idea, but she hasn’t got a better one.

The heat has thickened. The early-afternoon sun grips the village into immobility; the main street is empty, only the old men sitting slumped on the grotto wall, too hot to move indoors, one of them fanning himself with sluggish flaps of his newspaper.

Mrs. Duggan is in her window, as always, having a smoke and trawling the street for anything of value. Lena catches her eye and nods, and Mrs. Duggan arches an eyebrow at her. When Lena knocks at the door, there’s no movement inside, but after a moment a heavy, slow voice calls, “Well, in you come, so.”

The house smells like Noreen’s cleaning, with a thick undercurrent of something sweaty and sweet. The front room is cluttered with old brown furniture, ruffly porcelain objects, and framed photos of popes from a while back. Mrs. Duggan is settled deep into her armchair, overflowing onto the arms. She’s wearing a purple dress and battered fleece slippers; her hair, dyed a shiny black, is pulled back in a tight bun. She has the air of something geological, like the house was built around her because no one was willing to move her.

“Well, would you look at that, now,” she says, inspecting Lena with amused, hooded eyes. “Lena Dunne paying me a visit. ’Tis strange times around here, all right.”

Mrs. Duggan is one of the reasons Lena never had children. She’s a dense, ripe fermentation of all the things about Ardnakelty that Lena wanted to leave behind. In the end Lena made her own terms with the place, but she was never willing to give a child into its hands.

“I’m after making blackberry jam,” Lena says. “I brought you a jar.”

“I’d eat that,” Mrs. Duggan says. She leans forward, grunting with effort, to take the jam from Lena and examine it. “That’d go nice with a bitta soda bread. I’ll have Noreen make some tonight.” She finds space for the jar on the small table at her elbow, amid tea mugs and ashtrays and playing cards and biscuits and tissues, and gives Lena a glance. “Are you pitying your sister, now, running around making soda bread for an old woman in this heat?”

“Noreen has what she wanted,” Lena says. “I’ve no reason to pity her.”

“Most of us get what we wanted,” Mrs. Duggan agrees. “For better or worse. Sit you down.” She nods to the chair on the other side of the window. “Like you got yourself that American fella up at O’Shea’s place. How’s he turning out?”

“He suits me,” Lena says. “And it looks like I suit him.”

“I knew you’d have him,” Mrs. Duggan says. “The first time I saw him walk past that window, I made a wee bet with myself: Lena Dunne’ll take him. I had a glass of sherry on the strength of it, when I heard I was right. Are you going to keep him?”

“I don’t plan ahead,” Lena says.

Mrs. Duggan gives her a cynical look. “You’re too old to be coming out with that foolishness, trying to sound like some featherheaded young one. O’ course you plan ahead. You’re right not to marry him yet. Let him keep on feeling like you’re a fling a while longer. They like that, at his age. It makes them think the wildness isn’t gone outa them.” She takes a last deep drag off her cigarette and mashes it out. “Out with it, now. What d’you want?”

Lena says, “You’ll have heard about Johnny Reddy and his Englishman looking for gold.”

“Sure, the dogs in the street have heard about that.”

“Was there ever any word of gold here, before this?”

Mrs. Duggan leans back in her chair and laughs, a deep, throbbing wheeze that sets all her folds moving in slow tectonic rolls.

“I was wondering when someone would think to ask me that,” she says. “I’d a wee bet on with myself, who it’d be. I was wrong. No glass of sherry for me tonight.”

Lena doesn’t ask who she was betting on. She’s giving Mrs. Duggan no more satisfaction than she has to. She waits.

“Didja ask Noreen?”

“If Noreen had ever heard anything, I’d know already.”

Mrs. Duggan nods, her nostrils flaring a little with contempt. “That one can’t hold her piss. Why are you bothering asking me, if her ladyship’s got nothing to give you?”

“Things get lost,” Lena says. “There mighta been someone thirty or forty or fifty years ago that knew about the gold, that’s dead now. And Noreen doesn’t get as deep as you did. If anyone knows, it’d be you.”

“It would, all right. You won’t flatter me by telling me what I already know.”

“I wasn’t aiming to flatter you,” Lena says. “I’m telling you why I’m here.”

Mrs. Duggan nods. She takes another cigarette from her packet, fumbling a bit with swollen fingers, and lights it.

“My Dessie’s down at the river now,” she says, “with a loada the other lads. Helping the English fella take out the gold they put in. Is your fella with them?”

“I’d say he is, yeah.”

“Like a buncha wee boys,” Mrs. Duggan says, “grubbing about in the muck, delighted with themselves.” She sits and smokes, her eyes moving over Lena’s face. “Here’s what I’d loveta know,” she says. “Why’d you go kissing Johnny Reddy when you were engaged to Sean Dunne?”

Lena has refused to blink for Mrs. Duggan for a long time. She says, “Johnny was a fine thing, back then. All of us fancied him.”

Mrs. Duggan snorts. “What would you want with a little scutter like that, when you’d a fine fella of your own? Sean was twice the man Johnny is.”

“He was, all right,” Lena says. “But there’s plenty of girls that fancy a last fling before they settle down. Plenty of lads, as well.”

“That’s God’s own truth,” Mrs. Duggan acknowledges, with a private smile. “Plenty. But you were never a slut. You always thought you were too great to follow the rules, but that’s not the way it took you. If you’da wanted a last fling, you’da gone off backpacking round Australia.”

She’s right, and Lena doesn’t like that. “That woulda been better crack, all right,” she says. “But Johnny was quicker and cheaper.”

Mrs. Duggan merely shakes her head again and waits, watching Lena and smoking. She looks amused.

Lena has a flash of the kind of naked powerlessness she hasn’t felt in decades. This woman and this place are both so obdurately, monumentally what they are, down to bedrock, that it feels insane to go trying to outwit them. Their vastness allows her no space to maneuver, or even to breathe. For one sharp instant she remembers this feeling, teetering on mindless panic, and Johnny’s hand sliding up her back.

“If Sean had found out,” she says, “he mighta broke it off. And then I’da gone off to college.”

Mrs. Duggan leans back in her armchair and laughs again. The sound goes on for a long time. “Would you look at that, now,” she says, when she’s taken her full enjoyment from it. “That’s what it was all along: the bold Helena wanted more than the likes of poor aul’ Seaneen Dunne and poor wee Ardnakelty could offer her. And you were hoping I’d do your dirty work for you.”

“Not hoping,” Lena says. “I wanted Sean, or else I’da done my own dirty work. I just felt like rolling the dice, just the once.”

“You thought you were awful smart,” Mrs. Duggan says. “But I won’t be used.”

“I wasn’t thinking of you,” Lena says. “I didn’t even know you’d find out. I was just thinking of anyone that happened to pass by.”

“You knew,” Mrs. Duggan says. “I hear things. But I’ll have my will with them, not yours or anyone’s.”

Lena is done; she’s paid her fee. She says, “You’ll have heard whether there’s gold out there or not, so.”

Mrs. Duggan nods, accepting the transaction. She blows out smoke and watches it curl against the windowpanes.

“In all my days,” she says, “I never once heard a whisper about any gold. People are saying aul’ Mick Feeney knew and kept it to himself, but there’s been times when Mick Feeney woulda given me anything he had in exchange for what he wanted offa me, and he never said a word about that. I’ve known every Feeney around for eighty year now, and if any one of them had a notion of any gold, I’ll ate this ashtray.” She puts out her cigarette, pressing down hard, and watches Lena. “I can’t tell you if there’s gold out there, but I can tell you no one ever thought there was, not till Johnny and his Englishman came in here talking big. What d’you think of that?”

“Anything outa Johnny Reddy’s mouth,” Lena says, “I’d be more surprised if it hadda turned out to be true.”

Mrs. Duggan snorts, acknowledging this. “Now you have it. What are you going to do with it?”

“I haven’t thought of that yet,” Lena says. “Nothing at all, maybe.”

“There’s going to be trouble,” Mrs. Duggan says, with slow, pleasurable anticipation. “I know you tried to tell me you don’t be planning ahead, but if I was you, I’d make an exception this time.”

Lena says, “You never said this to Noreen, or Dessie, no?”

“If they hadda asked me right,” Mrs. Duggan says, “I mighta, maybe. But they never thought to ask me at all. They think your sister’s the one that knows things now. I’m only some aul’ biddy that’s gone past her sell-by date.” She leans back, the chair creaking, her wide mouth stretching in a smile. “So I’m just sitting here at my ease and watching them all run mad. ’Tis nothing to me if Dessie wants to make a fool of himself. I’ll be gone soon enough. While I’m here, I’ll take what I can get.” She nods at the ashtray. “Empty that, on your way out. Don’t be getting it in with the recycling. Your sister does be awful fussy about that.”

Lena takes the ashtray into the kitchen and empties it into the bin. The kitchen is big and bright and ferociously clean, with rows of matching mugs hanging below the cupboards and a fruit-patterned oilcloth on the long table. On one wall is a whiteboard with a column for each of Noreen’s children, to keep track of training times and orthodontist appointments and who needs a new hurling stick. Lena writes “Do something nice for your mam” in each column, while she’s there.

“Well, Sunny Jim,” Mart says, as he and Cal head up the lane towards their homes, taking it at an easy pace to spare Mart’s joints. The sun is only just starting to gentle; it throws their shadows sharp and black onto the road, to leap up and flutter at their elbows along walls and hedges. “I’d say that went well.”

“Everyone seemed pretty happy,” Cal says. This was the part that startled him: the men’s spontaneous explosion of shouts and cheers when Rushborough held up the first glittering traces in the pan; the ring of genuine, wild amazement and delight, like they had all been holding their breath waiting to find out if anything was in there. The gold has taken on a reality outside themselves and their actions. They’re like believers exalted by the holy truth underlying a relic, even though they know the relic itself is a shard of chicken bone.

“I wasn’t banking on that,” Mart explains. “When you’re dealing with the likes of Johnny Reddy, you’d always allow for things going a bit arseways. But I’ll give the lad this much: there’s been none a that. Everything smooth as butter.”

“So far,” Cal says.

“So far,” Mart acknowledges. “I’ll tell you one thing that took me by surprise, but. I wasn’t reckoning on putting my whole day into this.” He tries to arch his back, and grimaces as it cracks. “I thought all you had to do was give the pan an aul’ shake and tip out the muck, and away you go to the next spot. I wasn’t bargaining for all that fussing and foostering. Standing still that length of time is grand for you and the rest of the spring chickens, but it’s a whole other kettle of fish for the likes of me.”

“You should’ve gone home,” Cal says. “Left me and the other spring chickens to it.”

“I coulda,” Mart concedes, “only there’s not enough action around here that I can afford to miss out on any. And besides, anyone that takes his eye off Johnny Reddy deserves whatever he gets.” He cracks his back again and suppresses a wince. “I’ll be grand, sure. Are you coming down to the celebrations? You can’t be skipping those, now. We can’t have Paddy Englishman wondering if something’s wrong.”

“I doubt he’d miss me,” Cal says. “I don’t think that guy likes me much.” Rushborough was civil to him, with the pinch-lipped, flickery-lidded civility that Brits save for people they dislike, and looked at him as little as possible. Cal could see Johnny getting twitchy over it. He likes Johnny twitchy.

“To be honest, I wouldn’t say he’d notice either way,” Mart says. “He’s other things on his mind. Did you see the face on him? Like a child that just saw Santy.”

“Yeah,” Cal says. He thinks of Rushborough thigh-deep in the river, the pan held high as a trophy and his teeth bared in an exultant grin, sunlight splintering all around him and water streaming down his arms. He didn’t look like a kid to Cal. “I’m just gonna get some food and a shower, and I’ll be there. I’ve been sweating like a sinner in church.”

“You’ll have someone to give you a hand with both of those,” Mart says, grinning and pointing at Cal’s front yard with his crook, as they round the bend. “You might not end up any less sweaty after, but.”

Lena’s car is parked in the yard. Without meaning to, Cal quickens his pace. Normally Lena’s old blue Skoda is one of his favorite sights, but these days everything unexpected has the queasy shimmer of bad news about it. “Holy God, you’re in a hurry,” Mart says, grinning more broadly. Cal slows down.

He’s been getting edgier and edgier, the last few days. There are too many little things he doesn’t like. He doesn’t like it, for example, that Johnny came down to the river yesterday to help sow the gold. Cal had it all figured that Johnny was staying well clear of that part of the operation, but Johnny was right there on the riverbank with the rest of them, and Cal isn’t sure why. He doesn’t like his own enforced inaction, either: in normal times he’s happy to direct his fixing instinct towards old chairs, but these aren’t normal times, and the situation calls for a lot more than standing in mud watching some dumbass Brit play treasure hunter. He doesn’t like the way Johnny is cutting Trey away from him, as nimbly as Mart’s dog cutting out a sheep he has use for, and he doesn’t like the fact that he can’t work out what use Johnny might have for the kid. Most of all he doesn’t like Trey keeping things from him, although he knows she’s under no obligation to tell him anything at all.

“I won’t stop in to say hello,” Mart says. “Your missus isn’t mad about me, didja spot that? I never done anything on her that I can think of, but she’s not a fan.”

“There’s no accounting for tastes,” Cal says.

“When we’re all rolling in gold, maybe I’ll buy her a great big hamper of treats for them dogs of hers, and see if she changes her tune. Meanwhile, I’ll leave ye to it.”

“See you at Seán’s,” Cal says. Another thing he doesn’t like is the sense of alliance with Mart that’s somehow been thrust on him. He had the boundary between the two of them carefully and clearly mapped out, and it held firm for two years, although Mart sometimes poked at it just out of devilment. Now it’s lost its solidity. Johnny himself may be nothing but a yappy little shitbird, but he’s somehow brought with him enough force to pull the whole townland off true.

“Don’t be rushing,” Mart says. “I’ll tell the lads you’ve a good excuse for being late.” He lifts his stick in farewell and trudges off, the heat from the road making his legs waver like he’s about to dissolve into thin air. Cal heads round to the back of his house, over the withering lawn.

Lena is in her rocker on the back porch, where Cal knew she would be. She has a key to his house, but walking in when he’s not there is a border line she hasn’t yet been willing to cross. Sometimes Cal wishes she would. He likes the idea of coming home to find her curled on his sofa, absorbed in a book, with a mug of tea in her hand.

Lena came as a complete surprise to Cal. When his wife left him, he planned on being done with women for good. He had been with Donna since he was twenty; she was the only woman he had ever wanted, and the last thing he intended was to ever start wanting another one. He was planning on being one of those guys who are happy to have a good-natured flirtation in the bar, maybe a one-night stand every now and then, but nothing more. He knows from Lena that she felt a little differently, maybe because her husband died rather than walking out on her. It wasn’t that she was set against ever taking another man; it was just unimaginable. And yet, somehow, here they are, wherever here is. The fact of them still startles Cal sometimes. He feels like he has no right to it, after how adamantly he ruled out anything of the kind.

“Hey,” he says. “Everything OK?”

“Grand,” Lena says, which lets Cal take a breath. “I let Rip out, before he et the door off the hinges; he’s down the back field, with mine. And I’d murder a glass of that tea, if you’ve any in the fridge.”

This summer has finally converted Lena to Cal’s sweet tea, which previously both she and Trey viewed with extreme suspicion. Cal fixes each of them a tall glass, with ice and a wedge of lemon, and picks sprigs of mint from the pot on the porch.

“I heard this was the big day,” Lena says, raising her glass to thank him. “All of ye down at the river, getting the gold back out from where ye put it yesterday. The circle of life.”

“Does the whole place know?” Cal asks, dropping into his chair.

“Noreen had it from Dessie, and myself and herself are speaking again, so I had it from her. I wouldn’t say she’s told the world, but; she only said it to me because she reckoned I’d already have heard it from you. How’d it go?”

“Went according to plan, I guess. That Rushborough guy, he had all kinds of equipment—a pan and a screen thing to go over it, and a magnet and a thing that puffed air and I don’t know what-all. He talked the whole time. Placer gold, re-stratifying, alluvial channels. I felt like there was gonna be a pop quiz at the end.”

Cal sinks half his glass and wishes he had put bourbon in it. Mart is right, it was a longer day than he’d bargained for. The sun struck off the water at bewildering angles, so that he had to keep squinting and turning, trying to make sense of it. He suddenly feels a little bit heat-sick, or sun-sick, or something-sick.

“The whole time,” he says, “I was thinking: maybe we did something wrong. Like we put the gold at the wrong depth, or in the wrong part of the river, or whatever. And Rushborough would catch it and back out; shut down the whole thing and take off back to London. If he went, Johnny’d go too, before the guys give him a beat-down for making them waste their money.” He presses the cold glass to his temple and feels the blood throb against it. “I guess Mart must know his stuff too, though, ’cause Rushborough acted like everything was perfect. Gabbing away about how proud his grandma would be. Happy as a pig in shit.”

Lena says nothing. She’s turning her glass in her hands, watching the ice cubes swirl. Cal can feel her examining the best ways to tell him something. His muscles are tightening again. Like most guys he knows, he finds few things as nerve-racking as a woman with something on her mind. He knocks back more of his tea, hoping the cold will brace up his brain for whatever’s on the way.

“I went to see Mrs. Duggan,” Lena says. “D’you know her? Noreen’s mother-in-law. The big woman that sits at her window all day watching the street.”

“I’ve seen her,” Cal says. “Never met her.”

“She doesn’t get out much, only for mass. Sciatica, she’s got. Up until maybe fifteen years back, but, she ran the shop. She knew everything that went on around here. Even more than Noreen does. You could get up to some mischief with no one but your best mate, that’d never say a word to anyone, but the next day Mrs. Duggan’d know.”

Lena is rocking the chair easily and her voice is level, but Cal can hear the charge in it. Going to see this woman cost her.

“There was one of them around where my granddaddy lived,” he says. “Most places’d be better off without them.”

“Mostly I’d say the same,” Lena says. “Today, I’m not sure yet. Mrs. Duggan says she never heard a word about any gold around here. She’s eighty, so she never knew your woman Bridie Feeney that was Rushborough’s granny, but she woulda known Bridie’s brothers and sisters. And Michael Duggan, that Rushborough said found that bitta gold along with his granny, he was Mrs. Duggan’s uncle-in-law. If she never heard of any gold, then neither did any of them.”

Cal sits still, trying to fit this in among the other things he knows or suspects or fears. The sickly haze has seared right off him; he’s as alert as he’s ever been in his life. “You figure she’s telling you the truth?” he asks.

“Ah, yeah. That’s the worst about Mrs. Duggan: she’s always right. There’s no point being the one that knows everything, unless people know to believe what you tell them.”

“Then where the hell—”

Cal can’t stay put. He gets up and walks a circle around the porch. “Where the hell did all that crap come from? Rushborough just pulled the gold straight out of his ass, threw in a bunch of stuff his gramma told him about this place, and used that dumb shit Johnny to get him in the door?” He could kick himself for not figuring this out days ago. Rushborough never looked like a sucker; always, from the first glance, he looked like the guy fleecing the suckers for all they were worth. Everyone else has an excuse for missing that. Cal has none.

“No,” Lena says. “I reckon there’s the two of them in it. I’ll tell you one other thing: when Johnny got back here, he needed a haircut. That’s a little thing, but it wasn’t like him. He always liked making a fancy entrance. I thought then, he came running. ’Cause he was in trouble.”

Cal says, “You didn’t tell me that.”

“No,” Lena says. “I didn’t. It mighta been nothing.”

“So Johnny and this Rushborough guy,” Cal says. He makes himself sit down again, to hold his thoughts to a steady pace. “They ran themselves into some kinda hot water, over in England. They cooked up this story and came over here to scam a few quick bucks, to get themselves outa trouble.”

He doesn’t underestimate the level of trouble Johnny could be in. By nature Johnny is clearly small-time, but he’s made up of nothing but a shit-ton of talk and a useful smile; he’s light. If he got caught up by something with force, he could roll a long way from where he naturally belongs.

“How, but?” Lena says. “They pulled, what, a grand or two worth of gold outa the river today? It wouldn’t be worth their while doing all this just for that.”

“Nope,” Cal says. He remembers Mart, in the pub, gabbing about psychology. “This was just the start. Now they’ve got the guys all worked up, they’re gonna come up with some reason they need more money. Mining licenses, or equipment, or something. The guys, Mart and P.J. and the rest, have they got enough cash to make them worth scamming?”

The movement of Lena’s rocking chair has stilled. “They’d have a bit put away, all right,” she says. “Maybe not Con McHugh, he’s only young, but the rest. And they’ve the land. Sixty or seventy acres each—Senan has a hundred. That’s family land, all of it, owned free and clear. Any of them could walk into a bank tomorrow and mortgage a few of those acres for maybe five grand each, or put them up as collateral for a loan.”

“Those guys are knee-deep in this thing already,” Cal says. He never worked Fraud, but he had buddies who did; he knows how it goes. “If Johnny talks a good enough game, they’ll figure it’d be a waste not to go that one step deeper.”

Lena has started rocking her chair again, slowly, thinking. “They’d do it,” she says. “Most of them, anyway. If they think there’s gold on their own land, or even that there might be, they can’t just turn away from it. If it was up on the mountain, they’d play safe and leave it, maybe. But not on their land.”

Cal finds himself strangely and deeply outraged for the men who were on the riverbank today. He has his own beef with these men, or some of them, but he remembers their faces in the pub when Rushborough brought out the ring: their stillness as their land transformed and ignited, blazing with fresh constellations and long-hidden messages from their own blood. Compared to what Rushborough and Johnny are doing, their salting the river seems like kid mischief: shoplifting beer, shaving the drunk guy’s eyebrows. Cal has lived in Ardnakelty long enough to be conscious that the tie between them and their land is something he can’t fathom, cell-deep and unvoiceable. Johnny, at least, should have known better than to fuck with that, and much better than to let some guy with an English accent fuck with it.

“If they find out,” he says, “there’s gonna be trouble.”

Lena watches him. She says, “You reckon they should find out?”

“Yeah,” Cal says. An immense tide of relief is rising inside him. At last, he can do something. “And I reckon the sooner the better. We’re all heading down to Seán’s, to celebrate. They can all find out at once.”

Lena’s eyebrows go up. She says, “That’ll get messy.”

“The longer I wait, the messier it’ll get.”

“You could say it to Johnny on his own. Walk home with him after the pub, tell him you’ll be saying it to the lads tomorrow, so he’s got till then to pack his bags. Keep things from getting outa hand.”

“Nah,” Cal says.

“Tell him there’s other people that know as well. In case that Rushborough gets any funny ideas.”

“People round here,” Cal says, “they think about the kid like she’s half mine.” It comes out with difficulty, because he’s never said it before and because he has no idea how much longer it will hold any kind of truth; he’s sorely aware that he hasn’t seen Trey in days. But for now, at least, it can still have some worth to her. “If I call out Johnny in front of God and everybody, so the whole place knows it was me that tanked his plan, then no one’s gonna go thinking she was in on his bullshit. So, once he’s gone, she can go on living here without anyone giving her hassle.”

There’s a small silence. Off by the vegetable patch, the dogs have triggered the zombie scarecrow and are losing their minds, threatening all manner of extravagant destruction from a safe distance. The tomato plants are burgeoning; even from here, Cal can see the bursts of red shining among the green.

“This Rushborough fella,” Lena says. “I met him, the other morning. I was out walking the dogs, and he stopped for a wee chat.”

“About what?”

“Nothing. Aren’t the mountains lovely, and this isn’t the weather he expected from Ireland. Whatever you do, watch that fella.”

“I’m not gonna say anything when Rushborough’s there,” Cal says. “He’s smarter’n Johnny; he might manage to talk his way out. But I bet you a hundred bucks Rushborough’s gonna leave after a couple of drinks, to give Johnny and the guys some space to gloat about how good they fooled him. That’s where I come in.”

“Still,” Lena says. “Watch him, after. I don’t like him.”

“Yeah,” Cal says. “Me neither.”

He wants to tell Lena that these days he feels like he can’t find Trey, that for three nights running he’s had nightmares where she disappeared somewhere on the mountainside, that he wishes he had bought her a phone and put a tracker app on it so he could spend his days just sitting still and watching her bright dot go about its business. Instead he says, “I gotta go shower and eat something. We’re heading down to Seán’s at six.”

Lena looks at him. Then she comes over to him, cups her hand around the back of his neck, and kisses him full and strong on the mouth. It feels like a baton-pass, or like she’s sending him into battle.

“Right,” she says, straightening up. “I’ll leave you to it, so.”

“Thanks,” Cal says. The smell of her is in his nose, clean and sunny as drying hay. “For talking to Mrs. Duggan.”

“That woman’s a feckin’ nightmare,” Lena says. “If I was Noreen I’da poisoned her tea years ago.” She puts a finger and thumb in her mouth and whistles for her dogs, who abandon their war with the scarecrow and head across the field in long, happy bounds. “Let me know how you get on,” she says.

“Will do,” Cal says. He doesn’t watch her to her car. He’s already picking up the glasses and heading into the house, thinking about the right words to use when the time comes.