The Hunter

Five

Cal spends the next morning dicking around in his house, waiting for Mart to show up. He has no doubt that Mart will in fact show up, so there’s no point in getting his teeth into anything serious. Instead he does dishes and wipes various stuff that looks like it could use it, with one eye on the window.

He could dick around in his vegetable patch instead, and let Mart come talk to him there, but he wants to invite Mart in. It’s been a long time since Mart’s been in this house. This was by Cal’s choice: what happened to Brendan Reddy lies between them, cold and heavy. Cal accepted the boundaries Mart drew around it—he doesn’t ask for names, he keeps his mouth shut, he keeps Trey’s mouth shut, and everyone gets to live happy ever after—but he wasn’t going to let Mart pretend it away. But the Johnny Reddy situation—Cal is starting to think of it as a situation—means that, regardless of how little he likes it, things need to shift.

Mart shows up halfway through the morning, smiling up at Cal on the doorstep like he comes over every day. “Come on in,” Cal says. “Outa the heat.”

If Mart’s surprised, he doesn’t show it. “And why not, sure,” he says, knocking the dirt off his boots. His face and arms are burned a rough red-brown; under the sleeves of his green polo shirt, edges of white show where the sunburn stops. He rolls up his straw hat and stuffs it in a pocket.

“The mansion’s looking well,” he observes, glancing around. “That lamp adds a touch of style. Was that Lena?”

“Can I get you some coffee?” Cal asks. “Tea?” He’s been here long enough to know that tea is appropriate regardless of the weather.

“Ah, no. I’m grand.”

Cal has also been here long enough that he knows better than to take this as a refusal. “I was gonna make some anyway,” he says. “You might as well join me.”

“Go on, then; I can’t let a man drink alone. I’ll have a cuppa tea.”

Cal switches on the electric kettle and finds mugs. “Another hot one,” he says.

“If this keeps up,” Mart says, taking a chair and arranging himself around his worst joints, “I’ll have to start selling off my flock because I haven’t the grass to feed them. And come spring, the lamb crop’ll be fuckin’ atrocious. Meanwhile, what are them eejits on the telly showing? Pictures of childer ating ice creams.”

“The kids are a lot cuter than you are,” Cal points out.

“True enough,” Mart concedes, with a cackle. “But them telly lads give me the sick all the same. Going on about the climate change as if it’s news, big shocked faces on them. They coulda asked any farmer, any time these last twenty year: the summers aren’t the same as what they were. They turned tricky on us, and they’ve only got trickier. And meanwhile all them fools are lying on the beaches, burning the pasty arses off themselves, like it’s the greatest thing that ever happened to them.”

“What do the old guys reckon? It gonna break soon?”

“Mossie O’Halloran says it’ll be lashing rain by the end of the month, and Tom Pat Malone says it won’t break till September. Sure, how would they have any notion? This weather’s like a dog that’s turned rogue: you wouldn’t know what it’s capable of.”

Cal brings the tea stuff and a packet of chocolate chip cookies over to the table. Mart adds lavish amounts of milk and sugar and stretches out his legs with a luxurious sigh, putting the weather aside and settling in for the main business of the day.

“Will I tell you what never ceases to amaze me about this townland?” he asks. “The level of feckin’ eejitry.”

“This to do with Johnny Reddy?” Cal asks.

“That lad,” Mart informs him, “would bring out the eejit in Einstein. I don’t know how he does it, at all. ’Tis a gift.” He takes his time choosing a cookie, to build up the suspense. “Guess what he’s after picking up in London,” he says. “Go on, guess.”

“A social disease,” Cal says. Johnny doesn’t bring out his best side, either.

“More than likely, but as well as that. Johnny’s after finding himself a Sassenach. Not a bit on the side, now; a man. Some plastic Paddy with a loada cash and a loada rosemantic notions about his granny’s homeland. And Paddy Englishman’s got it in his head that there’s gold all through our fields, just waiting for him to come along and dig it up.”

Cal came up with a large number of possibilities for Johnny’s bright idea, but this wasn’t among them. “What the fuck?” he says.

“That was my first thought, all right,” Mart agrees. “He got the story offa his granny. She was a Feeney. The Feeneys are a terrible lot for getting ideas into their heads.”

“And she figured there was gold around here?”

“More like her granddaddy said his granddaddy said his granddaddy said there was. But Paddy Englishman took it as gospel, and now he wants to pay us for the chance to sniff it out. Or so Johnny says, anyhow.”

Cal’s instinct is to automatically disbelieve in anything that comes out of Johnny Reddy, but he’s aware that even a career bullshitter could accidentally stumble across something that has substance. “You’re the geology expert,” he says. “Any chance it’s true?”

Mart picks a cookie crumb out of a tooth. “That’s the mad part, now,” he says. “I wouldn’t rule it out altogether. There’s been gold found in the mountains up on the border, not too far from here. And the bottom of this mountain, where the two different kinds of rock rub up against each other, that’s the kind of spot where you’d get gold being melted by the friction and pushed up towards the surface, all right. And there’s an aul’ riverbed, sure enough, that coulda brought the gold down through all our land to the river beyond the village, once upon a time. It could be true.”

“Or it could be just the Feeneys and their ideas,” Cal says.

“More than likely,” Mart agrees. “We pointed that out to the bold Johnny, but it didn’t faze him one bit. He’s one step ahead of the likes of you and me, d’you see. He wants us to bunce in three hundred quid each and buy a bitta gold to sprinkle in the river, so Paddy Englishman’ll think it’s popping outa the fields like dandelions, and give us a grand or two each to let him take samples on our land.”

Even after only a few minutes’ acquaintance with Johnny, Cal can’t find it in himself to be surprised. “And then what?” he says. “If there’s no gold in the samples?”

“Francie Gannon inquired about the very same thing,” Mart says. “Great minds think alike, hah? According to Johnny, Paddy Englishman won’t see anything amiss about that at all, at all. He’ll prance off home with his pinch of gold, and we’ll all live happily ever after. I wouldn’t insult Sheila Reddy’s virtue, but I don’t know where that child got her brains from, because she got none from her daddy.”

“So you’re not gonna get involved,” Cal says.

Mart tilts his head noncommittally. “Ah, I didn’t say that, now. I’m having a great aul’ time, so I am. This is the best entertainment that’s come to town in years. It’d almost be worth throwing in the few bob, just to have a front-row seat.”

“Get Netflix,” Cal says. “Cheaper.”

“I’ve got the Netflix. There’s never anything on it, only Liam Neeson battering people with snowplows, and sure he’s only from up the road. What else am I going to spend my life savings on? Silk velvet boxers?”

“You’re gonna give Johnny three hundred bucks?”

“I am in my arse. That flimflam merchant’s not getting his hands on a penny of mine. But I might go in with the other lads to buy the bitta gold. For the crack, like.”

“They’re gonna do it?” Cal asks. This doesn’t jibe with what he knows of Ardnakelty people, or of their views on Reddys. “All of them?”

“I wouldn’t say all of them. Not for definite. They’re wary—specially Senan and Francie. But they haven’t said no. And the more of them that say yes, the more the rest won’t want to miss their chance.”

“Huh,” Cal says.

Mart watches him wryly, over his mug. “You thought they’d have better sense, hah?”

“I didn’t think those guys would put money on Johnny Reddy’s say-so.”

Mart leans back in his chair and takes a pleasurable slurp of his tea. “Like I’m after telling you,” he says, “Johnny’s got a great gift for bringing out the eejitry in people. Sheila was no eejit, sure, till he came sniffing around, and now look at her. But ’tis more than that. What you haveta keep in mind about every man jack in this townland, Sunny Jim, is that he’s the one that stayed put. Some of us wanted to and some didn’t, but once you’ve got the land, you’re going nowhere. ’Tis all you can do to find someone to mind the farm for a week while you head for Tenerife to admire a few bikinis.”

“You can sell land,” Cal says. “Lena sold hers.”

Mart snorts. “That’s not the same at all, at all. She’s a woman, and that wasn’t her land, ’twas her husband’s. I’d sell my own kidneys before I’d sell my family’s land; my father’d come outa the grave and take the head off me. But we can go the whole year round without seeing a new face, or a new place, or doing anything we haven’t done all our lives. Meanwhile we’ve all got brothers WhatsApping us photos of wallabies, or posting on Facebook how they’re baptizing childer in the jungles of Brazil.” He smiles at Cal. “It doesn’t bother me, sure. When I get to feeling restless, I do a bitta reading about something new, to keep my mind on an even keel.”

“Geology,” Cal says.

“Sure, that was years ago. These days I do be looking into the Ottoman Empire. They were some boyos, them Ottomans. You’d want to get up early to take them on.” Mart adds an extra half-spoon of sugar to his tea. “But some of the lads haven’t got the same resources. They balance along grand most of the time—they’re used to it, sure. But we’re all a wee bit off-kilter, this summer, waking up every morning to fields that need rain worse and worse and aren’t getting it. We’re on edge, is what we are; our balance is upsetted already. And then along comes the bold Johnny, prancing in here with his stories about film stars and millionaires and gold.” He tastes the tea and nods. “Look at P.J., now, over the wall. Do you reckon he’s got the resources to keep his mind on an even keel when Johnny’s offering him the sun, moon, and stars?”

“P.J. seems pretty down-to-earth to me,” Cal says.

“No harm to P.J.,” Mart says. “He’s a fine man. But he’s worn to a frazzle, fretting day and night about what he’s going to feed his sheep if this weather doesn’t break, and he’s got nothing else in his head to distract him when he needs a bit of a rest from that. No wallabies and no Ottomans, only the same aul’ life he’s had since he was born. And now Johnny’s after bringing him something brand-new and shiny. P.J.’s bedazzled, and why wouldn’t he be?”

“I guess,” Cal says.

“And even the rest of them, that mightn’t be as easily bedazzled as P.J.: they’re allured, is what they are. They’ve got a bad case of allurement.”

“Fair enough,” Cal says. He doesn’t feel he’s in a position to judge them for that. He supposes what brought him to Ardnakelty could be described, from some angles, as a bad case of allurement. That got knocked out of him good and hard. The landscape still holds the power to bedazzle him, simply and wholly, but when it comes to everything else about the place, he sees too many of its layers for that. He and it have reached an equilibrium, amicable even if not particularly trusting, maintained with care and a certain amount of caution on all sides. All the same, taking everything into account, he can’t bring himself to regret following where that allurement led him.

“And here’s the thing of it,” Mart says, pointing the spoon at Cal. “Who’s to say they’re wrong? You’re sitting there thinking P.J.’s a fool for getting mixed up with Johnny, but even if Paddy Englishman was to change his mind about the samples, maybe ’tis well worth the few hundred quid to P.J., to have something new to think about for a while. The same as it’s worth it to me for the entertainment. Maybe it’ll do him a lot more good than spending that money on a psychologist who’d tell him he’s suffering from stress because his mammy took him outa nappies too early. Who’s to say?”

“You’re the one that was calling them all a bunch of eejits, five minutes ago, for wanting to get involved,” Cal reminds him.

Mart wags the spoon at him vigorously. “Ah, no. Not for getting involved. If they go into this the way they’d put a few bob on an outsider in the Grand National, there’s no eejitry in that. But if they’re believing they’ll be millionaires, that’s a different thing. That’s eejitry. And that’s where it could all go a bit pear-shaped.” He throws Cal a sharp glance. “Your young one told them her teacher says the gold is there.”

Cal says, “Trey was there? Last night?”

“Oh, she was. Sitting in the corner like a wee angel, not a peep outa her till she was spoken to.”

“Huh,” Cal says. He thinks less and less of his chances of making it through this summer without punching Johnny Reddy’s teeth out. “Well, if she says her teacher said that, he probably did.”

“A year or two back,” Mart says meditatively, “that wouldn’ta made a blind bitta difference. But now there’s plenty of people around here that reckon your young one’s worth listening to. It’s great what a mended table can do, hah?”

“She’s not mine,” Cal says. “And this gold story’s got nothing to do with her.”

“Well, if you’re feeling technical,” Mart acknowledges, “she’s not. And maybe it hasn’t. But in the lads’ minds, it has, and she’s having an effect. Isn’t that a turn-up for the books altogether? Who woulda thought a Reddy would ever have that much credit in this townland?”

“She’s a good kid,” Cal says. He’s clear that Mart is giving him a warning, although a delicate one, for now.

Mart is reaching for another cookie, absorbed in picking the one with the most chocolate chips. “She doesn’t go running around looking for trouble, anyway,” he agrees. “That’s a great thing.” He selects a cookie and dunks it in his tea. “D’you know something? The things these lads have planned for the gold, if it shows up, would give you the pip. Cruises, and barns, and tours of Hollywood. There’s not a one of them came up with a single iota of originality.”

“What’re you gonna spend yours on?” Cal asks.

“I won’t believe in that gold till I get my hands on it,” Mart says. “But if I do, I’m telling you now, I won’t be spending it on any feckin’ Caribbean holiday. I might put in a space telescope on my roof, or get myself a pet camel to keep the sheep company, or a hot-air balloon to bring me into town. Watch this space, boyo.”

While he listens to Mart, one part of Cal’s mind has been picturing the wandering line Johnny is talking about, from the foot of the mountain through all those men’s land to the river. “If there’s gold on your land and P.J.’s,” he says, “it’s gotta run through my back field.”

“I was thinking the same, all right,” Mart agrees. “Imagine that: you mighta planted them tomatoes on a gold mine. I wonder will they taste any different.”

“So why didn’t Johnny invite me along last night?”

Mart slants a look towards Cal. “I’d say this is some class of fraud, what Johnny’s got planned for Paddy Englishman. You’d know better than I would.”

“Not my department,” Cal says.

“If you were planning anything that might be fraud, would you invite a Guard along?”

“I’m a carpenter,” Cal says. “If I’m anything.”

Mart’s eyebrows twitch at an amused angle. “A Guard and a blow-in. Johnny doesn’t know you the way I do, sure. You’ve a dacent respect for the way things are done here, and you can keep your mouth shut, when that’s the wisest thing to do. But he doesn’t know that.”

That answers the question of why Johnny came running over to Cal’s place to shoot the breeze before he even got his stuff unpacked. Not to check out the guy who was hanging around his kid; to find out whether the ex-cop was the kind who would screw with his scam.

Cal says, before he plans to say it, “He’d know it if you vouched for me.”

Mart’s eyebrows leap. “What’s this, now, Sunny Jim? Are you looking to get in on the action? I wouldn’ta had you down as the prospecting type.”

“I’m full of surprises,” Cal says.

“Are you getting restless already, or have you been turning up gold nuggets with the parsnips?”

“Like you said. There’s nothing on Netflix.”

“For God’s sake don’t be telling me Johnny Reddy’s after bringing out the eejitry in you, as well. I’ve enough of that to be dealing with. You’re not feeling an urge to dust off the aul’ badge and haul the bold fraudsters up to the Guards by the scruffs of their necks, now, are you?”

“Nope,” Cal says. “Just reckon if my land’s involved anyway, I might as well find out what’s going on.”

Mart scratches meditatively at a bug bite on his neck and considers Cal. Cal looks back at him. All his gut rebels against asking Mart Lavin for favors, and he’s pretty sure Mart knows that.

“You want entertainment,” he points out, “watching Johnny try to figure out what to do about me oughta up the ante.”

“That’s a fact,” Mart acknowledges. “But I wouldn’t want him getting an attack of nerves and whisking Paddy Englishman away from under our noses before things have a chance to get interesting. That’d be a waste.”

“I won’t make any sudden moves,” Cal says. “He’ll hardly know I’m there.”

“You’re great at being harmless, all right,” Mart says, smiling at Cal so that his whole face crinkles up engagingly, “when you want to be. All right, so. Let you come down to Seán Óg’s tomorrow night, when Johnny’s bringing Paddy Englishman in for inspection, and we’ll see where we get. Is that fair enough?”

“Sounds good,” Cal says. “Thanks.”

“Don’t be thanking me,” Mart says. “I’d say I’m doing you no favors, getting you mixed up with that fella’s nonsense.” He drains his tea and stands up, unsticking his joints one by one. “What’ll you spend your millions on?”

“Caribbean cruise sounds good,” Cal says.

Mart laughs and tells him to get away to fuck with that, and stumps out the door, pulling his straw hat down over his fluff of hair. Cal puts away the cookies and takes the mugs over to the sink to wash them out. It occurs to him to wonder why Mart decided to tell a Guard and a blow-in about a plan that might be fraud; unless, for reasons of his own, he wanted Cal on board.

The main talent Cal has discovered in himself, since coming to Ardnakelty, is a broad and restful capacity for letting things be. At first this sat uneasily alongside his ingrained instinct to fix things, but over time they’ve fallen into a balance: he keeps the fixing instinct mainly turned towards solid objects, like his house and people’s furniture, and leaves other things the room to fix themselves. The Johnny Reddy situation isn’t something that he can leave be. It doesn’t feel like something that needs fixing, though, either. It feels both more delicate and more volatile than that: something that needs watching, in case it catches and runs wild.

Trey has to go to the shop for her mam because Maeve is a lickarse. It’s Maeve’s turn, but she’s snuggled up on the sofa with their dad, asking one stupid question after another about the Formula 1 on the telly, and hanging off his answers like they’re the secret of the universe. When their mam told her to go, she pouted up at their dad, and he laughed and said, “Ah, sure, leave the child be. We’re happy here, aren’t we, Maeveen? What’s the big emergency?” So, since the emergency is that they have nothing in for the dinner, Trey is trudging down to the village dragging a wheeled shopping trolley behind her. She doesn’t even have Banjo for company: she left him sprawled on the coolest part of the kitchen floor, panting pathetically, rolling an agonized eye at her when she snapped her fingers to him.

Trey dislikes going to the shop. Up until a year or two back, Noreen used to stare her out of it whenever she went in, and Trey robbed something every time Noreen shifted the glare away to serve a customer. These days Trey generally pays for the things she wants, and Noreen nods to her and asks after her mam, but occasionally Trey still robs something, just to keep the parameters clear.

She has no intention of robbing anything today; she just wants to buy potatoes and bacon and whatever other shite is on the list in her pocket, and go home. By now Noreen will have extracted every detail of last night from Dessie, with ruthless expertise, and will be on the hunt for more. Trey doesn’t want to talk about any of it. The men stayed late into the night, getting louder and louder as they got drunker, and laughing in great eruptions that brought Alanna stumbling into Trey’s room, confused and scared, to climb in with her and breathe wetly on the back of her neck. Johnny has them eating out of his hand. Trey is starting to feel like a fool for ever thinking she could do anything about any of them.

Noreen—of course—has company. Doireann Cunniffe is nestled up to the counter, where she can lean in to Noreen to catch every word first, and Tom Pat Malone is settled well into the corner chair that Noreen keeps for people who need a rest before they start home. Mrs. Cunniffe is little and excitable, with funny teeth and a head that sticks forward, and she wears pink cardigans even in this heat. Tom Pat is a curled scrap of a man, well into his eighties, who can tell the weather and is the hereditary possessor of a recipe for wool-fat salve that cures everything from eczema to rheumatism. He was named after his grandfathers and has to be called by both names in order to avoid offending either, even though they’ve both been dead for fifty years. Mrs. Cunniffe has a packet of boring biscuits on the counter and Tom Pat has the Sunday paper on his lap, to add legitimacy to their presence, but neither of them is there to buy things. Trey keeps her head down and starts collecting what she needs. She is under no illusion that she’s going to get out of here easily.

“Begod, Noreen, ’tis like Galway station here today,” Tom Pat says. “Is there anyone in this townland that hasn’t been in to you?”

“They’re only following your good example, sure,” Noreen points out smartly. She’s dusting shelves—Noreen is never not doing something. “How’s your daddy today, Theresa?”

“Grand,” Trey says, finding ham slices.

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, it’s well for some. He must have a head made of titanium. What were they drinking, at all? I asked Dessie, but he couldn’t turn his head on the pillow to answer me.”

Mrs. Cunniffe giggles breathily. Trey shrugs.

Noreen shoots her a sharp bird-glance, over one shoulder. “He was talking plenty when he came in, but, God help us all. Four in the morning, it was, and him shaking me outa the bed to tell me some mad story about gold nuggets and beg me to make him a fry-up.”

“Didja make it for him?” Tom Pat inquires.

“I did not. He got a piece of toast and an earful about waking the kids, is what he got. Come here, Theresa: is it true, what he said, or was it just the drink talking? There’s some English fella coming to dig up gold on everyone’s land?”

“Yeah,” Trey says. “He’s rich. His granny came from round here. She told him there was gold.”

“Holy Mary, mother a the divine,” Mrs. Cunniffe breathes, clasping her cardigan together. “ ’Tis like a film. Honest to God, I’d palpitations when I heard. And will I tell you something awful strange? Friday night, I dreamed I found a gold coin in my kitchen sink. Just lying there, like. My granny always said the second sight ran in our—”

“That’ll be ating cheese too late at night,” Noreen advises her. “Once we had a baked Camembert at Christmas, and I dreamed I was after turning into a llama in a zoo, and I was annoyed ’cause my good shoes wouldn’t fit on the hooves. Leave the cheese alone and you’ll be grand. Now, Theresa”—Noreen abandons her dusting to lean over the counter and point the duster at Trey—“did your daddy say who this fella’s granny was?”

“Nah,” Trey says. “Don’t think he knows.” She can’t see the jam they normally get. She grabs some weird-looking apricot thing instead.

“That’s men for you,” Noreen says. “A woman woulda thought to ask. Myself and Dymphna, that’s Mrs. Duggan, we spent half the morning trying to get it straight who she mighta been. Dymphna reckons she musta been Bridie Feeney from across the river, that went over to London before the Emergency. She never wrote back. Dymphna says her mammy always thought Bridie had gone over to have a baba and was hiding the shame, but I suppose it might be that she just didn’t bother her arse writing at first, and then she married some fancy doctor and got too many notions to write to the likes of us. Or both,” she adds, struck by the idea. “The baba first, and then the doctor.”

“Bridie Feeney’s sister was married to my uncle,” Tom Pat says. “I was only a wee little lad when she went off, but they always said she’d do well for herself. She was that kind. She coulda married a doctor, all right.”

“I know Anne Marie Dolan,” Mrs. Cunniffe says triumphantly, “whose mammy was a Feeney. Bridie woulda been her great-aunt. I rang Anne Marie straightaway, as soon as I got my breath back, didn’t I, Noreen? She says neither her granddad nor her mammy ever said a word to her about any gold. Not a peep outa them. Would you credit that?”

“I would,” Tom Pat says. “I’d say that’s only typical. Anne Marie’s granddad was aul’ Mick Feeney, and Mick had no use for girls. He thought they were awful talkers, the lot of them, couldn’t hold their water—no harm to the present company.” He smiles around at them all. Mrs. Cunniffe titters. “And he’d only daughters. I’d say he told no one, and waited for Anne Marie’s young lad to get old enough that he could pass it on. Only didn’t Mick take a heart attack and die, before he got the chance.”

“And no surprise to anyone but himself,” Noreen says tartly. “I heard his back room was that full of bottles, they had to get a skip in. No wonder he never done nothing about the gold. He’d other things to keep him occupied.”

“And if it wasn’t for this English chap,” Mrs. Cunniffe says, a hand to her face, “the secret woulda been lost and gone forever. And us walking over the gold our whole lives, without a notion.”

“That’s what you get when people do nothing,” Noreen says. Having stood still for as long as she’s capable of, she goes back to her dusting. “God knows how many generations of Feeneys, every one of them doing feck-all about that gold. At least this English lad got sense enough from somewhere to do something. About feckin’ time.”

“You’ll be meeting this English chap, won’t you, Theresa?” Mrs. Cunniffe asks, edging closer to Trey. “Would you ever ask him if there’s any of it in our bitta land? Noreen was telling me it’s in the river, and sure we’re only a few yards away. I couldn’t be digging myself, my back does be at me something terrible, but Joe’s a great man for the digging. He’d have the garden up in no time.”

Somewhere on its way down the mountain, the gold has apparently turned from a possibility into a solid thing. Trey isn’t sure what she thinks of this.

She dumps her shopping on the counter and adds a packet of crisps, as her fee for taking Maeve’s turn. “And twenty Marlboro,” she says.

“You’re too young to be smoking,” Noreen tells her.

“For my dad.”

“I suppose,” Noreen concedes, throwing her one more suspicious glance and turning to get the cigarettes. “Cal’d malavogue you if he smelled smoke off you. Remember that.”

“Yeah,” Trey says. She wants to leave.

“Come here to me, a chailín,” Tom Pat orders Trey, beckoning. “I’d come to you, only I used up all the strength in my legs getting here. Come over and let me have a look at you.”

Trey leaves Noreen to ring up the shopping and goes to him. Tom Pat takes hold of her wrist, to bend her down so he can see her—his eyes are filmed over. He smells like a hot shed.

“You’re the spit of your daddo,” he tells her. “Your mammy’s daddy. He was a fine man.”

“Yeah,” Trey says. “Thanks.” Her granddad died before she was born. Her mam doesn’t talk about him much.

“Tell me something, now,” Tom Pat says. “Yourself and that Yankee fella up at O’Shea’s place. Do ye ever make rocking chairs?”

“Sometimes,” Trey says.

“I fancy a rocking chair,” Tom Pat explains, “for in front of the fire, in the winter. I do be thinking about the winter an awful lot, these days, to keep myself cool. Would ye ever make me one? A small one, now, so these little legs of mine can touch the ground.”

“Yeah,” Trey says. “Sure.” She says yes to just about any work that comes their way. She’s aware that, for government reasons she doesn’t understand and doesn’t care about, Cal isn’t allowed to get a job here. One of her fears is that he won’t make enough money to live on and he’ll have to move back to America.

“Good girl yourself,” Tom Pat says, smiling up at her. His few teeth look as big as horses’ teeth in his fallen mouth. “Ye’ll have to come down to me, now, to sort the ins and outs of it. I can’t see to drive any more.”

“I’ll say it to Cal,” Trey says. His hand is still around her wrist, loose bony fingers with a slow tremor shaking them.

“Your daddy’s doing a great thing for all this townland,” Tom Pat tells her. “A thing like this doesn’t stop with a few diggers in a few fields. A few years from now, we won’t know ourselves. And all because of your daddy. Are you proud of him, now?”

Trey says nothing. She can feel silence filling her up like pouring concrete.

“Sure, when did the childer ever appreciate their parents?” Mrs. Cunniffe says with a sigh. “They’ll miss us when we’re gone. But you tell your daddy from me, Theresa, he’s a great man altogether.”

“Listen to me now, a stór,” Tom Pat says. “D’you know our Brian? My Elaine’s young lad. The redheaded fella.”

“Yeah,” Trey says. She doesn’t like Brian. He was in Brendan’s class. He used to wind Brendan up till Brendan lost his temper, and then run to the teacher. No one ever believed a Reddy.

“Your man, the Sassenach, he’ll be needing someone to help him go scooping about in that river. Hah? He won’t want to get his fine shoes wet.”

“Dunno,” Trey says.

“Brian’s not a big lad, but he’s strong,” Tom Pat says. “And it’d do him good. All that lad needs is a bitta hard work, to get his head on straight. His mammy’s too soft on him. You say that to your daddy, now.”

“Brian’s not the only one that’ll want that work,” Noreen puts in, unable to stay silent any longer. “There’s plenty of lads around here that’d only love to get a foot in the door there. My Jack’ll be in the pub tomorrow night, now, Theresa. You tell your daddy to introduce him to that English fella.”

“I dunno if he even needs anyone,” Trey says. “I never met him.”

“Don’t be worrying about that. All you’ve to do is say it to your daddy. Can you remember that?”

All of them are focused on Trey with an intensity she’s not used to. Everything feels very weird, like some crap old film where people’s bodies get taken over by aliens. “I’ve to go,” she says, moving her wrist out of Tom Pat’s hand. “My mam needs the dinner.”

“That’ll be thirty-six eighty,” Noreen says, neatly backing off. “Them cigarettes are awful dear. Would your daddy not try the vaping instead? I’ve Dessie on the vape yokes a year now, and he’s off the cigarettes altogether—don’t be giving me that look, I know what he was at last night, I’ve the use of my nose. But mostly.”

The shop bell dings cheerily and Richie Casey comes in, smelling of sheep shite and scraping his boots on the mat. “Fuckin’ roasting,” he says. “The sheep’ll be coming up and begging to be sheared, if the wool doesn’t melt offa them first. How’s it going, Theresa? How’s your daddy?”

Richie Casey has never said a word to Trey before in her life. “Grand,” she says, shoving her change into her pocket, and escapes before anyone can get even weirder.

It takes her most of the walk up the mountain to get her head clear and understand what’s happening. All these people want something from her. They need her help, the same way her dad needed her help last night.

Trey isn’t used to anyone except her mam needing her help. What her mam needs is stuff like going to the shop or cleaning the bath, straightforward things about which Trey has no choice and which have no implications or consequences. This is different. All these people need her to do things for them that she can decide whether or not to do; things that, either way, have implications.

Trey has always preferred straightforward things. Her first instinct was to reject this new situation, but slowly, as she jolts the trolley behind her up the rocky path, it shifts in her mind. For one of the first times in her life, she has power.

She turns it over, testing the flavor. She’s pretty sure Cal would consider her dad’s plan, and her involvement in particular, to be a bad idea, but that doesn’t seem relevant. Cal is separate. She doesn’t waste much effort on wondering whether he’d be right, because he mostly is, and because it makes no difference.

The heat scorches the top of her head. Insects spin and whine above the heather. She remembers Tom Pat’s fingers, frail and shaking, around her wrist, and Mrs. Cunniffe’s pop-eyes fixed on her hungrily. Instead of rejecting the situation, her mind moves to meet it. She doesn’t know how yet, but she’s going to use it.