The Hunter

Six

Normally, on a Monday night, Seán Óg’s would be close to deserted. Barty the barman would be leaning on the bar watching the racing on TV, having intermittent shreds of conversation with his scattering of daily communicants, old bachelors in faded shirts who come in from the far reaches of the townland to see another human face. A clump of them might be playing Fifty-Five, a card game to which Ardnakelty brings the level of ferocious dedication that Americans reserve for football, but that’s as intense as the action would get. When Cal goes to the pub on Mondays, it’s because he feels like having a pint in peace.

Tonight it’s crammed. Word has spread, and everyone for miles around wants to check out Paddy Englishman. There are people in here whom Cal has never seen before, and who are either the wrong gender or decades younger than this place’s usual clientele. Everyone is talking at once, and some people are wearing their going-out clothes. Bodies and excitement have turned the air so muggy that Cal feels like he’s not breathing. He checks around for Lena, but she’s not there. He didn’t really expect her to be.

“Pint of Smithwick’s,” he says to Barty, when he manages to reach the bar. “You’re doing some business tonight.”

“Jaysus, wouldja stop,” Barty says. His face is sweating. “Hasn’t been this packed since Dumbo’s funeral. It’s fuck-all good to me, but. Half of these are grannies or teenagers; they order one fuckin’ sherry or a pint of cider, and take up space for the night. If you see any of these shams spill a drop, you tell me and I’ll throw them out on their ear.” A couple of months ago Barty replaced the splitting bar stools and banquettes with new, shiny, bottle-green ones. Ever since then he’s been, according to Mart, like a woman with a new kitchen, one step away from going over you with a duster before he allows you in. He didn’t do anything about the worn-out red linoleum flooring, or the lumpy painted-over wallpaper, or the faded newspaper clippings framed on the walls, or the frayed fishing net draped from the ceiling and festooned with whatever random items people feel like throwing in there, so the place looks pretty much the same as always, but Barty doesn’t see it that way.

“I’ll make sure they mind their manners,” Cal says, taking his pint. “Thanks.”

Cal can tell where Paddy Englishman is—in the back alcove where Mart and his buddies usually hang out—because it’s the corner everyone’s carefully ignoring. He makes his way through the crowd, shielding his pint and nodding to people he knows. Noreen waves to him from a corner, where she’s squeezed in between two of her enormous brothers; Cal waves back and keeps moving. One girl is hopping around in a neon-pink dress not much bigger than a bathing suit, presumably in the hope that Paddy Englishman will notice her and whisk her off to a party on his yacht.

A sizable proportion of the regular occupants of Seán Óg’s have condensed themselves into the alcove. All of them are a little redder in the face than usual, but Cal figures this is heat rather than drink. They’re here for a purpose tonight; they wouldn’t let drink blunt them until that purpose was thoroughly accomplished. In the heart of the alcove, with his shoulder to Cal, laughing at some story of Sonny McHugh’s, is a narrow fair-haired guy in a noticeably expensive shirt.

The guys are scrupulously, methodically providing Rushborough with a normal night out. Dessie Duggan is giving out loudly to Con McHugh about something to do with shearing, and Bobby is explaining his mother’s latest blood tests to Francie, who doesn’t appear to have registered that he’s there. None of them have dressed up for the occasion. Bobby has washed till he’s even pinker and shinier than usual, and Con has flattened down his unruly dark hair, or else his wife has, but they’re all in their work clothes—except Mart, who has given free rein to his sense of the artistic and is wearing a flat tweed cap, a threadbare grandfather shirt, and a hairy brown waistcoat that Cal had no idea he even owned. He could do with a clay pipe, but apart from that, he’s a tourist board’s dream.

Mart and Senan are sitting next to each other so they can argue more conveniently. “That hat,” Senan is telling Mart, in the voice of a man repeating himself for the last time, “is no loss to you or anyone. You oughta be thanking God it’s gone. Say there was a news reporter here, and he caught that yoke on camera—”

“What the hell would a news reporter be doing here?” Mart demands.

“A report about…” Senan lowers his voice a notch and tilts his head at the fair-haired guy. “That, sure. And say he put you on the telly, wearing that yoke. This town’d be the laughingstock of the country. The world, even. It’d go viral on YouTube.”

“Because the rest of ye are a shower of fashion icons, is it? Linda Evangelista wore that there polo shirt on the catwalk? That hat of mine had more panache than anything you’ve ever been next nor near. If that news reporter ever arrives, I know what you’ll be wearing to greet him.”

“I wouldn’t wear that fuckin’ offense against nature for—”

“You’re both beautiful,” Cal says. “How’s it going?”

“Ah, ’tis yourself!” Mart says with delight, raising his pint high to Cal. “Shift over there, Bobby, and make room for the big fella. Senan oughta thank you, Sunny Jim; I was working on him to give me my hat back, but now that’ll have to wait. Mr. Rushborough!”

Rushborough turns from laughing with Sonny, and Cal gets his first good look at the guy. He’s somewhere in his forties, probably, with the kind of thin, smooth, pale face that’s impossible to pin down any closer. Everything about him is smooth: his ears lie close against his head, his hair is slicked down neatly, his shirt falls cleanly with no bulges, and his light eyes are set flat in his face.

“Let me introduce you to Mr. Cal Hooper,” Mart says, “my neighbor. Cal’s the man that lives in between myself and P.J. over there.”

Johnny Reddy is a couple of seats down from Rushborough, in conversation with P.J. He doesn’t look one bit pleased to see Cal sitting his ass down among them. Cal gives him a big friendly smile.

“A pleasure to meet you,” Rushborough says, leaning across the table to shake Cal’s hand. Even his voice is smooth and flat, what Cal would consider fancy-type English. Against the rich sway and roll of the Ardnakelty accents all around, it’s jarring enough to feel like a deliberate challenge.

“Likewise,” Cal says. “I hear your people come from round here.”

“They do, yes. In a way I’ve always considered it my real home, but I’ve never managed to find the time to visit before.”

“Well, better late than never,” Cal says. “What do you think of it now that you’re here?”

“I haven’t had a chance to explore properly yet, but what I’ve seen is really stunning. And these chaps have been giving me a wonderful welcome.” He has a rich man’s smile, easy and understated, the smile of a man who isn’t required to put in effort. “Honestly, it’s a better homecoming than I ever dreamed of.”

“Good to hear,” Cal says. “How long are you planning to stay?”

“Oh, at least a few weeks. No point in doing things by halves. Possibly more; it all depends.” He cocks his head. His pale eyes are measuring Cal up, working fast and competently. “You’re American, aren’t you? Do you have heritage here as well?”

“Nope,” Cal says. “Just liked the look of the place.”

“Clearly a man of excellent taste,” Rushborough says, laughing. “I’m sure we’ll speak again,” and he nods to Cal and goes back to his conversation with Sonny. His eyes stay on Cal for one second too long, before he turns away.

“He’s my third cousin,” Bobby says, round-eyed, pointing at Rushborough. “Didja know that?”

“I heard his grandma was a Feeney,” Cal says. “I figured you’d be related somehow.”

“You wouldn’t know it to look at us,” Bobby says a little wistfully. “He’s better looking than I am. I’d say he does great with the women.” He tugs down his shirtfront, trying to live up to his new standards. “I never woulda thought I had a rich cousin. All my cousins are farmers, sure.”

“If this works out,” Johnny says in an undertone, grinning over his shoulder, “you’ll be the rich cousin.” Cal has already noticed that Johnny, while giving P.J. his total flattering attention, is keeping sharp track of every other conversation in the alcove.

“Holy God,” Bobby says, a bit overawed by the thought. “I will, and all. And me up to my oxters in sheep shite every day of my life.”

“It’s not sheep shite you’ll be smelling of in a few months’ time, man,” Johnny tells him. “It’s champagne and caviar. And I’m telling you now, there’s not a woman on earth that can resist that smell.” He winks and turns back to P.J.

“Is that a fact?” Bobby asks Cal. Bobby considers Cal to be an authority on women, on the grounds that Cal has both an ex-wife and a girlfriend. Cal himself feels like a divorce isn’t exactly evidence of proficiency in the field, but it would be unkind to point that out to Bobby. It seems to cheer Bobby to believe that he has access to an expert.

“I dunno,” he says. “Mostly the women I’ve known didn’t care if a guy was rich, as long as he paid his way and didn’t mooch. Probably some do, though.”

“I’d love a wife,” Bobby explains. “I worry about the mammy; she doesn’t want to go into a home, but she’s getting to be more than I can manage on my own, herself and the sheep. ’Tisn’t only that, but. I can do without the ride, mostly, but I’d love a cuddle. With a woman that’s nice and soft. Not one of them bony ones.” He blinks wistfully at Cal. Cal revises his previous assessment: Bobby, at least, is around three-quarters drunk. Bobby is the resident lightweight—Mart says, with resigned contempt, that he’d get drunk off a sniff of a beer mat—but he knows that, and allows for it. The fact that he’s let himself reach this point means that he’s made up his mind about Rushborough.

Rushborough, meanwhile, has finished with Sonny and moved on to Francie, propping his elbows on the table to ask questions and nod intently at the answers. Francie doesn’t look like he’s made up his mind, or anywhere near it. He’s answering the questions, though, which for Francie counts as being sociable. He’s not rejecting Rushborough and his grandma outright, or at least not yet.

“If I get my share of that gold,” Bobby says, with decision, “I’ll find myself a lovely big soft woman that likes the smell of caviar. I’ll buy her a whole stewpot full of it, and a pint of champagne to wash it down. I’ll bring it to her in bed, and the whole time she’s ating it, I’ll lie right there and give her a cuddle.”

“Sounds like a win-win to me,” Cal says.

Mart has lost interest in needling Senan and is leaning across to cut in on Rushborough and Francie’s conversation. “Oh, begod,” he says, “ ’tis still there, o’ course. There’s not a man in the townland would dig up that mound.”

“Or even go near it after dark,” Dessie says.

“The fairy hill on Mossie’s land?” Bobby asks, coming out of his vision. “Mossie does plow around it. And even for that, he brings his rosary beads. Just in case, like.”

“Really?” Rushborough asks, enthralled. “It wasn’t just my grandmother, then?”

“Ah, God, no,” Senan assures him. “My own mother, God rest her soul”—he crosses himself, and the rest of the guys follow promptly—“she was coming home one night, past that field, from visiting her daddy that wasn’t well. A winter night, and everything quiet as the grave, only then didn’t she hear music. ’Twas coming from that same mound. The sweetest music you ever did hear, she said, and she stood there listening a minute, only then it put a great fear on her. She ran all the way home like the devil himself was at her heels. Only when she got in the door, didn’t she find all of us childer outa our minds with worry, and my daddy putting on his coat to go look for her, because she shoulda been home hours before. A two-mile walk was after taking her three hours.”

“Mrs. Maguire wasn’t one of them women that do be imagining all sorts,” Sonny tells Rushborough. “There was no nonsense about her. She’d fetch you a clatter round the ear as soon as look at you.”

“Our bedroom window does look out over that field,” Dessie says. “Many’s the time I’ve seen lights around that mound. Moving, like; circling round, and crossing back and forth. You couldn’t pay me to go in that field at night.”

“Good heavens,” Rushborough breathes. “Do you think the landowner would let me have a look at it? In the daytime, of course.”

“You’d have to tell Mossie who your granny was,” Con says. “He wouldn’t let some aul’ tourist wander around his land. He’d run them off with his slash hook, so he would. But if he knows you’re from round here, sure, that’s different. He’d show you the place, right enough.”

“I’ll bring you down there any day you like,” Johnny promises. Johnny has been staying detached from Rushborough, letting the other men explore him at will. Cal doesn’t find this reassuring. It means the evening is unfolding right along the lines that Johnny wants it to.

“Would you?” Rushborough asks, thrilled. “That would be wonderful. Should I bring anything? I have some vague memory of my grandmother mentioning an offering of some kind, but it’s so long ago—might it have been cream? Possibly it sounds foolish, but—”

“That’s what my granny woulda put there, all right,” Mart agrees. Cal can tell from the quizzical angle of his head that Mart is finding Rushborough very interesting.

“Just don’t step on the mound,” Francie says ominously. “Mossie’s nephew stood on that mound, one time, to show he wasn’t afraid of any aul’ superstition. He got a tingling right up his legs, like pins and needles. Couldn’t feel his feet for a week.”

“God between us and harm,” Mart says solemnly, raising his glass, and they all drink to that. Cal drinks along with them. He feels, more and more, like they could all do with something between them and harm.

He’s seen these guys leprechaun up before, at innocent tourists who were proud of themselves for finding a quaint authentic Irish pub that wasn’t in any of the guidebooks. They convinced one earnest American student that the narrow window in the corner had been blessed by Saint Leithreas and that if he could climb through it he’d be sure to get to heaven, and he was halfway through before an outraged Barty came out from behind the bar and hauled him down by the seat of his pants. They tried it on Cal, too, in his first couple of months here, but he declined to dress all in green in order to ingratiate himself with the local Little People, or to walk round the pub backwards to avert bad luck when he dropped his change. This is different. They’re not heaping extravagant quantities of blarney down this guy’s throat to see what he’ll swallow. This is a subtler, meticulous operation, and a serious one.

“Now there’s a mighty idea!” Johnny cries, turning from P.J. to the alcove. “P.J.’s after pointing out that we can’t welcome a man home without a bit of a singsong.”

P.J. looks like he didn’t notice himself having any such idea, but he nods obligingly. “Oh, my goodness,” Rushborough says, delighted. “A singsong? I haven’t been to one of those since I was a boy at my grandmother’s house.”

“Get out the guitar there,” Sonny orders Con, and Con turns promptly to get it from the corner behind him: clearly this was in the plan. If Rushborough wants heritage, he’s going to get it. “Ah, begod,” Mart tells the table happily, “there’s nothing like an aul’ singsong.”

The normal repertoire in Seán Óg’s, on evenings that turn musical, is a mix of traditional Irish stuff and everything from Garth Brooks to Doris Day. Tonight it’s wall-to-wall green, in a tasteful array of shades: homesickness, rebellion, booze, and pretty girls, mainly. P.J. starts off with “Fields of Athenry” in a rich, melancholy tenor, and Sonny follows up by bellowing out “The Wild Rover” and slapping the table till the glasses jump. Rushborough is entranced. On the maudlin songs he leans his head back against the banquette, with his eyes half closed and his pint forgotten in his hand; on the rowdy ones, he beats time on his thigh and joins in the choruses. When the men invite him to take his turn, he sings “Black Velvet Band” in a light, clear voice that almost fits in, except for the accent. He knows all the words.

The crowd in the pub shifts and eddies, without hurry but with method. People pause at the entrance to the alcove, listening to the singing, or swapping news, or waiting for the bar to clear; after a few minutes they move on, leaving the space for someone else. None of them intrude on the alcove. Cal didn’t expect them to. Soon enough they’ll want to meet Rushborough, but that can wait for another day. For now they’re content to circle, collecting impressions to discuss at leisure: his clothes, his hair, his accent, his manner; whether he looks like a Feeney, whether he looks like a millionaire, whether he looks handy in a fight; whether he looks like a fool. Cal isn’t sure what a millionaire is supposed to look like, but to him this guy looks like he could do plenty of damage in a fight, and he doesn’t look like any kind of fool at all.

The singing comes round to Cal. He doesn’t try to add to the greenery—even if he wanted to, it would make a dumb tourist out of him, and he’s not aiming to be a tourist right now. He sticks with “The House of the Rising Sun.” Cal has the right voice for pub singsongs, a big man’s voice, nothing showy or impressive, but good to listen to. He spots Johnny noticing that he takes his turn as a matter of course, and not liking it.

When he’s accepted his round of applause, and Dessie has launched into “Rocky Road to Dublin,” Cal heads for the bar. Barty, topping up two glasses at once, nods to him but can’t take the breath to talk. His face is sweating harder.

“Women,” Mart says with deep disapproval, appearing at Cal’s shoulder. “This pub’s full of women tonight.”

“They get everywhere,” Cal agrees gravely. “You reckon they should stay home and take care of the kids?”

“Ah, Jaysus, no. We’ve the twenty-first century here now. They’ve as much right to a night out as anyone. But they change the atmosphere of a place. You can’t deny that. Look at that, now.” Mart nods at the girl in the pink dress, who has started dancing with one of her girlfriends in a few square inches of space between the tables and the bar. A large guy in a too-tight shirt is hovering hopefully nearby, making spasmodic movements that are presumably intended to match theirs. “Is that what you’d expect to see in this pub on a Monday night?”

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like that in here,” Cal says truthfully.

“That’s disco behavior, is what that is. That’s what you get when there’s women in. They oughta have pubs of their own, so they can have their pint in peace without some potato-faced fucker trying to get into their knickers, and I can have mine without your man’s hormones getting in the air and spoiling the taste.”

“If they weren’t here,” Cal points out, “you’d be stuck looking at nothing better’n my hairy face for the evening.”

“True enough,” Mart concedes. “Some of the women in here tonight are a lot more scenic than yourself, no harm to you. Not all of them, but some.”

“Enjoy ’em while you can,” Cal says. “Tomorrow the scenery’ll be back to normal.”

“Near enough, maybe. Not all the way back, as long as we’ve got Bono over there drawing the crowds.”

They both glance over at the alcove. Rushborough has launched into a song about some guy getting killed by the British.

“Whatever the Croppy Boy sounded like,” Mart says, “he didn’t fuckin’ sound like that.”

“You show him how it’s done,” Cal says.

“I will, in a while. I’ve to lubricate the vocal cords a bit more first.”

Cal, interpreting this correctly, catches Barty’s eye and points to Mart. Mart nods, accepting his due, and goes back to watching Rushborough, between moving shoulders. All the men in the alcove are gazing at the guy. Cal is out of patience with them. As far as he’s concerned, Rushborough has a face that would make any sensible man want to walk away, not sit there goggling at him like he hung the moon.

“Will I tell you something, Sunny Jim?” Mart says. “I don’t like the cut of that fella.”

“Nope,” Cal says. “Me neither.” He’s been trying to guess what this guy might do, if he figures out he’s been taken for a ride. He finds he doesn’t much like the possibilities.

“He’s who he says he is, anyway,” Mart informs him. “I thought he mighta been some chancer that spun Johnny a line, trying to scam a bitta cash outa the lot of us. Johnny’s not as cute as he thinks he is. A real first-class scam artist could make mincemeat outa him, and be long gone before Johnny ever noticed a thing.”

“That’s the impression I got,” Cal says. He hasn’t decided which option he likes less: Trey’s father being a good con artist, or being a bad one. He accepts the pints from Barty and hands Mart his Guinness.

“But this fella knows about that fairy mound, and putting cream by it. He knows about the time Francie’s great-granddad fell down the well and it took two days to get him back up. He knows the Fallon women had a name for being the finest knitters in this county. And didja hear when he sang ‘Black Velvet Band’? I never heard anyone but Ardnakelty people sing ‘A guinea she took from his pocket.’ Everyone else has the girl robbing a watch. His people came from around here, all right.”

“Maybe,” Cal says. “But he still doesn’t strike me as the type to go misty-eyed when someone sings ‘The Wearing of the Green.’ ”

“That article there,” Mart says, eyeing Rushborough over his glass, “doesn’t strike me as the type that’s ever gone misty-eyed over anything in his life.”

“So what’s he here for?”

Mart’s bright glance swivels to Cal. “A coupla year back, people were asking the same about you, Sunny Jim. A few of them still do.”

“I’m here because I landed here,” Cal says, refusing to bite on that. “This guy’s come looking.”

Mart shrugs. “Maybe he doesn’t give a shite about the heritage; ’tis gold he wants, pure and simple. And he thinks it’ll be easier to slip a quare deal past us if we take him for a sap that’d be happy with a handful of shamrock.”

“If that guy believes there’s gold out there,” Cal says, “he’s got more to go on than some story his granny told him.”

“I’ll tell you this much, anyway,” Mart says. “Johnny believes it’s there. He wouldn’t go to all this trouble, dragging himself away from the bright lights and the film stars back to an inferior environment like this, just for the grand or two he’ll get if there’s nothing in them fields.”

“You figure he knows something we don’t?”

“I wouldn’t put it past him. Maybe he’s saving it up for the right moment, or maybe ’tis something he’s planning on keeping to himself. But I’d say he knows something.”

“Then why’s he fucking around salting the river?”

“Now that,” Mart says, “I don’t know. Maybe he’s only aiming to be sure, to be sure. But I’ll tell you what’s occurred to me, Sunny Jim. Anyone that gives Johnny that bitta cash is in deep. Psychologically, like. Once you’ve sunk a few hundred quid into this, you won’t back out; you’ll let Paddy Englishman take whatever samples he wants, and dig up any field he chooses. Getting the lads to salt that river might be Johnny’s wee bitta insurance, against anyone changing his mind.”

It occurs to Cal that the insurance won’t just be psychological. Like Mart figured, salting the river is probably some kind of fraud. Anyone who gives Johnny that money will be giving him something he can hold over their heads, or at least try to.

Trying to hold anything over these guys’ heads would not be a smart move. Johnny ought to know that, but Cal reached the conclusion, well before he met Johnny, that the guy is careful not to know anything that might make him uncomfortable.

“So you’re out, huh?” he says.

“Ah, God, no,” Mart says, shocked. “Sure, I’d be going in forewarned; my psychology wouldn’t be running wild on me. I wouldn’t stay in one minute longer than I wanted to. To be honest with you, if the rest of them shams decide they’re on for it, I might haveta join in just outa the kindness of my heart. They’ll make a pig’s arse outa the whole operation if I’m not there to advise them.” He eyes the group in the alcove with tolerant scorn. “They wouldn’t have a baldy notion where the gold oughta lie in the river; they’ll throw it in wherever takes their fancy. And I’d bet my life they’ll just sprinkle in the dust as it is, the way half of it’ll be washed downstream before it can sink to the bottom, and we’ll never see it again. What they oughta do is roll the dust into little pellets of mud, the way it’ll go straight to the bottom, and then the mud’ll dissolve away and leave it ready for your man to find.”

“Sounds to me like you’re in,” Cal says.

“I hate a botched job,” Mart says. He cocks his head at Cal. “How about you, Sunny Jim, now you’ve had a look at His Lordship? Are you in or out?”

“I’m here,” Cal says. “That’s all I am, right now.” The sense of being in cahoots with Mart doesn’t sit well with him. “So,” he says, “the fairy mound’s real, huh?”

Mart flicks him a grin that says he knows what’s in Cal’s head and is enjoying it. “ ’Tis there, anyhow. And Mossie does plow around it, but that could just be outa laziness: his daddy and his granddaddy did it, so he hasn’t the initiative to do anything different. Beyond that, I’m making no guarantees. You’re welcome to go down there and look for the fairies any night you like. Tell Mossie I sent you.”

“And make sure I have a few shots of poteen first,” Cal says. “To shorten my odds.”

Mart laughs and claps him on the shoulder, and turns to nod to a stout guy leaning on the bar. “How’s she cuttin’?”

“Not a bother,” says the guy. “Your man’s having a grand aul’ night, anyhow.” He nods at Rushborough.

“Sure, who wouldn’t, in a fine establishment like this,” Mart says. “ ’Tis a while since I saw you in here yourself.”

“Ah, I’d be in every now and again,” the guy says. He takes his pint from Barty. “I’ve been thinking of selling a few acres,” he mentions. “That field down near the river.”

“I’m not in the market,” Mart says. “You could try Mr. Hooper here. He could do with something to keep him occupied.”

“I’m not offering. I’m only saying. If there was gold on it, or even if your man went looking for gold on it, I could triple the price.”

“Out you go with a spade, then,” Mart says, smiling at him, “and start digging.”

The guy’s jowls set mulishly. “Maybe your man’s granny said there was gold on your land, but she never said there was none anywhere else. Johnny Reddy can’t be keeping this to himself and his pals.”

“I’m no pal of Johnny Reddy’s, bucko,” Mart says. “But I’ll say this for the man: he’s wise to start small. Let you bide your time, and see what way the wind blows.”

The guy grunts, still dissatisfied. His eyes are on the alcove, where Dessie is putting plenty of bawdy winks into a song about a guy coming home drunk and finding various unexpected items in his house, and Rushborough is laughing. “See you again,” he says, picking up his glass and giving Mart a brief nod. “I’ll be back in soon enough.”

“D’you know what Johnny Reddy’s real failing is?” Mart asks, considering the guy’s back as he wades through the crowd towards his table. “He doesn’t think things through. It wouldn’t take a psychic to predict that fella, and plenty of others like him, but I’d put money on it that he never once occurred to Johnny.”

“That guy doesn’t look like a happy camper,” Cal says.

“I did consider sending him in to have the chats with Mr. Rushborough,” Mart says, “just to watch what wee Johnny made of that. But that fella has no subtlety about him. He’d go putting a sour taste in Paddy Englishman’s mouth, and then where would we be at all?”

“Do people know?” Cal asks. And, when Mart cocks his head inquiringly: “That Johnny’s aiming to salt the river.”

Mart shrugs. “There’s no telling who’d know what, around here. I’d say there’s a dozen different stories going around this same pub, and a few dozen different ways that people wanta get in on the action. We’re in for an interesting wee while. Now come on back, before that chancer robs our seats on us.”

The night proceeds. Gradually the singing runs out of momentum; Con puts his guitar back in the corner, and Rushborough buys him and everyone else in the alcove a double whiskey. The pub has started to run out of momentum, too. The non-locals have reached the maximum level of drunkenness at which they still consider it reasonable to drive home on unfamiliar roads. The old people are getting tired and heading for their beds, and the young ones are getting bored and taking bags of cans back to each other’s houses, where they’ll have more scope. The girl in pink leaves with the potato-faced fucker’s arm around her waist.

By midnight, all that’s left in the pub is a dense fug of sweat and beer breath, Barty wiping down tables with a rag, and the men in the alcove. The ashtrays have come out. Rushborough smokes Gitanes, which lowers him further in Cal’s esteem: Cal feels that, while people are entitled to their vices, anyone who isn’t a dick finds a way to pursue those vices without giving everyone in the room a sore throat.

“I’m proud,” Rushborough informs them all, throwing an arm around Bobby’s shoulders, “I’m proud to claim this man as my cousin. And all of you, of course all of you, I’m sure we’re all cousins of some degree. Aren’t we?” He looks about half drunk. His hair is ruffled out of its sleek sweep, and he’s tilting a little bit, not drastically, off center. Cal can’t get a good enough look at his eyes to decide whether it’s real.

“ ’Twould be a miracle if we weren’t,” Dessie agrees. “All this townland’s related, one way or another.”

“I’m this fella’s uncle,” Sonny informs Rushborough, pointing his cigarette at Senan. “A few times removed. Not far enough for me.”

“You owe me fifty years’ worth of birthday presents, so,” Senan tells him. “And a few quid in communion money. I don’t take checks.”

“And you owe me a bitta respect. Go on up there and get your uncle Sonny a pint.”

“I will in me arse.”

“Look,” Rushborough says, with sudden decision. “Look. I want to show you all something.”

He lays his right hand, palm down, in the middle of the table, among the pint glasses and the beer mats and the flecks of ash. On the ring finger is a silver band. Rushborough turns it around, so that the bezel is visible. Set into it is a pitted fragment of something gold.

“My grandmother gave me this,” Rushborough says, with a wondering reverence in his voice. “She and a friend found it, when they were children digging in the friend’s garden. About nine years old, she says they were. Michael Duggan was the friend’s name. They found two of these, and kept one each.”

“My great-uncle was Michael Duggan,” Dessie says, awed enough to talk quietly for once. “He musta lost his.”

The men lean in, bending low over Rushborough’s hand. Cal leans with them. The nugget is about the size of a shirt button, polished by time on the high surfaces, ragged in the crevices, studded with small chunks of white. In the yellowish light of the wall lamps, it shines with a worn, serene glow.

“Here,” Rushborough says. “Take it. Have a look at it.” He pulls the ring off his finger, with a reckless little laugh like he’s doing something wild, and passes it to Dessie. “I don’t really take it off, but…God knows, it could have been any of yours as easily as mine. I’m sure your grandparents were digging away in the same gardens. Side by side with mine.”

Dessie holds up the ring and peers at it, tilting it this way and that. “Holy God,” he breathes. He lays one fingertip on the nugget. “Wouldja look at that.”

“ ’Tis beautiful,” Con says. Nobody makes fun of him.

Dessie passes the ring, held over a cupped hand, to Francie. Francie, giving it a long stare, nods slowly and unconsciously.

“That’ll be quartz,” Mart informs them all. “The white stuff.”

“Exactly,” Rushborough says, turning eagerly towards him. “Somewhere in that mountain, there’s a vein of quartz, shot through with gold. And over thousands of years, much of it was washed down out of the mountain. Onto Michael Duggan’s land, and all of yours.”

The ring passes from hand to hand. Cal takes his turn, but he barely sees it. He’s feeling the change in the alcove. The air is drawing in, magnetized, around the shining fragment and the men who surround it. Till this moment, the gold was a cloud of words and daydreams. Now it’s a solid thing between their fingers.

“The thing is,” Rushborough says, “the important thing is, you see, my grandmother didn’t just discover this by chance. The one thing that frightens me, the one thing that’s been giving me pause about this whole project, is the possibility that her directions are no good. That they’ve been passed down over so many generations, they got warped along the way, to the point where they’re not accurate enough to lead us to the right spots. But you see, when she and her friend Michael found this”—he points to the ring, cupped like a butterfly in Con’s big rough hand—“they weren’t digging at random. They picked the spot because her grandfather had told her his father said there was gold there.”

“And he was right,” Bobby says, starry-eyed.

“He was right,” Rushborough says, “and he didn’t even know it. That’s one of the marvelous aspects: her grandfather didn’t actually believe in the gold. As far as he was concerned, the whole thing was a tall tale—something invented by some ancestor to impress a girl, or to distract a sick child. Even when my grandmother found this, he thought it was just a pretty pebble. But he passed the story on, all the same. Because, true or false, it belonged to our family, and he couldn’t let it disappear.”

Cal takes a glance at Johnny Reddy. Johnny hasn’t said a word to him all evening. Even his eyes have stayed carefully occupied, far from Cal. Now, he and Cal are the only people who aren’t gazing at the scrap of gold. While Cal is watching Johnny, Johnny is watching the other men. His face is as intent and consumed as theirs. If this ring is what Johnny was keeping up his sleeve, it’s having all the impact he could have hoped for.

“The gold is out there,” Rushborough says, gesturing at the dark window and the hot night outside, thrumming with insects and their hunters. “Our ancestors, yours and mine, they were digging it up thousands of years before we were born. Our grandparents were playing with it in those fields, just as they’d play with pretty pebbles. I want us to find it together.”

The men are still. Their land is changing from a thing they know inside out to a mystery, a message to them in a code that’s gone unsuspected all their lives. Out in the darkness, the paths they walk every day are humming and shimmering with signals.

Cal feels like he’s not in the room with them, or like he shouldn’t be. Whatever’s on his land, it’s not the same thing.

“I feel incredibly lucky,” Rushborough says quietly. “To be the one who, after all these generations, is in a position to salvage this story and turn it into a reality. It’s an honor. And I mean to live up to it.”

“And no one but this load of gobshites to give you a hand,” Senan says, after a moment of silence. “God help you.”

The alcove explodes with a roar of laughter, huge and uncontrolled. It goes on and on. There are tears rolling down Sonny’s face; Dessie is rocking back and forth, barely able to breathe. Johnny, laughing too, reaches over to clap Senan on the shoulder, and Senan doesn’t shrug him off.

“Oh, come on,” Rushborough protests, slipping his ring back onto his finger, but he’s laughing too. “I can’t imagine better company.”

“I can,” Sonny says. “Your woman Jennifer Aniston—”

“She’d be no good with a shovel,” Francie tells him.

“She wouldn’t need to be. She could just stand at the other end of the field, and I’d dig my way over to her like the fuckin’ clappers.”

“Here, you,” Bobby says, digging a finger into Senan’s solid arm, “you’re forever giving me shite about why aliens would want to come to the back-arse of Ireland. Does this answer that for you, does it?”

“Ah, whisht up, wouldja,” Senan says, but his mind isn’t on it. He’s watching Rushborough’s hand, the turn and pulse of light as he gestures.

“Aliens need gold now, do they?” Mart inquires, taking up Senan’s slack.

“They need something,” Bobby says. “Or otherwise why would they be here? I knew there hadta be something out there that they were after. I reckoned it was plutonium, maybe, but—”

“Fuckin’ plutonium?” Senan bursts out, goaded out of his thoughts by this level of idiocy. “You reckoned the whole mountain was about to blow up in a big mushroom cloud—”

“Your trouble is you don’t fuckin’ listen. I never said that. I only said they’re bound to need fuel, if they’re coming all this—”

“And they’re using gold for fuel now, is it? Or are they trading it for diesel on the intergalactic black market—”

Cal leaves them to it and goes back up to the bar. Mart joins him again, in case Cal should forget by whose favor he’s here tonight.

“Hey,” Cal says, motioning to Barty to make it two pints.

Mart leans on the bar and works a knee that’s stiff from sitting. He has an eye on the alcove, over Cal’s shoulder. “Didja ever hear the story of the three wells?” he asks.

“Well, well, well,” Cal says. He’s not in the right frame of mind to humor Mart.

“That’s the one,” Mart says. “Well, well, well.”

He’s watching, not Rushborough, but Johnny. Johnny has his head bent sideways over a lighter, flicking it hard. In that unguarded second his face is slack, almost helpless, with some emotion. Cal thinks it might be relief.

“Like I told you,” Mart says. “We’re in for an interesting wee while.”

Cal says, “What’ll you do if it all goes wrong?”

Mart’s forehead crinkles. “What d’you mean, like?”

“If Rushborough starts smelling a rat.”

“ ’Tisn’t my place to do anything, Sunny Jim,” Mart says gently. “This is Johnny Reddy’s wee enterprise. I’m only here for the view. The same as yourself. Remember?”

“Right,” Cal says, after a second.

“Don’t worry,” Mart reassures him. He pulls out his tobacco pouch and starts rolling a cigarette on the bar, with leisurely, expert fingers. “If you forget, I’ll remind you.”

Barty swears bitterly at a rip in one of his new bar stools. In the alcove, someone whistles, high and shrill, cutting through the laughter and the voices like an alarm.