The Hunter

Cal knows he needs to make nice with Johnny, but this plan is undermined somewhat by his urge to kick the guy’s ass. He’s not going to do it, obviously, but just allowing himself to picture it gives him some satisfaction. Cal is six foot four and built to match, and after spending the last two years fixing up his place and helping out on various neighbors’ farms, he’s in better shape than he’s been since he was twenty, even if he still has a certain amount of belly going on. Johnny, meanwhile, is a weedy little runt who looks like his main fighting skill is convincing other people to do it for him. Cal reckons if he got a running start and angled his toe just right, he could punt this little shit straight over the tomato patch.

“I’ll try and make sure she doesn’t saw off a thumb,” he says. “No guarantees, though.”

“Ah, I know,” Johnny says, ducking his head a little sheepishly. “I’m feeling a wee bit protective, is all. Trying to make up for being away so long, I suppose. Have you children of your own?”

“One,” Cal says. “She’s grown. Lives back in the States, but she comes over to visit me every Christmas.” He doesn’t like talking about Alyssa to this guy, but he wants Johnny to know that she hasn’t cut him off or anything. The main thing he needs to get across, in this conversation, is harmlessness.

“It’s a fine place to visit,” Johnny says. “Most people’d find it a bit quiet-like to live in. Do you not find that?”

“Nope,” Cal says. “I’ll take all the peace and quiet I can get.”

There’s a shout from across Cal’s back field. Mart Lavin is stumping towards them, leaning on his crook. Mart is little, wiry, and gap-toothed, with a fluff of gray hair. He was sixty when Cal arrived, and he hasn’t aged a day since. Cal has come to suspect that he’s one of those guys who looked sixty at forty, and will still look sixty at eighty. Rip shoots off to exchange smells with Kojak, Mart’s black-and-white sheepdog.

“Holy God,” Johnny says, squinting. “Is that Mart Lavin?”

“Looks like,” Cal says. At the start, Mart used to stop by Cal’s place every time he got bored, but he doesn’t come around as much any more. Cal knows what brought him today, when he’s supposed to be worming the lambs. He caught sight of Johnny Reddy and dropped everything.

“I shoulda known he’d still be around,” Johnny says, pleased. “You couldn’t kill that aul’ divil with a Sherman tank.” He waves an arm, and Mart waves back.

Mart has acquired a new hat from somewhere. His favorite summer headgear, a bucket hat in orange and khaki camouflage, disappeared from the pub a few weeks ago. Mart’s suspicions fell on Senan Maguire, who had been the loudest about saying that the hat looked like a rotting pumpkin, brought shame on the whole village, and belonged on a bonfire. Mart put this down to jealousy. He believes adamantly that Senan succumbed to temptation, took the hat, and is sneaking around his farm in it. The pub arguments have been ongoing and passionate ever since, occasionally coming close to getting physical, so Cal hopes the new hat will defuse the situation a little bit. It’s a broad-brimmed straw thing that, to Cal, looks like it should have holes in it for a donkey’s ears.

“Well, God almighty,” Mart says, as he reaches them. “Look what the fairies left on the doorstep.”

“Mart Lavin,” Johnny says, breaking into a grin and holding out a hand. “The man himself. How’s the form?”

“Fine as frog hair,” Mart says, shaking hands. “You’re looking in great nick yourself, but you always were a dapper fella. Put the rest of us to shame.”

“Ah, will you stop. I couldn’t compete with that Easter bonnet.”

“This yoke’s only a decoy,” Mart informs him. “Senan Maguire robbed my old one on me. I want him thinking I’ve moved on, so he’ll drop his guard. You couldn’t watch that fella. How long are you gone now?”

“Too long, man,” Johnny says, shaking his head. “Too long. Four years, near enough.”

“I heard you were over the water,” Mart says. “Did them Brits not appreciate you well enough over there?”

Johnny laughs. “Ah, they did, all right. London’s great, man; the finest city in the world. You’d see more in an afternoon there than you would in a lifetime in this place. You should take a wee jaunt there yourself, someday.”

“I should, o’ course,” Mart agrees. “The sheep can look after themselves, sure. Then what brought a cosmopolitan fella like yourself back from the finest city in the world to the arse end of nowhere?”

Johnny sighs. “This place, man,” he says, tilting his head back becomingly to look out over the fields at the long tawny hunch of the mountains. “There’s no place like it. Doesn’t matter how great the big city is; in the end, a man gets a fierce longing on him for home.”