The Hunter

“That’s what the songs say,” Mart agrees. Cal knows Mart has despised Johnny Reddy for most of his life, but he’s watching him with lively appreciation just the same. Mart’s personal boogeyman is boredom. As he’s explained to Cal at length, he considers it to be a farmer’s greatest danger, well ahead of the likes of tractors and slurry pits. Boredom makes a man’s mind restless, and then he tries to cure the restlessness by doing foolish shite. Whatever Mart may think of Johnny Reddy, his return is likely to relieve boredom.

“There’s truth in the old songs,” Johnny says, still gazing. “You don’t see it till you’re gone.” He adds, as an afterthought, “And I’d left the family on their own long enough.” Cal finds himself disliking Johnny Reddy more by the minute. He reminds himself that he was primed to do that, no matter what the man turned out to be like.

“C’mere till I tell you who died while you were off gallivanting,” Mart says. “D’you remember Dumbo Gannon? The little fella with the big ears?”

“I do, o’ course,” Johnny says, coming back from the wide open spaces to give this the full attention it deserves. “Are you telling me he’s gone?”

“Took a heart attack,” Mart says. “Massive one. He was sat on the sofa, having a bit of a rest and a smoke after his Sunday dinner. His missus only went out to get the washing off the line, and when she came back in, he was sitting there stone dead. The aul’ Marlboro still burning away in his hand. If she’d been a bit longer with that washing, he coulda taken the whole house with him.”

“Ah, that’s sad news,” Johnny says. “God rest his soul. He was a fine man.” He has his face composed in the appropriate mixture of gravity and sympathy. If he had a hat, he’d be holding it to his chest.

“Dumbo ran you off his land once,” Mart says, fixing Johnny with a reminiscent gaze. “Bellowing and roaring out of him, so he was. What was the story there, bucko? Did you ride his missus, or what did you do at all?”

“Ah, now,” Johnny says, winking at Mart. “Don’t be giving me a bad name. This fella here might believe you.”

“He will if he’s wise,” Mart says, with dignity.

They’re both looking at Cal, for the first time in a while. “Too wise to fall for your guff,” Johnny says. This time he winks at Cal. Cal keeps gazing at him with mild interest till he blinks.

“Mr. Hooper always takes me at my word,” Mart says. “Don’t you, Sunny Jim?”

“I’m just a trusting kinda guy,” Cal says, which gets a grin out of Mart at least.

“There’s a few of the lads coming up to my place tomorrow night,” Johnny says casually, to Mart and not Cal. “I’ve a coupla bottles in.”

Mart watches him, bright-eyed. “That’ll be nice,” he says. “A lovely homecoming party.”

“Ah, just an aul’ chat and a catch-up. I’ve a bit of an idea going.”

Mart’s eyebrows jump. “Have you, now?”

“I have. Something that could do this place a bitta good.”

“Ah, that’s great,” Mart says, smiling at him. “That’s what this townland needs: a few ideas brought in. We were getting stuck in the mud altogether, till you came back to rescue us.”

“Ah, now, I wouldn’t go that far,” Johnny says, smiling back. “But a good idea never hurts. Let you come up to my place tomorrow, and you’ll hear all about it.”

“D’you know what you oughta do?” Mart asks, struck by a thought.

“What’s that?”

Mart points his crook at the mountains. “D’you see that aul’ lump of rock there? I’m fed up to the back teeth driving them roads every time I wanta get over that mountain. The potholes’d rattle the eyeballs right outa your head. What we need is one of them underground pneumatic railways. London had one right back in aul’ Victoria’s time, sure. A tunnel with a train carriage in it, just like the Tube, only they’d a big fan at each end. One would blow and the other would suck, and that carriage’d fly straight through the tunnel like a pea out of a peashooter. Twenty-five mile an hour, it went. Sure, you’d be through that mountain and out the other side in no time at all. You put your mind to it and get us one of those. If the Brits can do it, so can we.”

Johnny is laughing. “Mart Lavin,” he says, shaking his head affectionately. “You’re the same as ever.”

“Theirs went wrong in the end, though,” Mart informs him. “One day they shut it down, just like that; sealed off the tunnel, no word of an explanation. Fifty or a hundred years later, an explorer found the tunnel again, deep down under London. The carriage was still sealed up inside. A dozen men and women still sitting in their seats, in their top hats and hoop skirts and pocket watches, every one of them nothing but bones.” He smiles at Johnny. “But, sure, yours wouldn’t go wrong. We’ve all the finest technology these days. Yours’d be only great. You get onto that, now.”

After a moment Johnny laughs again. “You oughta be the ideas man, not me,” he says. “Come on up to my place and you’ll hear it all. See you tomorrow night.” To Cal, he says, “Good to meet you.”