The Hunter

“That detective’s coming for Daddy,” Trey says.

That puts a stop to Maeve’s fussing. She pulls the sheet off her head and stares. “Why? Did he kill your man?”

“Rushborough was dodgy,” Trey says. “Daddy was only protecting us. Now we’ve to protect him. I’m gonna stop the detective getting him.”

“You are not. How?”

Outside, the car horn beeps. “Don’t have time to explain,” Trey says. “The detective’s coming. You haveta help Mammy get the little ones away, quick.”

Maeve is giving Trey a suspicious stare. Her hair is a mess from being under the covers. “Daddy’s not even here. He went out with some guys.”

“I know, yeah. They’re gonna rat him out if we don’t move quick.” Trey is sick to death of coming up with the stories people want to hear. All this talking feels unsafe and fake, like she’s pretending to be someone else. She wants Maeve gone, all of them gone, so she can get on with things in quiet. “Come on,” she says.

After a moment Maeve kicks off the sheet and gets up. “You better not fuck up,” she tells Trey, as they head out.

Sheila has the car pointed at the gate and the engine running. “Wait till you see the car,” she says to Trey, out the window. “And then run like mad, after.”

“Yeah,” Trey says.

Maeve slams the car door. Sheila reaches a hand out the window and grips Trey’s arm for a second. “Jesus,” she says. That smile is back on her. “I never reckoned on you.” Then she puts the car into gear and takes off, out the gate and down the road.

Trey watches the car’s dust cloud wander lazily across the yard, golden in the last sunlight splitting through the pines, and then dissipate. The sound of the engine fades. The birds, unfazed by all the yelling and carry-on, are settling for evening, flipping back and forth between trees and bickering over perches. Under the dusky air, its windows shuttered by the reflections of trees in the glass, the house looks like it’s been empty for weeks. For the first time Trey can remember in all her life, it feels peaceful.

She supposes she should walk through it one more time, but she has no impulse to do that. She’s already taken Brendan’s watch out of its slit in her mattress and strapped it on her wrist. She would have liked to take away the coffee table that she made at Cal’s, but she has nowhere to take it. Apart from that, there’s nothing she wants from here.

She picks up the spare petrol can from the dirt of the yard, where her mother left it, and heads for the shed.

—

The shadow of the mountain has stretched far across the fields, and the sky has dimmed to a dull, filmed lilac. The hole in the dirt is growing, but slowly. Johnny is soft, a limp-muscled wisp next to the dense, unspared bodies around him; he’s panting, and the gaps between spade strikes are getting longer. Cal barely notices him. Johnny, after weeks at the center of Ardnakelty’s universe, isn’t important any more; nothing he does will make a difference now. Cal is watching the men watching him.

“Come on, lads,” Johnny says, raising his head and shoving hair out of his eyes with a forearm. “We’ll find fuck-all here. If it’s gold ye want, at least let me take ye where Rushborough said it’d be. I’m not guaranteeing anything, I never did, but—”

“You’re not deep enough,” Senan says. “Keep going.”

Johnny leans on the spade. Sweat shines on his face and darkens the underarms of his shirt. “If ye want your money, I’ll pay ye back. All this drama, there’s no need for—”

Con says, “We don’t want your money.”

“Lads,” Johnny says. “Listen to me, lads. Give me a few weeks, just, and I’ll be outa your hair for good. I swear to God. I’m only waiting till it won’t bring that Nealon fella after me, is all. Then I’ll be gone.”

“You’re waiting for him to settle on some of us, instead,” Bobby says. Mostly Bobby is a funny little man, but the depth of his anger has burned that away; no one would make fun of him today. “Get to fuck.”

“Ye don’t want Nealon pulling me in. I’m telling ye. I’d never say a word about what went in the river, ye know I wouldn’t, but there’s stuff on my phone. If he starts looking into me, we’ll all be in the shite together. If ye’ll just hang on a few—”

“Hold your whisht,” Francie says. His voice comes down hard across Johnny’s, flattening it. “Keep digging.”

—

The mountain feels different. Trey stands balanced on the stone wall opposite her gate, watching the road far below for her mam’s car. The fields should have the dreamy ease of evening, but instead they’re swollen with a strange bruised glow, under a thickening haze of cloud. Closer around Trey, shadows flick silently among the underbrush, and branches twitch in no wind. The air simmers; she feels watched from every direction at once, by a hundred hidden, unblinking eyes. She remembers how she used to move about this mountain when she was a kid, feeling herself passed over as too light for notice, just another half-grown wild thing to be allowed free rein. She’s worth watching now.