The Hunter

When the lights in the farmhouses below start to blink out, she heads home. The front of the house is dark, but there’s a haze of yellow light spilling out behind it: someone is still awake. As Trey pushes open the gate, Banjo stiffens and lets out a low warning bark. Trey stops, ready to run.

“Call off the dogs,” says a voice not far away, light and amused. “I’m harmless.”

A shadow peels itself off a tree trunk and comes towards her at a leisurely saunter. “Wouldja look at this night,” her dad says. “Isn’t it only gorgeous?”

“Mam knows where I was,” Trey says.

“I know, sure. She said you were down at Lena Dunne’s, polishing up an aul’ bed. You’re great to give her a hand.” Johnny takes a deep breath, smiling a little up at the stars. “Smell that air. My God, there’s nothing in all of London that’d compare to that smell.”

“Yeah,” says Trey, to whom the air smells much the same as usual. She heads for the house.

“Ah, come here,” her dad calls after her. “Don’t be wasting a night like this. We’ll stay out here a bit. Alanna won’t go asleep—overexcited, like. We’ll let your mammy settle her in peace.” He beckons with his head to Trey and arranges himself comfortably, leaning his arms on the barred metal gate. Trey’s dad likes being comfortable, and he’s good at it; he can make anywhere look like he belongs there.

Trey remembers what Cal said about not pissing him off. She thinks it’s stupid and knows he’s right, both at the same time. She goes over and stands by the gate, an arm’s length from her dad, with her hands in the hoodie pockets.

“I’ve missed your mammy,” Johnny says. “She’s still a beautiful woman—you’re too young to see that, maybe, but it’s the truth. I’m lucky to have her. Lucky she waited for me all this time, and didn’t run off with some fancy man that came knocking at the door selling notions.”

Trey can’t picture her mam having the energy to run off with anyone, and anyway no one ever comes knocking at their door. She had forgotten his smell, cigarettes and soap and an aftershave with some rich spice in it. Banjo is sniffing it too, and glancing up at her for clues on how to classify it. “Sit,” she says.

“I can’t get over the size of you,” her dad says, smiling at her. “Just a little biteen of a thing that’d run from her own shadow, you were, when I saw you last. And now look at you: near grown up, working away, in and outa houses all over this townland. I’d say you know half the people round here better than I would. D’you get on with them all right?”

“Lena’s sound,” Trey says. She can feel him wanting something from her, but she doesn’t know what.

“Ah, yeah. Lena’s grand. And I called in to your friend Cal Hooper. I reckoned if you’re going down there on the regular, I oughta get to know him a bit. Make sure he’s all right.”

Trey goes cold straight through with outrage. He said it like he was doing her a favor. He had no right anywhere near Cal. She feels like he stuck his hand in her mouth.

“He seems like a dacent-enough fella. For a policeman.” Johnny laughs. “Jaysus, a child of mine hanging around a Guard. Did you ever hear the like?”

Trey says nothing. Her dad grins at her. “Is he a nosy bollox, yeah? Always asking questions? Where were you on the night of the fifteenth?”

“Nah,” Trey says.

“I’d say he has the whole place afraid to put a toe outa line. If he caught the lads drinking poteen, heaven help us, he’d have them hauled up to the Guards in town before they’d know what hit them.”

“Cal drinks poteen,” Trey says. “Sometimes.” She thinks about punching her dad in the face, or running away and sleeping in an abandoned cottage somewhere on the mountainside. A couple of years back she would probably have done both. Instead she just stands there, with her fists in the pockets of Lena’s hoodie. Her anger is too dense and tangled to find a way out of her.

“Well, that’s something, anyway,” her dad says, amused. “He can’t be too bad if he can handle Malachy Dwyer’s stuff. I’ll have to bring some down to him one day, and we can make a night of it.”

Trey says nothing. If he does that, she’ll get Cal’s rifle and blow his fucking foot off, and see can he make his way down the mountain to Cal’s after that.

Johnny rubs a hand over his head. “Are you not speaking to me?” he asks ruefully.

“Got nothing to say,” Trey says.

Johnny laughs. “You always were quiet,” he says. “I thought it was only that you couldn’t get a word in edgewise, with Brendan about.”

Brendan has been gone more than two years. His name still feels like a jab to Trey’s throat.

“If you’re annoyed with me for going away, you can go on and say it. I won’t get angry with you.”

Trey shrugs.