The Hunter

Johnny sighs. “I went because I wanted to do better for you,” he says. “All of ye, and your mammy. You might not believe that, and I wouldn’t blame you, but at least have a think about it before you decide it’s only rubbish. There was nothing I could do for you here. You know yourself: this shower of gombeens act like the Reddys are nothing but shite on their shoes. Am I wrong?”

Trey shrugs again. She doesn’t feel like agreeing with him, but he’s right, or near enough. People are nicer to her and her family, the last couple of years, but the note underneath hasn’t changed, and she wouldn’t want their niceness even if it was real.

“There wasn’t one of them would give me a chance. Everyone knows my daddy was a waster, and his daddy before him, and that’s all they want to know. There’s a hundred jobs I’d be able for around here, but I was lucky to get a day shoveling shite. I’d go up for a factory job I could do in my sleep, and be turned away before I could open my mouth—and the job’d go to some feckin’ eejit that could barely tie his own shoelaces, but his daddy drank with the manager. And there was no point in trying Galway, or Dublin. This bloody country’s too small. Someone woulda known someone whose mam was from Ardnakelty, and they’da scuppered my chances just like that.” He snaps his fingers.

Trey knows the dark edge to his voice. It used to mean he was going to slam out and come home drunk, or not at all. It’s fainter now, just an echo, but her calf muscles still twitch, ready to run if she needs to.

“That wears a man down. It wears him till he loses sight of himself. I was turning bitter, taking it out on your mammy—I never usedta have a cruel bone in my body, but I was cruel to her, those last coupla years. She didn’t deserve that. If I’da stayed, I’da only got worse. London was the nearest I could be and still have a chance to get somewhere.”

He looks at her. His face is pulled into the taut lines she remembers from those same nights, but those are fainter too. “You know I’m telling the truth, am I right?”

“Yeah,” Trey says, to make him leave it. She doesn’t give a shite why her dad went. Once he was gone, Brendan was the man of the family. He felt like it was his job to look after the rest of them. If their dad had stayed, Brendan might still be there.

“Don’t be holding it against me, if you can help it. I done my best.”

“We’ve done grand,” Trey says.

“You have, of course,” Johnny agrees warmly. “Your mammy says you’ve been a great help to her. We’re proud of you, the pair of us.”

Trey doesn’t respond. “It musta been hard on you,” her dad says sympathetically, switching tone. She can feel him circling her, looking for ways in. “I’d say it didn’t help that Brendan went. The two of ye were always fierce close.”

Trey says, keeping her voice flat, “Yeah.” Brendan was six years older than her. Up until Cal and Lena, he was the only person who ever appeared to think about Trey by choice, rather than because he had to, and the only person who regularly made her laugh. Six months before Trey met Cal, Brendan walked out of the house one afternoon and never came back. Trey doesn’t think about those six months, but they’re layered into her like a burn ring inside a tree.

“Your mammy said he went looking for me. Is that what he said to you?”

“He said nothing to me,” Trey says. “I heard he went to Scotland, maybe.” This is true.

“He never found me, anyway,” her dad says, shaking his head. “I never thought he’d take it that hard, me leaving. Do you ever hear anything from him?”

The wind fingers restlessly through the trees behind them. Trey says, “Nah.”

“He’ll be in touch,” her dad says confidently. “Don’t you worry. He’s only off sowing his wild oats.” He grins, out to the slopes of dark heather. “And praying for a crop failure.”

Brendan is buried somewhere in these mountains, Trey doesn’t know where. When she’s out there she keeps watch for any sign—a rectangle of mounded earth, a space where the brush hasn’t had time to grow tall again, a tatter of cloth brought to the surface by weather—but there’s more of the mountains than she could look at in a lifetime. There are people in the townland who know where he is, because they put him there. She doesn’t know who they are. She watches for signs in people’s faces, too, but she doesn’t expect to find them. People in Ardnakelty are good at keeping things hidden.

She gave Cal her word that she’d say nothing and do nothing about it. Trey, seeing as she doesn’t have much else, puts a fiercely high value on her word.

“I came back,” Johnny points out cheerfully. “See? Brendan’ll do the same.”

Trey asks, “Are you gonna stay?”

It’s a plain question—she wants to know what she’s dealing with—but her dad takes it as a plea. “Ah, sweetheart,” he says, giving her a soft-eyed smile. “I am, of course. I’m going nowhere. Daddy’s home now.”