The Hunter

Trey nods. She’s no wiser. She can tell he believes it, but he always does; it’s one of his gifts, taking every word out of his own mouth as gospel. She had forgotten what it’s like talking to him, how misty and muddy.

Johnny leans in a little closer, his smile widening. “I’ve no need to go anywhere, sure,” he says confidentially. “Will I tell you something?”

Trey shrugs.

“I’ve a plan,” Johnny says. “When I’m through, the only place we’ll be going is a lovely new house with a big bedroom for each one of ye. And you won’t have to be walking around with holes in your jeans, neither.”

He waits for her to ask. When she doesn’t, he settles his arms better on the gate, preparing to tell the story anyway. “There’s a fella I met,” he says, “over in London. I was in an Irish pub, having a pint with a few mates and minding my own business, when this lad came over to me. English fella. I was wondering what he was at in a place like that—the pub’s a bit rough, now, and he was the type you’d expect to see drinking brandy at a fancy hotel. The coat on him, and the shoes: you could tell they cost more than I’d see in a month. He said he’d been asking around for an Ardnakelty man, and I was pointed out to him.”

Johnny rolls his eyes whimsically. “Course I reckoned this was bad news, one way or another. I’m no pessimist, but Ardnakelty never worked in my favor before. I was about to tell him to fuck off for himself—which woulda been the worst mistake of my life—only he offered to get me a pint, and I was a bit short of a few bob that day. And then didn’t it turn out his granny was from Ardnakelty. One of the Feeneys, she was. She went over to London before the war, doing the nursing, and married a big-shot doctor. She usedta tell this fella stories about the place, how beautiful it was, how she’d run wild on the mountains—same as you do, sure.” He smiles at Trey. “And she told him something else, as well. You know there’s gold somewhere at the bottom of these mountains, don’t you?”

“Teacher said that,” Trey says. “In Geography.”

He points a finger at her. “Fair play to you, paying attention in school. You’ll go far. Teacher was right. The men that lived here thousands of years ago, they knew where to look for it. There’s more ancient gold pieces found in this country than anywhere in the whole of Europe, did Teacher tell you that? Bracelets as wide as your hand, collars bigger than dinner plates, round bits like coins that they sewed onto their clothes. Your great-great-granddads and great-great-grannies woulda been dripping with it, at feasts. They’da been out on this mountain, round their fires, shining so bright you could hardly look at them. They were digging it up by the handful, musta been, big nuggets of it, as easy as we’d cut turf.”

He mimes grabbing a fistful and holding it high. His voice has caught alight, rising. His excitement tugs at Trey, but she doesn’t like it. It doesn’t fit in the still night. She feels like he’s drawing notice, in ways that aren’t safe.

“Only then the Brits came,” Johnny says, “and that land was taken away from our people, and they emigrated, or they starved—and, bit by bit, the knowledge got lost. Except…” He leans in closer. His eyes are bright. “It wasn’t lost altogether. There were still a few families that passed it down, all those hundreds of years. This fella in the pub—Cillian Rushborough, his name is—his granny’s granddad told her where to look. And she told Cillian.”

He cocks his head at her, teasing, waiting for her to ask more. In the moonlight, with his eyes shining and a half-smile on his face, he looks barely older than Brendan.

Trey says, cutting to the end, “And your man Cillian told you, and now you’re gonna dig up the gold.” That’s all he came home for: money. The realization is a sweep of relief. She’s not stuck with him forever. If he finds nothing, and his novelty value in the village wears off, he’ll be gone.

Johnny laughs. “Ah, God, no. Only a fool would hand over a treasure map to a man he doesn’t know from Adam, and Cillian’s no fool. But he needed a man from Ardnakelty. The directions his granny gave him, they’re all Greek to him: ‘In the old riverbed that’s dried up now, just by the northwest corner of that field the Dolans bought offa Pa Lavin…’ He needs someone that knows his way around the place. And if he blew in here on his own, there’s not a man that would let him go digging on their land. But with me on board…”

He leans in closer. “I’ll tell you a secret,” he says, “that I’ve learned along the way. The best thing you can have in life is a bit of a shine on you. A bitta possibility; a bitta magic. A shine. People can’t stay away from that. Once you’ve got it, it doesn’t matter a tap whether they like you, or whether they respect you. They’ll convince themselves they do. And then they’ll do whatever you want from them. D’you know where I was last night?”