The Hunter

The downward slope gets steep in places, but Trey’s legs are accustomed to this mountain, and she keeps her stride. Her runners raise small spurts of dust. She lifts her elbows to let the air dry her armpits, but there’s not enough breeze to make a difference. Below her, the fields sprawl out, a mosaic of varying greens in odd-angled shapes that Trey knows as well as the cracks on her bedroom ceiling. The haymaking is underway: tiny baling machines trundle back and forth, deftly tracking the unexplained curves of the stone walls and leaving yellow cylinders in their wake like droppings. The lambs are white scraps skittering across the grass.

She cuts off the path, over a drystone wall tumbledown enough that she doesn’t have to help Banjo clamber it, across an expanse of thigh-high gnarled weeds that used to be a field once, and into a thick band of spruce trees. The branches sift and scramble the sunlight into a confusing dazzle, and their shade cools her neck. Above her small birds are drunk on summer, zipping back and forth, all trying to be the loudest. Trey whistles a trill up at them and grins when they freeze into silence, trying to figure her out.

She comes out of the trees to the cleared ground behind her house. The house got a fresh coat of butter-colored paint and some patches to the roof a couple of years back, but nothing can paper over its air of exhaustion. Its spine sags, and the lines of the window frames splay off-kilter. The yard is weeds and dust, blurring into the mountainside at the edges, scattered with things Liam and Alanna were using for toys. Trey has brought each of her school friends here once, to show she’s not ashamed of it, and hasn’t asked them again. Her default position is to keep things separate. It’s made easy by the fact that none of her friends come from this townland anyway. Trey doesn’t hang around with people from Ardnakelty.

As soon as she steps inside the kitchen door, she knows the house is different. The air is taut and focused, with no scattering of movement and noise. Before she has time to do more than register that fact and the smell of cigarette smoke, she hears, from the sitting room, her father’s laugh.

Banjo lets out a preliminary huff of a bark. “No,” Trey says, low and fast. He shakes off heather and dirt, his ears flapping, and lunges for his water bowl.

Trey stands still for a minute, in the wide band of sunlight falling through the door onto the worn linoleum. Then she goes into the hall, moving quietly, and stops outside the sitting room. Her father’s voice runs clear and merry, tossing out questions that get back an excited babble from Maeve or a mumble from Liam.

Trey thinks about leaving, but she wants to see him, to know for sure. She pushes open the door.

Her dad is sitting smack in the middle of the sofa, leaning back and grinning, with his arms spread wide around Alanna and Maeve. They’re grinning too, but uncertainly, like they just got a great big Christmas present that they might not want. Liam is squashed into a corner of the sofa, staring at their dad with his mouth open. Their mam is sitting on the edge of an armchair, with her back straight and her hands flat on her thighs. Even though she’s been there all along and their dad hasn’t been there in four years, Sheila is the one who looks like she can’t feel at home in the room.

“Well, God almighty,” Johnny Reddy says, his eyes twinkling at Trey. “Would you look at that. Little Theresa’s after growing up. What age are you now? Sixteen? Seventeen?”

Trey says, “Fifteen.” She knows that, if anything, she looks younger.

Johnny shakes his head, marveling. “I’ll be beating the young lads away from the door with a stick before I know it. Or am I too late? Have you got yourself a fella already? Or two or three?” Maeve giggles sharply, and looks up at his face to check if that’s right.

“Nah,” Trey says flatly, when it becomes clear he’s waiting for an answer.

Johnny lets out a sigh of relief. “I’ve time to find myself a good stick, so.” He tilts his chin at the chair, which Trey has forgotten to put down. “What’s that? Didja bring me a present?”

“Gonna mend it,” Trey says.

“She makes money at it,” Sheila says. Her voice is clearer than usual, and there are high spots of color on her cheekbones. Trey can’t tell whether she’s glad or angry about him being back. “That’s what bought the new microwave.”

Johnny laughs. “A chip off the old block, hah? Always got a bitta something on the go. That’s my girl.” He winks at Trey. Maeve wriggles under his arm, to remind him she’s there.

Trey remembered him big, but he’s only a middling-sized man, and slight with it. His hair, which is the exact same mousy brown as hers, flops across his forehead like a teenager’s. His jeans and his white T-shirt and his black leather jacket are the newest things in the house. The sitting room looks even messier around him.

She says, to her mam, “Taking this to Cal’s.” She turns around and goes out to the kitchen.