The Hunter

Johnny reels back, laughing and holding up his hands in mock apology. “Ah, God, I take it back, don’t hurt me! No harm to your work—sure, haven’t I seen it myself, don’t I know you wouldn’t get finer anywhere in this country? Go on, we’ll say anywhere north of the equator. Is that better?”

Trey shrugs.

“Once they’re all here, you can sit yourself down over in that corner, out of the way. Get yourself a lemonade or something to drink. Say nothing unless I ask you a question—sure, that’ll be no bother to you, you’ve a talent for that.” He smiles at her, his eyes crinkling up. “And if I do, you just go on and agree with me. Don’t worry your head about why. Can you do that?”

“Yeah,” Trey says.

“Good girl yourself,” Johnny says. Trey thinks he’s going to pat her shoulder, but he changes his mind and winks at her instead. “Now let’s put a shine on this place. Them dollies in the corner, bring them into Alanna’s room, or Maeve’s, or whoever owns them. And whose runners are those under the chair?”

Trey picks up dolls’ clothes, toy cars, crisp packets and socks, and puts them away. The shadow of the mountain is starting to slide across the yard, towards the house. Liam and Alanna have got a bucket of water and are slopping it on the ground to soften it, so their garden fork will stick in better. Sheila shouts to them, from the kitchen, to come in for their baths. They ignore her.

Johnny buzzes around the room, setting out saucers for ashtrays with stylish flicks of his wrist, skimming dust off surfaces with a kitchen cloth, leaping backwards to admire his work and then forwards to fine-tune it, whistling through his teeth. The whistle has a tense jitter to it, and he never stops moving. It comes to Trey that her dad isn’t excited; he’s nervous, that this might not work out. More than that: he’s afraid.

Trey sets her mind to coming up with a polite way to ask how the McHughs are liking their new patio benches. She wants her dad to need her in on this. The other thing she was going to ask Cal, if he reckoned her dad’s plan might not be a load of shite, was how to scupper it.

—

The men fill up the room till it feels airless. It’s not just the size of them, broad backs and thick thighs that creak the chairs when they shift; it’s the heat off them, the smoke of their pipes and cigarettes, the smell of earth and sweat and animals from their clothes, the outdoors swell of their deep voices. Trey is crammed into a corner by the sofa, with her knees pulled up out of the way of sprawling feet. She’s left Banjo out in the kitchen, with her mam. He wouldn’t like this.

They arrived as the long summer evening was seeping away, slanting the mountain’s shadow far across the fields and filtering tangles of sunlight through the trees. They came separately, as if the gathering was accidental. Sonny and Con McHugh swept in on a wave of noise, arguing about a call the ref made in last weekend’s hurling match; Francie Gannon slouched in silently and took a chair in the corner. Dessie Duggan made a crack about not being able to tell whether Trey is a girl or a boy, which he thought was so funny that he repeated it all over again to Johnny, in the exact same words and with the exact same giggle. P.J. Fallon wiped his feet twice on the mat and asked after Banjo. Mart Lavin handed Trey his big straw hat and told her to keep it out of Senan Maguire’s reach. Senan took the opportunity to tell Trey, loudly, how she and Cal did a mighty job fixing the shambles Bobby Feeney had made of the Maguires’ rotted window frame, while at his shoulder Bobby puffed up with offense. Their faces have the pucker of constant low-level worry—all the farmers’ do, this summer—but tonight has brightened them: for a few hours, anyway, they can think about something other than the drought. Their cars, parked at angles that take no notice of each other, crowd the bare yard.

Trey has seen all these men since she was a baby, but she’s seen them giving her a brief neutral glance on the road or in the shop, or—the last couple of years—discussing furniture repairs over her head with Cal. She’s never seen them like this, taking their ease together with a few drinks on them. She’s never seen them here. Her dad’s friends, before he went away, were quick-moving men who picked up bits of work here and there, on other men’s farms or in other men’s factories, or who didn’t work at all. These are solid men, farmers who own their land and work it well, and who four years ago would never have thought of coming up the mountain to sit in Johnny Reddy’s front room. Her dad was right in this much, anyway: he’s brought a change with him.