The Hunter

The tight-wound, glittery buzz that was coming off him earlier is gone; he’s breezy as spring. He’s poured the men lavish drinks, and put ashtrays at the smokers’ elbows. He’s asked after their parents by name and by ailment. He’s told stories about the wonders of London, and stories that make the men bellow with laughter, and stories where he has to skip bits with a wink to the men and a tilt of his head at Trey. He’s charmed stories out of each one of them, and been enthralled or impressed or sympathetic. Trey’s feeling towards him, which was pure anger, is becoming shaded over by scorn. He’s like a performing monkey, doing his tricks and somersaults and holding out his cap to beg for peanuts. She preferred her fury clean.

She did her own tricks for the men when they arrived, just like her dad wanted, showing them into the sitting room and asking after their furniture, nodding and saying That’s great thanks when they praised it. Her anger towards them is untouched.

Johnny waits till halfway into the third drink, when the men have relaxed deep into their chairs but before their laughter takes on an uncontrolled edge, to thread Cillian Rushborough into the conversation. Bit by bit, as he talks, the room changes. It becomes focused. The overhead bulb isn’t bright enough, and the fringed lampshade gives its light a murky tinge; when the men stay still to listen, it smears deep, tricky shadows into their faces. Trey wonders how well her father remembers these men; how many of the fundamental and silent things about them he’s forgotten, or overlooked all along.

“Well, holy God,” Mart Lavin says, leaning back in his armchair. He looks like Christmas just came early. “I underestimated you, young fella. Here I thought you’d be offering us some shitey music festival, or bus tours for Yanks. And all the time you’ve got the Klondike waiting at our doors.”

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” Bobby Feeney says, awed. Bobby is little and round, and when his eyes and mouth go round as well, he looks like a toy that’s meant to roll. “And me out in them fields every day of my life. I never woulda guessed.”

P.J. Fallon has his gangly legs wound around the legs of his chair, to help him think. “Are you positive, now?” he asks Johnny.

“Course he’s not fuckin’ positive,” Senan Maguire says. “A few bedtime stories, is all he has. I wouldn’t cross the road for that.”

Senan is a big man, with a ham of a face and a low tolerance for shite. Trey reckons Senan is her dad’s main obstacle. Bobby Feeney and P.J. Fallon are both easily led, Francie Gannon goes his own way and lets other people be fools if they want, nobody listens to Dessie Duggan, everyone knows Sonny McHugh would do anything for a few quid, and Con McHugh is the youngest of eight so it doesn’t matter what he thinks. Mart Lavin disagrees with everything he encounters, often purely for the pleasure of arguing about it, but everyone is used to that and discounts it. Senan has no patience. If he decides this is foolishness, he’ll want to stamp it out altogether.

“That’s what I thought, at the start,” Johnny agrees. “Some aul’ story his granny heard, and maybe misremembered, or maybe just made up to keep a child entertained; sure, that’s not enough to go on. Only this lad Rushborough, he’s not a man you’d write off. Ye’ll see what I mean. He’s a man you’d take seriously. So I said I’d sit down with him and a map of the townland, and listen to what he had to say.”

He looks around at the men. Francie’s bony face is expressionless and Senan’s is pure disbelief, but they’re all listening.

“Here’s the thing, lads. Whatever’s at the bottom of this story, it’s not made up outa thin air. And if it’s been misremembered along the way, it’s funny how it’s been misremembered to add up awful neat. Them spots Rushborough’s granny told him about, they’re actual places. I can pin down every one of them, within a few yards. And they’re not just scattered around here, there and everywhere. They’re in a line, give or take, from the foot of this mountain down through all your land to the river. Rushborough reckons there usedta be another river there, that’s dried up now, and it washed the gold down from the mountain.”

“There was another river there, all right,” Dessie says, leaning forward. Dessie always raises his voice a little too loud, like he expects someone to try and talk over him. “The bed of it goes across my back field. Gives me a pain in the hole with the plowing, every year.”

“There’s dried-up riverbeds everywhere,” Senan says. “That doesn’t mean there’s gold in them.”

“What it means,” Johnny says, “is there’s something in Rushborough’s story. I don’t know about the rest of ye, but I wouldn’t mind finding out how much.”

“Your man sounds like a fuckin’ eejit,” Senan says. “How much will this cost him, hah? Machinery, and labor, and fuck knows what else, and no guarantee that he’ll get a cent out of it.”