The Hunter

“I am in my arse. That flimflam merchant’s not getting his hands on a penny of mine. But I might go in with the other lads to buy the bitta gold. For the crack, like.”

“They’re gonna do it?” Cal asks. This doesn’t jibe with what he knows of Ardnakelty people, or of their views on Reddys. “All of them?”

“I wouldn’t say all of them. Not for definite. They’re wary—specially Senan and Francie. But they haven’t said no. And the more of them that say yes, the more the rest won’t want to miss their chance.”

“Huh,” Cal says.

Mart watches him wryly, over his mug. “You thought they’d have better sense, hah?”

“I didn’t think those guys would put money on Johnny Reddy’s say-so.”

Mart leans back in his chair and takes a pleasurable slurp of his tea. “Like I’m after telling you,” he says, “Johnny’s got a great gift for bringing out the eejitry in people. Sheila was no eejit, sure, till he came sniffing around, and now look at her. But ’tis more than that. What you haveta keep in mind about every man jack in this townland, Sunny Jim, is that he’s the one that stayed put. Some of us wanted to and some didn’t, but once you’ve got the land, you’re going nowhere. ’Tis all you can do to find someone to mind the farm for a week while you head for Tenerife to admire a few bikinis.”

“You can sell land,” Cal says. “Lena sold hers.”

Mart snorts. “That’s not the same at all, at all. She’s a woman, and that wasn’t her land, ’twas her husband’s. I’d sell my own kidneys before I’d sell my family’s land; my father’d come outa the grave and take the head off me. But we can go the whole year round without seeing a new face, or a new place, or doing anything we haven’t done all our lives. Meanwhile we’ve all got brothers WhatsApping us photos of wallabies, or posting on Facebook how they’re baptizing childer in the jungles of Brazil.” He smiles at Cal. “It doesn’t bother me, sure. When I get to feeling restless, I do a bitta reading about something new, to keep my mind on an even keel.”

“Geology,” Cal says.

“Sure, that was years ago. These days I do be looking into the Ottoman Empire. They were some boyos, them Ottomans. You’d want to get up early to take them on.” Mart adds an extra half-spoon of sugar to his tea. “But some of the lads haven’t got the same resources. They balance along grand most of the time—they’re used to it, sure. But we’re all a wee bit off-kilter, this summer, waking up every morning to fields that need rain worse and worse and aren’t getting it. We’re on edge, is what we are; our balance is upsetted already. And then along comes the bold Johnny, prancing in here with his stories about film stars and millionaires and gold.” He tastes the tea and nods. “Look at P.J., now, over the wall. Do you reckon he’s got the resources to keep his mind on an even keel when Johnny’s offering him the sun, moon, and stars?”

“P.J. seems pretty down-to-earth to me,” Cal says.

“No harm to P.J.,” Mart says. “He’s a fine man. But he’s worn to a frazzle, fretting day and night about what he’s going to feed his sheep if this weather doesn’t break, and he’s got nothing else in his head to distract him when he needs a bit of a rest from that. No wallabies and no Ottomans, only the same aul’ life he’s had since he was born. And now Johnny’s after bringing him something brand-new and shiny. P.J.’s bedazzled, and why wouldn’t he be?”

“I guess,” Cal says.

“And even the rest of them, that mightn’t be as easily bedazzled as P.J.: they’re allured, is what they are. They’ve got a bad case of allurement.”

“Fair enough,” Cal says. He doesn’t feel he’s in a position to judge them for that. He supposes what brought him to Ardnakelty could be described, from some angles, as a bad case of allurement. That got knocked out of him good and hard. The landscape still holds the power to bedazzle him, simply and wholly, but when it comes to everything else about the place, he sees too many of its layers for that. He and it have reached an equilibrium, amicable even if not particularly trusting, maintained with care and a certain amount of caution on all sides. All the same, taking everything into account, he can’t bring himself to regret following where that allurement led him.

“And here’s the thing of it,” Mart says, pointing the spoon at Cal. “Who’s to say they’re wrong? You’re sitting there thinking P.J.’s a fool for getting mixed up with Johnny, but even if Paddy Englishman was to change his mind about the samples, maybe ’tis well worth the few hundred quid to P.J., to have something new to think about for a while. The same as it’s worth it to me for the entertainment. Maybe it’ll do him a lot more good than spending that money on a psychologist who’d tell him he’s suffering from stress because his mammy took him outa nappies too early. Who’s to say?”

“You’re the one that was calling them all a bunch of eejits, five minutes ago, for wanting to get involved,” Cal reminds him.