Trey doesn’t look up. “Like you said,” she says. “He’s my dad.”
“Right,” Cal says. He rubs a hand over his mouth, hard. He wonders whether she’s thinking that, when Johnny skips town, he’ll take her with him. “Yeah. But like you said, you’re not a baby. If you don’t want to be mixed up in his doings, you’ve got a right to make that call. Daddy or not.” He has a crazy impulse to offer her things, pizza, a fancy new lathe, a pony, whatever she wants, if she’ll just step away from the lit fuse and come home.
Trey says, “I wanta do it.”
There’s a small silence in the room. Sunlight and the lazy burr of haying machines come in through the windows. Rip has rolled over to have his belly rubbed.
“Just remember,” Cal says. “You can change your mind anytime.”
“How come you even care if those lads get fucked over?” Trey demands. “They’re nothing to you. And they done plenty on you, before.”
“I just want peace,” Cal says. All of a sudden he’s exhausted, down to his bones. “That’s all. We had that, up to a couple of weeks ago. It was good. I liked it.”
“You can have peace. Just get outa it. Leave the rest of them to it.”
That leaves Cal stymied again. He can’t tell Trey that he won’t walk out while she’s in; it would be unfair to put that on her. This barely even feels like a conversation, just a series of stone walls and briar patches.
“It’s not that simple,” he says.
Trey blows out an impatient puff of air.
“It’s not, kid. Say I pull out: what are the rest of them gonna think, when it all goes belly-up? They’re gonna think I knew and didn’t tell them. That’s not gonna be any kind of peace.”
She says, still not looking up from the dogs, “My dad said to tell you to back off and mind your own business.”
“Did he now,” Cal says.
“Yeah. He says you’ve got nothing, and if you go talking you’ll only land me in shite.”
“Huh,” Cal says. He wishes he had just dumped Johnny in a bog while he had one handy. “I guess that’s one way to look at it.”
Trey shoots him one brief glance he can’t read. She says, “I want you outa it as well.”
“You do,” Cal says. He feels like a stone just dropped into his stomach. “How come?”
“Just do. ’S not your business.”
“Right,” Cal says.
Trey watches him, rubbing Rip’s belly and waiting for more. When Cal has nothing else to offer, she says, “So will I say to my dad that you’ll leave it?”
“Anything I’ve got to say to Johnny, I said last night. And,” Cal says, even though he knows he should shut his mouth, “if I find something to add, I’ll tell him myself. I won’t use you as a goddamn go-between.”
For a minute he thinks Trey’s going to argue. Instead she says abruptly, standing up and spilling dogs everywhere, “Can we just do that chair?”
“Sure,” Cal says. Out of nowhere he feels, crazily, like tears might be stinging his eyes. “Let’s do that.”
They give the chair more care and delicacy than it really deserves, going back three times over the turning of the leg, sanding it finer and finer till a baby could suck on it. Mostly they work in silence. Summer air wanders in and out of the window, bringing the smells of silage and clover, picking up sawdust motes and twirling them idly in the wide bars of sunlight. When the sun moves off the window and the heat starts to mellow towards dinnertime, Trey dusts off her outgrown jeans and goes home.
Thirteen
That night the house is stilclass="underline" everyone is hard asleep, after last night’s disturbances. Trey doesn’t want to be in bed. Her life has stopped feeling normal; it’s crowded with too many people and too many wants, till she doesn’t feel safe taking her eye off it, even to sleep. Instead she stays on the sofa, being hot and watching worn-out late-night telly by the dirty yellow light of the standing lamp. Some smarmy tosser is trying to make an unhappy-looking couple build an extension shaped like a box even though they hate it. Trey is in no humor for the likes of him. She hopes the couple give him a kick up the hole and build whatever they want.
When light powerful as day ignites outside and floods in around the curtains, she doesn’t move. Her mind is a blank; there’s nothing in it to answer this. For a wild lurch of a second she thinks Bobby Feeney’s UFOs are real and have landed, even though she doesn’t believe in that shite. For another lurch she thinks she must have fallen asleep and it’s morning, but on the telly the same tosser is still quacking away. Trey switches him off. In the sudden silence she hears engines revving, loud and deep.
She stands in the middle of the sitting room, listening. There’s no movement from the rest of the house. Banjo, tucked away in his corner by the sofa, is snoring peacefully. In the blue-white glare the room looks like something in a nightmare, familiar objects suddenly incandescent and humming with menace. Outside, the engines pulse on.
Trey moves, very quietly, down the corridor towards her bedroom. She’s thinking of the window, but before she even reaches the door she can see the same blue-white light spilling out through the opening. In the glow from the window Maeve’s sleeping face is luminous and unnatural, like she’s deep underwater, unreachable.
“Mam,” Trey says, not loud enough to be heard. She has no idea whether she wants her mam to wake up. She has no idea what she expects her mam to do.
Maeve turns sharply on the bed and makes a protesting sound. Trey doesn’t want to deal with Maeve awake and demanding explanations. “Mam,” she says, louder.
In her parents’ room there’s a stir and a murmur, and then quick footsteps. Sheila opens the door in a flowered nightie, hair messy on her shoulders. Behind her, Johnny, in boxers and a T-shirt, is pulling on trousers.
“There’s something outside,” Trey says.
“Shhh,” Sheila says. Her eyes flick around the corridor. Maeve is sitting up, open-mouthed; Liam is calling.
Johnny pushes past Sheila and Trey and heads down the corridor, towards the front door. He stands still, his ear cocked to the door, listening. The rest of them gather behind him.
“Daddy,” Maeve says. “What is it?”
Johnny ignores her. “Come here,” he says to Alanna, straightening up, but she backs away with a high muffled whimper. “You, then,” he says, catching Liam’s arm. “Don’t be whinging, for fuck’s sake; no one’s going to hurt you. Come on.” He pushes Liam in front of him, opens the door, and stands in the doorway.
The light hits them full in the face from all directions. It turns the night air to a white haze. The rev of the engines is louder, a full deep snarl. On every side amid the haze, too blinding to look at straight, are circles of condensed light, paired like eyes. It takes Trey a minute to understand: high beams.
“What’s the story, lads?” Johnny calls cheerily, raising his arm to shield his eyes. The note of his voice jars crazily against the scene. “Is there a party on and no one told me?”
Silence; just the growl of the engines and a strange flapping sound, like wind-whipped washing on the line. Trey, craning past her dad’s shoulder, sees flames. In the middle of the bare front yard is a galvanized metal barrel. Inside it is fire. The flames surge avidly, feet high, a tall ragged column swaying in the restless breeze.
“Ah, here, lads,” Johnny calls, shifting his voice to a mix of tolerance and exasperation. “I’ve children trying to sleep. Go home to your beds. If ye’ve something to say to me, come up tomorrow and we’ll have a chat like dacent men.”
Nothing. The breeze catches a flaming scrap from the barrel and scuds it away till it blinks out, high against the sky. Trey squints, trying to see the men or even the cars, but the lights are too bright; everything behind them is erased into darkness. The air is fever-hot.