“I got no idea,” he says. “I don’t read minds. If anyone said Nealon’s got a witness, ask them.”
“There’s a terrible loada possibilities,” Mart says with a sigh, “when you’re dealing with the likes of Paddy Englishman. Even dead, you couldn’t watch the fucker. The man struck me as being that many shades of dodgy, you wouldn’t know which one to keep your eye on.” He glances sideways at Cal. “Tell us, Sunny Jim: what did your Theresa think of him? Sure, she saw more of him than any of us, what with him being a friend of her daddy’s. Did she say he was dodgy?”
“Course she didn’t,” Malachy tells him. “If she was uneasy around him, this fella wouldn’ta let the man near her. Wouldja?”
Cal feels danger rise in the air like heat-shimmer off a road. “I didn’t need any kid to tell me that guy was squirrelly,” he says. “I got that far all by myself.”
“You did,” Mart concedes. “You said to me, right up at that bar, you didn’t like the cut of him.”
“I’ve a pain in my hole with Rushborough,” P.J. declares suddenly and with force. “I’d had enough of him even before this, and ’tis only after getting worse. I’ve my hands full, with this drought. I’m feeding out winter rations; I’ll have to sell stock if this keeps up. I can’t afford to be thinking about anything else. He came in here distracting me, getting my hopes up. He’s dead now, and he’s still distracting me. I want the fella gone.”
P.J. mostly doesn’t get listened to, but this draws a ripple of nods and low noises of agreement. “You and all the rest of us,” Senan says, raising his glass. “We shoulda run the fucker outa town the day he walked in.”
“Young Con McHugh’s only devastated,” P.J. tells Cal, his long face creased with concern, “so he is. With the weather the way it is, he says, it’d take a miracle for him to come outa this year OK. He thought your man Rushborough was the miracle, like.”
“More fool him,” Senan says, knocking back the last of his pint.
“We all thought it,” Bobby says quietly. “You can’t be blaming Con.”
“Then more fool all of us.”
“Con’s grand,” Francie says. “He’ll have a kiss and a cuddle with the missus and he’ll get over it. ’Tis Sonny who’s not great. Sonny talks big, but he gets the moods something fierce.”
“That’s why he’s not here to congratulate you,” P.J. explains to Cal. “He woulda been, only he hadn’t the heart.”
“Sonny wishes he’da been the one that kilt Rushborough,” Francie says. “He never touched him, but he wishes he’d taken his shotgun and blown your man clean away.”
“We all do,” Senan says. “Your man came swanning in here, making believe he was our salvation. All the while he was fucking us right up the arse.”
Mart, who’s been watching in silence from his corner, moves. “Paddy Englishman was nothing,” he says. “Forget about him. He was no more than vermin that wandered onto our land and got itself shot, and good riddance.”
“He was no cousin of mine,” Bobby says, simply and a little sorrowfully. “I shoulda known. I did know, underneath; I just didn’t wanta. Like when I asked Lena to marry me. All the things that disappoint me worst, I knew them all along.”
“He was no cousin or neighbor or nothing to any of us,” Mart says. “There was no reason he shouldn’t try to con us outa our money, the same as he woulda conned anyone else he ran across. That’s what vermin does: scavenges what it finds. Johnny Reddy’s a different matter.”
“Wee Johnny sold out his own people,” Francie says. His deep, slow voice feels like a dark tremor running in the floor, up through the banquettes and the table. “That’s dirty. A dirty thing to do.”
“Sold us to an Englishman, no less,” Malachy says. The men stir at the word. Cal feels something old in the air, stories too long ago to tell, but built into these men’s bones. “Rounded us up and handed us over to him like livestock.”
“Not only us,” Mart says. “He handed over our parents and our grandparents and all. Fed Paddy Englishman fulla their stories, fattened him up on those till he could talk like he had genuine Grade-A Ardnakelty blood, and then let him loose here. He did a good job, did wee Johnny; I’ll say that for him. Once your man gave us a round of ‘Black Velvet Band,’ I fell for it, hook, line, and sinker.”
“Your man knew about my great-granddad falling down the well,” Francie says. “That story was none of his fuckin’ business. The man nearly died; the whole townland worked their arses off, getting him out. They didn’t do it for some fuckin’ English gombeen in poncey shoes to try and con me outa what’s mine.”
“I’ll tell you what else of ours Johnny sold to Rushborough,” Mart says to Cal. “He sold him our bad luck. It’s been a hard year for us, boyo, and getting harder every day without rain. Other years, we mighta laughed in Paddy Englishman’s face, but this summer we were ripe and ready for any flimflam merchant that’d offer us some hope to think about when we were low. Johnny knew that, and he handed it over.”
The men are still shifting, slow and heavy, turning their necks and rolling their shoulders like men readying for a fight.
“D’ye know the word ‘outlaw’?” Mart asks the table in general. “D’ye know where that comes from? Back in the day, a man that done the dirt on his people was put outside the law. If you could catch him, you could do whatever you chose to him. You could tie him up hand and foot and hand him over to the authorities, if you wanted. Or you could beat the shite outa him, or hang him from a tree. The law didn’t protect him any more.”
“You’re the law,” Francie says to Cal. “Would you be in favor of that? It’d be awful convenient. Some wee shitehawk, that you probably didn’t like anyhow, wouldn’t be your responsibility any more.”
“He wouldn’t be my responsibility anyway,” Cal says. “I’m no kinda law around here.”
“Exactly,” Mart says to Francie. “Isn’t that what I’m after telling you? Shut your trap and listen to me, and you might learn something by accident. The only sensible thing an outlaw could do was leg it. Head for the hills, get himself a safe distance away, and start over somewhere no one knew him. And I’d say Johnny’s been giving that option plenty of consideration, the last coupla days.”
“I’d be giving it more than consideration,” Malachy says, one corner of his mouth lifting in a sweet smile, “if I was in his shoes. I’d run like a rabbit. Johnny must be a braver man than I am.”
“Ah, not braver,” Mart says, waving a finger at him. “Wiser, maybe. Tell us, Sunny Jim: let’s say the bold Johnny ran. What would Detective Nealon make of that?”
“I only met the guy one time,” Cal says. “Your guess is as good as mine.”
“Don’t be acting the maggot,” Mart says. “You know what I’m getting at. If that was you investigating, you’d think Johnny legged it because ’twas him that kilt Paddy Englishman. Amn’t I right?”
“I’d wonder,” Cal says.
“And you’d go looking for him. Not just yourself; you’d have people watching out for him, here and over the water. Red flags on his name on the aul’ computers.”
“I’d want to find him,” Cal says.
“Johnny knows that,” Mart says. “That’s why he’s still hanging about. He’s keeping the head down, he’s not strolling into Noreen’s to sprinkle his charm over any poor soul that happens to stop in, but he’s there.” He nods to the window. Outside, the light is fading; it puddles sullenly in the stained glass. Cal thinks of Johnny, trapped and humming with tension somewhere on the darkening mountainside, and of Trey methodically going about the business she’s set in motion.