The Thing About December (20 page)

Eugene was left bleeding on the hard ground in front of the pump for a good long while before help arrived. Mumbly Dave said he was nearly bled out before they scraped him up off of the road and put him into the ambulance and took him in to the hospital for the Paki doctors to sew him back together. Except they didn’t – them boys’d sooner go chop-chop any day, Mumbly Dave said. They no like a sew, that for auld women. One leg plenty leg enough for bowsie white man. He only sit on hole watching telly, anyway. Johnsey didn’t think that was how the
Paki doctors talked. Doctor Frostyballs didn’t, but he was Indian. Was it the same thing? God only knows. All them lads are much of a muchness, in fairness.

Eugene shouldn’t have moved his headquarters from the IRA memorial. At least up there someone might have seen what was after happening and rang the ambulance quicker. No one knew it was Paddy did the shooting until the guards put the serial number from his gun into their computer and up popped Paddy’s licence. The rat-faced townie lad who had kicked Johnsey in the head told the guards it was an auld boy did it, he stopped his car in the middle of the road and he put on his hazard lights, and he had white hair and mad eyes and he looked like the devil, and he walked around to the passenger side, and he waved on a couple of cars who had to go around him, and he took his time, and he took his shot, and Eugene went down screaming, and then he threw the gun in over the wall of the empty yard and got back into his auld Jetta and turned it around and fucked off back the way he came.

Jim Gildea the sergeant told Mary his wife who told everyone else that the townie lad had shat all over himself. The spread wasn’t as wild as Paddy had planned for Johnsey with the duck shot, so Eugene Penrose took the whole blast. And while Eugene lay bleeding and screaming, the brave boy with the birds on his neck shat and pissed all over himself and cried like a little girl and for a finish one of the ambulance lads had to give him an injection to make him stop being such a stones.

Johnsey kept thinking about Eugene, lying on the road with the blood pumping out of him and his leg in bits. And then he’d think of Eugene when he was only a small boy in primary school, when they’d all been pals. The thoughts tormented him. Did Paddy shoot Eugene for
him
? Was it because Paddy had thought him too weak to take his own vengeance? Then he’d think of Paddy and
all the times he’d patted him on the head with his big huge hand and smiled fondly at him when he was a child and how he used to think Paddy was like a mountain, dark and unmovable and eternal. But it turns out Paddy was like one of them mountains out foreign that are the same for years, and everyone thinks it’s the finest, and they live along the side of it in green pastures as happy as Larry, and then all of a sudden one day the quiet mountain blows its top and explodes into the sky and pukes melted rocks all over itself and destroys anyone who can’t run fast enough to the lowlands and finally the mountain destroys itself.

MUMBLY DAVE
said there was more excitement in the village in the last few months than there was in a hundred years. If they won the county final, there wouldn’t be as much of a hullabaloo. And it all boiled down to Johnsey Cunliffe. He was some troublemaker! What was he going to do next? Start a riot? Sure, he was fit for anything! Auld Peg-Leg Penrose is quare sorry he crossed you now, I’d say!

Sometimes if you’re worried about a thing, it’s great to have someone making a joke about it. Like when the curly fella in the newspaper said all them things about him, and Mumbly Dave gave that whole evening saying about how they should take the Land Rover to Dublin and wait for him outside his poncey office and they’d lamp the know-it-all arse off of him with hurleys and make him squeal like a fuckin cut pig. Johnsey nearly wet himself laughing the way Mumbly Dave described that, and all the laughing about it made it feel like the whole thing was only a joke and not really real. But Johnsey couldn’t bear to listen to Mumbly Dave joking about Eugene Penrose and his leg. How’s it he couldn’t explain that to Mumbly Dave? How could he, when he couldn’t explain it to himself?

Siobhán said when you lose a limb you end up with too much blood. That can cause awful trouble for your heart because there does be too much pressure. That makes sense if you think about it – there aren’t as many places for the blood to go. How is it though a human body knows how to make food into shite and drink into pee and a yoke you can’t even see into a baby and your brain can do forty million things a minute according to that auld science teacher inside in the Tech and still it can’t figure out it needs less blood if there’s a bit chopped off of it? Worse again, Siobhán said sometimes people feel an itch where their leg or arm used to be, a
phantom
itch, like a ghost back to haunt them, and that itch can drive them right around the bend, because you can’t scratch what’s not really there. He remembered the itch under his cast inside in hospital and how that used drive him demented until Siobhán brought him in a knitting needle to poke down it for sweet relief and she told him not to let Sister or any of the other fatarses see him with it on account of they weren’t meant to let people do that. He wondered had Eugene felt the phantom itch yet.

AUNTY THERESA
dragged poor Nonie and Frank up to the house not long after Paddy was buried. She wanted to know was he having an auction or what in the name of God was going to happen, and did he know that the rezoning wouldn’t last forever, the farm would be only allowed to be a farm again before long and the show would be over, and that nephew of Paddy Rourke’s from England wouldn’t be too happy with him for devaluing his inheritance with his quare notions and did he know there was such a thing as
compulsory purchase orders
and they’d soon get sick of him inside in the council and they’d
make
him sell and their idea of what’s the going rate mightn’t tally with what Master
Johnsey Cunliffe had inside in his head and wasn’t it a fright to God to say herself and Frank had to scrimp and scrape all their lives to get Susan and Small Frank through university and here was he sitting on several fortunes and acting like he was too good for them and Small Frank solid choked with asthma and he never lifting his nose from his books so that he may make something of his life and here was he going around making a show of them all with that waster of the Cullenses and he the talk of the whole country and poor Sarah hadn’t a penny spare her whole life she didn’t put into the Credit Union for
him
and now he wouldn’t even look at his own aunty and she all that was left on this earth of his mother and why in the name of Jaysus would he not answer the phone?

Nonie said Ah now, ah now, but Theresa ignored her and Johnsey wondered had Theresa forgotten how Nonie was Mother’s sister as well, and did she want him to sell the farm so he could give money to Susan and Small Frank who never once looked at him on the school bus and never once said a word when he was being tormented, only sat there smirking? Uncle Frank wanted to know was he doing a line with that little blonde nurse and he smiled and winked at Johnsey and Theresa told him shut his stupid face and she started
mar dhea
crying out of her with her hand on her forehead and Nonie went Ah now, again, and Frank threw his eyes towards heaven and looked fidgety and embarrassed and Johnsey remembered Daddy once saying how that poor fucker Frank made a hard bed for himself when he decided to take the free house and the big dowry and Mother said how dare he, her father paid no dowry to any man, Frank was picked from a long line of fine suitors, and Daddy looked at Johnsey and covered one side of his mouth and said you should have seen
that
line, Johnsey – a fairy, a blind man, a fella in his nineties, and Frank!

IT WAS GRAND
having Siobhán calling up all the same. You couldn’t be giving the whole day to thinking about Paddy and Eugene and Theresa and people’s expectations of you when you had to think about her calling up.

The next time she called after the time she showed up by surprise, they weren’t even there. They’d been inside in the city, looking at hookers. Mumbly Dave had promised Johnsey he’d take him in to this street where they do be and he could have a look at his future wife ha ha ha! The hookers were quare-looking; a little fat lady who looked like a wan you’d see above at Mass only you could see half of her white belly because her top was too short and didn’t meet the top of her skirt. And there was a wan whose cheekbones looked like they could cut you. She was wearing a shiny tracksuit and her eyes looked dead. There was a skinny man with a thin moustache standing beside her who Mumbly Dave said was a woman and Johnsey couldn’t believe it until he looked for a bit longer and then he could see that it really
was
a woman and Mumbly Dave said she was a mad bull-dyke pimp and Johnsey didn’t know what them words meant but said nothing and Mumbly Dave said she’d cut your mickey off if you tried to get smart with her or the hookers, and while they were staring at her she clocked them and started walking towards Mumbly Dave’s car and she had the head of a wan that’d take a bite out of you and eat you without salt and Mumbly Dave stalled the car in a panic and just as she got to them he got it going and she swung her foot at the car as they drove off and the hooker with the dead eyes only barely moved her head as they passed.

When they got back to the house, there were red words written on the kitchen window. Johnsey thought of them horror films he could only ever watch half of. Mumbly Dave told him it was lipstick. Lipstick, you dipstick! Ha ha ha! But Johnsey well
knew Mumbly Dave was joking away his own hurt feelings. The words said:

Hi J
I called @ 6 but you must be off with your boyfriend
Txt me l8r 087 7946509
Siobhán xxx

Mumbly Dave said
Jay
like he was disgusted and
boyfriend
like he was more disgusted again and when Johnsey chanced a sideways look at him, he was nearly sure he saw a glint of water in his eye, but Mumbly Dave just said it was unbelievable that a fella could have rides of nurses scrawling love messages on his kitchen window and he not even having a phone to text her with and he having been given her number
twice
now and he was starting to wonder had he even a mickey to ride her with and it was an unnatural waste! If it was
him
she was after, he’d have had her rode and given the road long ‘go but he had no farm of land ha ha ha and he’d want to be getting his finger out in the name of Jaysus. Johnsey couldn’t stop looking at the lipstick message. Three kisses. Mumbly Dave said they could also stand for triple x, as in porno, like. Johnsey wished he’d stop saying words like hole and porno in regards to Siobhán, but how do you tell someone something like that without them thinking you’re an awful holy Joe and an auld spoilsport and hurting them even further?

The next day they went into the phone shop and a wan who Mumbly Dave said had flaking knockers on her sold him a mobile phone and he couldn’t tell what sort of knockers she had because he couldn’t look at her, but she smelled quare nice and she sounded lovely and he dropped his money on the floor when he went to pay her and Mumbly Dave said Watch him, he’s throwing it away, ha ha ha, signs on he can do it and he a feckin millionaire, ha ha ha, and Johnsey felt himself going from red
to purple and he suddenly pictured himself smashing the new phone into Mumbly Dave’s face. How’s it he couldn’t just shut up and let him pay the girl besides trying to be smart the whole time and showing off and probably now the girl who smelled lovely would cop his face from the paper and think look at this greedy prick in buying phones and why is everything you do just so embarrassing and how is it he couldn’t control them awful thoughts? Did badness now have the run of his brain?

Mumbly Dave said horse her off a text there so as they drove home. Johnsey asked him what should he say? Mumbly Dave said Jaysus boy, will I have to ride her for you as well? After he said that, Johnsey wouldn’t please the prick and resolved to make his own text without any help. You had to
scroll
through the
menu
to figure out all the yokes but he didn’t ask Mumbly Dave for his advice and he didn’t make a bad fist of it all the same now and for a finish he said:
Hello Siobhan this is Johnsey Cunliffe sorry I missed you please call again
.

Mumbly Dave asked what was he after sending her? Had he the number in right? Johnsey wondered how Mumbly Dave was all of a sudden so browned off with him. It was
he
was making the smart comments and making little of Johnsey and yet here he was nearly shouting now about the blessed text and he was looking over at Johnsey and reaching to grab the phone off of him and the car was roaring for the want of a change of gear and he wasn’t being too careful about staying inside the white line the way you have to be because Daddy always said to Mother when she was driving if you put your wheels out over the line, some day you’ll go around a bend and there’ll be as big a fool as you coming against you and BANG! Two dead fools. And no knowing how many crathurs of innocent passengers taken with them, all out of foolishness. And Mother would roar at him to shut his face but still and all she’d pull back towards the ditch to quieten him.

When Johnsey called out the text he’d typed, Mumbly Dave said hoo hoo hoo, that was the gayest thing he’d ever heard! Please call again? You’re some tulip, boy! This is Johnsey Cunliffe! Mother. Of. Jaysus. You’re some stones. You’re … And the car shook as the wheels on Johnsey’s side took too much of the soft verge and Mumbly Dave cursed and his hands moved fast on the wheel and when he got it straightened he said Ha ha! That shook you, boy! As much as to say he’d been doing the jackass on purpose, his bad driving only a stunt to put the wind up Johnsey. But there was a lot of colour gone from his face for a fella that was only playing the fool.

He must have copped on then that Johnsey was like a dog with him for making a laugh of his text to Siobhán and was wishing to God he could reach in to the sky and pull it back and send something else cool and smart and funny and imagine it was out there now, bouncing off of a satellite and back down to earth and into Siobhán’s phone with the pink case around it and the blue love heart on it and wasn’t it an awful dangerous thing, a text message, because once you pressed that little
send
button, that was it. Like pulling a trigger of a shotgun and sending a pellet into a little rabbit’s brain as he sniffed the sweet spring air. You couldn’t undo it. You couldn’t ever take it back. Mumbly Dave said Don’t worry, boy, don’t worry, and drove straight and not too fast the rest of the road home.