Cal finishes his beer and heads up the fading road. Mart and Kojak come to their door in a cloud of onions and paprika. “Well, would you look at that,” Mart says happily. “It’s Sunny Jim. How’s she cutting?”
“I told Trey Reddy to get lost,” Cal says. “She won’t be coming round any more.”
“Good man yourself,” Mart says. “I knew my money was safe on you. You’ll be glad you did it in the end.” He waves Cal towards the kitchen. “Sit you down there now, and I’ll get another plate. I’m after making a chicken and bacon paella that’s only feckin’ beautiful, if I do say so myself.”
“I ate,” Cal says. “Thanks.” He gives Kojak’s ears a rub and goes home, through the cold darkening air and the smell of smoke coming from somewhere.
SEVENTEEN
When Cal walks into Noreen’s the next day, he’s expecting a frosty stare if he’s lucky, but she greets him with a block of cheddar, a long account of how Bobby came in asking for it and she told him that when his manners were as good as Cal Hooper’s he’d get the same service Cal gets and the big eejit left practically in tears, and a reminder that in a couple of weeks Lena’s pups will be old enough to leave their mammy. Cal has been in Ardnakelty long enough to interpret the nuances of this exchange. Not only does Noreen know that he’s seen the light, and approve wholeheartedly, she’s going to make sure the rest of the townland knows it too. Cal wonders whether Mart went as far as breaking the terms of his feud with Noreen to make this happen.
By way of confirmation, he tests out Seán Óg’s that evening. He walks in the door and is hit by a burst of whoops and ironic cheering from Mart’s corner. “Jaysus,” Senan says, “the dead arose. We thought Malachy had kilt you.”
“We reckoned you must have an awful delicate constitution altogether,” says the buck-naked window guy, “to be put off the drink for life by a few sips of poteen.”
“Who’s we, kemosabe?” Mart demands. “I told ye he’d be back. He didn’t fancy looking at your ugly mugs for a few days, is all. I don’t blame him.” He moves over to make room for Cal on the banquette, and signals to Barty to bring him a pint.
“Come here,” Bobby says to Senan. “Ask him. He’d know.”
“Why would he know?”
“It’s probably some American yoke. The young people do all be talking American these days.”
“Go on and educate me, then,” Senan says to Cal. “What’s a yeet?”
“A what?” Cal says.
“A yeet. I’m sitting on the sofa tonight after my tea, doing a bit of digesting, and my youngest lad comes running in, launches himself onto my feckin’ belly like he’s been shot from a cannon, yells ‘Yeet!’ out of him right in my face, and legs it out again. I asked one of my other fellas what he was on about, but he only laughed his arse off and told me I’m getting old. Then he asked me for twenty quid to go into town.”
“Did you give it to him?” Cal asks.
“I did not. I told him to fuck off and get a job. What the hell is a yeet?”
“You never saw a yeet?” Cal says. He finds himself fed up to the back teeth with being tossed around by these guys like a beach ball. “They’re pet animals. Like hamsters, only bigger and uglier. Great big fat faces and little piggy eyes.”
“I haven’t got a fat fuckin’ face. You’re telling me my young lad’s after calling me a hamster?”
“Well,” Cal says, “that word’s used for something else, too, but I hope your boy wouldn’t know about that. How old is he?”
“Ten.”
“He got the internet?”
Senan is swelling up and turning red. “If that little fecker’s been looking at porn, he can say good-bye to his drum kit, and his Xbox, and his—everything. What’s a yeet? Did he call his own father a prick?”
“He’s only winding you up, ye eejit,” the buck-naked window guy tells him. “He’s no more notion of yeets than you have.”
Senan glares at Cal. “Never heard of ’em,” Cal says. “But you’re cute when you’re angry.”
Everyone roars with laughter, and Senan shakes his head and tells Cal where he can shove his hamsters. The guys order another round, and Mart insists on teaching Cal the rules of Fifty-Five, on the grounds that if he’s planning on sticking around these parts he might as well make himself useful. Nobody says a word about Trey, or Brendan, or Donie, or dead sheep.
Nobody Cal meets, in fact, mentions any of those. Cal tries to take this as an indication that the whole thing is well and truly over—surely if the kid did anything dumb, he would hear about it, one way or another. He’s not entirely sure that’s the case.
Trey herself has dematerialized. Cal is prepared for anything from slashed tires to a brick through his window—he’s moved his mattress into a corner out of range, and he keeps a lookout for missiles on his way in and out of the house. Nothing happens. When he sits on his step in the evenings, nothing rustles in the hedges but birds and small animals. When he works on his house or cooks his dinner, the back of his neck stays quiet. If he didn’t know better, he could easily find himself believing that he imagined the whole thing.
He goes flat out on the house: gets the name of the local chimney sweep from Noreen, finishes painting the walls in the front room and moves on to stripping the wallpaper in the little second bedroom. Mart’s buddy Locky comes round to do the rewiring and provide a washing machine, at a price that Cal knows better than to inquire into. Locky shows an inclination to chat, so Cal takes the opportunity to go into town and buy himself some new kitchen cupboards and an actual fridge-freezer. With them installed and a fire in the fireplace, the front room changes. It loses its remote, dismantled air and comes together into something whose bareness has a spare, solid warmth. He WhatsApps Alyssa a photo. Oh wow, she texts back, it looks great!
Getting there, Cal texts. You should come see it. Alyssa comes back with, Yes! As soon as work settles down and an eye-roll emoji. Even though this is much what Cal expected, it leaves him sore and low, with the urge to call Donna and piss her off.
Instead he goes out to his woods and spends a couple of hours collecting dead branches to stack for firewood. The cold has settled in, and a fine net curtain of rain hangs in the air. Whenever Cal leaves the house, even just to take out the trash, he doesn’t feel a drop hit him, but he gets back inside damp through. Somehow it seeps inside the house, too: no matter how long he keeps the fire burning and the oil heater on, his sleeping bag and his duvet always feel almost imperceptibly damp. He buys another heater for his bedroom, which helps some but not a whole lot.
He tries to take advantage of the fact that he can play his music as loud as he wants again, but it doesn’t go to plan. He starts out well, cooking dinner to a good rousing dose of Steve Earle complete with full air drums, just like no one ever came peeping in the windows to see him make a fool of himself. Somehow or other, though, by the end of the evening he finds himself sitting on his back step with a beer, looking up into the darkening haze of the sky and feeling the mist of rain thicken on his skin and his hair, while Jim Reeves fills the air with an old tearjerker about a guy trudging through a blizzard who almost makes it home.
One of the few things that give Cal real pleasure in these days is the discovery that he still has his eye for a rifle. The weather lends itself more to fishing, but he doesn’t have the patience just now. He would love to spend more time out with the Henry, drizzle or no drizzle, but there’s a limit to how much rabbit he can eat. He stashes a couple in his new freezer and takes two to Daniel Boone, who rewards him with a discount on bullets and a tour of his favorite guns, and a pair to Noreen, to make it clear that he sees and appreciates her support. He knows he ought to take one to Mart, but he can’t bring himself to do it.