Daddy had often talked about money as though it was only a nuisance of a thing that you had to pay heed to only the odd time. Mother berated him over his attitude — it was lacks-a-daisy-kel. You wouldn’t see the McDermotts or the Flynns or the Creamers beyond not minding their money. Or them Grogans below in the village, they grigged Mother no end and they having the grocery and the post office and the drapery and the hardware and the undertakers and the bar and the bed and breakfast and the garage and a farm of land and three or four more farms of land left to them (that people knew about!) and the board of the Bank of Ireland couldn’t so much as fart without Herbert Grogan’s permission, he had so much money stuffed into their accounts and he claiming expenses, imagine, every time he scratched himself because all the goms around the place kept voting him back onto the County Council and do you think for one second that Herbert Grogan would do in a month the work your father would do in a day? He would in his eye! He had cuteness coming out of his ears, though, that was the difference. He’d put legs under hens for you, that chap.
Why, Mother would demand, would a man who worked so hard have so little store in the bit of money his work made him? Daddy used to lay blocks as well as farming the land. He took what them auld builders gave with no argument. He never thought to up his rates. Was it unmanly to want to be paid properly for the pain in your back or the sweat of your brow? He had tried to show Johnsey how to lay blocks, but he just wasn’t tasty. You had to be quare tasty to excel in that line of work. Your plumb line had to be right, your hand sure with the mortarboard, your eye sharp so that you sat the block just right. Johnsey could hold a block in one hand fine, but he couldn’t lay his mortar at the same time. Or he could lay mortar but not if the other hand had to do something else. For a finish Daddy would grab the board and the block off of him and tell him go on away and tidy up, they were going. If Johnsey looked back, as a rule, he’d be shaking his head.
Mother often said to him to mind his bit of a job, it would stand to him. You had to have a job to get a job, she said. If you hadn’t really the aptitude for farming or for a professional career, you had to be punctual and conscientious and hard-working. You had to make the most of what you had. What had Johnsey? A big thick head into which travelled only black thoughts of how much he hated being here on this earth alone and a big pair of hands that were good at nothing only lifting bags of fertilizer and spuds and a heart that was cowardly and broken. How could you get past all that and into a place of reason and happiness and ease? Could your mind ever be at peace when you had to be afraid every minute of the next bark from the old dog Packie or the next smart remark or jostle or put-down or kick from Eugene Penrose? How could you call yourself a man when you came from a family of men who would face down the devil himself and you unable to face down a cross old bollix or a little smirking squirt?
THE NEXT DAY came wild and windy. A breeze that would skin you made short work of the softness that had been in it the last few days as it whipped around the high walls of the front gate, doing its level best to push him back inside. Nobody had told this wind Hey calm down, it’s nearly summer. It battled him the whole way to the village and then, just as he reached the old pump, the heavens opened and an almighty shower of icy rain landed on him. He had the jacket without a hood, of course. And you couldn’t be seen with an umbrel unless you were a woman or very old. If he bowled up the street holding an umbrel it would surely be grabbed off of him and he’d be tormented for being a queer.
Packie thought it was great sport that he landed in frozen and drowned wet. He laughed and shook his head as much as to say you could expect no more from a fat eejit only to be caught out in the shower and told him go stand in front of the Dimplex. The Dimplex was no great shakes in the drying-off department: the co-op was like a huge damp cave and the Dimplex was old and tired and probably as sick of Packie giving out about it as Johnsey was. Before the warm air had even settled on his sodden legs, Packie got sick of his own charity and Johnsey was sent packing to the yard. He threw a poncho at him at least. Johnsey slipped it over his head and its plasticky skin made him feel colder again.
Packie wanted space cleared abroad in the yard for a big delivery. It was a full day’s work if not two days’ were you to do a right clean job. Some places had forklifts; Packie’s co-op had a big donkey called Johnsey Cunliffe. The delivery would be arriving at four, so tough — four was the deadline for a cleared yard. There were rakes of pallets to be moved one by one to the side wall; there were bags and bags of feed under a huge canvas to be uncovered and brought inside and space to be made for them; there were racks of shovels and forks and garden implements that Packie had bought long ago in some quare figary he had gotten thinking people would travel out from town to buy gardening tools in a small country co-op. Packie thought he’d be the height of fashion. Even Johnsey could clearly see that Packie Collins would never again be the height of fashion. Maybe he was a big draw one time, when your family having the co-op meant you were a fierce big deal.
The great delivery came a half an hour late. Lucky thing too, as the clearing was only barely finished when the lorry rumbled up the road and squeaked and puffed to a stop outside the gates of the yard. Packie was like an old biddy at a jumble sale; flapping around and trying to act like he didn’t give a damn what was coming, but you could see the redness creeping up his neck and his eyes bulging out of his cranky old head a bit farther than usual. The lorry was full of timber, two-by-four and four-by-four and what have you in long, clean planks.
The next day, just before lunch, two huge blue skips were dropped from two lorries that had great swinging arms and chains for the job of picking things up and leaving them back down. These skips were to be filled with the wooden racks that Packie had once stocked with plants and flowers in the days of high fashion and with all the other unused, unwanted, out-of-date and broken things that lived in Packie’s yard. Johnsey half expected to be told to climb in himself, such was the mercilessness of Packie’s purge. Packie even took an axe to the racks himself but his glasses fell off after the first few swings and he cursed and spat and soon rolled the sleeves of his smock coat down and retreated back inside behind his counter.
The next delivery to come was of concrete blocks. They were deposited in the yard by a ferrety-looking fella who had a forklift that had been stuck to the back of his lorry. He moved quickly and placed pallets of blocks side by side along the back wall with vicious exactness. He made Johnsey nervous. Neither he nor the yard were used to such frantic noise and activity. Packie was rubbing his hands together a lot. Even old Biddy, Packie’s hairy-faced wife, arrived for a look at the big consignment, all lined up now like a rank of giant, grey, alien soldiers. She looked like a cat that had been fed too well. Johnsey could imagine her licking cream off of her whiskers.