Isn’t it a fright that Daddy or Mother couldn’t have told him what he was to do after they died, before they died? Would Mother go mad with him if he had a woman living in the house? Would she think Mumbly Dave was very common and not a suitable pal? Would Daddy think he was an awful useless meely-mawly if he could make no fist of life at all? Would he be proud if Johnsey could tell the McDermotts to shove their lease and take back the land and tell the auctioneers and the consortium and the newspaper crowd to shove it all up their holes and let them all go and shite and if he married Siobhán and had a big dairy herd and a rake of children and while he was thinking all this an awful commotion had started abroad in the yard and when he looked out there was a wild-looking fella with black hair sticking up out of his head in tufts like a wet dog and he had a hurley and Mumbly Dave was standing in front of him pointing at his chest and Siobhán was saying Who the fuck is that?
IT WAS Eugene Penrose’s father. When Johnsey came out the door, he had leapt forward and swung a hurley and Mumbly Dave had ducked and grabbed him under the arms and he was roaring and screaming that Johnsey was going to go down for what he’d had done to his youngf’la and Johnsey never saw the other fella coming from the haggard wall who lamped him into the side of the head and as he hit the ground he saw the edges of Daddy’s track and he thought to himself Mumbly Dave is going to catch that with his shoe now any second and all you could see was Mumbly Dave’s arse and your man’s boiling-red head like a twisted-around four-legged monster-man, roaring blue murder and swinging a hurley and Siobhán was screaming Get away from him and he realized someone was throwing kicks at him and when he looked up there was another monster, with two heads and two spare legs wrapped around its middle and one head had long blonde hair and it was biting the cheek off the other head with the black hair and it had drawn blood and the bitten head roared and the Unthanks’ Bluebird swung in the gate and the squad behind them and the sudden storm stopped.
SIOBHÁN HAD blood on her teeth. She was saying oh for God’s sake, her nails were all broken! The guards had Patsy Penrose and Junior Penrose in the back of the squad. The Unthanks were standing in the yard, looking unsure of themselves. They’d seen Patsy and Junior heading off towards the Dark Road and they’d heard Patsy cursing Johnsey and knew well they were out to cause ructions and told Jim Gildea straight away. Jim wanted to know did they need an ambulance? Siobhán said it was grand, she was a nurse, she’d look after them, and sure no one was really injured. Mumbly Dave said Ambulance me hole, it’s the fuckin army we need now, before some madman kills Johnsey, how’s it ye can’t arrest them cunts that writes lies in the newspapers about him, surely there’s some law to say you can’t blacken a man like that? The young garda who was with Jim told Mumbly Dave calm down but that only made him worse, and when he called the young garda a jumped-up little bollix, the garda pointed into his face and said Once more now, boy, and Mumbly Dave said And what? And what? And what? And luckily Jim Gildea came straight over and whatever else about Jim, Himself said afterwards, he was a long time at it and he knew how to douse a flame; he took the young lad away from Mumbly Dave and the Unthanks got Mumbly Dave to go inside and when they got in, Mumbly Dave turned on the Unthanks and called them a pair of fuckin Judases and asked why didn’t they shag off back to their bigshot pals besides creeping around up here trying to brainwash Johnsey and Herself started to cry and so did Himself and Johnsey thought his heart would break in two.
THAT’S A FINISH now to setting foot outside the gate any more. A man is only safe inside in himself. There’s nothing people won’t do or say when they think right is on their side. Who decides what’s right? Is Mumbly Dave more right than the Unthanks because they had money given to Herbert Grogan and the developers and he hadn’t? They could have had that done but years, before anyone had a notion what land would be rezoned. The clean truth unspoken became a lie, the way whatever unnoticed thing was inside in Daddy went bad and grew into a tumour that spread around his body and killed him. Maybe Mumbly Dave would have gave money towards this big plan too if he’d had a penny besides what you get for not working on account of your back being shagged or falling off of ladders and a nixer here and there and borrowing money off of the Credit Union below against this big payout that’s meant to be coming from Timmy Shake Hands’s insurance. That’s a finish to it now, he wouldn’t show his face any more and they could call him every kind of a blackguard all they wanted in words fancy or plain and God would have to get over him not going to Mass and the Unthanks could take their sorry eyes and their silence that was no longer easy but loaded up with the threat of apologies and excuses and leave him to his house and the odd walk down the river field to the Callows and if the world wanted him for something they could come and ask politely and he’d tell the world politely to go way and have a shite.
If them two detectives from inside in town ever came back promising justice would be done or asking if he knew anything about what Paddy done, with Jim Gildea behind them looking down at his shoes and trying to remember every detail to take home to Mary, he’d give them no hop. If any more business people arrived up with their Alsatian smiles and their auld spiel about deeds or deals or private treaties or what have you, he’d run them. He’d pull the phone from the wall altogether: no more of that auld craic. He wondered would Siobhán still want to call in and talk about the Shanleys and her mother being an awful wagon and her sisters being a smug pair of bitches and eat her apple sandwiches now that she’d had to bite a lad’s face to stop him being killed? Would she say Ah here, this lad is too much hassle for too little in the way of bravery or looks or charm or dates in big restaurants where foreign fellas with tea towels on their arms comes over to put salt on your chips for you? Would Mumbly Dave find a new friend who wouldn’t have poison thoughts about him every time he cracked a joke in front of a girl who had no more interest in him in a romantic way than in the man in the moon? There’s too many things in the world that can go wrong. There’s too many variables, that science teacher would have said. And even if you could catch all them auld variables in time, before they ballsed things up on you, everything would go bad for a finish, anyway. Interfered with or left alone, everything eventually turns rotten and dies.
ISN’T IT A PURE BALLS, Mumbly Dave said, that a man could have such luck and to have nothing only misery come of it? He used to think Johnsey was mad to be humming and hawing about selling the land, but now he knew what it really was: Johnsey had loyalty. Why else would he defend the Unthanks, and they feeding him with one hand and trying to pull out his guts with the other? It’s a great quality in a man. He was loyal to his family, even though they were all gone from him. He wouldn’t sell the land that kept them. He wouldn’t allow concrete to be poured on their years of toil. He could see past big auld plans for cinemas and shops and matchbox houses, and sure who’d benefit in the long run only the same few fat fuckers that was running the show all along and making pure-solid fools of the whole country? It’ll all come out some day, boy, that you was the only one to call a halt to all the auld grabbing and greed and that no money would pay you to sell out your auld home.