Chapter Four #5
“Maybe not,” Mart says. “But I won’t be easy in my mind till I know herself and Bobby have made it past that.
The thing about the crossroadses, boyo, is that they’re fierce unpredictable.
Take yourself and myself: if you think about it, Sunny Jim, we’ve had our own crossroadses along the way. Haven’t we?”
“That’s one way to put it,” Cal says.
“There’s been times when our relationship coulda easily gone tits-up. But here we are, getting on like a house on fire.” Mart smiles sweetly at Cal, tilting his head to the lighter. “Who woulda thought, hah?”
“I just keep you around for the rides home from the pub,” Cal says. “You quit offering, then we’ll have a crossroads.”
Mart has a giggle at that. Mart likes it when Cal gives him shit; he sees it as a sign that he’s getting Cal into the swing of the local customs. “Or,” he says, “take the Moynihans. They’re having a bit of a crossroads these days—not among themselves, now. With this place.”
The touch of extra weight on his voice is so delicate that it’s practically imperceptible, but Cal is familiar with Mart’s ways.
Like everyone else around here, Mart is constitutionally incapable of going at anything directly—Cal puts it down, vaguely, to centuries of British rule, the concealment reflex that’s beaten into the colonized.
It took him months to figure out that anyone who refused a cup of tea probably wanted one, but he’s got better at reading the code.
Apparently they’ve reached a point where Ardnakelty—or at least Mart’s personal corner of it—wants him to know something, or wants something from him, or both.
“Yeah,” he says. “I got that.”
Mart cocks his head at him. “I thought you mighta done, all right. Part of it, anyhow. Tell us, Sunny Jim: what’d you get?”
Cal says, “Folks think Rachel Holohan killed herself ’cause Eugene was cheating on her.”
“Near enough,” Mart says. “There’s some debate about the details—there’s people that think he was cheating, and people that think he was giving her the aul’ heave-ho, and people that think he was treating her bad, and people that think ’twas a bit of all three.
But that’s the gist of it. That’s why Tommy has Eugene taking leave from work to stay down here, sure: so everyone’ll get the message that he’s pure devastated about losing the love of his life, he’s got no bitta fluff pulling him up to Dublin, he’s a poor injured innocent and nothing else.
I’m not convinced Tommy’s made the right call there, myself, but that’s what he’s at. ”
“If I wanted people feeling sympathetic,” Cal says, “I’d get Eugene as far away as I could. Kid’s short on charm.” He keeps chopping. This conversation needs spaces in which he can evaluate things, before he opens his mouth.
Mart snorts appreciatively at that. He smokes and watches Rip bowing and wriggling, trying to convince Mart’s black-and-white sheepdog Kojak to come play. Kojak, flopped in the grass, ignores him. They’ve always been good buddies, but Kojak is getting old, and Rip doesn’t understand.
“Father Eamonn gave a rousing aul’ homily on Sunday,” Mart says, “about personal responsibility. I wasn’t there myself, but that’s what I’m told.
According to His Holiness Father Eamonn, now, everyone’s got personal responsibility for their own actions and their own sins.
We’re not to be putting any of it on anyone else.
It doesn’t matter what anyone done on a person along the way; God won’t be factoring that in when he does the accounting.
” He squints up at the mountain, gauging the rags of mist that hang around its crest line.
“There’s an interesting moral question there, Sunny Jim.
If a fella does his woman wrong, just for example, and she goes in the river, whose slate does the sin go on?
What would the Protestants have to say about that? ”
“I’m not much of a Protestant,” Cal says. “And suicide’s not much of a sin in my book. It’s just a sad thing.”
Mart cocks an eyebrow at him. “That’s very diplomatic of you altogether,” he says. “After our wee singsong in the pub, the other night, I thought you’d more opinions than that. Or were you only humming along to keep the rest of us company?”
His eyes, half hidden among their cheery creases, are bright and sharp on Cal’s.
“I’ve got opinions about the Moynihans,” Cal says. “I don’t like ’em.”
While this is true, it’s not important. The fact is, Cal was sitting right there with the guys, giving Senan shit about his pickup lines and expecting someone to buy the next round, when Tommy and Eugene walked in. He didn’t have the right to opt out as soon as things got complicated.
Mart nods, acknowledging the validity of the point.
“You’re in good company,” he says. “Plenty of people don’t; myself included.
But the thing is, Sunny Jim, there’s people that do.
Not like them, now, but there’s people that’d lick Tommy Moynihan’s boots clean and thank him for the honor.
Tommy’s brought jobs to this place, bucko. Jobs.”
His eyes flick sideways to Cal, to make sure Cal knows to be adequately awestruck.
“I’m not impressed, myself,” he adds. “If Tommy sorted out them nitrate derogations, say, or if he got rid of my paperwork for me, I might chance the odd lick of the boots now and again; but the opportunity to work my arse off in a meat-processing plant for shitey wages to buy that fella first-class flights to Cancun doesn’t set my heart aflutter.
For some people, but, them jobs put him within a spit of the Sacred Heart.
The McHugh boys, now: there’s eight of them, and only enough land for four to farm.
The other four got jobs off Tommy. They won’t hear a word against the man, or his family. ”
“Makes sense,” Cal says.
“It does not. Tommy’s not doing them a favor; he’s making money offa their backs. They’re fuckin’ peasants, is what they are, tugging their forelocks to the squire and missing the bigger picture altogether. You’d expect better of farming men.”
Mart blows out a long, scornful plume of smoke.
“They’re stuck in the past,” he says, “is what it is. You don’t know what ’twas like around here, bucko, when myself and Tommy were young lads.
There was nothing. If you weren’t in line to inherit land, you had nothing: no way to earn a living, and no woman’d look at you.
You packed up your bits and bobs and off you went to England or America or Australia.
Plenty never came home. I’ve two brothers out there somewhere, Sunny Jim, or then again maybe I don’t.
Maybe they died of the drink in moldy bedsits years ago, and no one knew to tell me. ”
Cal nods and keeps chopping. He understands that this story isn’t just Mart’s; it’s community property, a thing carried in common by every family scattered across these fields. From her bucket, Linda mourns for all the lost loves.
“The McHughs and the rest of themens that lick up to Tommy,” Mart says, “they haven’t kept up with the times.
They haven’t got it into their heads that things are after changing.
Nowadays there’s more jobs than you can ate.
The businesses do be crying out for workers.
When the young people emigrate nowadays, ’tisn’t ’cause they can’t find a job; ’tis ’cause they have a job, and they still can’t get a house to live in.
But themens still fall on their knees and give thanks when they hear the word jobs. ”
Rip is still bugging Kojak, bouncing in circles around him. “Rip,” Cal calls over. “Sit, boy.” Rip gives him an affronted look, but he sits, as slowly as he can get away with. Kojak gets up, shakes himself, and stalks over to Mart.
“And now,” Mart says, “we’ve got Father Eamonn shoving his oar in.
Tommy’s fierce generous at the collection plate, and he was awful loud about following Father Eamonn’s orders when it came to them votes on the gay marriage and the abortion.
So I wouldn’t say Father Eamonn’s basing his opinion on purely theological grounds. ”
“Uh-oh,” Cal says. “You allowed to shit-talk a priest? Or are you gonna have to bring that up in confession?”
“I would if I went, but I don’t so I won’t.
And I never liked the fat fucker anyhow.
But there’s people that listen to him. And meanwhile, there’s people like myself and Senan and Francie, that’s not big fans of Tommy and the amount of say he has around this place.
” He glances over at Cal. “That’s something we’d keep to ourselves, but, as a general rule. ”
“I heard you guys bitching about Tommy before this,” Cal says.
“Amongst ourselves, you did. In the privacy of our own corner, in like-minded company. No one’d cross the man to his face.”
This startles Cal. He’s never known Mart to be intimidated by any man, or any woman, except possibly Noreen. “Or what?” he asks.
“Or else,” Mart says. He rubs Kojak’s head.
“Let’s say you wanted planning permission or a bitta rezoning, so your son could build himself a house on your land, maybe: you could kiss that good-bye.
Or let’s say you were a farmer: you’d have inspectors calling out to you three or four times a month, and they’d find something every time—maybe there’d be a blocked gutter, or a wee crack in your concrete, or a species of weed they didn’t like the look of, and next thing you knew, you’d be up to your ears in penalties.
There’s plenty of people in high places that owe Tommy a favor or two.
D’you know Eoin Duggan? Dessie’s cousin? ”
“Stocky redheaded guy with a big chin?” Cal says. He’s liking Tommy less and less. He’s also not crazy about the implication that this is, all of a sudden, information he needs.
“That’s the boyo. When Tommy got the lovely new Range Rover, a coupla year back, didn’t the poor lad discover it wouldn’t fit in his usual space outside the church, for mass.
So he wanted the space Eoin always used; ’tis wider, d’you see.
Only Eoin needed the width for his mammy to get in and out, so he told Tommy to get fucked. ”
Mart draws on his rollie, watching Cal to make sure he’s getting all the nuances here.
“After that day,” he says, “Eoin couldn’t get behind the wheel without being pulled over.
If he left Seán óg’s, he was breathalyzed.
If he headed into town, his treads were too worn, or his headlight was aligned wrong, or he was outa his lane.
Inside two months, Eoin had enough points on his license that he was off the road.
And the first time he got a lift to mass, what do you think he found parked in his space? ”
“Nice to know I was right about the guy,” Cal says, reaching for the next log.
In fact, it’s not nice, and he wasn’t right.
The bitching he heard along the way was all small-scale stuff: Tommy Moynihan’s conservatory is a poncy eyesore, Tommy Moynihan got the bin lorry’s route changed because it was waking him up too early, Tommy Moynihan expects Noreen to save him the good bacon even if other people come in first, Tommy Moynihan got his brother-in-law the council contract to resurface the road.
All of it confirmed Cal’s opinion that Tommy was a prick.
He got no hint, ever, that the guy was this kind of dangerous, or this kind of thorough.
Cal has encountered Ardnakelty power structures before, but not this one.
What he’s seen in action has been the power of backcountry men, men who would never in a million years call in the official authorities to fix a problem, even if it would do any good; who do it themselves instead, neatly and ruthlessly, maintaining the rule of a law constructed from unspoken codes and understandings that run generations deep.
What Mart’s talking about is something that exists on a different level: the power of rich men on golfing terms with the authorities, farseeing men who analyze situations in terms of profit and formulate long-term plans, and who never do anything themselves.
In three and a half years here, Cal never spotted this feature of the landscape. Every time he thinks he finally counts as settled in Ardnakelty, the place comes up with something that makes him feel like a big dumb greenhorn all over again.
“People don’t cross Tommy Moynihan,” Mart says.
“What happened in the pub the other night: Tommy wouldn’t be used to that kinda treatment at all, at all.
” He smiles a small, grim smile down at Kojak, remembering.
“But a girl’s dead, Sunny Jim. That changes things.
There’s going to be crossroadses popping up everywhere you look, the next while.
You won’t be able to go out your door without tripping over one.
” He turns his smile to Cal. “D’you remember them days when you were just a blow-in, bucko, and no one gave a shite what you thought? We’ve come a long way.”
The pile of logs has shrunk to a scattering, and Cal’s muscles are burning. He puts down the axe and rolls his shoulders, tilting his head back to look up at the sky. The cloud has taken on a purplish tinge that he knows; rain is on the way. “What is it you want?” he asks.
Mart cocks his head inquiringly. “Did I ask you for anything?”
“Not yet,” Cal says. “But when you tell me stuff, mostly you want something.”
He expects a grin of acknowledgment, but he doesn’t get it. “I’m clarifying the situation, is all,” Mart says, “while I’ve the opportunity. Just in case.”
He drops his rollie butt and grinds it out with his boot. “I’ve a feeling,” he says. “D’you know how some people’d get the aches in their bones when the weather’s turning bad? Like that, only different. And whatever else about you, Sunny Jim, you’re a useful lad to have on side in a crisis.”
Cal says, “What kind of crisis?”
“I’ve a feeling,” Mart says. He jams his blue beanie down over his ears, so the pom-pom sticks up straight on top of his head, and stands up, wincing as his hip jabs him. “Just a feeling.”
He nods at the split wood. “That oughta do us for a while. Fair play to you, Jean-Claude: we’ll be lovely and warm for the winter. When the frost comes in, yourself and the missus and the young one can snuggle up in front of that and toast marshmallows.”
He hefts the feed sack into the wheelbarrow, dumps the boombox on top, and trundles off towards his house, with Kojak loping at his heel and Linda still singing her heart out. The rain is starting.