Chapter Five
Five
The crossroads shows up two days later, when Cal is on his roof, replacing a handful of broken slates before the winter winds hit.
Cal had never owned an old house before this, and one of the things he didn’t expect is that it needs constant tending, like a living creature.
He figured he’d get it back into shape and that would be that, but something always requires his care: the tiles on the front step wear loose, or the paint on the window frames peels, or grasses take root in the chimney pot.
Mostly this doesn’t come to Cal as a bad thing, although he knows that would be different if he was busier or less handy.
He likes the thought of the house moving and changing through the seasons the same way the land does, responding to his attentions and flourishing under his hands.
Right now, though, amid the general atmosphere of unease, that feels like a bunch of sentimental bullshit.
He just checked the slates last autumn, and all of these were fine then.
There’s a damp patch on the workshop wall that makes him think the gutter is failing; the bathroom sink isn’t draining right, and he hates screwing around with plumbing, especially plumbing that some clown half-assed in the eighties.
He doesn’t feel like he’s keeping the house happy and thriving, he feels like the whole thing is just plain falling to pieces, on purpose, faster than he can patch it.
He hears the crossroads coming before he sees it; there’s no point in having the most expensive car in Ardnakelty unless you can make everyone else listen to its bellowing.
He looks up to watch the black Range Rover charging too fast along the twisting road, between the stone walls and the half-clipped hedgerows.
He reckons Eugene is driving. The car is being handled deftly, but with a young man’s assumption that it’s everyone else’s job to get out of his way.
Cal takes for granted that the Moynihans are aiming for the main road and town, seeing as there’s no one around here worth their attention.
It’s only when the Range Rover passes P.J.
’s place and starts slowing down that he realizes where it’s headed.
By the time Eugene has maneuvered through Cal’s gate, and parked a standoffish distance from his low-class Pajero, Cal is down the ladder and waiting in front of his house.
Tommy is in the passenger seat, and he’s first out of the car, settling his beige farmer jacket on his shoulders and striding across the yard with a hand lifted to Cal.
Rip, bubbling over with energy after a morning of being bored at the foot of the ladder, is bouncing and wiggling at the prospect of visitors. “Sit,” Cal says.
Eugene follows Tommy at a snappy pace, picking up his feet like a city boy.
Eugene doesn’t have exactly the demeanor Cal would expect from someone in his circumstances.
The kid looks like he’s grieving hard, all right—he’s lost weight, and there are purple bags under his eyes—but what he mainly looks is tense and irked, like he considers the entire situation utterly unacceptable.
He has the air of a man about to file an elaborate grievance with HR.
“Howdy there, chief,” Tommy says, coming to a stop a few yards from Cal. Tommy is taller than most men around here, but Cal has a couple of inches on him; Tommy tends to stay well back, so he won’t have to look up. “How’s the form?”
“Hangin’ in there,” Cal says, wiping his hands on his work pants.
“Lord willing and the creek don’t rise.” Noreen isn’t here to glare at him; if he wants to give Tommy the full boy-howdy treatment, he can.
This time he’s not just yanking Tommy’s crank.
Whatever Tommy wants, Cal isn’t inclined to give it to him, and he’s always found big-dumb-redneck to come in handy against people who enjoy looking down on other people.
He doesn’t like thinking in these terms, of adversaries and strategies, but here they all are.
“You’ve got this place looking great,” Tommy says approvingly, inspecting Cal’s cottage.
“I hope you know we all appreciate what you’ve done here—amn’t I right, Eugene?
” Eugene gives a tight nod and says something that has the appropriate words in it.
“This place was an eyesore, so it was,” Tommy tells Cal.
“I’d be ashamed to pass by it. And then you came along and rescued it for us. ”
“Glad to be of use,” Cal says.
“I’d say it keeps you on your toes,” Tommy says. He holds out a hand to Rip, but Rip is too well-behaved to cozy up to anyone without Cal’s permission, which he’s not about to get. “If you’re not too busy, could you give us a few minutes of your time?”
“Well,” Cal drawls, scratching the back of his neck and squinting up at his roof, “I reckon I might could take a break. All’s I was doing is patching up a coupla loose slates, and I don’t guess they’ll fall off in the next half hour.”
“I’d say you’ll have to take a break anyhow,” Tommy advises him, examining the layer of cloud with a critical eye. “It’s going to lash any minute. All this rain must be a bit of a shock to you, hah?”
“We got rain in America,” Cal says. “Sometimes we even get a lot of it.”
“Everything’s bigger over there,” Tommy says, like he’s coming up with something clever, “even the rain. Ours does the job, though. Could we step inside, before it has us drownded?”
A few days ago Cal might have brought them inside, just out of manners, but now he doesn’t feel like letting this goombah call the shots. “Aw, shucks,” he says, tipping back his baseball cap. “Y’all went and picked a bad day for that. The house ain’t fit for company.”
“Ah, now,” Tommy says, smiling, “you’re selling your missus short there. I’d say Lena keeps the place fit for a king.”
“Well,” Cal says blandly, smiling right back, “mostly Miz Dunne does her housework, and I do mine. And sometimes, I gotta confess, my mama would slap the sugar out of me if she could see the results.”
Tommy laughs, and Eugene gives a brief snigger. Cal feels that Tommy needs to do a better job of training Eugene, if he wants the kid to follow in his footsteps. Eugene has a genuine talent for hitting the wrong note.
“We’re not fussy,” Tommy assures him. “If ’tis good enough for you, man, ’tis good enough for us.”
“I wouldn’t feel right about it,” Cal says, shaking his head regretfully.
“Inviting two fine men like y’all to sit down in a place that ain’t up to any of our standards.
I’ll always take the opportunity to shoot the breeze with good neighbors, but today we’ll have to do it in God’s living room instead of mine.
” He waves a hand in the general direction of the scenery.
Behind Tommy and Eugene, the rooks are starting to swoop over to investigate the Range Rover.
Tommy isn’t going to push it any harder, when he won’t win.
“That’s a lovely way of putting it,” he says approvingly, scanning the fields.
“Sometimes it takes an outside eye to make us see what we’ve got, isn’t that right?
” That part is to Eugene, who deigns to nod, although he’s displeased and not hiding it well.
Cal smiles at him. “I wouldn’t want to mislead you, but,” Tommy adds.
“We’re not just here for the company, fine though it is.
This is a professional call, you might say. ”
The Moynihans’ house is about the only one in Ardnakelty that doesn’t have any of Cal and Trey’s work in it. Cal hasn’t missed the message: in Tommy’s eyes, he’s not important enough, or maybe not permanent enough, to be worth patronizing. He finds it interesting that this has suddenly changed.
“Gee,” he says, “I’m honored, but I’m plumb up to my ears with Christmas orders. I can give you the number for a guy up in town who does good work, though.”
After a second of bafflement, Tommy throws back his head and laughs heartily.
“Ah, God, no,” he says. “We’ve got a bitta miscommunication going on here.
Your furniture’s great stuff, I’ve seen it here and there and I’m well impressed, but we’re sorted for all that—at the moment, anyhow; sure, I’ll call back over as soon as we need anything.
No, I’m talking about another kind of professional call. ”
“That so,” Cal says.
“It is,” Tommy says, rearranging his posture to indicate serious conversation and shifting his tone to a somber one.
Eugene, looking off past Cal’s head, doesn’t bother to follow his lead.
“I don’t know how much you’ll have heard, now.
But you know what happened to poor Rachel Holohan.
You were there when she was found, sure. ”
“I was there,” Cal says. “That was a terrible thing.”
“Oh, it was, all right. Tragic. The poor girl.” Tommy shakes his head and leaves a moment of silence. Eugene blinks fast.
“And you might know,” Tommy says, snapping out of it, “herself and Eugene here were as good as engaged.”
“I do seem to recall Noreen mentioning something along those lines,” Cal says.
“That’s right, o’ course: you were there when she was making guesses about the engagement do.” Tommy smiles sadly. “Noreen’s always been sharp as a tack. She wasn’t far off there, was she, Eugene?”
This is apparently Eugene’s cue. “I was going to ask Rachel that weekend,” he says.
Eugene doesn’t talk like his daddy. Tommy has the full Ardnakelty accent, rich as farm dirt; Eugene has scrubbed all that away till he could be from anywhere in this country, as long as anywhere had a decent selection of concept restaurants and craft beer.
His voice is tight; he doesn’t like trotting out this story for Cal’s inspection. “I had the ring and everything.”
Cal looks mildly puzzled and waits.