Chapter Eighteen #6
That night he does the same as the night before: leaves his living-room lamp on, and himself silhouetted in the window. This time he has his Henry rifle across his knees, out of view. Mart’s lights are off tonight, but Cal knows he’s not asleep.
He texts Lena: Keep an eye out. If you have any problems let me know and I’ll be right there. It sounds stilted and wrong, like he’s talking to someone he’s never met, but it’s the best he can do. He doesn’t expect an answer, but after a few minutes Lena texts back Will do. Thanks.
The night is still, with faint shifting patches of moonlight amid broken cloud.
The cold reaching him through the glass has a new arrogance.
The change is subtle, but Cal has been here long enough to read the place’s shorthand: winter is coming in.
Some morning soon, he’ll open the door for Rip and find the fields white with frost. Outwintering cattle will breathe big, sweet-scented puffs of fog; farmers, wrapped up warm, will start their plowing; Noreen will plaster the shop in an explosion of Santas and elves and tinsel.
Later the ewes will be housed for early lambing, the winter wheat that lay dormant under the cold will unfurl its first green from the soil, and spring will rise all over again.
It’s past two o’clock when Cal’s phone beeps. Trey: Someone left out the back. Not sure who secrity lights turned off but too tall for cloda. Heading other way on lane this time up towards village. Gonna try n follow
Whoever it is, they’re not aiming for Lena’s, anyway. That lane weaves at its leisure among the fields behind the village and eventually comes out on Cal’s road, right about opposite Mart’s far field.
OK, Cal texts back. Doesn’t matter if you lose him. Just don’t scare him off. Keep me updated. He doesn’t like any of this being in writing, but they can’t exactly do it out loud. Sound carries for miles, on a night like this.
Mart answers his phone on the second ring.
“You’d better have news for me, Sunny Jim,” he says.
“You promised me movement, and I’m dying of boredom here.
I’ve read the whole fuckin’ internet, trying to keep myself occupied, and just to save you time, there’s nothing on there only eejits having a go at other eejits.
I had faith in them Moynihans to come up with something interesting, after your wee expedition today, but they’re after letting me down something fierce. ”
“I reckon they’re coming through,” Cal says. “Either Tommy or Eugene left their place a few minutes ago, headed our way on the back lane.”
“Well, glory be to God,” Mart says. “That’s an improvement. Fair play to him. Are you ready, Jean-Claude?”
“Yeah,” Cal says. “You?”
“I was born ready,” Mart informs him. “And I’ll let P.J. know the score; not that I think there’s anything coming his way, but still. Catch you on the flip side, Sunny Jim.”
Cal waits in his armchair for twenty minutes before his phone beeps again. Defo Tommy. Had his phone light on we saw his face. Carrying sthing could be a gun. Couldnt stick close wo getting caught lost him but headed your way
Tommy wouldn’t do his own dirty work unless he was on the ropes. Eugene went to Daddy looking for answers, and wasn’t happy about what he heard. The rage that was battering at Tommy’s house the other night has broken through; it’s inside his walls now.
Good work, Cal texts Trey. I’ll take it from here. You guys go home so you don’t get in my way.
He turns off his living-room lamp. Then he texts Mart: Tommy. Maybe armed maybe not. That part might as well be down in writing; it could come in useful someday, depending on where this night ends. Mart texts back a thumbs-up.
With all the lights off, the darkness outdoors slowly takes on form.
The trees, branches bared for winter, spread like river tributaries against the sky.
In the patchy moonlight the road has a pale cast; on its other side, the stone walls are veins of denser darkness against the fields, so faint that Cal can’t tell whether he’s actually seeing them or whether he knows them so well that his memory overlays them on the night.
Rip’s head goes up. “Stay,” Cal says.
Outside the window, nothing moves. He goes quietly to the back door, cracks it an inch, and puts his ear to the ribbon of cold air. His land is silent. Far off at Mart’s place, Kojak is barking.
Cal texts Mart: All OK?
Bloody dog, Mart texts back. Someone was headed this way. Now Id say hes after scaring them off.
Cal texts, They could come back.
Not tonight. Have to start all over tomorrow. If I knew this was a full time job Id of turned it down.
Mart is likely right, but Cal stays in his chair anyway, in case Tommy takes advantage of that thinking. Trey texts him: Story
Nothing, Cal texts back. Kojak scared him off.
Nah. Watch that fucker
I am. Go to bed.
The night, silent and with no stars to mark time passing, goes on and on.
Its scent of earth, leaf mold, and vast cold space seeps in at the cracks of the house.
Cal thinks about all the smells that he used to take for granted, back in Chicago, and that vanished from his life overnight: traffic fumes and alleyway piss, lavish riots of spices curling out of restaurants, deep snow, damp coats steaming on the L train.
So many things didn’t occur to him, when he decided to move here.
When the sky finally starts to pale, he walks his land, keeping Rip to heel, looking for anything Tommy might have left behind, either accidentally or on purpose.
The fields are still gray with dawn. Feeding rabbits scatter at their approach, and under the hazel trees a squirrel is hunting for any last nuts.
Cal’s boots swish steadily in the dew-wet grass.
He thinks of how Mart said he should give his place a name, and wonders whether, if he did, it would go ignored and dissolve into nothing, or whether it would trace a trail through the maps of this townland’s conversation, for however long Ardnakelty lasts.
Mart is out in his near field, checking that the repaired water trough is working. He’s blurred to the ankles by the layer of mist over the grass, so that he looks like a ghost rising up out of the earth, summoned by some signal.