Chapter Twenty
Twenty
The ambulance, when it finally comes, comes fast and silently, with no lights or sirens.
Cal is so cold and so stiff that when he stands up to wave, his legs almost go out from under him.
The sky is too dark for mid-afternoon; against its bruised gray the paramedics stride briskly across the fields, neon-yellow, snapping on gloves, shouldering their bags of delicate sharp tools.
Kojak rises up to guard against them, with a low warning snarl, and it takes Cal a long time to persuade him away and get a grip on his collar so they can bend over what they’ve come for.
In spite of its discretion, the ambulance has been noted.
From every direction people move in, across fields and along the road, to stand at a distance.
P.J. brings his tractor with its winch, and he and a couple of other men weave straps through Mart’s tractor, tug at clasps, squint to check angles.
They say a word or two here and there. Their faces wear no expression.
The paramedics have pulled up the duvet over Mart’s head.
When the tractor is raised and steady, the paramedics move in with their stretcher. Cal turns away, so as not to see what they’re lifting and covering. All around, the treelines have closed in, intent and watching; farther off, the mountain is hidden by cloud, so that the world ends at its slope.
People cross themselves as the stretcher passes. The small sharp sound of the ambulance door slamming carries across the fields. As the ambulance starts back towards the main road, more slowly now that there’s no hurry, the watchers turn for home.
Cal and P.J. and Senan are left. They unhook the winch rope and disentangle the straps from Mart’s tractor. “Leave it stand,” Senan says. “The oil needs to settle.”
Cal’s jacket and sweatshirt and Mart’s duvet lie tangled on the grass.
The hole in the earth is there, but Mart was right: blurred by the ground’s sogginess and by the tractor, to the Guards and the inspectors it could pass for something dug by rabbits or badgers.
Cal pulls out his phone and takes photos, before he treads on the edges a few times just in case.
He has to cast around for a while before he finds the heap of dark dirt tucked away discreetly at the foot of a wall, and takes photos of that too.
He catches Senan’s head turned towards him.
“Come over to my place,” he says, when he gets back to the tractor. “When you’re done here. And get Francie.”
P.J. winds his winch rope back in and loads the silage onto his tractor to feed the sheep—they turn noisy at the sight, and jostle around their trough.
Senan takes charge of Kojak while Cal trudges across the fields, with the duvet under his arm, to retrieve Rip from Mart’s house.
Kojak is obeying commands docilely now, but he still has a wild creature’s eyes; if he finds Rip alone in his home, he’ll kill him.
Cal is the kind of cold that feels like nothing will ever thaw him.
He folds away his jacket and sweatshirt and Mart’s fleece in a corner of his bedroom, and layers himself in sweaters.
Rip trails him around the house, making anxious beagle conversation; he’s happily impervious to most things, but today has left him cowed.
Outside, in the stillness that’s too heavy for a workday, the news is flying.
Cal’s mind goes to Lena, but he can’t do anything about her right now; he has other business that needs dealing with first. His thinking has a strange, rhythmic clarity, like it’s being paced by a drumbeat he can’t hear.
He washes his hands, scrubbing tractor grease and mud out of the cracks in his skin.
He finds a bottle of bourbon and a handful of glasses and mugs, and sets them out on the kitchen table.
His phone is full up with frantic texts from Bobby, who’s heard some version and is afraid to come near in case he gets run off.
Cal texts him back: Come over to my place.
The other men won’t welcome that, but Cal figures he might as well find out straightaway whether Bobby and Mart were right about people listening to him.
And if he wins this fight, Bobby will take his side, out of gratitude, in any others that might come up.
He needs to start thinking this way. He goes to the workroom and brings out his spare chair.
Senan and P.J. and Francie arrive together. Kojak slinks to a corner and lies flat, but no one else can settle; they move around Cal’s kitchen and his living room, shoulders rolling, breathing like bulls. The house feels too small for them. It smells powerfully of sweat, mud, rage.
“Now,” Senan says. “What’s the fuckin’ story?”
“Mart drove that path every day of his fuckin’ life,” Francie says. “He didn’t roll that tractor. Tommy Moynihan’s at the back of this.”
“Bobby oughta be here any minute,” Cal says. “We’ll talk then.”
All three of them wheel to face Cal. “Fuck Bobby,” Senan and Francie say at the same time. P.J. is open-mouthed.
“The man’s a fuckin’ traitor,” Senan says.
“Bobby’s changed his views,” Cal says. “He’s had enough of Moynihan’s shit.”
Francie lets out a harsh snap of a laugh. “Bit late for that, hah?”
“If he walks in that door,” Senan says, “I’ll punch his teeth out for him.”
“Nope,” Cal says. “Bobby never did one thing to help Moynihan out. All he did was take a while to get his priorities straight.”
“ ’Cause he’s a waste of fuckin’ space,” Francie says.
“Maybe,” Cal says, “but if you cut him out, you’re doing Moynihan’s work for him. That’s what he wants: everyone pissed off with everyone else, so we won’t team up against him. We’ve been playing his game long enough.”
“The man’s right,” P.J. says, to all of their surprise.
P.J. takes so little part in arguments that people tend to factor him out altogether, but apparently the other night’s foray into loudness had a lasting impact.
“Bobby’s sound as a pound. You’re only sore ’cause he didn’t do what you tolt him for once.
Now he’s doing it, what more d’you want? ”
“I want the little shite outa my sight,” Senan says. “Today of all days.”
“I been pals with Bobby since school,” P.J. says, unbudged. “I’m not having Tommy fuckin’ Moynihan decide who my friends are.”
“What d’you want that gobdaw for, anyhow?” Francie asks Cal. “I can get you a dozen men that’d be more use.”
“Tommy’s got sources,” Cal says. “He’s gonna know exactly who’s been on board with us all along, and who was staying clear of the action up until now. I want to show him that people are done with staying clear.”
They look at him, registering that he has some plan in mind, weighing the value of that. Cal looks back at them.
They could, with reason, turn on him. They did things his way before, and now Mart is dead. All of them know that Mart never in his life did anything except by his own choice, but these men have more anger than they can hold, and they need somewhere to lay it.
“It’s your house,” Senan says, after a moment. “You can invite anyone you want.”
“I’m warning you now, but,” Francie says, “if that amadán comes out with any shite about giving Tommy the benefit of the doubt, I’ll fetch him such a kick up the hole, he won’t sit down for a month.”
This is as near to capitulation as Cal could hope for.
“If he does that,” he says, “I’ll kick him up the ass myself.
But he won’t.” Francie snorts, unconvinced, and sheers off to pace the living room again.
Rip, further unsettled by Kojak’s strangeness, is watching him warily; Kojak lies like none of them are there.
The tap on the door is so timid that Cal only hears it because he’s been listening for it. Bobby is a mess, pale and red-eyed, his sparse hair sticking up at frantic angles. When he sees the others, he freezes.
“Come on in,” Cal says. And to all of them: “Have a seat.”
Senan and Francie eye Bobby, who blinks hard but keeps his chins up. No one says anything.
Cal sits down at the table and starts pouring bourbon, with a generous hand. P.J. folds his lankiness into a chair. After a long second, the others follow.
Senan takes his glass and raises it. Cal thinks he’s going to say To Mart, but instead he clears his throat suddenly and fiercely, and says nothing at all. The rest of them lift their glasses to match, and drink hard.
Cal knows the evening they should be having: more drink, anecdotes about Mart, more drink, dark stories about other farm accidents, more drink, songs to fill the place of the weeping they won’t do. This death requires a different kind of tribute.
“I seen that hole,” Senan says, putting down his glass. “Under the tire. That’s what rolled the tractor.”
“Yeah,” Cal says. “Mart was awake when I got there. Awake and talking.” He sees that reach them, what his day has been like. “He said that hole was dug last night. And the sod was put back over it, so’s he wouldn’t see it.”
No one meets that with any surprise. All it gets is a slow, grim tightening of the anger around the table. “ ’Twouldn’t be hard,” P.J. says, “and the ground this wet.”
“There’s tire-tracks worn in the grass,” Francie says, “where Mart took the same route every time. All anyone’d have to do is pick a spot on one a them tracks, and they’d have him.”
Senan nods, and keeps nodding. “Tommy’s a dead man,” he says. “We’ll head over there tonight and take him up the mountains.”
Cal drinks and keeps quiet. He knew this was coming. It needs to have its time.
“You oughta stay out of it,” P.J. says, to Senan. “You’ve Angela and the kids.”
“The kids won’t know. And Angela’ll say nothing.”
“Ah, I know that, sure. But if we get caught, like.”
“I’m not fuckin’ staying outa anything,” Senan says. His voice is flat and final. To Cal: “How about you? You’ve Lena and the child. D’you wanta stay outa this?”
All of them are looking at Cal. “Whatever we decide on,” he says, “I’m in.”