The Thing About December (2 page)

THE LOCK
on the door of the slatted house was broken and the wood was warped from dampness and rot, so the door was stuck half open. Even after three years it was strange to have the slatted house empty in January. The cattle made their beds in there every winter; they’d be cosy and warm and safe from the cold rain and the stinging frost, all squashed in together and using each other as big radiators. And their shite would flow away down a pipe all winter and into an underground tank to be sucked back up and spread on the land to feed the grass that they would eat and turn back into milk and shite again. Whenever the teacher would describe the Nativity in school, Johnsey always pictured the stable in Bethlehem as the slatted house that neatly divided the front yard from the big yard, and the three wise men as Daddy,
Paddy Rourke and Mister Unthank. The baby Jesus would have been fine and warm and safe in there.

There was enough light allowed in so that Johnsey could see the stout crossbeam that dissected the roof. Would it take his weight? Things was built right in them days, Daddy always said. He was very fat, though. Imagine if he did it arseways and fell on his hole and broke his leg! And Dermot McDermott found him, say. And called Mother. And the fire brigade. And Father Cotter. And then Eugene Penrose and the rest of the dole boys would arrive on after seeing the brigade flying out. The whole village would be standing in the yard for a finish, waiting for a turn to look in the door at the fat eejit on the floor of the slatted house with his leg bursted and cocked at a quare angle, crying like a small child, his face purple and swelled and the rope still tight around his neck, and they’d point and shake their heads and roll their eyes until someone kind would break it up and push them away and try to help him, and their kindness would stab him deeper than the laughter of the rest, because he didn’t deserve it, and they’d know it, but be kind anyway.

Father Cotter was that way, and the Unthanks. Packie Collins wasn’t. He told Johnsey every day that he was only allowing him work in the co-op out of respect for his father, Lord have mercy on him. He was a
liability
. Johnsey often heard Packie muttering about him to customers, who’d look around and smirk, and if he caught their eye they’d salute him, but in a way that was too friendly, as fake as that cake in the window of the wedding shop inside in town. As fake as a three-pound note, Mother would say. Father Cotter’s job was to be nice to people; he worked for God, who gave strict instructions to all to be good and nice. And Mister Unthank was Daddy’s great old friend; they’d palled around together since they were small boys. He’d stood at Daddy’s coffin for ages in the funeral home, with his hand on the rim,
just shaking his head and saying, really softly,
Jack, Jack, Jackie
, and tut-tutting, like Daddy used to over things being wasted and things that weren’t right, and Johnsey saw a tear rolling off of Mister Unthank’s chin and landing on his father’s cheek, so that it looked like Daddy himself was crying.

DADDY HAD ALWAYS SAID
to be honest. Daddy wasn’t able to tell a lie. Once, years ago, an auld biddy from the village rang to know would Mother be able to bake twenty tarts in a hurry for the ICA show and Daddy told them hold on and put down the phone and went out to the chicken coop in the haggard to ask her and Mother said to tell that old biddy make her own tarts, no, tell her I’m gone to town and won’t be back till nine but Daddy said No, Sarah. You know I can’t tell a lie. And the way he said it, it was like the priest saying
and the Word was made flesh
: it was a fact, a given thing; there could be no argument. Mother stomped into the hallway, raging, and had to tell her own lie. Then she told Daddy that now he had
her
feeling terrible and she had to go as far as town for a finish so as to make her lie into truth, and stay there until nine o’clock to make doubly certain that truth prevailed that day. That was one of the things about Daddy: he could make you feel bad by being so good, so that you
had
to try to be good like him.

He couldn’t think properly abroad in the yard or around the buildings or even in the dark of the slatted house. The whole place smelled of Daddy. Whenever he looked up the yard he expected to see him striding towards him, saluting with his stick and full of news even when there was no news. Everything in the yard seemed to have died with him, as though they had only existed to serve him. But still all these things were shaped by his weight and worn by his touch so that no one else could quite fit them: the rut along the yard where he had tramped the same track
over and over every day where visitors often stumbled, unaware of its presence until its sides caught their soles; the shiny, paintless edges around the handles of the doors to the slatted house and the milking parlour and the workshop where every day for years on end he had flung them open and closed; the seats of the tractor and the jeep, moulded by the burden of him into a hollow; the very walls of the buildings that seemed to stand now only to honour the memory of his stony strength.

It wasn’t good for you, the way this house was now. Even a gom like him could see that. Sadness plus sadness equals more sadness. Sadness begets sadness. The deadness of the yard and the buildings made the air seem thicker and harder to walk through. Dermot McDermott had enough in his own yard and buildings above; he leased the grass only. Anyway, it would have made his heart sick to see that curly-headed fucker flying in and out around Daddy’s yard with his big fancy John Deere, destroying the place and taking no care to maintain the integrity of Daddy’s world. It would have been an invasion. Better the dead-quiet loneliness that prevailed now than the noisy ignorance of that chap and his fancy machinery. That’s the way Daddy would have seen it, Johnsey was certain.

He heard Daddy one time saying he was a grand quiet boy to Mother when he thought Johnsey couldn’t hear them talking. Mother must have been giving out about him being a gom and Daddy was defending him. He heard the fondness in Daddy’s voice. But you’d have fondness for an auld eejit of a crossbred pup that should have been drowned at birth. He’d be no use for anything only eating and shiteing and he’d be an awful nuisance, but still and all you’d give him the odd rub and a treat, and you’d nearly always be kind to him because it wasn’t his fault he was a drooling fool of a yoke. You wouldn’t be going around showing him off to people, though, that’s for sure.

His bedroom was the best place to think about things. Too much thinking could balls you up rightly. Your mind could start acting like a video player, showing you your own thickness. It was worst when he’d had to talk to people, like one of the auld biddies quizzing him on the way home or in the bakery about Mother or someone stopping him on the street to know how was he and how was his Aunty Theresa and was Small Frank finished his auld exams and he’d stand there and feel his cheeks burning off of him and he’d do his damnedest to try and answer properly and sound like a normal fella but words could make an awful fool of you. What use was talking, anyway? What was ever achieved with words?

Johnsey often thought about girls in his room. He had a dirty magazine that used to belong to Anthony Dwyer, who wasn’t quite the gom Johnsey was, but who had the added hardship of being a meely-mawly with one leg shorter than the other. Looking at Dwyer’s magazine often landed him in a sinful place and the thought of doing that made him feel like he sometimes did before walking up to Communion if the Moran girls were sitting near the front in their short skirts: he could feel his heart hammering and jumping and kicking about the place, for all the world as though it was ready to jump up his throat and out his mouth and slap him in the puss before running off on little fat red legs, leaving a bloody trail behind it, shouting Good luck now, fatarse, sure you don’t need me, anyway! He had a look out the window and across the yard. No stir abroad. Why would there be?

He imagined Dermot McDermott with a lovely girl in a short skirt and she pinned up against that bollix, trapped, and he saying to her Go on, come on will you and trying to have his rotten way with her and she not wanting to and trying to free herself. Then he imagined he, Johnsey, striding up behind Dermot McDermott and he turning around and Johnsey planting him a box, square
on the jaw, and the lovely girl crying Thank you, thank you and Johnsey would put his arms around her and she would suddenly decide she wanted after all to do the dirty things Dermot McDermott had wanted her to do, only with Johnsey, and not the curly fucker who was now prostrated in the muck.

JOHNSEY HAD
never really spoken to a girl, besides Mother and the aunties and the auld biddies, and they were certainly not real girls like the ones in town or outside Molloy’s smoking fags in what Mother called their
bum freezers
. A few hellos and goodbyes and grands and yes pleases and thanks very muches to Packie’s daughter and the very odd customer in the co-op who was female; that was it, really.

His parents had talked him into going to a disco once. He didn’t know why they were so mad for him to go. It was for the youth only, and being held in a parish hall fifteen miles away. A bus was going from the village, a twenty-five seater, but some would have to stand. The thoughts of that bus, and a hall with girls in it, and Eugene Penrose and all the cool lads laughing and looking at him as if to say where does
he
think he’s going, he’s not one of us, and the risk of having to talk or being expected to disco dance; Johnsey didn’t know why Mother and Daddy were doing this to him. Why couldn’t he just stay at home with them, like always, and watch
The Late Late Show
and drink tea and eat buns or currant cake?

Johnsey was thirteen then, his hair was thick and black and wouldn’t be told which way to lie, his face was red, his hands were too big, his feet often betrayed him, his voice cracked in his throat and escaped from his mouth all high-pitched or too low and his head shook when he was forced to talk, and surely to God this much misery was too much for one boy to have to bear.

Mother had bought him new trousers especially – they would be for good wear as well, they wouldn’t go astray, anyway – and a shirt and a jumper. The jumper was right expensive, and it had a tiny little golfer on it like the ones all the cool lads were wearing. And he had Doc Marten shoes on. Daddy had brought them home for him in a box that said ‘Air Wear’ on it. But the ones he had brought were too small and he had to carry them back into town and get bigger ones, but he didn’t mind, he said it was his own fault – he should have checked.

When he was leaving the house that night for the disco, Mother had brushed his hair back with her hand and kissed him on the forehead and said My little man, off to his first dance. And Daddy drove him down to the village in the jeep, so he felt like a right big man jumping down from the high seat and Daddy winked at him and said Go handy now, leave a few girls for the rest! Johnsey wasn’t sure what Daddy meant but it sounded manly and funny and he laughed along and said Good luck, thanks, Dad – he only just remembered not to say
Daddy
while there was a chance any of the cool lads could hear. Daddy had given him a whole fiver on the way down, and it was warm in his hand. The bus was paid for and it was two pounds in, so three pounds of the fiver was all his for spending. What was there to buy at discos? Johnsey could not imagine. Surely there’d be Coca-Cola, anyway. In spite of his nerves, he felt a thrill.

He had been hoping Dwyer would be down at the memorial to wait for the bus so he would have a comrade in spastication. He could still hear Daddy’s jeep and smell its fumes when Eugene Penrose sauntered over, flanked by little Mickey Farrell and a lad with fair hair from Fifth Year who was in a fight one day with a fella from the minor team and he drew shocking red blood and won the fight and the fella from the minor team, who was
eighteen
, started crying and the blood solid spurted from his nose.

What are you doing here? Eugene Penrose’s hair was long, straight down from his fringe and over his ears. He looked like a right dipstick, Daddy would say. An awful-looking yahoo!

Going to the disco, Johnsey had said.

Are you now? Come on so, come over here and stand with us, old Paddy Screwballs is driving the bus so he’ll be ages yet. He’s probably above at home picking cling-ons out of his hole.

Johnsey didn’t know what to do. Eugene Penrose had talked friendly to him before now and it only ever ended badly. Once, it had lasted a full day, the friendliness, but then he had grabbed his schoolbag going past the church gates and hung it off the high railing and when Johnsey had reached up to get it, Eugene Penrose had pulled down his pants and put a big fist of muck in his underpants and mashed it in with a kick and started roaring that Johnsey had shat in his pants and the whole school-bus crowd saw him with muck all over his arse and on the backs of his legs and he was called Shittyarse Cunliffe for nearly a year after it.

But Johnsey followed Eugene Penrose and little Mickey Farrell with his slanty eyes (Mother had asked Daddy one Sunday coming from Mass, Is that little lad of the Farrells a Mongol, and Daddy had laughed and said No, he’s a rat like his father) over to the memorial where all the cool lads were and a few girls acting like they were disgusted with the cool lads but you could tell they weren’t, really, and a couple of nervous-looking spastics standing to the side, like bits of auld watery broccoli beside a plate of steak and chips.

Hey, lads, Penrose declared, pulling him by the arm to present him to the rest, Look at Cunliffe’s jumper – I’d say his mother knit it and glued a golfer on it!

I’d say his father bought it off the tinkers, someone else volunteered. Johnsey could see his fellow spastics were guffawing
away with the cool lads, feeling safely ignored for the minute and trying to gain ground while they could.

Hey, Johnsey Cunt-Lick, don’t shit in your pants now, it’s only a small bus!

We’ll put the fucker in the boot!

Someone grabbed the back of his jumper and yanked the label out and roared
Penneys!