City of Bohane: A Novel (6 page)

Wolfie wore:

Black patent high-tops, tight bleached denims with a matcher of a waistcoat, a high dirk belt, and a navy Crombie with a black velvet collar. Wolfie was low-sized, compact, ginger, and he thrummed with dense energies. He had a blackbird’s poppy-eyed stare, thyroidal, and if his brow was no more than an inch deep, it was packed with an alley rat’s cunning. He was seventeen, also, and betrayed, sometimes, by odd sentiments under moonlight. He wanted to own entirely the city of Bohane. His all-new, all-true love: Miss Jenni Ching of the Hartnett Fancy and the Ho Pee Ching Oh-Kay Koffee Shoppe.

‘Get ’round the far side o’ that hill,’ said Wolfie, ‘an’ we should see the place, yeah?’

‘Like I know the fuckin’ bogs from fuckology,’ said Fucker.

They were headed for a low tavern out at Eight Mile Bridge. A tout was to be met there. They walked on through the damp air.

‘If yer askin’ me?’ said Fucker.

‘Well, I ain’t,’ said Wolfie.

‘If yer askin’ me,’ said Fucker, ‘Logan H, he gone seriously fuckin’ para, like.’

‘Logan H, he always
been
para, Fucker. You don’t land the runnins o’ Bohane without bein’ seriously on the fuckin’ para side, y’check me? S’how y’keep suckin’ wind.’

Fucker waggled his beanie head in puzzlement.

‘But what’s this old Gant cunt gonna go and do on him? Who got the juju over Logan, like? He’s well protected, the Long Fella.’

‘Ours ain’t to reason why, Fucker. We’s oney the boys, like. Yet.’

They came upon the Bohane river. Feeding directly off the bog, it was a tarry run of blackwater, and it burbled its inanities. Fucker listened as they walked, and was antsy, and he ran the tip of his tongue across his cracked, nervous lips. He let free a nagging worry.

‘You an’ the Jenni-chick gone kinda serious lately, Wolf?’

‘We’s a lock, Fucker.’

‘Knew I ain’t been seein’ you around the place so much of an evenin’.’

‘Missin’ me, Fucker?’

‘Aw she’s a wee lash an’ all, like. I wouldn’t blame you, kid.’

‘Breed a bairn off her quick as you’d look at me.’

‘You would? A Chinkee gettin’ bred off a ginge? Weird-lookin’ fuckin’ baba, no?’

‘Stow it, Fucker.’

The river ran, and the Nothin’ massif loomed in a grey haze, and swaying briars scraped at the boys’ noggins, and Eight Mile Bridge was at last reached.

‘Spud-ater Central,’ said Wolfie Stanners.

A scatter of inebriates hung out beneath the great stone arches of the bridge. They sucked at their sacks of tawny wine. Misfortunate souls in beanie hats, ragged-arsed trews, ancient geansais. The boys eyeballed them hard as they passed.

‘Awful to see fellas let themselves go,’ said Fucker.

‘No self-respec’ is the prob,’ said Wolfie.

They went down a short fall of carved stone steps to the old tavern: the Eight Mile Inn. The inn was set low on the river’s bank to dodge the hardwind’s assaults. It was lit only by turf fires and the boys squinted in the gloom as they entered.

Door creaked shut behind, and slammed, and wisps of steam like spectral maggots rose from their damp coats in the inn’s fuggy heat.

Their eyes adjusted. They picked out their man at a far corner. As was arranged, he read a copy of the
Vindicator
. Gestured with it as the boys entered. He was a nervy-looking old-timer with milk-bottle shoulders. Mug of brandy before him. A few old bogside quaffers in flat caps were slung about the dim corners but they kept their eyes down. Wolfie and Fucker crossed the room and slid onto the high stools either side of the tout. Wolfie called a pair of amber halves off the fat-armed Big Nothin’ wench behind the counter. She served them, and was all slow and lazy-eyed about it – a lass, no doubt, with notions of being carted off to the city some day. The boys pointedly ignored her. At length, Wolfie addressed the tout in a sidelong whisper.

‘Understand,’ he said, ‘that the man from the paper put word to you?’

‘Mr Gleeson, he did.’

‘Know why we’re here so?’ said Fucker.

‘It’s about a bead wants drawin’.’

‘You the man to draw it for us, cove?’

‘The man ye’re lookin’ for been seen awrigh’, like.’

‘Seen when and where?’

‘Would it mean somethin’ t’ye if I said, like? Ye know Big Nothin’, ye do?’

‘Said when and where?’

‘He oney comes out on night walks.’

‘Comes out where, cove?’

‘Comes out. Walks abroad.’

Fucker snapped.

‘Fuck’s walks a-fuckin-broad mean, fuckface?’

‘He walks Nothin’.’

‘There’s a whole wealth,’ said Wolfie, ‘o’ Big fuckin’ Nothin’ out here, in’t there?’

‘Where’s it he’s kippin’, cove?’

‘That ain’t known.’

The boys threw their hands up. Consulted each other quietly. They were tempted already towards a spilling of blood but wary of the report that needed making to Logan Hartnett. The spud-ater knew this well. Spud-aters – they can be as cute as shithouse slugs.

Fucker sat on his hands and bit his bottom lip. Wolfie, more the diplomat of the pair, changed tack.

‘You’d be a fella who’d take a turn ’round Smoketown the odd time, sir?’

‘Now,’ said the spud-ater, ‘we are talkin’ decen’ cuts o’ turkey.’

‘An’ what’d have an interest for you ’cross the footbridge, sir?’

The old-timer’s eyes sparkled.

‘I’d lick a dream off the belly of a skinny hoor as quick as you’d look at me.’

Wolfie nodded soberly, as though appreciative of the spudater’s delicate tastes.

‘Draw a bead and you’ll have your pick o’ the skinnies,’ he said. ‘Could have a season o’ picks.’

‘A season?’

‘Cozy aul’ winter for ya,’ said Fucker. ‘Buried to the maker’s name in skinnies and far gone off the suck of a dream-pipe, y’check me?’

The old tout sighed as temptation hovered.

‘Oh man an’ boy I been a martyr to the poppy dream …’

‘An’ soon as you done with the dream-pipe,’ Fucker teased some more, ‘there’d be as much herb as you can lung an’ ale to folly.’

‘All dependin’,’ said Wolfie, ‘on you drawin’ a bead on the man’s berth for us, check?’

Spud-ater considered the dregs of his brandy.

Swirled it.

Drained it.

Wolfie nodded for the bar wench to bring him another. She did so. The spud-ater swallowed a fresh nip and savoured it and wrinkled with some delicacy his nostrils. Said:

‘That man we’re talkin’ about? That’s a man with a wealth o’ respect behind him out here on Nothin’. Lot o’ friends here still.’

‘Hear ya, cove.’

‘A man like that? A man that go waaaay the fuck back on Big Nothin’? Man like that get a bead drawn on him for a pair o’ Fancy headjobs … I mean no offence.’

Wolfie held up a forgiving palm.

‘None taken, sir.’

‘All I’m sayin’? It mightn’t auger so well for the fella that draws a bead on Gant Broderick, y’get me?’

‘Don’t say the name,’ said Wolfie.

The tout massaged then slowly with one the other his Judas palms. Niggled at the decision.

‘You gonna draw the fuckin’ bead for us?’ said Fucker. ‘Or we passin’ the time o’ fuckin’ day, like?’

The old-timer put his face in his hands. Looked sadly at the boys then, nodded, and bit down hard on his lip. Jerked a thumb outside.

‘Meet me under that bridge a week t’moro,’ he said. ‘Three bells in the a.m. An’ boys? It’s gonna be moonless.’

7

The Lost-Time: A Romance

Quick as a switchblade’s flick the years had passed and she was forty-three years old. She walked each evening in the Bohane New Town, as if every step might bring her further from the life she had made. But always she circled towards home again.

Macu wore:

A silk wrap, in a rich plum tone, with her dark hair stacked high and shellacked, and her bearing was regal, and a jewelled collar-belt was clasped about her throat; the dullness of its gleam was in the evening light a soft green burn.

By custom, this was the hour of the paseo for the Bohane Dacency – the hour when a parade of the New Town was decorously made. Here was Macu among the delicate ladies as they gently wafted along the pretty greystone crescents.

The paseo whirl:

One might trouble one’s dainty snout with a whiff of the taleggio displayed in an artisanal cheese shop, or run one’s nails along the grain of a silvery hose shipped in from Old Lisbon (if the route was open), or take a saucer of jasmine tea and a knuckle of fennel-scented snuff at a counter of buffed Big Nothin’ granite.

But there was a want in these ladies yet, and it was for the rude life of youth. These old girls had Rises blood in them or they had Back Trace bones, one or the other. Most of the money in Bohane was new money, and it was a question merely of a lady’s luck if she was to be headed for a Beauvista manse or for the Smoketown footbridge.

Macu in the reminiscent evening walked the New Town and she traced a mapline to her lost-time.

It was one of those summers you’re nostalgic for even before it passes. Pale, bled skies. Thunderstorms in the night. Sour-smelling dawns. It brought temptation, and yearning, and ache – these are the summer things. And sweet calypso sounded always from the Back Trace shebeens. Fancy boys sucked on herb-pipes in the laneway outside the Café Aliados. Aggravators were on the prowl from the flatblock circles of the Rises and the ozone of danger was a sexy tang on the air.

Skirmishes.

Blood spilling.

Hormones raging.

And the Trace Fancy had the Gant Broderick’s name to it then. That would have been the day in Bohane – she smiled now as she recalled it – a Fancy boy would wear clicker’d clogs with crimson sox pulled to the top of the calf and worn beneath three-quarter-length trackie cut-offs, with a tweed cap set back to front, a stevedore donkey jacket with hi-viz piping, the hair greased back and quiffed – oh we must have looked like proper fucking rodericks – and a little silver herb-pipe on a leather lace around the neck.

Her mother was gone by then and her father was weakening. There was a greenish tint to his skin in the low light of the Aliados. Always wincing, always reaching for his lower back. Macu was taking on the upkeep of the caff, and she was quick-tongued with the Fancy boys who lounged there. They hung off the Aliados’s tapped-brass counter and were dreamy-eyed for her. She was skinny and seventeen and working it on wedge heels. A darting glance from under the lashes that’d slice a boy’s soul open. A bullwhip lash of the tongue and they’d whimper, swoon, let their eyes roll. Macu was the first-prize squaw that summer back deep in the Bohane lost-time.

The Gant was a slugger of a young dude and smart as a hatful of snakes. Sentimental, also. He had washed in off the Big Nothin’ wastes, the Gant, and it was known in Bohane there was a good mix of pikey juice in him. A rez boy – campfire blood.

See him back there:

A big unit with deep-set eyes and a squared-off chin. Dark-haired, and sallow, and wry. The kind of kid who wore his bruises nicely. A cow lick that fell onto his high forehead.

Her father warned her off – pikeys is differen’, he said – and the warning lent its own spice; fathers never learn.

The Gant jawed a mouthful o’ baccy barside of the Aliados one night, and he winked at her, and he said what’s it they call yez anyway, girl-chil’? Macu, s’it?

‘Back off, pike,’ she said. ‘Y’foulin’ me air, sketch?’

The Gant down the Aliados vibed it like he was an older dude. Summer nights in Bohane, with tempers coming untamped, and tangles in the wynds, and he was losing some of his boys to the dirks of the uptown aggravators. That put its heaviness on him.

He loaded the sad glare on Macu.

She turned it straight back to him.

Oh these were good-looking young people, in a hard town by the sea, and the days bled into the sweet nights, and it was as if the summer would never end.

‘Macu, you get time off ever, girl?’

A shyness on him she could hardly believe. The runnings of the town under his shkelp belt already and he was blushing for her.

‘Me aul’ dude ain’t the hottest.’

‘I see that, girl.’

‘Busy, yunno …’

‘Get to get an aul’ walk in sometime, though? A turn down the river, Macu?’

He showed no front when he talked to her. She liked the rez spiel that came from him. She liked those spun-out Big Nothin’ yarns. Of the old weirds who roamed out there and of the paths that opened to the Bohane underworld. Of the cures and the curses. Of the messages writ in starsign on the night sky. The Gant had the weight of Nothin’ in his step. It felt grown-up to walk the Bohane Trace with the Gant by her side. They took it slowly.

‘I ain’t lookin’ for no easy lackeen,’ he said.

‘Y’ain’t found one,’ she said.

He spoke of the taint that was on the town. He spoke often of premonition. He said it came to him as a cold quiver at the base of the spine. He said that it came in the hour before dawn. He said if he stayed in the creation, he’d come to a bad end sure enough. He said there was no gainsaying that. He said he had the feeling – he said it was in the blood.

‘Sounds to me like a rez boy gettin’ spooked,’ she said, and she traced the tips of her fingers along the creases of his hunched neck.

‘I got a feel for these things,’ he said.

The Bohane river blackly ran. They fell into its spell. It became official in the Trace that summer that Macu from the Aliados was the Gant Broderick’s clutch. He told her that he loved her and that his love caused the fear inside to amplify.

‘Before was like I ain’t had so much to lose,’ he said.

‘Y’breakin’ me fuckin’ heart, pike,’ she said.

‘Don’t want to miss seein’ what you turn into,’ he said.

He said that already they were conspiring against him in the Fancy. He said he was watchful of more than one.

‘Like who?’

‘Like the skinny boy. You know who.’

He talked about leaving the peninsula behind. He asked her to come with him.

‘But go
where
, G?’

‘Maybe … Go across over?’

‘That fuckin’ scudhole?’

‘I won’t go without you, girl.’

‘I dunno, G …’