Johnny doesn’t argue with that. He smiles a little, looking out over the dark fields. “I forget you’re only a child,” he says. “You haveta understand men. These lads around here, they’ve been hardworking men all their lives. Everything they’ve got, they earned. A man’s supposed to be proud of that, but the truth is, he can get awful weary of it. He gets to craving something he didn’t have to earn; something that fell into his hands, for no reason at all. That’s why people play the lottery. ’Tisn’t the money they want, even if they think it is; ’tis that moment when they’d feel like they’re one of God’s own handpicked winners. These lads want to feel lucky, for once. They want to feel like God and the land are on their side. They might not give five grand for the chance of fifty, but they’ll give it for the chance to feel lucky.”
Trey doesn’t know what he’s on about and doesn’t care. She says, “Leave Cal outa it.”
“I never wanted him in it to start with,” Johnny says, offended. “I wouldn’t take a penny off a man that’s been good to you. I turned him down flat. D’you know what that fella did? He threatened to go to the Guards if I didn’t let him in. That’s what you get for hanging off a Yank. Would any man from around here do that?”
Trey says, “Leave him outa it or I’ll throw this yoke in a bog.”
“You’ll do what you’re told,” Johnny says. He sounds like everything about him has worn thin. “Or I’ll beat the living shite outa you.”
Trey shrugs.
Johnny rubs a hand down his face. “Right,” he says. “I’ll do what I can. Just get your bit right. For Jesus’ sake.”
Trey heads off down the road. “Where d’you think you’re going?” Johnny calls after her. “There’s no vet open at this hour.”
Trey ignores him.
“Are you headed to your man Hooper’s?”
Trey wants to speed up, but she has to wait for Banjo. He isn’t whimpering any more, but he’s limping heavily, favoring the hurt paw.
“Ah, come back here,” Johnny calls. She hears the car door open. “I’ll give the pair of ye a lift.”
“Get fucked,” Trey calls back to him, without turning her head.
—
Trey cuts across fields till she’s sure her dad can’t have followed her. Then she finds a moonlit spot, near enough a wall that she won’t stand out too clearly, and squats down to examine Banjo’s paw. Her heart is still going hard.
The paw is swollen. When Trey tries to feel for lumps or breaks, Banjo whimpers, moans urgently, and finally growls, although he follows that up with a frenzy of licking to apologize. Trey sits back and rubs his neck the way he likes best. She isn’t going to push him till he snaps at her. It would break his heart.
“ ’S OK,” she says. “You’re grand.” She wishes she had kneed Rushborough in the goolies.
Rushborough and everything he’s brought with him are so alien to her that she can’t translate the evening into any terms she can comprehend. It feels like something that didn’t happen. She sits, trying to spread it out in her mind till she can see it straight. On the other side of the wall, cows chew in a steady, dreamy rhythm.
As far as Trey can see, she has two choices. She can stick to her original goal, which was to scupper her dad’s plan and set him running. That would be easy. She could take the scrap of gold to Cal, or to any of the men, and tell them where she got it. They’re suspicious of her dad already, by reflex. They’d have him and his Englishman run out of town within a day. Rushborough may be hard, but he’s outnumbered and off his patch: he’d be gone.
Against this is the fact that Trey would cut off her own hand sooner than do any of those men a favor. What she wants to do with them is splay open their rib cages and pull out their hearts. She wants to break her teeth on their bones.
This urge has never troubled her, morally speaking. She’s accepted it as something she can never act on, even if she somehow learned exactly where it should be directed, but she’s clear that she would have every right to act. What’s stopped her, too adamantly for the slightest questioning, is Cal. They made a deal: Cal found out for her what had happened to Brendan, as near as he could, and in exchange she gave him her word to do nothing about it, ever. But her dad’s doings have no connection to Brendan. She can do whatever she wants with them.
She could do what her dad and his Englishman need from her. Against that is the fact that she has no desire to do them any favors, either: her dad can fuck himself, and after what Rushborough did to Banjo, he can fuck himself a million times over. But their plan, if she helps them, could hit half of Ardnakelty. Somewhere in there, it’s bound to hit the people who did that to Brendan.
And her dad will be gone soon enough that way, too. Even if the plan goes perfectly, sooner or later it’ll run up against the fact that there’s no gold. He and Rushborough will grab as much cash as they can, and go.
