“So Johnny and this Rushborough guy,” Cal says. He makes himself sit down again, to hold his thoughts to a steady pace. “They ran themselves into some kinda hot water, over in England. They cooked up this story and came over here to scam a few quick bucks, to get themselves outa trouble.”
He doesn’t underestimate the level of trouble Johnny could be in. By nature Johnny is clearly small-time, but he’s made up of nothing but a shit-ton of talk and a useful smile; he’s light. If he got caught up by something with force, he could roll a long way from where he naturally belongs.
“How, but?” Lena says. “They pulled, what, a grand or two worth of gold outa the river today? It wouldn’t be worth their while doing all this just for that.”
“Nope,” Cal says. He remembers Mart, in the pub, gabbing about psychology. “This was just the start. Now they’ve got the guys all worked up, they’re gonna come up with some reason they need more money. Mining licenses, or equipment, or something. The guys, Mart and P.J. and the rest, have they got enough cash to make them worth scamming?”
The movement of Lena’s rocking chair has stilled. “They’d have a bit put away, all right,” she says. “Maybe not Con McHugh, he’s only young, but the rest. And they’ve the land. Sixty or seventy acres each—Senan has a hundred. That’s family land, all of it, owned free and clear. Any of them could walk into a bank tomorrow and mortgage a few of those acres for maybe five grand each, or put them up as collateral for a loan.”
“Those guys are knee-deep in this thing already,” Cal says. He never worked Fraud, but he had buddies who did; he knows how it goes. “If Johnny talks a good enough game, they’ll figure it’d be a waste not to go that one step deeper.”
Lena has started rocking her chair again, slowly, thinking. “They’d do it,” she says. “Most of them, anyway. If they think there’s gold on their own land, or even that there might be, they can’t just turn away from it. If it was up on the mountain, they’d play safe and leave it, maybe. But not on their land.”
Cal finds himself strangely and deeply outraged for the men who were on the riverbank today. He has his own beef with these men, or some of them, but he remembers their faces in the pub when Rushborough brought out the ring: their stillness as their land transformed and ignited, blazing with fresh constellations and long-hidden messages from their own blood. Compared to what Rushborough and Johnny are doing, their salting the river seems like kid mischief: shoplifting beer, shaving the drunk guy’s eyebrows. Cal has lived in Ardnakelty long enough to be conscious that the tie between them and their land is something he can’t fathom, cell-deep and unvoiceable. Johnny, at least, should have known better than to fuck with that, and much better than to let some guy with an English accent fuck with it.
“If they find out,” he says, “there’s gonna be trouble.”
Lena watches him. She says, “You reckon they should find out?”
“Yeah,” Cal says. An immense tide of relief is rising inside him. At last, he can do something. “And I reckon the sooner the better. We’re all heading down to Seán’s, to celebrate. They can all find out at once.”
Lena’s eyebrows go up. She says, “That’ll get messy.”
“The longer I wait, the messier it’ll get.”
“You could say it to Johnny on his own. Walk home with him after the pub, tell him you’ll be saying it to the lads tomorrow, so he’s got till then to pack his bags. Keep things from getting outa hand.”
“Nah,” Cal says.
“Tell him there’s other people that know as well. In case that Rushborough gets any funny ideas.”
“People round here,” Cal says, “they think about the kid like she’s half mine.” It comes out with difficulty, because he’s never said it before and because he has no idea how much longer it will hold any kind of truth; he’s sorely aware that he hasn’t seen Trey in days. But for now, at least, it can still have some worth to her. “If I call out Johnny in front of God and everybody, so the whole place knows it was me that tanked his plan, then no one’s gonna go thinking she was in on his bullshit. So, once he’s gone, she can go on living here without anyone giving her hassle.”
There’s a small silence. Off by the vegetable patch, the dogs have triggered the zombie scarecrow and are losing their minds, threatening all manner of extravagant destruction from a safe distance. The tomato plants are burgeoning; even from here, Cal can see the bursts of red shining among the green.
“This Rushborough fella,” Lena says. “I met him, the other morning. I was out walking the dogs, and he stopped for a wee chat.”
“About what?”
“Nothing. Aren’t the mountains lovely, and this isn’t the weather he expected from Ireland. Whatever you do, watch that fella.”
