City of Bohane: A Novel by Kevin Barry Page B

the house.’
    Strings of fires all along the bluffs – Norrie families on a war footing was the message.
    ‘They can light their little fires all they want. And remember this much for me, Macu, please – you never once in your fucking life had a good feeling the night before a Feud, check?’
    ‘Maybe a time comes when there be one Feud too far, Logan, y’heed?’
    He glared at his wife, but kept silent his anger, and he twisted it instead to aim coldly, smilingly at his girl-chil’ lieutenant.
    ‘Jenni-gal,’ he said, ‘I understand you’re becoming quite a regular ’cross at the Bohane Arms?’
    Jenni Ching didn’t so much as flutter an eyelash.
    ‘I’m findin’ it’s the kind o’ spot you’d hear an interestin’ yarn about the Bohane los’-time,’ she said.
    ‘Oh yeah?’ said Macu. ‘Concerning’?’
    ‘All kin’ o’ caper,’ said Jenni. ‘’bout how peoples come up and ’bout how they goes back down again.’
    ‘My dear mother would have the sketch for you there sure enough.’
    Jenni eyeballed Macu hard.
    ‘An’ ’bout where it was peoples come from. Originally, like.’
    Laminate posters on the Ho Pee wall showed roosters, pigs, rats. The fairy lights were strung from wall to wall above the Formica tables and they burned a lurid note. Logan was smiling now as he spooned up his soup – he liked a catfight.
    Macu, polite as the seeping of a poison, said:
    ‘An’ where’s it the Chings is boxin’ out of original, Jenni-chick?’
    Jenni from her tit pocket yanked a stogie, clipped and lit it, sucked deep and blew a brownish smoke.
    ‘Chings in Bohane goin’ back an’ again beyond the los’-time. S’town built offa Ching blood. We goes way back. We ain’t in off the las’ wave at all, missus.’
    A motion she drew in the air then, slowly and looping, with her cigar hand, to indicate the wave, and the smoke made signals indeciperable atop the Ho Pee’s dreamy glow.
    ‘Ye sure ain’t,’ said Macu. ‘Chings been snakin’ aroun’ them wynds long as I got the recall. Gettin’ the reck on everyone’s business, like.’
    ‘Ladies,’ said Logan, ‘please.’
    He pushed back his soup. He knit long fingers across his slender belly. He always enjoyed the eve of a Feud. He knew that Eyes Cusack would not for long keep his mongrels leashed, and his mood was high and expectant. When you were running a Fancy, regular demonstrations of rage were needed to keep the town in check and, just as importantly, the Fancy boys in trim. Too much sweetness and light and they got fat, unpleasantly smiley and over-interested in the fashion mags.
    Jenni Ching looked from Logan to Macu and back again.
    Jenni Ching raised her brow and blew smoke to the tapped-brass ceiling of the Ho Pee.
    Jenni Ching was thinking: This is what’s runnin’ the Back Trace motherfuckin’ Fancy?
    ‘Colours to be raised?’ she asked.
    ‘Absolutely,’ said Logan. ‘If we’re going do it at all, we’re going to do it properly.’
    ‘Colours a pain in the fuckin’ gee,’ she said. ‘Fuck we wanna be marchin’ with flags for, H? This the Paddy’s Day fuckin’ Parade or what, like? Just get the fuck out there and reef the scutty fucks! Flags and fuckin’ colours ain’t gonna make no differ to the gack we welt outta the Rises filth no-how, y’check me?’
    Logan sighed, was sweetly paternal.
    ‘Jenni?’ he said. ‘We’re not savages. If there’s young fellas gonna be planted in the boneyard tomorrow, they ain’t going down without knowing who’s responsible. Fancy’s colours will be raised.’
    ‘S’the kin’ o’ mawky shite that gets my melt off,’ she said. ‘Flags an’ fuckin’ banners …’
    ‘I’m hearin’ Girly talkin’,’ said Macu.
    ‘True enough,’ Logan smiled.
    Girly Hartnett was long noted for nose-thumbing at tradition. Girly’s reckon was that Bohane was far too sentimental a town. Of course, it didn’t stop her spending a quare chunk of clock travelling to the