“Good man yourself,” Mart says. “I knew my money was safe on you. You’ll be glad you did it in the end.” He waves Cal towards the kitchen. “Sit you down there now, and I’ll get another plate. I’m after making a chicken and bacon paella that’s only feckin’ beautiful, if I do say so myself.”
“I ate,” Cal says. “Thanks.” He gives Kojak’s ears a rub and goes home, through the cold darkening air and the smell of smoke coming from somewhere.
SEVENTEEN
When Cal walks into Noreen’s the next day, he’s expecting a frosty stare if he’s lucky, but she greets him with a block of cheddar, a long account of how Bobby came in asking for it and she told him that when his manners were as good as Cal Hooper’s he’d get the same service Cal gets and the big eejit left practically in tears, and a reminder that in a couple of weeks Lena’s pups will be old enough to leave their mammy. Cal has been in Ardnakelty long enough to interpret the nuances of this exchange. Not only does Noreen know that he’s seen the light, and approve wholeheartedly, she’s going to make sure the rest of the townland knows it too. Cal wonders whether Mart went as far as breaking the terms of his feud with Noreen to make this happen.
By way of confirmation, he tests out Seán Óg’s that evening. He walks in the door and is hit by a burst of whoops and ironic cheering from Mart’s corner. “Jaysus,” Senan says, “the dead arose. We thought Malachy had kilt you.”
“We reckoned you must have an awful delicate constitution altogether,” says the buck-naked window guy, “to be put off the drink for life by a few sips of poteen.”
“Who’s we, kemosabe?” Mart demands. “I told ye he’d be back. He didn’t fancy looking at your ugly mugs for a few days, is all. I don’t blame him.” He moves over to make room for Cal on the banquette, and signals to Barty to bring him a pint.
“Come here,” Bobby says to Senan. “Ask him. He’d know.”
“Why would he know?”
“It’s probably some American yoke. The young people do all be talking American these days.”
“Go on and educate me, then,” Senan says to Cal. “What’s a yeet?”
“A what?” Cal says.
“A yeet. I’m sitting on the sofa tonight after my tea, doing a bit of digesting, and my youngest lad comes running in, launches himself onto my feckin’ belly like he’s been shot from a cannon, yells ‘Yeet!’ out of him right in my face, and legs it out again. I asked one of my other fellas what he was on about, but he only laughed his arse off and told me I’m getting old. Then he asked me for twenty quid to go into town.”
“Did you give it to him?” Cal asks.
“I did not. I told him to fuck off and get a job. What the hell is a yeet?”
“You never saw a yeet?” Cal says. He finds himself fed up to the back teeth with being tossed around by these guys like a beach ball. “They’re pet animals. Like hamsters, only bigger and uglier. Great big fat faces and little piggy eyes.”
“I haven’t got a fat fuckin’ face. You’re telling me my young lad’s after calling me a hamster?”
“Well,” Cal says, “that word’s used for something else, too, but I hope your boy wouldn’t know about that. How old is he?”
“Ten.”
“He got the internet?”
Senan is swelling up and turning red. “If that little fecker’s been looking at porn, he can say good-bye to his drum kit, and his Xbox, and his—everything. What’s a yeet? Did he call his own father a prick?”
“He’s only winding you up, ye eejit,” the buck-naked window guy tells him. “He’s no more notion of yeets than you have.”
Senan glares at Cal. “Never heard of ’em,” Cal says. “But you’re cute when you’re angry.”
Everyone roars with laughter, and Senan shakes his head and tells Cal where he can shove his hamsters. The guys order another round, and Mart insists on teaching Cal the rules of Fifty-Five, on the grounds that if he’s planning on sticking around these parts he might as well make himself useful. Nobody says a word about Trey, or Brendan, or Donie, or dead sheep.
Nobody Cal meets, in fact, mentions any of those. Cal tries to take this as an indication that the whole thing is well and truly over—surely if the