to the argument going on down the bar. It catches his ear because it sounds unusual. Mostly the arguments in here are the well-worn kind that can be made to stretch for years or decades, resurfacing periodically when there’s nothing fresh to discuss. They involve farming methods, the relative uselessness of various local and national politicians, whether the wall on the western side of the Strokestown road should be replaced by fencing, and whether Tommy Moynihan’s fancy conservatory is a nice touch of modern glamour or an example of jumped-up notions. Everyone already knows everyone else’s stance on the issues—except Mart’s, since he tends to switch sides regularly to keep things interesting—and is eager for Cal’s input to mix the conversation up a little.
This argument has a different ring to it, louder and messier, like it’s one they haven’t practiced. “There’s no dog could do that,” the guy at the end of the bar is saying stubbornly. He’s little and round, with a little round head perched on top, and he tends to wind up on the wrong end of jokes; generally he seems OK with this, but this time he’s turning red in the face with vehemence and outrage. “Did you even look at them cuts? It wasn’t teeth that done that.”
“Then what d’you think done it?” demands the big bald slab of a guy nearest to Cal. “The fairies?”
“Feck off. I’m only saying, it was no animal.”
“Not them fecking aliens again,” says the third guy, raising his eyes from his pint. He’s a long gloomy streak with his cap pulled down close over his face. Cal has heard him say a total of about five sentences.
“Don’t mock,” the little guy orders him. “You’re saying that because you’re uninformed. If you ever paid any notice to what’s going on right above your thick head—”
“A crow would shite in my eye.”
“We’ll ask him,” the big guy says, pointing his thumb at Cal. “Neutral party.”
“Sure, what would he know about it?”
The big guy—Cal is pretty sure his name is Senan, and he mostly gets the last word—ignores this. “Come here,” he says, shifting his bulk around on the bar stool to face Cal. “Listen to this. Night before last, something kilt one of Bobby’s sheep. Took out its throat, its tongue, its eyes and its arse; left the rest.”
“Sliced out,” Bobby says.
Senan ignores this. “What would you say done it, hah?”
“Not my area,” Cal says.
“I’m not asking for an expert scientific opinion. I’m only asking for common sense. What done it?”
“If I was a gambling man,” Cal says, “my money’d be on an animal.”
“What animal?” Bobby demands. “We’ve no coyotes or mountain lions here. A fox won’t touch a grown ewe. A rogue dog would’ve ripped her to bits.”
Cal shrugs. “Maybe a dog took out the throat, then got scared off. Birds did the rest.”
That gets a moment’s pause, and a raised eyebrow from Senan. They had him pegged as a city boy, which is only partly true. They’re re-evaluating.
“There you go,” Senan says to Bobby. “And you making a holy show of us with your aliens. He’ll take that back to America now, and they’ll be left thinking we’re a bunch of muck savages that’d believe anything.”
“They’ve got aliens in America as well,” Bobby says defensively. “They’ve more than anyone, sure.”
“Nowhere has fuckin’ aliens.”
“Half a dozen people seen them lights last spring. What d’you think that was? The fairies?”
“That was Malachy Dwyer’s poteen. A few sups of that and I see lights too. One night walking home from Malachy’s, I seen a white horse wearing a bowler hat cross the road in front of me.”
“Did it kill your sheep?”
“Damn near kilt me. I jumped so high I went arse over tip into the ditch.”
Cal is comfortable on his stool, drinking his beer and appreciating this. These guys remind him of his grandpa and his porch buddies, who enjoyed each other’s company in the same way, by giving each other shit; or of the squad room, before a quicksand layer of real viciousness seeped in under the pretend stuff, or maybe just before he started noticing it.
“My grandpa and three of his buddies saw a UFO one time,” he says, just to feed the conversation a little bit. “They were out hunting, one evening about dusk, and a big black triangle with green lights on the corners came along and hovered over their heads for a while. Didn’t make a sound. My grandpa said they about shit themselves.”