“That’s a beauty of a dog you’ve got there,” the man says, when he gets close enough.

“He’s a good dog,” Cal says. He knows this guy has to be around his own age, touching fifty, but he looks younger. He has a wistful, fine-boned face that makes him seem like something more than a hardscrabble guy from the back end of Ireland. In a movie, he’d be the wronged gentleman who deserves his title back and the prettiest girl to marry. Cal is startlingly, savagely glad that he looks nothing like Trey.

“Johnny Reddy,” the man says, offering Cal his hand.

Cal holds up his own palms, which are thick with dirt. “Cal Hooper,” he says.

Johnny grins. “I know, sure. You’re the biggest news in Ardnakelty since P.J. Fallon’s ewe dropped the lamb with two heads. How’s the place treating you?”

“Got no complaints,” Cal says.

“Ireland of the welcomes,” Johnny says, giving him a boyish smile. Cal doesn’t trust grown men with boyish smiles. “I hear I’ve to thank you. The missus says you’ve been awful good to our Theresa.”

“No thanks needed,” Cal says. “I wouldn’t’ve got this place fixed up half as quick without her help.”

“Ah, that’s great to hear. I wouldn’t want her being a nuisance to you.”

“She’s no trouble,” Cal says. “She’s turning into a pretty handy carpenter.”

“I saw that coffee table the two of ye made for the missus. Lovely delicate legs on it. I wouldn’t mind seeing legs that good on a young one.” Johnny’s grin widens.

“All the kid’s work,” Cal says. “I didn’t lay a finger on it.”

“I don’t know where she gets it from, at all,” Johnny says, switching tack nimbly when he doesn’t get the man-to-man guffaw he was angling for. “If I tried, I’d land myself in hospital. The last time I did any woodworking was back in school. All I got outa that was ten stitches.” He holds up a thumb to show Cal the scar. “And a slap across the head off the teacher, for bleeding on school property.”

“Well,” Cal says. “We can’t all have the same gifts.” Johnny gives him the urge to pat him down and ask him where he’s headed. There are guys like that, who flunk the sniff test just going to the store; it’s a good cop’s job to work out whether they’re actually doing something hinky, or whether it’s just that they will be sooner or later, probably sooner. Cal reminds himself, which he hasn’t needed to do in a long time, that hinkiness, imminent or otherwise, is no longer his problem. He motions to release Rip, who’s twitching to investigate. Rip circles Johnny at a distance, deciding whether he needs destroying.

“And now here’s Theresa making coffee tables,” Johnny says, offering Rip a hand to smell. He shakes his head, marveling. “When I was a young fella, people woulda broke their hearts laughing at that. They’d have said you were wasting your time teaching a girl, when she oughta be learning to cook a roast dinner.”

“That so?” Cal inquires politely. Rip, who is a creature of sense, has taken one sniff of Johnny and decided that nibbling his own ass for fleas is a better use of his time.

“Ah, yeah, man. Do the lads not slag you for it, down the pub?”

“Not that I know of,” Cal says. “Mostly they just like getting their furniture fixed.”

“We’ve come a long way,” Johnny says, promptly switching tack again. Cal knows what he’s doing: testing, aiming to get a handle on what kind of man Cal is. Cal has done it himself, plenty of times. He doesn’t feel any need to do it now; he’s learning plenty about Johnny as it is. “It’s great for Theresa, having the opportunity. There’s always room for a good carpenter; she can go anywhere in the world with that. Is that what you did yourself, before you came here?”

There is not a chance in hell that Johnny doesn’t know what Cal used to do. “Nope,” Cal says. “I was a police officer.”

Johnny raises his eyebrows, impressed. “Fair play to you. That’s a job that takes guts.”

“It’s a job that pays the mortgage,” Cal says.

“A policeman’s a great thing to have handy, in an outa-the-way place like this. Sure, if you’d an emergency, you’d be waiting hours for them eejits up in town to get to you—and that’s if they bothered getting up off their arses at all, for anything less than murder. There was a fella I knew one time—naming no names—he took a bit too much of a bad batch of poteen and went mental altogether. He got lost on the way home, ended up on the wrong farm. He was roaring at the woman of the house, wanting to know what she’d done with his missus and his sofa. Smashing all round him.”

Cal does his part and laughs along. It’s easier than it should be. Johnny tells a story well, with the air of a man with a pint in his hand and a night of good company ahead.

“In the end he hid under the kitchen table. He was waving the saltshaker at her, yelling that if she or any other demon came near him, he’d sprinkle them all to death. She locked herself in the jacks and rang the Guards. Three o’clock in the morning, that was. It was afternoon before they were arsed sending anyone out. By that time the fella had slept it off on her kitchen floor, and he was busy begging the poor woman to forgive him.”

“Did she?” Cal asks.

“Ah, she did, o’ course. Sure, she’d known him since they were babas. But she never forgave the Guards up in town. I’d say the townland’s over the moon to have you.”

Neither is there a chance in hell that Johnny believes Ardnakelty was over the moon about a cop moving in. Like most nowhere places, Ardnakelty is opposed to cops on general principle, regardless of whether anyone is currently doing anything that a cop might take an interest in. It allows Cal, but that’s in spite of his job, not because of it. “I’m not much good to them in that department,” Cal says. “I’m retired.”

“Ah, now,” Johnny says, smiling roguishly. “Once a policeman, always a policeman.”

“So I’ve been told,” Cal says. “Myself, I don’t police unless I’m getting paid for it. You hiring?”

Johnny laughs plenty at that. When Cal doesn’t join in this time, he settles down and turns serious. “Well,” he says, “I suppose that’s good news for me. I’d rather Theresa got a taste for carpentry than for policing. No harm to the job, I’ve a great respect for anyone who does it, but it’s got its risks—sure, who am I telling? I wouldn’t want her putting herself in harm’s way.”

Cal knows he needs to make nice with Johnny, but this plan is undermined somewhat by his urge to kick the guy’s ass. He’s not going to do it, obviously, but just allowing himself to picture it gives him some satisfaction. Cal is six foot four and built to match, and after spending the last two years fixing up his place and helping out on various neighbors’ farms, he’s in better shape than he’s been since he was twenty, even if he still has a certain amount of belly going on. Johnny, meanwhile, is a weedy little runt who looks like his main fighting skill is convincing other people to do it for him. Cal reckons if he got a running start and angled his toe just right, he could punt this little shit straight over the tomato patch.

“I’ll try and make sure she doesn’t saw off a thumb,” he says. “No guarantees, though.”

“Ah, I know,” Johnny says, ducking his head a little sheepishly. “I’m feeling a wee bit protective, is all. Trying to make up for being away so long, I suppose. Have you children of your own?”

“One,” Cal says. “She’s grown. Lives back in the States, but she comes over to visit me every Christmas.” He doesn’t like talking about Alyssa to this guy, but he wants Johnny to know that she hasn’t cut him off or anything. The main thing he needs to get across, in this conversation, is harmlessness.

“It’s a fine place to visit,” Johnny says. “Most people’d find it a bit quiet-like to live in. Do you not find that?”

“Nope,” Cal says. “I’ll take all the peace and quiet I can get.”

There’s a shout from across Cal’s back field. Mart Lavin is stumping towards them, leaning on his crook. Mart is little, wiry, and gap-toothed, with a fluff of gray hair. He was sixty when Cal arrived, and he hasn’t aged a day since. Cal has come to suspect that he’s one of those guys who looked sixty at forty, and will still look sixty at eighty. Rip shoots off to exchange smells with Kojak, Mart’s black-and-white sheepdog.

“Holy God,” Johnny says, squinting. “Is that Mart Lavin?”

“Looks like,” Cal says. At the start, Mart used to stop by Cal’s place every time he got bored, but he doesn’t come around as much any more. Cal knows what brought him today, when he’s supposed to be worming the lambs. He caught sight of Johnny Reddy and dropped everything.

“I shoulda known he’d still be around,” Johnny says, pleased. “You couldn’t kill that aul’ divil with a Sherman tank.” He waves an arm, and Mart waves back.

Mart has acquired a new hat from somewhere. His favorite summer headgear, a bucket hat in orange and khaki camouflage, disappeared from the pub a few weeks ago. Mart’s suspicions fell on Senan Maguire, who had been the loudest about saying that the hat looked like a rotting pumpkin, brought shame on the whole village, and belonged on a bonfire. Mart put this down to jealousy. He believes adamantly that Senan succumbed to temptation, took the hat, and is sneaking around his farm in it. The pub arguments have been ongoing and passionate ever since, occasionally coming close to getting physical, so Cal hopes the new hat will defuse the situation a little bit. It’s a broad-brimmed straw thing that, to Cal, looks like it should have holes in it for a donkey’s ears.

“Well, God almighty,” Mart says, as he reaches them. “Look what the fairies left on the doorstep.”

“Mart Lavin,” Johnny says, breaking into a grin and holding out a hand. “The man himself. How’s the form?”

“Fine as frog hair,” Mart says, shaking hands. “You’re looking in great nick yourself, but you always were a dapper fella. Put the rest of us to shame.”

“Ah, will you stop. I couldn’t compete with that Easter bonnet.”

“This yoke’s only a decoy,” Mart informs him. “Senan Maguire robbed my old one on me. I want him thinking I’ve moved on, so he’ll drop his guard. You couldn’t watch that fella. How long are you gone now?”

“Too long, man,” Johnny says, shaking his head. “Too long. Four years, near enough.”

“I heard you were over the water,” Mart says. “Did them Brits not appreciate you well enough over there?”

Johnny laughs. “Ah, they did, all right. London’s great, man; the finest city in the world. You’d see more in an afternoon there than you would in a lifetime in this place. You should take a wee jaunt there yourself, someday.”

“I should, o’ course,” Mart agrees. “The sheep can look after themselves, sure. Then what brought a cosmopolitan fella like yourself back from the finest city in the world to the arse end of nowhere?”

Johnny sighs. “This place, man,” he says, tilting his head back becomingly to look out over the fields at the long tawny hunch of the mountains. “There’s no place like it. Doesn’t matter how great the big city is; in the end, a man gets a fierce longing on him for home.”

“That’s what the songs say,” Mart agrees. Cal knows Mart has despised Johnny Reddy for most of his life, but he’s watching him with lively appreciation just the same. Mart’s personal boogeyman is boredom. As he’s explained to Cal at length, he considers it to be a farmer’s greatest danger, well ahead of the likes of tractors and slurry pits. Boredom makes a man’s mind restless, and then he tries to cure the restlessness by doing foolish shite. Whatever Mart may think of Johnny Reddy, his return is likely to relieve boredom.

“There’s truth in the old songs,” Johnny says, still gazing. “You don’t see it till you’re gone.” He adds, as an afterthought, “And I’d left the family on their own long enough.” Cal finds himself disliking Johnny Reddy more by the minute. He reminds himself that he was primed to do that, no matter what the man turned out to be like.

“C’mere till I tell you who died while you were off gallivanting,” Mart says. “D’you remember Dumbo Gannon? The little fella with the big ears?”

“I do, o’ course,” Johnny says, coming back from the wide open spaces to give this the full attention it deserves. “Are you telling me he’s gone?”

“Took a heart attack,” Mart says. “Massive one. He was sat on the sofa, having a bit of a rest and a smoke after his Sunday dinner. His missus only went out to get the washing off the line, and when she came back in, he was sitting there stone dead. The aul’ Marlboro still burning away in his hand. If she’d been a bit longer with that washing, he coulda taken the whole house with him.”

“Ah, that’s sad news,” Johnny says. “God rest his soul. He was a fine man.” He has his face composed in the appropriate mixture of gravity and sympathy. If he had a hat, he’d be holding it to his chest.

“Dumbo ran you off his land once,” Mart says, fixing Johnny with a reminiscent gaze. “Bellowing and roaring out of him, so he was. What was the story there, bucko? Did you ride his missus, or what did you do at all?”

“Ah, now,” Johnny says, winking at Mart. “Don’t be giving me a bad name. This fella here might believe you.”

“He will if he’s wise,” Mart says, with dignity.

They’re both looking at Cal, for the first time in a while. “Too wise to fall for your guff,” Johnny says. This time he winks at Cal. Cal keeps gazing at him with mild interest till he blinks.

“Mr. Hooper always takes me at my word,” Mart says. “Don’t you, Sunny Jim?”

“I’m just a trusting kinda guy,” Cal says, which gets a grin out of Mart at least.

“There’s a few of the lads coming up to my place tomorrow night,” Johnny says casually, to Mart and not Cal. “I’ve a coupla bottles in.”

Mart watches him, bright-eyed. “That’ll be nice,” he says. “A lovely homecoming party.”

“Ah, just an aul’ chat and a catch-up. I’ve a bit of an idea going.”

Mart’s eyebrows jump. “Have you, now?”

“I have. Something that could do this place a bitta good.”

“Ah, that’s great,” Mart says, smiling at him. “That’s what this townland needs: a few ideas brought in. We were getting stuck in the mud altogether, till you came back to rescue us.”

“Ah, now, I wouldn’t go that far,” Johnny says, smiling back. “But a good idea never hurts. Let you come up to my place tomorrow, and you’ll hear all about it.”

“D’you know what you oughta do?” Mart asks, struck by a thought.

“What’s that?”

Mart points his crook at the mountains. “D’you see that aul’ lump of rock there? I’m fed up to the back teeth driving them roads every time I wanta get over that mountain. The potholes’d rattle the eyeballs right outa your head. What we need is one of them underground pneumatic railways. London had one right back in aul’ Victoria’s time, sure. A tunnel with a train carriage in it, just like the Tube, only they’d a big fan at each end. One would blow and the other would suck, and that carriage’d fly straight through the tunnel like a pea out of a peashooter. Twenty-five mile an hour, it went. Sure, you’d be through that mountain and out the other side in no time at all. You put your mind to it and get us one of those. If the Brits can do it, so can we.”