Arm plugged in the buds, slipped his hood up, and resumed walking right out of town. His trousers, wringing, dried as he went. Eventually he found himself following the familiar wrought-iron railings that looked out over the strand. The railings were eaten through, thinned to crusted spindles of rust at their most exposed points. Beyond them lay the rush-topped hillocks and sandbars, the sand milk-blue in the moonlight. Arm scanned the boiling surf for a long time, watched the way each wave rose, evolved like a fortification, and then collapsed.
It was nearing four in the morning as Arm headed back into town. A couple of teenage lads were coming the opposite way, on the other side of the road. Arm took out his earphones and listened as one vociferated to the other about almost bating the head off a third lad back in the pub or club or wherever they’d been, the boaster milling his fists around, clumsily shadow-boxing the air and his cohort cackling along. They were oblivious to Arm. He was on the riverside of the road, and could hear the Mule, and couldn’t help but listen out for a voice or scream or roar, because even though Arm knew the man was almost certainly already dead he was still susceptible to the dreamlike dread that Fannigan had somehow eluded the laws of the perishable world and staged a resurrection.
But Ssshhhhhhhhhhh went the water.
And Haaahhhhhhhhhhhhhh went the wind.
And from off in the nearing distance of the town centre came the calm hum of the taxis as they made their appointed circuits through what was left of the night.
Arm’s folks had him late, and only him. A single-child family was a rarity around here, where households teemed with ever-expanding factions of brothers and sisters. Arm’s mother was a schoolteacher, forty-two at the time of his birth. His da was already fifty. The da ran a delivery truck out of the local bun factory along the western seaboard for thirty-two years straight and when he walked through the door in the evenings he trailed in his wake a fragrance of cinnamon and currants. His parents’ hair was grey by the time Arm started primary school, and though they raised him right and raised him well, Arm sometimes wondered if he wasn’t just a late concession to the perennial babymaking thriving away about them. Good old Maye and Trevor Armstrong. Arm and they had always got on and maybe too much. Too much civility, too much mellowness; though it was clear to them that there was an aspect to the run of his life Arm kept from them, they refrained from prying. They doted on Jack, and doted on the idea of Ursula; they chided Arm for not sticking with a girl that lovely.
They saw Arm with Dympna and said nothing at all.
It was their only real fault, this enduring inability to ever think the worst of their son.
When Arm came to the next morning he could hear them downstairs in the kitchen, making breakfast. The noise of their domestic routine got Arm to dwelling on Fannigan’s mother, old and frail and alone in this world for good now, though she did not yet know it. He pulled a naggin of Jameson’s from the foot of his bed and took a few scouring hits, looking to snap himself out of such useless, malign sentiments.
Arm showered, put on a white vest, his good denim shirt, and made his way down to the Dorys. The low sky was slabbed with rifts of cloud the colour and texture of raw animal fat. Ursula’s mother was out front, unloading groceries from the back seat of the family Vauxhall.
‘Can I help?’ Arm asked, hovering at the foot of the driveway with his hands in his pockets. He had the stone flecked with Fannigan’s blood with him. He had not yet decided where or how best to dispose of it, and figured in the interim he should keep it close.
Margaret Dory regarded Arm. She had a narrow, taut face and pale blue eyes that made no bones about boring right through him.
‘Douglas. Urs and Jack aren’t here. No, I’m fine,’ she said.
‘Where they gone?’
‘Over to the town farm.’
‘Guess I’ll drop down so. You think that’d be alright?’
Margaret considered Arm’s question. He could see she was thrown by his requesting permission.
‘Well, Douglas, well I’m sure it’d be okay.’
Arm pulled his hand from the weighted pocket and offered a brisk polite wave. Margaret Dory looked at Arm like he wasn’t there.
The cottage was abandoned. The noise of the radio drifted from inside, and the browned flower-husks on the sill shivered dryly in the breeze. Fresh deposits of shit stubbled the trampled track to the main field. Ursula and Jack were by the gate, their backs to Arm. Jack was in his Spider-Man jacket, standing on the bottom rung of the three-beam fence and baying elatedly as the horse and rider completed a stately lap of the field. Arm came up quietly behind him and grabbed at his shoulders, but Jack didn’t so much as flinch. It was as if he was expecting Arm’s touch at exactly that moment, and perhaps he was. The kid was a mystery from every angle of approach.
Arm chucked him on the cheek, very lightly, attempted the same on Ursula. She slapped at his hand and scowled.
‘No offense meant,’ he said.
‘What are you doing here?’ she said.
‘Your mam told me where you were.’
The rider and her horse were coming over. The rider stepped down from the saddle and approached the fence.
‘Hiiiiii Jack,’ she said, and turned to Arm, ‘the boxer.’
‘How do.’
‘Hi,’ she said to Ursula. ‘You’re Jack’s mom?’
‘Yes,’ Ursula said.
‘Rebecca. I’m the horse lady.’
‘And you’ve met Douglas here?’
‘Douglas? Yeah, he’s been here before. He’s been around.’
Ursula looked at Arm.
‘I’m taking an interest,’ he said.
Jack was reaching towards the horse, outstretched fingers writhing in
