Arm and Dympna parted ways for the afternoon. Arm took a walk through town and was struck by the notion of seeing Jack with the horses.
The town farm was a walled-off half acre of picture-book pasture tucked between the technical college and the swimming centre. Out front, Arm strolled past an empty white-washed cottage, its door open, radio on inside, a row of wizened pansies keeled over on the peeling red sill. In back he sidestepped dried animal patties cratered with hoofmarks and followed a trampled track to the gate of a large fenced field.
There were two adults and half a dozen kids, Jack among them, at the far end of the field, all watching a woman on a slim white horse. She was goading the beast into brief gallop bursts, letting it bolt at full steam for a bit before bringing it back down to a jangling trot.
Watching along with Arm was a kid in a wheelchair and an older lad in rubber croc shoes. The older lad, tubby, was eating a fluorescent green candy bar. He was maybe in his twenties, with black framed glasses and a monastic looking, wispy beard circumscribing his blubbery face from lock to lock. He had those black tribal rings in his ears that stretched out the lobes. He was the kid’s minder, Arm guessed. The kid had an enormous head and a puny body pinned and bracketed by an elaborate metal frame built down over the wheelchair. A metal halo studded with screws and bolts encircled his skull and kept his oversized head and undersized neck firmly in place; further bolts, straps and supporting spokes attended his arms and legs. The modified wheelchair looked like a cross between a rally-car roll cage and a medieval rack, but Arm supposed it was alleviating the kid’s suffering in some way.
The minder caught Arm looking and smiled.
The rider led the way as the group started over towards Arm, the kid and the minder. The narrow barrel of the horse’s torso hitched from side to side in a lazy, sultry way. At the gate the horse turned sideways. Up close, Arm could see that its hide was not a uniform white, but a light, chalky grey, speckled with luminous patches of white. It lowered the suede derrick of its tremendous head and neck and began nipping at a spiky patch of grass.
‘See the horsey, Terry?’ the lad with the stretched lobes said to the caged kid.
The rider was young too, with an aquiline nose, freckles, and black curly hair. She opened her mouth and politely alarmed American came out.
‘Can I help you with anything?’
‘That’s my boy,’ Arm said, pointing at the group, ‘Jack Dory.’
‘Oh Jack,’ she said. The kids had caught up, swarming at the gates.
‘He loves his horseys,’ she said, dismounting.
Jack was looking at the rider out of the side of his face. He was wearing a crooked little grin, as if he were in the midst of some prurient calculation.
‘Jack!’ Arm shouted.
Jack considered Arm sceptically, fluttered his hands either side of himself, and hopped in place. Then a big drooler, a rock-skulled six-foot manchild with a pudding-bowl haircut and a ratty scrawl of hair on his upper lip dundered by, knocking Jack to the ground. Jack screeched and immediately became interested in something in the grass by his foot. The drooler bent over and commenced groaning into the ear of the horse as he ran his knuckles up and down its neck. The horse, evidently conditioned to such chaos, continued to chomp unperturbed at the grass.
‘Hey now, Kevin,’ the rider said, grabbing his arm and pushing the avidly molesting manchild gently back.
‘He’s autistic too,’ she said to Arm, bending down to swat away the cigarette butt Jack was about to start eating. She grabbed him by the elbow and dragged him to his feet, which was about the only way to get Jack to his feet. Jack coughed and laughed again. The other carers, two grey-haired women with windburned faces, were frantically corralling the rest of the kids. A girl, no more than ten, in a purple leotard onesie and battered fur-trimmed snow boots, hissed and snarled as one of the women secured her in a delicate arm-lock and frogmarched her out the gate.
‘This is some fucking zoo,’ Arm said.
‘You shouldn’t be here,’ the rider said to Arm, her smile fading, ‘these kids have a schedule.’
‘I just came to see the horses,’ Arm said.
Satan on Sabbatical was due onstage at nine. Arm got to Quillinan’s early, installed himself at the bar, nursed an ice water and lime, and kept an eye on the door traffic until the man himself walked in, Lisa on his arm. Dympna chin-jutted in greeting and checked his stride to cede right of way to a couple of young ones cutting across him. Arm watched him register their behinds and dolefully smack his lips. There was only a certain type of town female that would go with Dympna. Ranged against him were the taint of his tinker lineage and the spectre of his criminality, as well as the persistent low rumours that suggested he fucked his own beautiful sisters, which made the Fannigan business all the more galling, Arm figured; whatever his other flaws, Dympna was a knight to those girls.
They came his way, arm in arm.
‘How do,’ Arm said.
‘Let’s get this party started,’ Lisa chanted.
Quillinan’s was getting full, buzzy. Brandon and his bandmates had been tireless in dredging up interest. The little stage space was way in the back, and Brandon was out there already, sitting on a stool, an unplugged electric guitar resting face up across his knees. He was scratching out the bare bones of a melody on the dormant instrument. Dympna gave Brandon a thumbs-up and then sculpted his palms in front of his chest, proffering the promised titties. Lisa whooped and clapped her hands
