Jig listened to his ma’s broken wails.
When she was down in the kitchen, between the moans and the filling and emptying of her glass, he watched as she jabbed at her mobile. Her face twitched as she held the phone to her ear. Then she slammed it down on the table and pulled hard on a cigarette.
Yesterday was Maggot’s sixteenth birthday, almost four months since the shooting. Still no sign of him.
Jig watched her from the hallway, peering around the doorway. He wanted to say something, but she would have bitten his ear off.
Wayne and Crystal watched TV in the front room all night. Jig gave them biscuits when they were hungry. Sometime around 11 p.m., he pulled them up to bed, and rather than face going back down, lay down himself and played games on his phone.
She had dragged her drunken grief upstairs, and set up base inside Maggot’s room. She shrieked and coughed through the small hours of the morning.
His ma’s outbursts were getting louder. He heard what sounded like a light swoosh, and knew it was the liquid in the bottle swishing down and back again.
‘Ah, give over, for the love of Jaysus.’
His da. He had walked out last night. Said she was wrecking his head. Jig smelled whiskey and chips off him when he came back in. The bastard had eaten all the chips on his way home and went straight up to bed.
‘Fuck off, ya stinking . . .’
His ma trailed off. His da’s words would usually have been enough for her to go in and hit him a couple of slaps and there’d be war. But his ma was weak. His da knew that.
‘Is Ma alright?’ Wayne piped up.
‘She’s crying,’ Crystal said from the bed above him.
‘Go the fuck asleep,’ Jig told them.
‘Jig?’ Wayne asked. ‘What’s Maggot doing up the mountains?’
Before he stormed out of the house, their da had shouted back at their ma: ‘He’s not going to fucking answer the phone. He’s never going to. He’s in the fucking mountains.’
Jig got up out of his bed and looked over at Wayne, who was peeping his head out from under the blanket.
‘Go to sleep.’
When his ma kicked off again, he found himself standing at Maggot’s door. His ma was sitting in the shadows, on the far side of the bed, with her back to him. A cigarette flared red and light grey smoke funnelled towards the window. With her other hand she lifted the bottle and took another swig. Jig could gauge from the sound there was only another mouthful left.
‘What?’ she said.
Jig didn’t think about what he was going to say. He just felt he should go in. He forced his feet to shuffle along the carpet, glancing up at the side of his mother’s face as he moved. She pulled her head up and snorted, rubbed a hand across her nose, and spluttered again. A dim light from outside slid across her face.
‘What do ya want?’ she said, just as he got to her side of the bed. ‘Go back to yer room.’
Jig stood for a moment. He began to turn around. She grasped his arm hard and pulled him down beside her. She dumped the fag into a can. Her mobile was on the floor, the screen still lit up. They sat in silence for a few moments. She took a final swig of the bottle, dropping it on the floor, landing with a quiet thud.
‘They killed him, Jig. Our Maggot,’ his ma said finally, as if it was the last word on a long discussion they were having.
Jig guessed he had been killed, kind of anyway. The guards kept saying it to him on the road. Anytime they passed in their cars, they shouted out the window trying to rise him: ‘Ye know them mountains are full of maggots,’ or ‘Has Maggot burrowed to the surface yet, Jig?’ followed by thick stupid country laughs.
Even his own da had said it.
But it wasn’t until his ma said those words that it was real. Like a nail being hammered in. Jig’s eyes peeled back. He imagined men with thick shovels over a big grave and a body wrapped in bin liners being kicked into it. All the maggots eating the skin.
His ma hugged him, rough and tight. Unfamiliar emotions seized Jig. He struggled to free himself, but her bony grasp held him firm.
‘Fuckers, wouldn’t even let me have a body.’
She pushed Jig back.
‘Can’t even give him a proper church burial.’
‘Why don’t ya talk to the coppers, Ma?’
It was the only thing he could think of, to get Maggot’s body back.
The darkness could not hide her eyes. Beady little black pebbles pierced into him. He stiffened for a smack.
‘No fucking way I’m going to the filth.’ She jerked her head towards the window.
He should have known better. It was the same with his da, when he was questioned by that garda months ago. Better dead than a rat, his da always said.
The garda had been right. He did see something. He saw Shop in the car when they were pulled over, before the shooting. He didn’t see Maggot, but guessed he was in it, if Shop was. They did everything together.
His ma pushed her face up against his, forcing him to recoil.
‘You’ll do it,’ she said, clasping his wrist.
‘What ya mean, Ma? Do what?’
‘Get our own back. The Hunt way.’
Jig felt he had to do a piss, but she tightened her grip.
‘Not now, yer too young. But down the road, years from now,’ she pointed her finger at him, ‘when they don’t expect it.’