In the window behind his head, the fields are a green so soft and deep you could sink into them. Wind blows a whisper of rain against the glass. The washing machine trudges on.

“I seen a man die quick once before,” Mart says, “when I was fifteen. The hay baler wasn’t clearing right, and he went to see what was wrong, only he left the power running. His hand got caught and the baler pulled him in. By the time I got it turned off, his arm and his head were gone. It shredded him like you’d shred a bitta wet kitchen roll.”

He watches his smoke trickle and spread through the air of the kitchen. “My granddad was after dying the month before that, of a stroke. That took him four days. Life seems like a big thing when it takes four days for all of it to leave a man. When it’s gone in a few seconds, it looks awful small all of a sudden. We don’t like to face up to that, but the animals know it. They’ve no notions about their dying. It’s a little thing, only; you’d get it done in no time. All it takes is one nip from a fox. Or a hay baler, or a propane tank.”

Cal says, “What’d you do with the body?”

Mart’s eyebrows twitch up. “Sure, we didn’t get the chance to do much of anything with it at all; not then, anyway. ’Twas a bit of an action-packed day all round. Before we’d properly got the hang of what was after happening, we got the call from the lad on the lookout, to say that the Dublin boyos were on their way. We put your man on an aul’ bedsheet that was in the back room and carried him up the hillside behind the cottage, as far into the trees as we’d time for. When we heard their car—big bull of a black Hummer, they had, I don’t know how they got it round the bends in them roads—we laid him down among the bushes and crouched down next to him.”

He glances at Cal, through the twists of smoke. “I thought of leaving him in the house for them to find. A message, like. But in the heel of the hunt I decided against it. No point in telling them more than they needed to know, sure. They’d get the gist of things anyway, once he turned up gone.”

“What’d they do?” Cal asks.

Mart grins. “They weren’t pleased with the situation at all, at all. They went and had a look in the cottage, and then they came out and looked around the yard, and then they went back in and did it all over again. Four of them, there was, and not a one of them could stay still for a bloody second; they were hopping about like they’d fleas. And the language out of them, holy God. We were close enough to hear them— ’twas a grand spring day, not a breath of wind. I’m no prude, but it nearly melted the ears right offa me.”

His grin widens. “D’you know what else they did? They rang Brendan. Half a dozen times. I knew they would, so I was after taking the phone outa his pocket, but I couldn’t unlock it to turn down the volume. We tried using the lad’s fingerprint, but he’d put a code on it. So will I tell you what we did with that phone? I had Bobby sit his great fat arse on it. That’d muffle anything. The face on him when it vibrated, trying not to leap up off it. Red as a big aul’ beetroot. The rest of us near burst with trying not to laugh.”

He stubs out his rollie in the lid of the jam jar. “In the end they gave up on him,” he says, “and off they went back down the mountain. D’you know what one of them was doing, on his way to their lovely shiny Hummer? He was whinging and whining out of him about his good shoes getting all mucky. Like a woman on her way to a fancy ball.”

Cal is pretty sure that every word is true. There’s no reason it shouldn’t be—it’s not like he can do anything with any of it—except for Mart’s habit of keeping people in the dark on principle. It seems to Cal that they’ve moved out on the other side of that.

He says, “Where’s Brendan now?”

“He’s still up the mountains. Buried, now, not just left there; the child doesn’t need to worry that there was crows and rats at him, or nothing like that. We said a few prayers over him and all.”

Mart reaches for his packet of cookies and opens it, carefully, so as not to crumble any edges. “And that was the end of that,” he says.

“Except for Donie and his messing around with the sheep,” Cal says.

Mart blows out a scornful puff of air. “I don’t count that, sure. I don’t count that feckin’ eejit on principle.” He offers the packet to Cal. “Go on, get one of those into you. You deserve it. You’re a cute hoor, aren’t you? Here you were feeling like an eejit yourself, but you’d it all figured out already, sure. You only had the one bit wrong. There’s no shame in that.”

Cal says, “Donie figured P.J. had to be involved, since it was his anhydrous. How’d he find out you and Bobby and Francie were on board too?”

Mart selects a cookie, taking his time over the decision. “I’d say Donie had an eye on things himself. He musta caught a glimpse of the four of us somewhere along the way and gone running to the Dublin lads—that fella’d make a great double agent, if only he had a brain in his head. And them fine boyos told him to send us a wee message to stay out of their business.” He smiles at Cal. “We got the message, anyway. Even if we didn’t take it the way they expected.”

Cal asks, “Does Bobby still think it was aliens?”

“Ah, God, Bobby,” Mart says indulgently, dipping his cookie in his tea. “He’s only delighted to have aliens at his sheep. I wouldn’t ruin it for him. I couldn’t, anyhow; even if I had a video of Donie working away, he still wouldn’t believe me. Sure, it doesn’t matter what Bobby thinks. Donie knew I’d get the message, after two sheep or three. But he didn’t think I’d find out it was him that sent it. He thought I’d take for granted it was the big bold Dublin lads, or someone they sent down from town maybe, and I’d be that petrified of them I wouldn’t dare lift a finger. He knows better now.”

“Seems to me,” Cal says, “if you boys wanted to raise the tone around these parts, the one you oughta have gotten rid of was Donie.”

“There’s Donies everywhere,” Mart says. “They’d do your head in, the little fuckers, but they make no difference in the long run. They’re ten a penny, so they are; if you get rid of one, another one’ll only pop up in his place. Brendan Reddy was another matter entirely. There’s not a lot of those about. And what he was doing woulda made a difference to this townland, all right.”

“You’ve already got drugs round here,” Cal says. “Plenty of ’em. It’s not like Brendan was bringing ’em into the Garden of Eden.”

“We lose enough of our young men,” Mart says. It seems to Cal that he should sound like he’s defending his actions, but he doesn’t. His eyes across the table are steady and his voice is calm and final, underlaid by the quiet patter of rain all around. “The way the world’s after changing, it’s not made right for them, any more. When I was a young lad, we knew what we could want and how to get it, and we knew we’d have something to show for it at the end of the day. A crop, or a flock, or a house, or a family. There’s great strength in that. Now there’s too many things you’re told to want, there’s no way to get them all, and once you’re done trying, what have you got to show for it at the end? You’ve made a buncha phone calls selling electricity plans, maybe, or had a buncha meetings about nothing; you’ve got your hole offa some bitta fluff you met on the internet, got yourself some likes on the aul’ YouTube. Nothing you can put your hands on. The women do be grand anyway; they’re adaptable. But the young men don’t know what to be doing with themselves at all. There’s a few of them, like Fergal O’Connor who you met there, that keep their feet on the ground regardless. The rest are hanging themselves, or they’re getting drunk and driving into ditches, or they’re overdosing on the aul’ heroin, or they’re packing their bags. I don’t want to see this place a wasteland, every farm looking the way yours did before you came along: falling to wrack and ruin, waiting for some Yank to take a fancy to it and make it into his hobby.”