City of Bohane Excerpt by Kevin Barry Lyrics
PART ONE – OCTOBER
1
The Nature of the Disturbance
Whatever’s wrong with us is coming in off that river. No argument: the
taint of badness on the city’s air is a taint off that river. This is
the Bohane river we’re talking about. A blackwater surge, malevolent,
it roars in off the Big Nothin’ wastes and the city was spawned by it
and was named for it: city of Bohane.
He walked the docks and breathed in the sweet badness of the river. It
was past midnight on the Bohane front. There was an evenness to his
footfall, a slow calm rhythm of leather on stone, and the dockside
lamps burned in the night-time a green haze, the light of a sad dream.
The water’s roar for Hartnett was as the rushing of his own blood and
as he passed the merchant yards the guard dogs strung out a sequence
of howls all along the front. See the dogs: their hackles heaped,
their yellow eyes livid.
We could tell he was coming by the howling of the dogs.
Polis watched him but from a distance – a pair of hoss polis watering
their piebalds at a trough ’cross in Smoketown. Polis were fresh from
the site of a reefing.
“Ya lampin’ him over?” said one. “Albino motherfucker.”
“Set yer clock by him,” said the other.
Albino, some called him, others knew him as the Long Fella: he ran the
Hartnett Fancy.
He cut off from the dockside and walked on into the Back Trace, the
infamous Bohane Trace, a most evil labyrinth, an unknowable web of
streets. He had that Back Trace look to him: a dapper buck in a
natty-boy crombie, the crombie draped all casual-like over the
shoulders of a pale grey eyetie suit, mohair. Mouth of teeth on him
like a vandalised graveyard but we all have our crosses. It was a pair
of hand-stitched Portugese boots that slapped his footfall, and the
stress that fell, the emphasis, was money.
Hard-got the riches – oh the stories that we told out in Bohane about
Logan Hartnett.
1
The Nature of the Disturbance
Whatever’s wrong with us is coming in off that river. No argument: the
taint of badness on the city’s air is a taint off that river. This is
the Bohane river we’re talking about. A blackwater surge, malevolent,
it roars in off the Big Nothin’ wastes and the city was spawned by it
and was named for it: city of Bohane.
He walked the docks and breathed in the sweet badness of the river. It
was past midnight on the Bohane front. There was an evenness to his
footfall, a slow calm rhythm of leather on stone, and the dockside
lamps burned in the night-time a green haze, the light of a sad dream.
The water’s roar for Hartnett was as the rushing of his own blood and
as he passed the merchant yards the guard dogs strung out a sequence
of howls all along the front. See the dogs: their hackles heaped,
their yellow eyes livid.
We could tell he was coming by the howling of the dogs.
Polis watched him but from a distance – a pair of hoss polis watering
their piebalds at a trough ’cross in Smoketown. Polis were fresh from
the site of a reefing.
“Ya lampin’ him over?” said one. “Albino motherfucker.”
“Set yer clock by him,” said the other.
Albino, some called him, others knew him as the Long Fella: he ran the
Hartnett Fancy.
He cut off from the dockside and walked on into the Back Trace, the
infamous Bohane Trace, a most evil labyrinth, an unknowable web of
streets. He had that Back Trace look to him: a dapper buck in a
natty-boy crombie, the crombie draped all casual-like over the
shoulders of a pale grey eyetie suit, mohair. Mouth of teeth on him
like a vandalised graveyard but we all have our crosses. It was a pair
of hand-stitched Portugese boots that slapped his footfall, and the
stress that fell, the emphasis, was money.
Hard-got the riches – oh the stories that we told out in Bohane about
Logan Hartnett.