County Final, Radio on the Wall

The cows don't know it's the county final. This is Michael Óg's position, and he's stated it to his father twice already, and his father has agreed with him both times, which is not the same as caring. Milking starts at four whether Ballinacurra are playing or not. The parlour holds sixteen at a time, eight a side, and the herd is a hundred and ten, so that's the guts of two hours, which is a match and a bit, and the match throws in at half past. His father, Michael Senior, has the radio on the shelf above the sink where the phone signal is worst and the radio signal is best. It is an old radio. It has a cassette door that has not opened since about the time Michael Óg was born. It is tuned to the local station and has been since the last century. The first eight go in. Clusters on. The commentator, a man they've both been listening to for twenty years without ever knowing what he looks like, is describing the parade. Ballinacurra in the green. The other crowd in whatever the other crowd wear. Michael Senior wipes a teat and says, "He's talking too much." "He's always talking too much." "He's talking more than usual." Throw-in. The commentary goes up a gear. A point for Ballinacurra inside a minute and Michael Óg, who is putting the clusters on cow forty-two, punches the air with the hand that isn't holding the cluster and cow forty-two gives him a look. It's a tight one. It's a first half of pucked-back frees and lads going down and getting up. Ballinacurra are three points up at the break and the parlour has moved twenty-four cows through and the commentator is doing the analysis with a fellow who used to play in the seventies and who says "you'd want to be" a great deal. Second half. The other crowd come at them. Two points. Level. Michael Senior has stopped wiping and is standing in the pit with a cloth in his hand doing nothing. A goal for the other crowd. The commentator is nearly crying.

And then, at quarter past four, right as Ballinacurra win a free sixty yards out, the radio does what it does. The voice thins. It fizzes. It goes. "Ah, no." "Hit it." Michael Senior hits it. He hits it the way his own father hit it, a flat palm to the top left corner. Static. He tries the aerial. He tries the aerial pointed at the door, and the window, and the ceiling. Nothing. Cow fifty-eight kicks the cluster off and it hangs there hissing. "Get the phone." "There's no signal, Dad, we're in the parlour." "Go outside then." Michael Óg goes outside in his wellies and his apron and stands in the yard with the phone in the air like he's offering it to somebody, and gets one bar, and the score comes up, and he stands there in the rain watching a number that says his club is a point down with four minutes left. Behind him, through the parlour door, his father shouts, "Well?" He can't answer. He's watching the number. It changes.