The Pub Across the Pond Read Online Free

to fifteen thousand. Ronan was a bigger gambler, but Joe, a businessman and a teetotaler, was well suited to take him on. It was hard to believe they were related. Joe ran the general shop next door and hardly ever set foot in the pub.
    In the center of the table, crumpled bills lay on top of each other like a massive pileup in a rugby game. They were out of cash and had switched to using bingo chips. It was never supposed to get up this high—it was five thousand when it came down to the two of ’em, and Joe was willing to keep the pot as it was, but Ronan had to push it.
    Ronan tossed his faded yellow chip into the pot. “Twenty thousand,” he said. He could feel his mates behind him: a chorus of shuffles, and grunts, and murmurs. He wanted to yell at them to shut their pieholes, but he didn’t want to give anything away. He had four aces. Two on the deal, and two more sweet babies on the draw. It was a sure winner. He almost felt sorry for his uncle. Not sorry enough to stop. Uncle Joe had never given him a break, had never given his father a break, argued with him over the property until the day their da died, and even after, even at his father’s wake, Joe was still onto Ronan to sell him the pub. He never understood his father’s love of the drink, or the craic, or even the money that could be made from a pub.
    Joe gave Jimmy grief over every twig or stone that landed on his side of the property line. He reported infractions to the guards every chance he got. His mother thought Uncle Joe had driven his father straight to the grave. Besides the drinking, and the smoking, and the fact that he never turned down a good feed, she was probably right; Joe was the one left standing.
    But Ronan would take his father’s short, boisterous life over his uncle’s nervous, plodding existence any day. And he had four aces. No, he wouldn’t feel sorry for Joe, not after his crass comments at his father’s wake. He could still feel Joe’s arm around him, his breath stinking of tea. He wouldn’t even drink a pint to the oul fella.
    â€œWhat are you going to do now, lad?” Joe said at the wake. Ronan looked at his pint, held it up by way of an answer. “I mean about the pub,” Joe said. “I can take it off your hands.” And then, by God if he didn’t start in on turning the pub into a spa with sunbeds. Sunbeds. At his own brother’s wake. Sunbeds, in fecking Ireland.
    That’s the beauty of it, Joe said. Pale, sun-deprived, Irish women would go mental over it. They’d be millionaires. Ballybeog had enough pubs. Uncle Joe had been thinking about this for a while. He’d purchased one sunbed, and it had been sitting in the back of his truck for months. Ronan told him he should just drive it directly to these sun-deprived women, whoever they were, but Joe said he didn’t have the time, and besides, he needed a place for the sunbeds; one wouldn’t make a profit, but think what he could do with twenty!
    Like Ronan was going to let his father’s pub become a roasting pit for the sun-obsessed. If they wanted the sun, they should move out of fecking Ireland. Besides, sunbeds gave you cancer. Ronan lit another cigarette and waited for Uncle Joe to react to his raise. Uncle Joe would take his sweet old time, as always. Ronan glanced with disgust at the overflowing ashtray. He smoked too much, he always smoked too many fags when he played cards. Declan quietly moved in, cleared the empty pint glasses, and replaced the ashtrays. Thanks be to God, Ronan didn’t want to look at the evidence, not stacked up against Joe’s little cuppa tea.
    Four aces. Four aces. Four aces.
    Joe dug in his pockets. He was such a thin man, and he was starting to look old. Was he shrinking? He and his father had never looked alike, his father so tall, so large, so full of life. Like two balloons, only somebody popped Joe and sucked all the air out of him. How was