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“Yes!”
“That’s the First Ring of Hell! Do you see them young fellows on bikes with flat tires and no spokes, pumping barefoot in the rain?”
“Yes!”
“That’s the Second Ring of Hell!”
The old man stopped. “And here … can you read? The Third Ring!”
I read the sign. “ ‘Heeber Finn’s’ … why, it’s a pub.”
The old man pretended surprise. “By God, now, I think you’re right. Come meet my … family!”
“Family? You said you weren’t married!”
“I’m not. But—in we go!”
The old man gave a great knock on the backside of the door. And there was the bar, all bright spigots and alarmed faces as the dozen or so customers whirled.
“It’s me, boys!” the old man cried.
“Mike! Ya gave us a start!” said one.
“We thought it was—a crisis!” said another.
“Well, maybe it is … for him anyway.” He jabbed my elbow. “What’ll ya have, lad?”
I scanned the lot, tried to say wine, but quit.
“A whiskey, please,” I said.
“Make mine a Guinness,” said Mike. “Now, introductions all around. That there is Heeber Finn, who owns the pub.”
Finn handed over the whiskey. “The third and fourth mortgage, that is.”
Mike moved on, pointing.
“This is O’Gavin, who has the finest bogs in all Kilcock and cuts peat turf out of it to stoke the hearths of Ireland. Also a fine hunter and fisher, in or out of season!”
O’Gavin nodded. “I poach game and steal fish.”
“You’re an honest man, Mr. O’Gavin,” I said.
“No. As soon as I find a job,” said O’Gavin, “I’ll deny the whole thing.”
Mike led me along. “This next is Casey, who will fix the hoof of your horse.”
“Blacksmith,” said Casey.
“The spokes of your bike.”
“Velocipede repair,” said Casey.
“Or the spark plugs on any damn car.”
“Auto-moe-beel renovation,” said Casey.
Mike moved again. “Now, this is Kelly, our turf accountant!”
“Mr. Kelly,” I said, “do you count the turf that Mr. O’Gavin cuts out of his bog?”
As everyone laughed, Kelly said: “That is a common tourist’s error. I am an expert on the races. I breed a few horses—”
“He sells Irish Sweepstakes tickets,” said someone.
“A bookie,” said Finn.
“But ‘turf accountant’ has a gentler air, does it not?” said Kelly.
“It does!” I said.
“And here’s Timulty, our art connoisseur.”
I shook hands with Timulty. “Art connoisseur?”
“It’s from looking at the stamps I have the eye for paintings,” Timulty explained. “If it goes at all, I run the post office.”
“And this is Carmichael, who took over the village telephone exchange last year.”
Carmichael, who knitted as he spoke, replied: “My wife got the uneasies and she ain’t come right since, God help her. I’m on duty next door.”
“But now tell us, lad,” said Finn, “what’s your crisis?”
“A whale. And … ” I paused. “Ireland!”
“Ireland?!” everyone cried.
Mike explained. “He’s a writer who’s trapped in Ireland and misunderstands the Irish.”
After a beat of silence someone said: “Don’t we all!”
To much laughter, Mr. O’Gavin leaned forward. “What do you misunderstand, specific like?”
Mike intervened to prevent chaos. “Underestimates is more the word. Confused might be the sum! So I’m taking him on a Grand Tour of the Worst Sights and the Most Dreadful Truths.” He stopped and turned. “Well, that’s the lot, lad.”
“Mike, there’s one you missed.” I nodded to a partition at the far end of the bar. “You didn’t introduce me to … him.”
Mike peered and said, “O’Gavin, Timulty, Kelly, do you see someone there?”
Kelly glanced down the line. “We do not.”
I pointed. “Why, it’s plain as my nose! A man—”
Timulty cut in. “Now, Yank, don’t go upsetting the order of the universe. Do you see that partition? It is an irrevocable law that any man seeking a bit of peace and quiet is automatically gone, invisible, null and void when he steps into that cubby.”
“Is that a fact?”
“Or as close as you’ll ever get to one in Ireland. That area, no more than two feet wide by one deep, is more private than the confessional. It’s where a man can duck, in need of feeding his soul without converse or commotion. So for all intents and purposes, that space, until he breaks the spell of silence himself, is uninhabited and no one’s there!”
Everyone nodded, proud of Timulty.
“Fine, Timulty, and now—drink your drink, lad, stand alert, be ready, watch!” said Mike.
I looked at the mist curling through the door. “Alert for what?”
“Why, there’s always Great Events preparing themselves out in that fog.” Mike became mysterious. “As a student of Ireland, let nothing pass unquestioned.” He peered out at the night. “Anything can happen … and always does.” He inhaled the fog, then froze. “Ssst! Did you hear?”
Beyond, there was a blind stagger of feet, heavy panting coming near, near, near!
“What …?” I said.
Mike shut his eyes. “Sssst! Listen! … Yes!”
Chapter 4 (#ulink_4cdc4701-a7a2-5642-97b4-67b1649c921f)
Shoes pounded the outside steps, drunkenly. The double wing doors slammed wide. A battered man lunged in, reeling, holding his bloody head with bloody hands. His moan froze every customer at the bar. For a time you heard only the soft foam popping in the lacy mugs, as the customers turned, some faces pale, some pink, some veined and wattle red. Every eyelid down the line gave a blink.
The stranger swayed in his ruined clothes, eyes wide, lips trembling. The drinkers clenched their fists. Yes! they cried silently. Go on, man! What happened?
The stranger leaned far out on the air.
“Collision,” he cried. “Collision on the road.”
Then, chopped at the knees, he fell.
“Collision!” A dozen men rushed at the body.
“Kelly!” Heeber Finn vaulted the bar. “Get to the road! Mind the victim—easy does it! Joe, run for the Doc!”
“Wait!” said a quiet voice.
From the private stall at the end of the pub, the cubby where a philosopher might brood, a dark man blinked out at the crowd.
“Doc!” cried Heeber Finn. “Was you there all the time?”
“Ah, shut up!” cried the Doc as he and the men hustled out into the night.
“Collision …” The man on the floor twitched his lips.
“Softly, boys.” Heeber Finn and two others gentled the victim atop the bar. He looked handsome as death on the fine inlaid wood, with the prismed mirror making him two dread calamities for the price of one.
Outside on the steps, the crowd halted, shocked as if an ocean had sunk Ireland in the dusk and now bulked all about them. Fog in fifty-foot rollers and breakers put out the moon and stars. Blinking, cursing, the men leaped out, to vanish in the deeps.
Behind, in the bright doorframe, I stood, dreading to interfere with what seemed village ritual. Since arriving in Ireland, I could not shake the feeling that at all times I was living stage center of the Abbey Theatre. Now, not knowing my lines, I could only stare after the rushing men.
“But,” I protested weakly, “I didn’t hear any cars on the road.”
“You did not!” said Mike, almost pride fully. Arthritis limited him to the top step, where he teetered, shouting at the white tides where his friends had submerged. “Try the crossroad, boys! That’s where it most often does!”
“The crossroad!” Far and near, footsteps rang.
“Nor,” I said, “did I hear a collision.”
Mike snorted with contempt. “Ah, we’re not great ones for commotion, or great crashing sounds. But collision you’ll see if you step on out there. Walk, now, don’t run! It’s the devil’s own night. Running blind you might hit into Kelly, beyond, who’s fevered up with pumping just to squash his lungs. Or you might head-on with Feeney, too drunk to find any road, never mind what’s on it! Finn, you got a torch, a flash? Blind you’ll be, lad, but use it. Walk now, you hear?”
I groped through the fog and, immersed in the night beyond Heeber Finn’s, made direction by the heavy clubbing of shoes and a rally of voices ahead. A hundred yards off in eternity, the men approached, grunting whispers: “Easy now!” “Ah, the shameful blight!” “Hold on, don’t jiggle him!”
I was flung aside by a steaming lump of men who swept suddenly from the fog, bearing atop themselves a crumpled object. I glimpsed a bloodstained and livid face high up there, then someone cracked my flashlight down.
By instinct, sensing the far whiskey-colored light of Heeber Finn’s, the catafalque surged on toward that fixed and familiar harbor.
Behind came dim shapes and a chilling insect rattle.
“Who’s that!” I cried.
“Us, with the vehicles,” someone husked. “You might say we got the collision.”
The flashlight fixed them. I gasped. A moment later, the battery failed.
But not before I had seen two village lads jogging along with no trouble at all, easily, lightly, toting under their arms two ancient black bicycles minus front and tail lights.
“What …?” I said.
But the lads trotted off, the accident with them. The fog closed in. I stood abandoned on an empty road, my flashlight dead in my hand.
By the time I opened the door at Heeber Finn’s, both “bodies,” as they called them, had been stretched on the bar.
And there was the crowd lined up, not for drinks, but blocking the way so the Doc had to shove sidewise from one to another of these relics of blind driving by night on the misty roads.
“One’s Pat Nolan,” whispered Mike. “Not working at the moment. The other’s Mr. Peevey from Maynooth, in candy and cigarettes mostly.” Raising his voice: “Are they dead, now, Doc?”
“Ah, be still, won’t you?” The Doc resembled a sculptor troubled at finding some way to finish up two full-length marble statues at once. “Here, let’s put one victim on the floor!”
“The floor’s a tomb,” said Heeber Finn. “He’ll catch his death down there. Best leave him up where the warm air gathers from our talk.”
“But,” I said quietly, confused, “I’ve never heard of an accident like this in all my life. Are you sure there were absolutely no cars? Only these two men on their bikes?”
“Only?” Mike shouted. “Great God, man, a fellow working up a drizzling sweat can pump along at sixty kilometers. With a long downhill glide his bike hits ninety or ninety-five! So here they come, these two, no front or tail lights—”
