“Ah …” The men stirred restlessly.
The Doc, sensing he had withheld information too long, feeling his audience drift away, now snatched their attention back by straightening up briskly and exhaling.
“Well!”
The pub quickened into silence.
“This chap here …” The Doc pointed. “Bruises, lacerations, and agonizing backaches for two weeks running. As for the other lad, however … ” And here the Doc let himself scowl for a long moment at the paler one there, looking rouged, waxed, and ready for final rites. “Concussion.”
“Concussion!”
The quiet wind rose and fell in the silence.
“He’ll survive if we run him quick now to Maynooth Clinic. So whose car will volunteer?”
The crowd turned as a body toward Timulty. I stared, remembering the front of Heeber Finn’s pub, where seventeen bicycles and one automobile were parked. “Mine!” cried Timulty. “Since it’s the only vehicle!”
“There! A volunteer! Quick now, hustle this victim—gently!— to Timulty’s wreck!”
The men reached out to lift the body, but froze when I coughed. I circled my hand to all and tipped my cupped fingers to my lips. All gasped in soft surprise. The gesture was hardly done when drinks foamed down the bar.
“For the road!”
And now even the luckier victim, suddenly revived, face like cheese, found a mug gentled to his hand with whispers.
“Here, lad, here. Tell us …”
“What happened, eh? Eh?”
“Send,” gasped the victim. “Send for Father Leary. I need the Extreme Unction!”
“Father Leary it is!” Nolan jumped and ran.
“Get my wife,” husked the victim, “to call me three uncles and four nephews and my grandfather and Timothy Doolin, and you’re all invited to my wake!”
“You was always a good sort, Peevey!”
“There’s two gold coins put by in my best shoes at home. For me eyelids! There’s a third gold coin; buy me a fine black suit!”
“It’s good as done!”
“Be sure there’s plenty of whiskey. I’ll buy it meself!”
There was a stir at the door.
“Thank God,” cried Timulty. “It’s you, Father Leary. Father, quickly, you must give the Extremest form of Unction you ever gave!”
“Don’t tell me my business!” said the priest in the door. “I got the Unctions, you provide the victim! On the double!”
There was a cheer from the men as the victim was held high and run for the door where the priest directed traffic, then fled.
With one body gone off the bar, the potential wake was over, the room empty save for myself, the Doc, the revived lad, and two softly cudgeling friends. Outside, you could hear the crowd putting the one serious result of the great collision into Timulty’s car.
“Finish your drink,” the Doc advised.
But I stood, looking numbly around at the pub: at the recovered bicyclist, seated, waiting for the crowd to come back and mill about him; seeing the blood-spotted floor, the two bicycles tilted near the door like props from a vaudeville turn, the dark night waiting outside with its improbable fog; listening to the roll and cadence and gentle equilibrium of these voices, balanced each in its own throat and environment.
“Doctor,” I heard myself say as I placed the money on the bar, “do you often have auto wrecks—collisions between people in cars?”
“Not in our town!” The Doc nodded scornfully east. “If you like that sort of thing, now, Dublin’s the very place!”
Crossing the pub, the Doc took my arm as if to impart some secret which would change my fate. Thus steered, I found the stout inside me a shifting weight I must accommodate from side to side as the Doc breathed softly in my ear.
“Look here now, son, admit it, you’ve traveled little in Ireland, right? Then listen! Biking to Maynooth, fog and ail, you’d best take it fast! Raise a din! Why? Scare the other cyclists and cows off the path, both sides! If you pump slow, why, you’ll creep up on and do away with dozens before they know what took them off! And another thing: when a bike approaches, douse your light—that is, if it’s working. Pass each other, lights out, in safety. Them devil’s own lights have put out more eyes and demolished more innocents than all of seeing’s worth. Is it clear now? Two things: speed, and douse your lights when bikes loom up!”
At the door, I nodded. Behind me I heard the one victim, settled easy in his chair, working the stout around on his tongue, thinking, preparing, beginning his tale:
“Well, I’m on me way home, blithe as you please, assailing downhill near the cross, when …”
Outside, the Doc offered final advice.
“Always wear a cap, lad, if you want to walk nights ever—on the roads, that is. A cap’ll save you the frightful migraines should you meet Kelly or Moran or anyone else hurtling full tilt the other way, full of fiery moss and hard-skulled from birth. Even on foot, these men are dangerous. So you see, there’s rules for pedestrians, too, in Ireland, and wear a cap at night is number one!” He handed me a cap.
Without thinking, I took the brown tweed cap and put it on. Adjusting it, I looked out at the dark mist boiling across the night. I listened to the empty highway waiting for me ahead, quiet, quiet, quiet, but not quiet somehow. For hundreds of long strange miles up and down all of Ireland, I saw a thousand crossroads covered with a thousand fogs through which one thousand tweed-capped, gray-mufflered phantoms wheeled along in midair, singing, shouting, and smelling of Guiness stout.
I blinked. The phantoms shadowed off. The road lay empty and dark and waiting.
Taking a deep breath, I straddled my bike, pulled my cap down over my ears, shut my eyes, and pumped down the wrong side of the road toward some sanity never to be found.
The door swung wide at my knock.
My director stood there in boots and riding pants and a silk shirt open at the neck to reveal an ascot tie. His eyes bulged like eggs to see me here. His chimpanzee mouth fell down a few inches, and the air came out of his lungs in an alcohol-tinged rush.
“I’ll be damned!” he cried. “It’s you!”
“Me,” I admitted meekly.
“You’re late! You okay? What delayed you?”
I waved behind me, up the road.
“Ireland,” I said.
“Christ, that explains it. Welcome!”
He pulled me in. The door slammed.
“You need a drink?”
“Ah, God,” I said. Then hearing my newly acquired brogue, I spoke meticulously.
“Yes, sir,” I said.
As John, his wife Ricki, and I sat down to dinner, I gazed long and hard at the wee dead birds on a warm plate, their heads awry, their beady eyes half shut, and said:
“Can I make a suggestion?”
“Make it, kid.”
“It’s about the Parsee Fedallah who runs as a character through the whole book. He ruins Moby Dick.”
“Fedallah?