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Behind came dim shapes and a chilling insect rattle.
“Who’s that!” cried the American.
“Us, with the vehicles,” someone husked. “You might say—we got the collision.”
The flashlight fixed them. The American gasped. A moment later, the battery failed.
But not before he 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 …?” said the American.
But the lads trotted off, the accident with them. The fog closed in. The American stood abandoned on an empty road, his flashlight dead in his hand.
By the time he opened the door at Heber Finn’s, both “bodies” as they called them, had been stretched on the bar.
“We got the bodies on the bar,” said the old man, turning as the American entered.
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 the old man. “Not working at the moment. The other’s Mr. Peevey from Meynooth, 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 Heber Finn. “He’ll catch his death down there. Best leave him up where the warm air gathers from our talk.”
“But,” said the American 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!” The old man 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—”
“Isn’t there a law against that?”
“To hell with government interference! So here the two come, no lights, flying home from one town to the next. Thrashing like Sin Himself’s at their behinds! Both going opposite ways but both on the same side of the road. Always ride the wrong side of the road, it’s safer, they say. But look on these lads, fair destroyed by all that official palaver. Why? Don’t you see? One remembered it, but the other didn’t! Better if the officials kept their mouths shut! For here the two be, dying.”
“Dying?” The American stared.
“Well, think on it, man! What stands between two able-bodied hell-bent fellas jumping along the path from Kilcock to Meynooth? Fog! Fog is all! Only fog to keep their skulls from bashing together. Why, look when two chaps hit at a cross like that, it’s like a strike in bowling alleys, tenpins flying! Bang! There go your friends, nine feet up, heads together like dear chums met, flailing the air, their bikes clenched like two tomcats. Then they all fall down and just lay there, feeling around for the Dark Angel.”
“Surely these men won’t—”
“Oh, won’t they? Why, last year alone in all the Free State no night passed some soul did not meet in fatal collision with another!”
“You mean to say over three hundred Irish bicyclists die every year, hitting each other?”
“God’s truth and a pity.”
“I never ride my bike nights.” Heber Finn eyed the bodies. “I walk.”
“But still then the damn bikes run you down!” said the old man. “Awheel or afoot, some idiot’s always panting up Doom the other way. They’d sooner split you down the seam than wave hello. Oh, the brave men I’ve seen ruined or half-ruined or worse, and headaches their lifetimes after.” The old man trembled his eyelids shut. “You might almost think, mightn’t you, that human beings was not made to handle such delicate instruments of power.”
“Three hundred dead each year.” The American seemed dazed.
“And that don’t count the ‘walking wounded’ by the thousands every fortnight who, cursing, throw their bikes in the bog forever and take government pensions to salve their all-but-murdered bodies.”
“Should we stand here talking?” The American gestured helplessly toward the victims. “Is there a hospital?”
“On a night with no moon,” Heber Finn continued, “best walk out through the middle of fields and be damned to the evil roads! That’s how I have survived into this my fifth decade.”
“Ah …” The men stirred restlessly.
