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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 Meynooth Clinic. So whose car will volunteer?”
The crowd turned as a staring body toward the American. He felt the gentle shift as he was drawn from outside the ritual to its deep and innermost core. He flushed, remembering the front of Heber Finn’s pub, where seventeen bicycles and one automobile were parked at this moment. Quickly, he nodded.
“There! A volunteer, lads! Quick now, hustle this boy—gently!—to our good friend’s vehicle!”
The men reached out to lift the body, but froze when the American coughed. They saw him circle his hand to all, and tip his cupped fingers to his lips. They gasped in soft surprise. The gesture was not 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?”
Then the body was gone off the bar, the potential wake over, the room empty save for the American, 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 the volunteer’s car.
The Doc said, “Finish your drink, Mr.—?”
“McGuire,” said the American.
“By the saints, he’s Irish!”
No, thought the American, far away, 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. No, thought the American named McGuire, I’m almost, but certainly not quite, Irish …
“Doctor,” he heard himself say as he placed 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 for it!”
Crossing the pub together, the Doc took his arm as if to impart some secret which would change his Fates. Thus steered, the American found the stout inside himself a shifting weight he must accommodate from s
ide to side as the Doc breathed soft in his ear.
“Look here now, McGuire, admit it, you’ve driven but little in Ireland, right? Then, listen! Driving to Meynooth, fog and all, you’d best take it fast! Raise a din! Why? Scare the cyclists and cows off the path, both sides! If you drive slow, why you’ll creep up on and do away with dozens before they know what took them off! And another thing: when a car approaches, douse your lights! 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 cars loom up!”
At the door, the American nodded. Behind him he 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, asailing downhill near the cross when—”
Outside in the car with the other collision victim moaning softly in the back seat, 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 any other 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!”
Without thinking, the American fumbled under the seat, brought forth a brown tweed cap purchased in Dublin that day, and put it on. Adjusting it, he looked out at the dark mist boiling across the night. He listened to the empty highway waiting for him ahead, quiet, quiet, quiet, but not quiet somehow. For hundreds of long strange miles up and down all of Ireland he saw a thousand crossroads covered with a thousand fogs through which one thousand tweed-capped, grey-mufflered phantoms wheeled along in mid-air, singing, shouting, and smelling of Guinness Stout.
He blinked. The phantoms shadowed off. The road lay empty and dark and waiting.
