'The Mountains Wild' Chapters 17 & 18

“And Long Island, probably.”

“And Long Island.”

“So what happened? We wouldn’t sell you any guns?”

“No, you wouldn’t. Though you made up for it later.”

“Northern Ireland?” He studied me for a minute. “You and Erin, you grew up around the bar, right?” I nodded. “Did your uncle have a bucket hanging on the wall? For the widows and orphans in the north?”

I hadn’t thought about it in years, but suddenly I remembered it. It had disappeared at some point, but when I was little, it had been there. “Yeah. He did. Was that the IRA?”

“In the late sixties, when the civil rights protests started in Northern Ireland, things got really violent. Once internment of IRA members started, people started raising money for the internees’ families and for the widows and orphans of hunger strikers. NORAID’s the big one most people know. But loyalist groups and the British government have always claimed that NORAID was actually fund-raising for the Provisional IRA.”

“Were they?”

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“There was certainly some mission creep there. You have to remember that the Troubles started with the civil rights protests and the slaughter of protestors on Bloody Sunday. From there, different groups sort of used the struggle for their own purposes.”

“That bucket. I never thought anything of it. But he took it down in the eighties when I was in high school.”

“Yeah, the Provisional IRA leaders would go over and talk to the NORAID guys in New York. They’d do the rounds and rally the troops and raise some money. By the eighties, Reagan and Thatcher had such a romance going that the general American attitude toward Northern Ireland shifted. But there are bars in the Bronx and Boston that still pass the bucket.”

“But Erin?” I was trying to think now, trying to remember. “She never said anything to you about being involved with anything like that?”

“No,” he said. But there was something. His brown eyes narrowed and flashed. “I just thought of something, though. Not about that, but only ...”

“Only what?”

He met my eyes. “She asked me once about mass rocks.”

“What’s that?” My pint was gone. His was too.

“During penal times, when the practice of Catholicism was prohibited by law, people would hold mass outdoors. There were rocks that were set up as altars. Sometimes caves were used. You can still find them sometimes, outside of Dublin, like.”

“Did she want to go see one or something? Why was she asking you about it?”

“I don’t know. She said she’d heard about them and did I know where any were? But it felt like she was just making conversation, not like she really wanted to see one, if you know what I mean. That’s funny. I just thought of it.”

I didn’t know what to say. The pub was starting to clear out.

“It’ll be last call soon,” Conor said. “I should get going. I have an early lecture.”

“Oh yeah, of course.” We got our jackets on, spilled out onto the bright, wet street. It was barely raining. The air was so heavy I felt as though I could hold it in my hands.  

Chapter 18

1993

WE WALKED IN SILENCE for a little bit and then he said, “So, have they found anything? About Erin, I mean?” He was trying to sound casual, but his voice wavered, and he made a point of looking at the window of a shop we were passing. “Where do you think she is?”

“I just don’t know. Erin and I used to be close when we were kids. But not anymore, really. I love her but I don’t know her anymore, if that makes sense. She’s done some crazy stuff the last couple years. She got a DUI, she dated this guy who was literally a criminal. She used to — I don’t know what she’d do.”

He sighed and picked up his pace. “Where are you staying?”

“Erin’s.”

“Ah, I’m not far then. Do you go Pearse Street or by the quays?”

“Pearse Street, I guess.”

“I’ll see you home. Let’s go by the quays. All right with you?”

He seemed happier now, more relaxed.  

I nodded. The air was moist with just a faint hint of the smoky smell. We wound around by D’Olier Street and then along the quays, the Liffey to our left, flowing to the sea.

“What’s that smell?” I asked him.

“Hmmm? Oh, the smoky sort of smell?”

“I love it.”

He looked down at me.

“So do I. I think it’s peat fires somewhere.”

“They let people burn peat in the city?”

“Maybe. I don’t know. Maybe it’s fires out in the country, or ...”

“You don’t actually have any idea, do you?” I looked up at him. “You’re just making that up.”

“Well, it must be peat, right? It smells like peat.” He stopped and put his hands out. “All right, all right. You’re right. I don’t know where it’s coming from, but it’s Dublin to me, you know? When I first came, for college, I had a flat in Rathmines and when I opened the window I smelled it and it made me think of home.”

“Aw. What a nice story.”

“Feck off, you.” He gave me a little shove.

The lights blurred a little. I bumped against his arm, hoping he’d take my hand, but he kept his hands in his pockets and kept walking.

We were almost to the canal. There was a pub right on the river, a glossy red pub that said “O’Brien’s” on one side of the door and “The Ferryman” on the other. It was after last call, but people were still going in and coming out.

“That’s a dockworker’s pub,” Conor tells me. “It’s good craic in there. You should walk over some time.”

“Who’s the Ferryman?”

“The ... Oh, there used to be ferries that ran on the Liffey. For the workers. They stopped running in the eighties. Have you not heard that song, ‘The Ferryman’? It goes like, ‘The little boats are gone on the breast of Anna Liffey, the ferryman is stranded on the quay, da, da, da. I love you today and I’ll love you tomorrow, something, something. Sure the Dublin docks is dying ...’ Oh, Jaysus, I have a terrible voice, I know I do. I can’t remember any more.”

I was laughing, hard now. “You really do have a terrible voice, you know.”

“Well, what about you?” On the next block, we took a right and walked along the canal. I could see the Bolands Flour Mills sign up ahead, just past the canal bridge. We were almost to Erin’s flat.

“I can sing a little.” I felt a small flush of triumph. I had a nice voice. Better than nice. I got it from my mother. She taught me a lot of Irish songs and I used to sing in college sometimes, when I’d had a few drinks, at a little Irish pub in South Bend.

“So, give us a song, Maggie D’arcy.” He was still laughing. He thought it was going to be funny.

Instead I stopped and closed my eyes. I wanted to impress him. I was hopelessly attracted to Conor Kearney and I wanted to impress him.

At least I was honest with myself about this.

It was a classic one my mom loved, that I finally learned phonetically once I had a little Irish.

Trasna na dtonnta, dul siar,

Slán leis an uaigneas is slán leis an gcian

Geal é mo chroi, agus geal í an ghrian

Geal a bheith ag filleadh go hÉrinn.  

I did the first chorus again and I ended on hÉrinn and something about the song, about saying her name, made tears come into my eyes and I turned away.

But he took me by the shoulders and turned me back and looked down at me. “I learned that in primary school. That was brilliant. You’ve a lovely voice. Do you speak Irish? You never said.”

“Níl ach beagán. Agus tú féin?” Not but a little. And you yourself? Then I laughed and said, “You’d better answer in English. That’s about it.”

He laughed too. “Not bad. Yeah, at school, you know. And we spoke Irish at home a bit. My mam was quite militant about us learning.”

We were crossing over the canal.

“How many siblings do you have?” I asked. It suddenly seemed important to know.

“Just five of us. That’d be a small family, in most people’s books, but my mam always had modern ideas about things. She’s a poet and she had grand ideas of fame and fortune. Of course, she was married to a sheep farmer in County Clare so the chances of that were pretty long, but they have a good life.” He hesitated, then said, “I’ve got three sisters and a brother — I’m the little one — and the sisters are all abroad, but doing well for themselves. One of them is a barrister in London, the other one is an art teacher in Denmark, married to a Danish guy, and my other sister’s in America — she’s a graphic designer in California.”

“What about the brother?”

“He’s a story for another day.”

“Don’t your parents miss your sisters?”

“Oh yeah, ’course they do, but it’s kind of what you do. Do you have brothers and sisters?”

“Nope. Both Erin and I are only children, which is why we were so close. As kids, anyway.”

He touched my arm and steered me around a pile of something dark on the sidewalk. I leaned into him. He didn’t lean away. Suddenly we were holding hands, rounding the Irishtown shops and starting down Ringsend Road. We’d be back to the house soon. I was still half drunk. The air was full of the smoky smell and the glow of the streetlights.

“Do you miss it, where you grew up?” I asked him. He rubbed my hand with his thumb. “Dublin must be really different.”

“Yeah, I miss it a lot,” he said. “But I don’t think I ever really thought I could stay there. When I think about going home for Christmas, the craic, my mam’s brown bread and roast and potatoes and going out in the morning to help my da with the sheep, watching telly with my sisters. I don’t know. I guess it’s family, though it’s the place, too. There’s this little hill just out the back of the farm and I used to go out there to think when I was a kid. Whenever I’m home, I always go out there to watch the sunset. That’s what I miss. Ah, I’m sad, amn’t I? Do you feel like that about your place?”

“Yeah, well, the beach mostly. I grew up looking out at the harbor. The sunsets. The smell of it. The sound of the seagulls. Boats always moving on the water.”

In the distance, a gull called, and we both laughed.

“You sure you don’t want to devote your life to studying seagulls in Irish literature? There’s a lot of textual evidence.” “So much better than chickens,” I said.

After a minute of silence, I asked him, “Did Erin ever tell you her mother was Irish?”

“Yeah, I think maybe she mentioned it.”

“Did she ever tell you she was looking for her?”

“I don’t think so. Is that why she came over here?”

“I don’t know,” I told him. “I don’t really know why she came over here.”

We were at the flat. We stopped and he looked down at me, then glanced away. His eyes were liquid light on the dark street.

“Thanks for walking me home.”

“Well, I should let you get inside,” he said. “And I have a lot of studying to do tomorrow. You know, chickens.”

“I’ll see you?” I said, laughing.

“Yeah. Stop by and have lunch. Or stop by and don’t have lunch. Our food’s not very good.”

“Okay. I will. Thanks, Conor.”

“No worries.” He hesitated again. I thought he was going to kiss me, but he didn’t. He just turned, stopped, turned again, and then he was off walking down the street, his shoulders hunched down in his leather jacket, and I was left standing there, listening to the gulls calling over the canal and out toward Sandymount and the sea.

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