By Michael Ledwith
May 10, 2023

Editor’s note: So many of you have asked about the first column “An Irish Fable” asking “What happens next?”  that writer Michael Ledwith generously written another chapter. JK

They drove up through a gentle pass between low mountains.

She asked, well what manner of luck brought you to my town?

I was supposed to go to Vietnam, had trained for it. Had accepted that I’d probably be killed there…

She took a deep breath, and made the sign of the cross…don’t say such Yank. She looked serious.

Well, let’s just say I had accepted the fate I had assigned myself when I raised my hand and took the oath to defend and protect America.

They make you take oaths in America still? Lovely country. Here oaths are mainly curse words.

But, when it was time to go, Nixon…

At the sound of President Nixon’s name, she put her hand on his arm to make him pause, turned her head to the window, hocked up a big one, spat and cried, fookin’ bastard that one was!

His heart bumped at the sound and sight of a beautiful Irish girl shouting bastard out the window to the blue sky and the cows, and he laughed.

Don’t laugh she said, bastard he was bastard he is!

He saved my life, Kathleen. I was hardcore and wanted to be a good officer and not kill civilians. I promised myself I wouldn’t bomb or use artillery indiscriminately. I wouldn’t honor free fire zones. I’d check out villages before assuming that NVA were there before calling in an air strike.

Either my men would have fragged me, or the VC would have killed me in a month. So, when Nixon declared Vietnamization, I didn’t have to go. And, I left to hitchhike around Europe starting in Ireland, and wound up sitting next to you.

She slammed on the brakes, leaned out the window and shouted: Forgive me God, I take it back, Nixon ain’t a bastard! Or not a bastard since he saved dear, lovely Michael here! Forget about it and I’ll pour my first pint on the ground in penance.

She drove on.

So, you and me in me boyfriend’s car is fate, is it?

Seems like it, he observed.

They stopped at a pub for lunch. Got sandwiches, three pints, and walked out to sit at a table out back. The back was a pasture, low hills a mile away, the sky the same soft blue of before.

She poured the first pint out. Looked up at God somewhere up there beyond the clouds and cried loud enough to startle the sheep just beyond the stone fence, he’s not a bastard!

An old lady, a table over, leaned toward them and said, I agree, he looks like a nice young man.

Kathleen and the lady began conversing about young men, the trials and tribulations of being a young woman amid such young men. He heard the old lady say, well, it don’t get better.

Single or married they’ll drive you crazy your whole life.

Are you married Kathleen asked? No, not now. I’ve buried three, none homicides, and I’m working on a local man, just moved down from Dublin, who seems to have a bit of money.

Like him? Kathleen asked. A bit. He’ll do. Not like that Yank sippin’ his porter like its champagne. He’s a keeper.

Yank! She called. Let’s do a toast and there’s no sippin’ in Ireland for toasts.

To President John Fitzgerald Kennedy, God rest his Catholic soul, as Irish as is the porter we drink, the lady announced.

They drained their pint glasses.

Then, my round, gathered the glasses up, and disappeared into the pub.

He looked at Kathleen, a bit differently now since the Nixon’s a bastard and the ‘dear lovely, Michael’, business, and asked, typical lunch is this?

We could have stopped at a McDonalds if you wanted to drive five hours to Dublin.

They drank the afternoon away with the old lady. She’d lived in Boston for a decade. Buried one of her husbands there. A bit of a fuss she said, a new life insurance policy and he falling off the roof. Porter listed as the cause of death, and me taking up light housekeeping with the Detective until the insurance money was paid and shared.

Ordered sandwiches to go, a bottle of Jameson, four of Guinness, scones, jam, butter and a dozen eggs for breakfast the next morning.

Their last toast, draining their pints to the  hope that another morning would come.

And, down the road a quarter mile, opened a gate, then up a curve to a hill overlooking the ocean. A little house with large windows, green shutters, thatch roof like Molly Looney’s pub in Bweeng Cross, and a barn out back.

They got out. A bit of awkwardness.

She with the hamper, he with his backpack and her little bag.

What now, he thought?

He dropped the cases. Took the hamper from her. Swept her into his arms, walked to the front door.

It shouldn’t be locked she said in a small  timid voice.

He kicked the bolt up. The door open and he carried Kathleen across the threshold.

Into a living room, fireplace, blackened wood beams in the ceiling, kitchen with table and chairs off to the right, the ocean seen through all the windows facing west.

A half-opened door, the second door on the left. He nudged it with foot. It swung open. A large bed, huge pillows, covered in quilts, the window showing golden light from the coming evening, walked her in. He tossed her on the bed in a grand gesture. Her cheeks flushed, her hair wild, her eyes, well he’d never forget the look in her eyes from that moment until his dying day.

Later, her asleep, he walked outside as the moon came up and cast a shadow in front of him. He wandered, instinctively towards the sea. He  could hear it.

Automatically checked the surf when it came into view beneath a full moon.

From the distance and in the moonlight it could have been ten-foot waves. Or eve  thirty-foot waves. It was hard to tell. But, it was big. And, breaking perfectly.

Wind offshore. Spray arcing back off the breaking waves. The familiar growl of really big waves. The sound of thumps, from ever so far away, indicating major tubes.

He wondered if there were surfers about. If he would, if he could, surf those big Irish waves.

He didn’t have a wetsuit and guessed it would be very cold. He didn’t have a board, but if there were surfers about, surely could borrow one.

When he got back to the cottage on the hill, she was tending a peat fire, wrapped in one of the quilts.

He said softly, Ah, Kathleen.

He let out a sigh, a sigh of complete happiness.

His first sigh of contentment and peace since he hitchhiked home after being discharged.

Beautiful you are in the soft glow of a peat fire, darlin’. An oil lamp filling in the shadows. A movie scene, not real life.

Are you a poet Yank, she asked?

No, never written a poem, and only memorized one.

What is it then? Let’s hear it.

Do you know Ogden Nash, he asked her?

Not a clue.

Shakespeare ain’t got nothing on him, he told her.

Let’s hear it then, she cried!

He stood at attention in the firelight to declaim the poem.

Let’s pour a drink first, Kathleen called to him.

How do you like your whiskey? Taking the Jameson bottle out of the bag.

Poured by you he answered. It’ll be the first whiskey I ever drank willingly.

What, she cried? What do you mean?

I was an altar boy, the priest made us take whiskey before receiving his sacrament.

Not Jameson she cried! Not Jameson! He defiled, he desecrated Jameson for such!?!

The pagan, pissant, pederastic prick of a priest!

Hearing such alliteration, coming from an Irish girl naked underneath her great aunt’s hand-made quilt was one of the most erotic experiences of his young life. Well, except the activities of that very afternoon.

No, he said, it was some cheap Canadian Whiskey.

Thanks, be to God, she cried and blessed herself.

I’ll pour you a short one.

She poured two shots.

He picked his up. Hers, already in her hand.

He didn’t declaim Nash, but said: to a beautiful Irish girl, hosting me in her beautiful country, hosting me in her great aunt’s bed (Kathleen blushed) and believing my story about being buggered by a priest!

He tossed it off. Now pour me another.

Ah, she cried, a storyteller. A rapscallion American storyteller. A deflowerer of a helpless almost virgin!

She poured herself another one as well.

Here goes, he said, lowering his voice to a command register, and declaiming dramatically:

If, a panther calls…don’t anther.

Silence.

Brilliant, she cried!

Brilliant!

She had the Jameson still in hand, took a long pull. Wiped the whiskey dripping from her lips with the back of her hand. Said, looking him straight in the eye:

What am I ever going to do with you Yank?

Me engaged to be married to a family friend. A neighbor’s boy. Deflowered just now for only the 6^th (a pause), no 7^th, time in me life two hours ago.  Naked under my great grandmother’s quilt. In the wilds of the Dingle. With a surfer lad who may or may not have been buggered by his parish priest, who can take his whiskey neat, drain a pint for a toast, and recites poetry on command?

I’m fooked.

-30-

Frequent contributor Michael Ledwith is a former bag boy at Winn-Dixie, who worked on the Apollo Program one summer in college. A former U.S. Army officer, he ran with the bulls in Pamplona and saw Baryshnikov dance ’Giselle’ at the Auditorium Theater.  Surfer. Rock and roll radio in Chicago. Shareholder, Christopher’s American Grill, London. Father. Movie lover—favorite dialogue: “I say he never loved the emperor.”