"I have to go to the bathroom." Jeanne looked sideways at me.
I had to agree. It had been a while. "Not a bad idea."
I'd been trying to drive through the storm, get far enough north, see if it abated in Mayo or Sligo. But it was getting worse, blowing in off the Atlantic. The weather reports on the car radio were calling it a gale. I'd never been in a gale before.
"There." She pointed.
My gaze followed her finger. Light yellow, two stories, eight windows across, three peaks in the roof. A stone fence, crushed gravel driveway lined with painted white stones. "Must be a hotel. Or a lodge." Here, I thought. In the middle of nowhere.
"Let's see if we can use their bathroom."
Made sense. I welcomed the chance to stop. Any excuse would do, but this one was starting to make real good sense.
We'd spent last night in a B and B in Gort (fifteen Irish pounds per person), the previous evening in the Central Hotel, Mallow, County Cork (twenty pounds each). Walking through the doors of Lough Inagh Lodge, we knew we'd moved up a notch. The lady behind the desk was charitable, understanding, listened to our exotic accents, and steered us to the washrooms—the most immaculate we'd encountered in Ireland, including the four-star Gresham back in Dublin.
Finishing before Jeanne, I idled, strolled about. I wandered into a library, tastefully appointed, an open log fireplace surrounded by wing-back chairs, poked my head into the dining room, checked out the oak-paneled bar— again, complete with fireplace.
"This place is gorgeous."
I turned and looked at Jeanne, who had appeared behind me. "Not bad, is it?"
"Why don't we see if they've got a room?"
"It's the middle of the afternoon."
"Have you looked outside? Have you forgotten?"
I hadn't forgotten. "Might be a budget breaker."
"We can ask."
She was right. We could ask.
"We have one room. A cancellation. It's sixty pounds per person."
We were quiet for a minute. We translated it into dollars, first Canadian, then American. Either way, we could feel the Irish rain, wind, and fog settle onto our backs.
"Might be more than we want to spend."
"I understand."
And she did. It was completely understandable. With resignation, we understood it too.
A half hour later, the windshield wipers beating furiously, we pulled over, got out our maps, oriented ourselves again. Visibility on all sides was a couple of dozen feet. We were here, in Connemara, God's country, but we couldn't see it. A sudden gust of rain and wind lashed at the side of the car, rocking us slightly.
Jeanne sighed. "I don't know about you," she said, "but I've got my sixty pounds right here." She pulled the notes from her purse, fanned them out. She raised one eyebrow. "Where you gonna stay?"
It was a corner room on the second floor. With the rain and mist, gray clouds sliding up the mountains, the view across the lake was haunting. And the room itself—a canopy bed, sitting room, dressing room adjacent to the bathroom—it was everything one might expect for one's sixty pounds.
Jeanne wore her black dress to dinner: white wine, smoked salmon appetizer, leek and chive soup, prawns in garlic butter, white chocolate mousse dessert with kiwi coulis. We took our tea in the library, then retired to the dark-paneled bar, seated ourselves in front of the fireplace, pretended we could afford it all.
The bartender, in his early twenties, placed the Baileys in front of me and the Irish Mist on Jeanne's coaster.
"Any chance we could get you to put a peat fire on for us?" I nodded at the ornate, black iron hearth.
"No problem." He smiled. "We call it a turf fire."
"Oops."
"Have you one going in a minute."
We were the only ones in the room. Jeanne put her feet up on a wooden stool, settled back, let the warmth penetrate as the bartender stood back, ran a hand through dark, black, curly hair, watched the turf logs do their work.
"There," he said.
"It's great." Jeanne was glowing. "Thanks again."
"My pleasure."
"You from around here?" she asked.
"I'm from Galway. I rent a place nearby."
"Is this a summer job or full-time?"
"It's summer for me this year. But I hope to learn some of the business this way."
"You go to school in Galway?"
"No, Limerick. University of Limerick."
"I have a son about your age," she said. "Just started university last year. In Toronto."
I thought of Adam, his summer job, working at Mr. Lube on Overlea Boulevard, in the pit, staring up at the bottoms of automobiles while we sat here, tucked away from reality.
He looked surprised. "Excuse me for saying so, ma'am, but I wouldn't have picked your accent as Canadian."
"And you'd be right. I'm Kentucky." She nodded at me. "He's the Canadian."
"She is too," I said. "She just doesn't know it yet. What are you studying?"
"I'm taking a business degree. Specializing in what they call Leisure Industry—recreation, tourism, hotel management, like that. I can learn here. It's Ireland's fastest growing industry. I'd be involved with places like this, folks like yourselves. I think I'd enjoy it."
"You're a smart young man. Smarter than I was at your age."
He smiled. "I try to tell my girlfriend the same thing. She's home in Galway. I see her as often as I can."
I tried to orient myself. "How far is that?"
"Forty-six miles. But who's counting? It's easier for her to get up here than it is for me to get down there, what with my hours, working weekends and all."
"You got your own place near here?"
"No." He shook his head, smiled. "Can't afford it. I have a room with a family in Recess, few miles down the road."
Jeanne was eyeing him. "What's your name?"
"Brendan."
"What's your girl's name?"
"Darla."
"What do you and Darla do when she comes up for a visit?"
I met her eyes, wondered at the question. "Why, they play checkers, Jeanne. What else?"
He laughed, didn't answer.
But Jeanne persisted. I realized she was fishing. "You must have a place you get away to, away from here, from the lodge, just the two of you."
I began to see where she was heading, admired her anew, leaned forward, interested in what his answer might be.
"There are some nice places," he admitted.
"Suppose my husband and I wanted to get away by ourselves, off in the mountains. You know," she was openly coy now, "a picnic, alone. Where would you suggest?"
"Assuming it stops raining," I added.
"Ahh," he said. "You can head out in just about any direction hereabouts and be alone."
"Your special place," she said. "We won't tell." Her voice lowered. "In fact, we won't even be here next week, won't even be in the country. Your secret's safe with us."
He hesitated, studied us, looked down, smiled, looked up. He shrugged. "There's one place." A pause. "Very private. Very pretty. Only the locals know it." He leaned a hand on a table, relaxed. "Tobar agus leaba Pádraic. Mám Eán."
We listened to the Irish, to the old language, its lilt flowing from him suddenly like a brook.
"St. Patrick's Well and Bed. Pass of the Birds. It's a holy well." He could see that we weren't sure what he was telling us. "Do you know what a holy well is?"
I felt a small embarrassment. "Not really. I can guess that it's a place of worship, a special place."
"There are probably thousands of them all over Ireland." He scratched his head, thought for a moment. "They're sacred places, ancient places. People make pilgrimages to them, seeking something. Say prayers, what have you. Most of them aren't very accessible. Not the kind of thing most tourists are interested in—too hard to get to. It's the locals who know where they are."
"Ancient places." I repeated his phrase. "How ancient?"
"Nobod
y knows. Pre-Christian though. The Celts? The Druids? Then they got all mixed up with Christian beliefs. They say that St. Patrick climbed to the top of the warn, looked down on Connemara, gave it his blessing." He smiled. "Lots of folks dismiss it as childish superstition, but I think they miss the point."
Jeanne and I were quiet. With the smell of the turf fire, here, far from our everyday world, we were listening to a twenty-something student bartender. It was we who should be telling him things that he did not know. We were the world travelers, old enough to be his parents, surviving quite comfortably in a city of three million. But we were both smart enough to know what we knew and what we didn't know, and to shut up when in the presence of the latter.
"People have psychological needs, you know. Anyone who has gone on a pilgrimage—taken a special trip for anything—knows what a pleasurable and memorable experience it is." He shrugged. "We're all looking for something. Something to ease the spirit, to give us hope. Something that interests us profoundly."
"You're a smart young man, Brendan." Jeanne looked at me as she spoke, then back at him. "Darla's a lucky girl."
"If I get a job, she's a lucky girl. That's what her father would say. I can hear him now."
"What do people pray for at the wells?" Jeanne asked.
"Depends. There are different kinds of wells. Seashore wells, mountaintop, bog wells, and mountain pass wells like Mám Eán. Some pray for sick children, some for various ailments—backache, headache, you name it. They say that many people used to pray for children of their own, to have them, that the wells were symbols of fertility." He smiled. "Last thing most people want now, right?"
We didn't answer. I don't know about Jeanne, but I suddenly felt like I was outside, alone on a hilltop, the gale winds buffeting me.
III
We were lucky—the weather cleared the next day. Although last night's dinner wasn't included in the sixty pounds each, breakfast was, so we helped ourselves to poached eggs with salmon, black pudding, orange juice, potato cakes, and sliced tomato, then sat back and finished our tea before checking out.
"If you go south," Brendan had told us, "back down 344 the way you came, about half a mile, you'll come to a single-lane road running off to the left, into the mountains. There's a sign in Irish there: 'MÁM RÁN, Tobar agus leaba Pádraic.' Tobar agus leaba—Well and Bed. Go about two miles along it. It's narrow, but you can drive it. A few hundred feet before you come to where it takes a ninety- degree turn to the right, there's a place to pull over. You can't miss it. There's another sign posted there. In Irish." He smiled. "You'll have to go on foot from there. Follow the track up to the top of the pass—about another half mile." He thought again. "Maybe a mile—I'm not sure. It's at the top." He looked carefully at both of us, hesitated, added: "There's an old children's burial ground on your right as you start up the path. Off a few hundred feet. No markers like you might be thinking of. Just stones, piled in special arrangements. Hundreds of years old, they say. You can tell it's man-made, not a natural part of the landscape."
We saw the old children's burial ground on the way up. A stone ring, fifty feet diameter, stones arranged within, part of a small stone wall still standing. We passed by in silence.
We were in a world of stone. At the summit, the mám, there was an array of artifacts—almost a small monastic site. Our eyes hurt as they adjusted to the startling depths and distances. We stared at the Twelve Bens that rose up, touched the clouds, ten, fifteen, twenty miles away. Beside us, a statue of Patrick, mounted atop a loose rock base, gazed with us across the mountains and the glens and the rivulets and the loughs. Fourteen Celtic crosses, each mounted atop a pile of loosely pyramided stones, were spread over the pass: the Stations of the Cross, the fourteen scenes from the Passion of Christ on his way to Calvary. The inscriptions on each were in Irish.
Behind Patrick, a stone oratory had been built into the mountainside, a small, open structure, with an arched roof and an altar, where a Mass could be said. I stared down the mountainside, pictured the crowds that had gathered over the centuries.
Our man Brendan could teach Bord Fáilte Éirann—the Irish Tourist Board—a thing or two. He was in the right business—it was a natural calling. He'd told us that among the pre-Christian Celts the year was divided into four quarters: spring, February 1, was the feast of Imbolc; summer began with Beltaine, May 1; autumn was heralded by Lughnasa, August 1; and winter with Samhain, November 1. This well, usually visited on the last Sunday in July, was a Lughnasa festival site.
We were ten days early. There was no festival, no crowd, nobody. We were alone.
"Tell us about what people do who'd like a child," Jeanne had said.
Brendan became quiet, looked at us with new eyes. His voice softened. "It's quite likely that people prayed for children, like they prayed for everything else, at many holy wells, but would never speak of it."
She persisted. "Besides praying, what do they do when they go there?"
I was quiet. Brendan was quiet.
"They must do something."
"There are lots of old stories. A woman can bring an egg-shaped stone as an offering. I've heard it said that she should deposit the stone in the well and then walk around it once. There's a stone bed there too."
"A what?" I asked.
"Tobar agus leaba Pádraic. Tobar means 'well,' leaba is 'bed,' agus means 'and.' Patrick's Well and Bed." He paused, thinking. Then: "There are different kinds of these stone beds around Ireland. Some are long stone rectangles, kind of containers, slightly concave, long enough, wide enough, to hold a person. The one on Mám Éan is a bit different. It's a small cave, a natural formation, almost like it was carved out of a cliff on the west side of the pass—across from the well and slightly above it. Some folk climb into it, lie there, probably say a prayer. Or whatever." He smiled. "I've done it."
"And Darla?" Jeanne asked.
"She's done it too." He was still smiling.
It was a poor man's Stonehenge. But the same care, the same sense of the sacred, of the power of place, hovered everywhere. There were two stone circles, several standing stones, and a miniature pyramid. The interiors of all of the circles were filled with small stones.
"There's a dark lake, very small, some thousand feet or so down the cnoc—the hillside—to the south. Lough Mám Éan. You'll be able to see it. They say there's a salmon and an eel live there," Brendan said, "and if you see them, you'll have your wish granted. It's another good story." He leaned back, one elbow on the polished bar. "The well itself—some drink from its water, some fill bottles and take it with them. Maybe they drink it. Maybe they rub it on an afflicted area. Maybe they just save it. I don't know." He shrugged, remembering. "My grandmother says the earth is sacred. Water is the source of life. It's simple, she says. Water is a good thing." He looked at us. "I've got a flask of it. So does Darla." Another shrug. "What's the harm?"
The well was girded by rocks piled in a U-shape, the approach to it littered by thousands of small stones. The water was crystal clear, no more than ten inches deep. Votive offerings were scattered about—coins, rosaries, buttons, ribbons, rusted crucifixes—anything to mark a visit.
Jeanne took the oval stone from her pocket, dropped it in the well, walked once around it. She dipped her plastic water bottle beneath its surface, held it there, let it fill. In each of the stone circles, we deposited another of the single round stones that we had brought with us, adding to the pile that had settled into the earth, century after century.
Singly, we climbed into the shelter that was St. Patrick's Bed, lay there for a while in silence. Then, when the sun squeezed through the clouds, lighting the entire pass, we climbed down, left the haven, and headed down the hillside to the small mountain pool that was Lough Mám Eán. By its edge, we spread out the Sligo blanket, lay down, touched, made love. Later, we sat, squinted into the distance, at purple slopes, at shaded glens, and when I turned to look back into the waters of the lough, I thought I saw, just for a moment, a sing
le moment, but I couldn't be sure, a flash of silver beneath its dark surface. I held my breath, looked again, but it was gone.
On the way back down the mountain, we passed the children's burial ground, again in silence.
Two days later, flying over Greenland, heading home, the pilot announced that it was minus forty-three degrees Celsius outside the aircraft. We looked down at the blinding white, at the mountains that no one would ever touch, and I thought once more of the silver flash in the water. I thought of the salmon and the eel.
IV
Understanding, for me, seldom comes quickly. I have no way of knowing if it's like this for others. I was crossing the border into Canada at the Lewiston bridge, just north of Niagara Falls, when things finally fell into place—tumblers finally meshing, after years of tinkering, jimmying. Probably it was the memory of Mám Eán, the proximity of the Falls, I don't know, but I saw the pattern: Las Vegas, the drive-ins, Niagara Falls, the Poconos, the cottage on Paudash Lake, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame—even Dayton and the Legacy Lounge, Mamma DiSalvo's Restaurant, all the colleges and universities growing like grain throughout Ohio. They were all holy wells. The sacred was the secular, a pilgrimage was a pilgrimage. We visited places in hope of change, peace, nourishment, insight, understanding. If we were lucky, very lucky, we fed our senses—ate, drank, experienced love, erotic or otherwise—at the same time. Listened for the music.
I touched my shirt pocket, didn't breathe. The stones. Both of them, real, still there. It was getting dark. Traffic was light. I figured about two more hours to home. Jeanne. Adam.
I tried not to drive too fast.
SEVENTEEN
I
It must have been the late 1980s. At dinner one night, Dad told us how he'd heard on the radio that every household was going to get a Blue Box, provided by the city, into which you'd put all your used jars, bottles, cans. This was to be set out with the garbage, to be picked up for recycling.
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