"Pat's not gone, Henry. She's here, damn it! Right here with us on this porch!"
Some two hours ago, I had heard the doctor say the words: "She's dead, Mr. Scott. I'm so sorry." I'd kissed a cheek that already was growing cold. I'd signed the necessary papers. Then I'd returned from Naples Community Hospital to a house hauntingly empty. Twenty minutes later, Henry Maxwell had driven out. He'd hugged me, had cried a little, himself. We'd settled into chairs on the screened porch, drinking in silence, staring at a far-off thunderstorm that wasn't going to get here, listening without hearing to the chirp of tree frogs while we brooded upon the injustice of a lovely, vivacious woman, struck down by death at age 34.
"Here?" Henry replied. "Yes. Of course she is."
"Don't tell me, 'of course'! I don't believe in such things and you know it, but she's here!" If anyone knew my lack of belief in a hereafter, it was certainly Henry Maxwell, the best friend I had in this world.
Unobtrusively, Henry moved the bottle of Scotch away from me to the other side of the coffee table. "Loss of a loved one can---how shall I say it?"
"'Can make us believe things that aren't really so?' Is that what you're trying to tell me?"
"No. What I was saying is that a blow like the tragic death of a wife could make a man more sensitive, more aware."
"Right now, I am neither sensitive nor aware. I am numb." I raised my glass, drank, then gestured with it. "She was right over there, about ten feet from us. I saw her. I know I did."
For a moment he didn't say anything. Then he asked, "Is she still there?"
"No. It was just a fleeting thing, like something revealed in a lightning flash." I sipped my drink, attempting to come to terms with what I was sure I'd seen. "She's trying to contact me," I said, finally. "She's trying to tell me something."
I had no idea why, but just at that moment I recalled the vision, the dream, whatever it was that Pat had had three months ago. Startling as a slap in the face, the certainty struck me that in that vision, a vision that she'd been convinced had been of a previous life, Pat had foreseen her own death.
There were sad-eyed poets with lean pasty faces and there were story-tellers who could make a man believe things no man should. There was a rabble-rouser who, men said, had been a part of the Fenian rising in '67 and was preaching a land war against the rich landlords, one eye on the few people standing in front of him and the other eye peeled for the constabulary. There were sharpies with games of a pea and three nutshells who could take your money quick, and there were pickpockets standing behind the watching crowd who could take it quicker. There were fiddlers, pipers, bodhrán-drummers and, of course, the dancing which went with them and which, come nightfall, I would surely be a part of, for that's where the willing girls would be.
None of these wonders was what distinguished Rathmore Fair. Special it was because it was situated near to the coming together of counties Kerry, Limerick and Cork. Yearly, sons of each county gathered to prove with fists and such other weapons as came to hand which county was the mightiest, and beyond that, which town of which county led all.
By unspoken agreement, the fun began in mid afternoon. Such as were coming would be here by then. Such as were here would have bravery well fortified by the contents of bottles and flasks. The matter of opponents would have been decided, spawned by long-standing rivalry or by challenges sweetly given.
'Coat-dragging', 'twas called. Why 'tis so, I don't know, but when a man removes his coat, holds it negligently by one hand and lets it drag in the dust behind him, it proclaims his challenge to all the world.
At two in the afternoon, the first coat-dragger appeared upon the green. A man from Loo Bridge it was, perhaps going first because anyone who knew anything knew that any man from Loo Bridge counted for nothing. He would get his strutting done and be out of the way when the real challenges came.
There was some discussion 'twixt Johnny FitzMaurice and me as to who would drag the coat, Johnny being king of his gang but me being needed for him to have any chance of victory. Since the coat dragging was the business of the best fighter, neither of us was about to give up the honor by default. The matter was decided, quick and private, when I knocked him flat on his arse with one punch, and not my Sunday one at that. Last night Vincent Rafferty and I had settled the coat-dragging business between us. We'd likely settle it again some night next week at the latest, we being best friends and all.
Without the slightest trace of anger Johnny picked himself up off the ground, wiped the blood from his split lip with the back of his hand, then gave a nod of his head. "All right, O'Shea. You drag. And see you fight to back it up!"
"Would you care for another sample of my fighting, FitzMaurice?"
"I wouldn't. Save it for Barraduff."