Jan Karon - In the Company of Others

Slade’s victim hadn’t died but was in critical condition. Sobering, this cascade of incidents since they’d stepped foot on the place.

They gathered in the car park, their wives laughing over some private joke.

‘Broughadoon is wonderful,’ said Walter, ‘but too much drama this time around. If I were in your boots, I’d be out of here.’

‘It’s her birthday, she gets to choose.’

‘A point of considerable merit,’ said his cousin. ‘And speaking of age, I think we’re all holding up well enough, though I deeply regret looking more like Dad with each passing day.’

‘He was a handsome fellow, my uncle. Good looks trump age.’

They had spent the morning remembering their Mississippi rites of passage and hacking through Kavanagh history cobbled together in recent years. He’d also taken the Vauxhall for a practice run around the Catharmore circle, flinging a few dog biscuits while at it.

‘What’s the plan?’ he asked Walter, who always had one.

‘Let’s say Belfast a week from today. An overnight there, then head south, taking our time. Katherine’s up for Guinness pie at that terrific pub we stumbled on in Dundalk, still talks about it. Anyway, we’ll finally see the family drinking horn at Trinity, and the Book of Kells-a long time coming. You have the hotel phone numbers; do what you can at once, given the season.’

‘That works,’ he said. The fact of separate cars had been established; all concerned seemed relieved. ‘Maybe we can squeak out of here a day sooner than we think. Let’s stay in touch.’

‘What happened to your cell phone, by the way?’

‘Don’t ask.’

Walter laughed. ‘To the four winds, would be my guess.’

‘Close enough.’

They recited the family motto-‘Peace and plenty!’-gave the high-five, and, following a round of the cousin’s kiss, which resembled the European greeting model embellished by back-slapping, Katherine scratched the Fiat out of the car park and into the outer lane.

Walter waved from the open window; Katherine honked three times.

‘Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,’ he informed Cynthia. ‘Her signature honk.’

He opened the door of the Vauxhall, which he’d parked next in line for takeoff, and helped Cynthia into the passenger seat. He was frankly consoled that Maureen had offered to pray for the ‘brilliant performance’ of their loaner.

‘Rev’rend! Cynthia!’ It was Maureen, leaning from an open window on the second floor. ‘Come back safe, please God.’

The side mirror had been reset in the thingamajig and there was nothing on the backseat but the blasted crutches and their versatile snack hamper. He even smelled leather polish, though precious little leather was left to polish.

They were off with a rattle.

For five days, his wife had entertained scant notion of where she was in the universe, save for views from the dining room or a garden bench. She cranked down the car window, poked her head out, gawked. He loved the reflex of her open mouth.

‘Amazing,’ she said. ‘Unbelievable.’

To their right, the easy green slope to the lake and its several islands, and the hovering hills beyond. Then the stone walls overtaken by scarlet trumpet vine, wild fuchsia, purple buddleia.

‘I’ll have run out of adjectives by the main highway.’

‘Understood.’

‘And Timothy… now that we’re not committed to flinging ourselves around in the backseat of a car with Stirling at the wheel, I’m crazy about Katherine all over again.’

‘Also understood.’

She fell for the cow barn with the single blue shutter, as he thought she might.

‘How lazy of me not to be more curious about my own Irish connection. I have no idea how we knew that my double-great-grandmother played the fife-Mother tried to trace the line when I was at Smith, but she got nowhere. It’s such a lot of trouble, genealogy.’

‘Next time,’ he said, ‘we can look up your crowd.’

‘Just think, darling-you and I could be cousins.’

Following Anna’s directions, they left the main highway and meandered about for an hour, stopping to sketch a lamb drinking water from a green tub. It was a greater provision than he’d hoped when they found a grassy sward with shade, a dead-on view of Ben Bulben, and a parking spot on the verge.

He helped her to a stooping tree with a massive trunk-a horse chestnut-then went back for the hamper and its cargo of lunch. ‘Just in case,’ Anna had said. ‘It may give you more freedom to roam.’

A light breeze shifted through a patch of blue flowers; across the road, sheep dotted a hill. Perhaps this was divine compensation for the ankle and all the rest of it, this day abroad in a world of mild temperatures and easeful shade and no haste in their bones.

He spread the blanket and sat beside her, as he’d done those years ago in a pasture when the bull chased him and they’d eaten raspberry tart and he’d surrendered his defenses without meaning to.

They’d gone to the country on the red motor scooter he used for eight years after giving up his Buick for Lent; he remembered how she’d clung on behind him and the thrill he felt that such a thing could be happening to him, Timothy Kavanagh. With cornfields zooming past and her warm flesh pressed to his back, he remembered praying that he wouldn’t suffer a heart attack or stroke from such frightful happiness. It had been their last day together before he set off for Sligo.

‘Beann Gulban, the peak of Gulba. What do you think?’

She turned to him with the dreaming look in her eyes. ‘It’s too beautiful. Far, far too beautiful and mysterious. I’m sitting here trying to believe it’s real. What is it, exactly?’

‘A mountain with a level plateau. Limestone and shale, sculpted by glaciers. Stands seventeen hundred feet above the plain. Our guidebook calls it a great satisfaction to seekers of the picturesque.’

‘I don’t see how one can call it anything at all-it defies logic and language completely. Look.’ She flung her arm out to him. Goose bumps.

‘The megaliths would give you a few bumps into the bargain, and so would the Carrowkeel cairns.’

He filled their glasses with Anna’s tea. ‘From the cairns, you can see more than a third of Ireland on a clear day.’

‘I’d love to visit the holy wells.’

‘Holy wells, dolmens, crannogs, caves; Stone Age, Bronze Age, Iron Age, Ice Age-name an age, the landmarks are all here, but nearly all involve walking. Next time,’ he said, raising his glass to hers. ‘Eat your Wheaties.’

‘I like it when you talk about next times. Getting you on an airplane is right up there with getting blood from a turnip.’

‘I’m doing better,’ he said. ‘And speaking of turnips, let’s eat.’

They devoured their lunch with appetite, then used the hamper as a headrest. Lying together on the blanket, they watched clouds navigate the canopy of leaves and branches. This was what they needed-the proverbial life of Reilly.

‘How’s the ankle today?’

‘Good. I’m tempted to throw away the crutches.’

‘Don’t do it.’

‘I won’t. But I’m so sorry about all this, really I am.’

‘Don’t be sorry. Otherwise we’d be racing around like chickens with our heads cut off. Believe me, if you’ve seen one or two castles, you’ve seen them all. The way things have worked out-it’s better, really. More… idiosyncratic.’

She laughed, traced the bridge of his nose with her forefinger. ‘Tell me what Broughadoon was like the first time.’

He told her of the plainness of the place and how that had suited him in his bachelor days, and the morning he stood at his bedroom window and glimpsed Anna behind the lodge, hanging wash on what she had called her drying bushes-aprons, dish towels, shirts, a child’s jumper. She had hooked items of women’s underwear on twigs behind the bushes, and he’d turned from the window as if caught in some indecent act.