The Last Storyteller

  “Will you come back to me?”

  She said, “We’ll talk about that when you’re better.” I nudged her. “All right so, Dan.” And she kissed him again, forehead, cheek, lips. From the look on his face I knew that he had never been kissed in his life.

  Then came the surprise. We walked down the stairs together. I glanced across at her. Elma Sloane had begun to weep.

  “Ben,” she said, “will you marry me? Or will you get somebody to do the deed? Anybody?”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “There’s mistakes and mistakes,” she said. “If I don’t go to that old man’s house with him, I might be making the biggest mistake I’ll ever make. And I want to go and I don’t want to go. Did I go too close to him? Oh, God!”

  I said, in my most sanctimonious voice, “There’s no such thing as too much kindness.”

  “Oh, will you listen to Saint Ben,” she said.

  38

  The people in this next part of the story—you’ll come to understand if I give them no names other than “Man One” and “Man Two.” One of those names will change. To “Little Boy.”

  “Randall Duff’s introduction,” I said when I telephoned the police station in Newbridge. I hinted at, outlined, a story of guns and shootings. For political reasons.

  Both walked me away, to a quiet room. Both spoke like boors. Both jostled me.

  Man Two said, “Saving your skin, is that it?”

  Man One: “Any friend of that old bugger has no friends here.”

  And yet, confident as cash, Randall had said to me, “They’ll greet you with open arms.”

  Man One ran the county CID, Criminal Investigative Department; Man Two had come down from Dublin at the beckoning of Man One—who said, “You know they can hang you for this.”

  “By the neck,” said Man Two. “Until. You. Are. Dead.”

  “Your bowels empty out,” said Man One. “On the end of the rope.”

  “And your prick stands straight up for all to see,” said Man Two.

  How often in my life have I not known the right thing to do? Answer: over and over and over. It’s a terrible feeling—and I had spent years roaming Ireland not knowing what to do, slopping out cowsheds, weeding beets and turnips, long lines of them in appalling weather on my knees, in drills that ran, it seemed, for hundreds of yards, an old jute sack folded at the corner to look like a cowl over my head as the wind whipped up the wet earth into my face inches below where I was kneeling.

  In other words, I’d had superb training in adverse matters, and it made me superior to those two brutes. They could induce no bleakness of spirit, no fright, no fear I hadn’t already known.

  “Spill it, pal,” said Man One.

  I said, “I came here to ‘spill it’—but I’m changing my mind.”

  Man One began to erupt, but Man Two, more experienced, held him back. They retreated a pace from their positions in front of me; they had stood me back against a gray and empty wall.

  “Oh? Changing our mind, are we?” said Man One, and balled his fist into a club. “We can stop that happening.”

  Man Two again put out a restraining hand. “What do you want?”

  “Not this,” I said.

  Man Two jerked his head at Man One, and they quit the room. I didn’t move. They came back within a minute.

  “Okay. Tell us what you want.”

  “Protection.”

  “You want our protection,” said Man Two.

  Man One: “People who ask us for protection always double-cross us.”

  I said, “Is this Chicago or something?” My stomach ached with tension.

  “Jerry, get us a few chairs,” said Man Two. When Man One had gone, he added in a more collegial tone, “The local fellows, they don’t know how to handle this kind of thing.”

  “But you were the same as him when I came in here,” I protested.

  “Ah, that was only tactics,” he said.

  “Can we drop that now?” I asked.

  He said, “Why would we?”

  I said, “I came here of my own free will, and I can take back anything I said.” And all the while I was thinking, If they search my car they’ll find my notebook, and it has incriminating details of my trip to the border.

  We got nowhere. Round and around we went, implying this, speculating upon that, suggesting the other; “what if?” and “suppose” carried the day. They hated me for it.

  39

  Shivering like a wet child, I left them, made it to the car, and drove away. James Clare had once said to me, “Ben, you have good instincts.” For a long time I hadn’t known what he meant, but here’s an example. Expecting to feel stressed after the Dan Barry visit with Elma, and knowing that I’d feel straitened if I went to the police, I’d arranged by telegram a second visit to Mr. O’Neill after those events. Nothing would calm me as much.

  My humility, banished by recent anger, came back when he opened the door. He has no age spots. Does he always dress as though for an important appointment? Less excitable—though still as thrilled—now, I could see him more clearly.

  He fed me again. This time I observed his hands, large and wide. I wonder does he use a pocketknife, like my father, to pare those nails. They’re so straight-cut. We lunched on potato soup and the national dish of bacon and cabbage with white parsley sauce. Cooked perfectly. With glasses of milk. I complimented him.

  “I’m not as good as I was,” he said. “We’re all getting older.”

  No. Don’t age. You don’t wear glasses, you’re as light on your feet as a dancing master, your voice sounds like a new bell. You’re not getting older. Stay this age for another eighty years.

  We drank tea after lunch. I asked, “When you were on the road, did you tell people stories about the places they lived in?”

  By way of an answer he said, “Are you a good driver?” We left the house, directed by him. “I think you’re going to enjoy this,” he said.

  As we drove through the countryside, he built a running commentary. “See that field? The week before the Battle of Clontarf in the year 1014, Brian Boru’s army defeated a force of Vikings in there. They call this the hill of Crogue, and the historians have neglected that battle. Which is wrong of them, because if Brian had lost that day, Ireland might well be Scandinavian today.”

  A few miles later, he pointed to a tall ruin out in the middle of the fields.

  “Now, there’s something very interesting. We always think that these fortified houses, they were built by the MacNamaras and such families, that they’re unique to Ireland. But I’ve seen very similar buildings in Spain—tall and powerful and capable of being defended easily. So were we imitating the Spanish or did they imitate us? Or was this something we both did at the same time because we’re in part descended from the Milesians who came from the north of Spain when God was in his twenties?”

  On and on he went. I wanted to drive him on every road in the country, and I told him so.

  “Well,” he laughed, “God knows I’ve walked every road in the country. And every one of them many, many times.” He fell silent.

  Soon I said, “Mr. O’Neill, the last time I saw you—something odd happened to me soon after.”

  He snapped his head to attention, and I told him the story.

  “I used to know Dan Barry,” he said. “He’s a sensitive man.”

  He waited for me to make my point.

  I said, “But the day before, you told me the story of Malachi MacCool and his longing.”

  “Why do you call it ‘odd’?” he said.

  Of course I had no answer. I said, “Has it happened before?” I could feel my hands beginning to shake.

  “Everything has happened before. You know that, Ben. And as you get older you’ll find your own life repeating itself.”

  I asked, “For better or worse?”

  Quick as a dart he said, “That will be up to you.”

  He reached into his pocket for his pipe. Caressing it, he brought
it to his nose; he had filled it before we left his house.

  “Look: stories are our oldest and best teachers. If you can get hold of that and use it, you’ll have a happy life.”

  He sniffed into his pipe. “Mmmm,” he hummed. “You can smell Kentucky,” he said and held it to my nose.

  I don’t know what Kentucky smells like. Coffee. Brandy. Rich odors. Thick, sweet Madeira. Venetia. Or does it smell of time itself? And adventure? And peace? And sunlit fields?

  I said, “That’s some aroma.”

  He caressed the pipe again. “I’ve always loved,” he said, “the strange experience of beauty. And I see that you know what I’m talking about. Now”—he changed tone—“to business. We’re on the trail of a tale from history. From nearby times. About a mile from here, near Pallasgreen, take a left turn. Do you know where we’re going?”

  They’d said in Dublin, You don’t ask him. He chooses which story to tell you. But my heart jumped because I guessed what he had in mind, and it couldn’t have been more different from the first tale he’d told me.

  Well, they’d said, Expect anything.

  40

  This is the most famous story in Ireland. At least it is to the people who live near here. I mean, you’d have to ride a donkey through Ballyneety to detect the place, because donkeys are very slow. But not everybody rode slow donkeys through here, and those who did had overwhelming cause to regret it. We’ll get out of the car up there, at that bend in the road.

  Horses pranced on the tie he wore. When he sat back in the passenger seat, pausing for a moment, he rested two fingers upright across his lips.

  Again, I bring you an edited version; and again, as with the tale of Malachi MacCool, you can see the full report in the Folklore Commission archives. Before we got out of the car he pointed to a farmhouse in the distance, two stories high, black roof, green front door.

  “There used to be decent people in that house,” he said. “Always good for a bed for the night. Then a daughter-in-law moved in, and that was that. A thin woman. In every way.”

  “Did you stay there often?”

  “I never abused a family with a welcome,” he said. “The trick out on the road was to try and make sure you came to a house so rarely that they’d be delighted to see you.”

  “The people in that house—before the thin woman got there, did they know the story of Ballyneety?”

  “Even if they did, they liked to hear it again,” he said, and he began.

  Until the cows come home and milk themselves, Ballyneety will be known as Sarsfield’s place, because this is the story of Patrick Sarsfield and his famous ride to triumph.

  Long, long ago, but not so long ago that the children of your grandchildren’s children can’t remember it, King Billy and King James were fighting like ferrets in a sack. Ireland was the rabbit the two of them were chasing, and they dragged that bag hither and yon, through field and stream, in mighty combat.

  We climbed out together and buttoned our coats against the cold wind.

  “There’s rain on that wind,” he said. “Stand here a minute and look to the northeast.”

  Farmhouses and hedges, bare now, their tough, webbed branches leaning east with the prevailing wind—that’s all I saw, and large scuds of lowering clouds.

  “We’ll stay looking.” He put his fingers to his lips again in recollection before resuming.

  Came the day, a day when people moaned with fear, the day that King James’s army was forced down the country, down and down, from high above Dublin. They came this way, from the direction we’re looking, and they were bound for the walled city of Limerick behind us, a town where to this day the dogs of the streets can walk on their hind legs.

  “Turn around now,” he said, “and if we’re lucky we can see the spire of St. John’s Cathedral.”

  He seemed disappointed that we saw no spire, and he led me to the shelter of a tree beside a gigantic rock, a glacial erratic thrown there at random by an ice age that poured across County Limerick twelve thousand years ago.

  When King Billy reached the city walls of Limerick, he surrounded them two hundred and seventy degrees, and he just sat there, a big round Dutchman, hands folded across his roly-poly belly, smoking his pipe. For weeks and weeks he didn’t move, as patient as a fat fisherman who’s looking to land a big, spiky pike.

  Now, the people inside the city, they couldn’t make out why King Billy wasn’t attacking. He had fifty thousand soldiers pacing up and down between Limerick and his camp in Caherconlish, seven miles away from the city, and about twelve miles from where we’re sitting now. That was twice as many soldiers as King James had. So why was Billy holding them to a siege?

  Well, they soon found out—because an Irish soldier in Billy’s army, a local man from Garryowen, deserted and got into Limerick. Billy, he said, was sitting tight because he was expecting what he called a siege train, with hundreds of guns and tons of gunpowder and cannonballs. And the deserter told them too that the siege train was expected in Cashel over there in County Tipperary, by Thursday—that was the tenth of August. Better weather than we have today.

  Mr. O’Neill stood out from our sheltering tree to point northeast. He tested the wind with a wet finger, then stepped back in and began the elaborate arrangements of lighting his pipe. When he had it fully going, and the blue smoke was whipped away on the icy breeze, he squared his shoulders, leaned against the tree, looked into the distance like a seer, and continued.

  When they heard this news inside Limerick, they told themselves that they were surely doomed. There was a little Frenchman with them; he had the rank of an officer, and he was the son of the Duke of Lauzun, in France. He looked at the walls of Limerick, on which they were all depending for protection, and he said that King Billy’s army didn’t need cannonballs; they could knock down the walls with roasted apples.

  Now, there were a few Irish officers in that army, and one of them was a gentleman as well. An officer isn’t always a gentleman, but this man was. His name was Patrick Sarsfield, and if you go around Limerick you’ll see his name everywhere. To this day they name pubs and streets and children and bridges after him.

  Sarsfield wasn’t content to sit there waiting for King Billy to come in and wreck the place. He, smart man that he was, reckoned that if they could destroy Billy’s guns before he got to use them, then Billy would have a sore jaw from a punch like that. But how could Sarsfield do that? He, too, sat trapped inside the besieged city, where nobody could get in or out.

  But Sarsfield knew a fellow, a wild man, name of Hogan, from the long, quiet village of Doon. He was known as “Galloping” Hogan, and he was a rapparee—a bandit, a highwayman. He and his gang, like the outlaws in the Wild West, held up stagecoaches and trains; they robbed the rich to help themselves.

  So Sarsfield sent for Hogan, who crept into the city, where Sarsfield, eloquent as an orator, mannerly as a diplomat, told Hogan what he wanted to do. Of course Hogan, who loved a bit of mischief, was delighted with this plan, and he knew every hill and hollow of these counties.

  In the notes of my first visit to John Jacob, I reflected that he “seems to have more than one octave in his speaking voice.” Now when he said, “He was a rapparee—a bandit, a highwayman,” his inflection rose almost to a musical sharp; and the phrase “eloquent as an orator, mannerly as a diplomat” came out brown and warm.

  Again he used his hands with the flourish of a conjuror. By his fireside that first night, the light had made shadowgraphs of his gestures on the whitewashed wall of his kitchen. And his fingers seemed like the ghosts of dancers, mumming and miming the tale he was telling. Here, I could see Galloping Hogan leaning down from his horse, listening to the earnest words of the tall, aristocratic, and bewigged Patrick Sarsfield.

  John Jacob O’Neill puffed a mighty puff on his pipe, buttoned his coat tighter, and said, “Come over here with me.”

  Striding like a young fellow, he left the tree, walked fast by the great rock, and stood o
ut in the open air. From a high piece of ground he pointed due north.

  “Up there,” he said, “that’s where you have to look, and out of all the events in our history—God Almighty, I’d love to have been there.”

  He paused again; seen from a distance, he could have been a monument.

  The year was 1690, and we had a nice and fine summer that year. So on the ninth of August, a Wednesday night, thirty secret men rode out through the north gate of Limerick. Their horses had bandages of thick cloth on their hooves so that they wouldn’t be heard by King Billy’s soldiers.

  They rode up the western bank of the Shannon. Along the way they met other Irish soldiers who had been primed by Galloping Hogan’s men. By the time they got to Killaloe, they were five hundred strong and fierce. According to their last report, the siege train had reached the town of Cashel in County Tipperary, thirty-six miles east of Limerick.

  He pointed north, then described an arc eastward with the stem of his pipe.

  The Shannon in summertime is low to this day at Ballyvally; that’s up above Killaloe. There used to be a ford there, and in that dry weather Sarsfield and his men crossed to the Tipperary bank. They hid in the Silvermine Mountains, until Galloping Hogan’s scouts came back with news of the siege train. They reckoned that the wagons and the big field guns were making about six to eight miles a day, and Hogan had reports of people watching it trundle across the country, and the soldiers with it sweating like pigs.

  By now Galloping Hogan was able to guess the direction the siege train would take, and they only had to decide where to intercept it. So, Wednesday night they crossed the Shannon, and between hiding and riding they got to the slopes of Keeper Hill on Friday. Now they were in Galloping Hogan’s home country, where he knew both sides of every leaf on every tree, and plenty of places to hide and get food.

  Saturday night they rode again, and we’re gazing directly now at where they were coming down from—up there north of us, and heading for this spot we’re standing on. Those reckless horsemen—they were a rag, tag, and bobtail gang of outlaws and rapparees and highwaymen, galloping hell for leather, and all of them ready and willing and able and eager to give the fat king of England a poke in the eye.