Father Curran’s mother’s wake is in a funeral home in Headford.

I’ve never been to a funeral home, even though I hold a poor-man’s-Master’s Degree in funerals: Family – heaps of them in just a few years: Primary school – one friend and one classmate: Secondary school – one suicide: The Rugby club – a tragic drowning: Working in the church – about a million.

All funerals are sad, but the saddest of them all was one for a St Mary’s mental patient who didn't have another soul on this planet to mourn his passing from what had to been amongst the most barren of lives.  Rattled by the sight of a funeral mass without a single mourner in the seats, Pat and I route ourselves from the cold safety of the sacristy to sit in the front seat as stand-ins for the long absent family.  As a player in this poignant scene; one plain wooden coffin, one priest intoning into a cavernously empty church, two stand-in mourners; I respond to the priest’s invocations with loud-lung-issued prayer, that tries to keen away the naked loneliness. 

The Headford funeral home struck me as false, plastic, and coldly hygienic; but having a water jug and a toilet, it fit my hangover-driven physiological needs. 

It did not however fit Pat’s robust socializing style.  The mourners, all natives of a town thirty miles from Castlebar, may as well have been from another galaxy.  These aliens stood in tight circles, presenting solid walls of gabardine that Pat could not penetrate.

We find Father Curran, express our condolences; Pat enunciates a resounding “Our Father” over the corpse, and, with eyes raised to the tiled ceiling, loudly informs to Saint Peter to get ready for her soul’s very soon arrival.

Our business complete, or so I naively thought, the plum Fiesta screams out of Headford on the Shrule Road at twenty-five miles an hour … in second gear.

Having finally attained, and then, all too quickly, lost fourth gear just before the dangerous curves south of Shrule, we LeMons through that sleepy village in a manner that leaves my hangover-anxiety praying the Shruleans have that very evening all been struck deaf, dumb and blind.

We take Kilmaine in a blink … well, a longish, anxious closing of the eyes and holding of the breath, but we’re through without the sound of plum coloured sheet-metal striking a human form.  Après-Kilmaine, with the roads sufficiently twisty-dark-dangerous but empty, we speed along, anxiously.

The hangover, relentless in its Catholic punishing of yesterday’s dual Deadly sins of Wrath and Drunkenness, will not lift: Every few miles my saliva turns to water and my stomach retches up more bile.  It musta ben that pint yesterday below in Jim Pete’s in Glenamaddy.  It tasted a bit off all right, but my taste was off cause the inside of my lip had gotten torn up when, with a strong wind at our backs we kicked our third penalty and the Creggs ref blew up the first half ten minutes early, starting an all-in fight.

Rugby is, as I’ve determined, good for the soul but hard on the machinery.

Ballinrobe saps our progress.  We pick our way slowly through its medieval streets, stuck behind a shite-splattered, yellow Volkswagen pulling a trailer with three calves staring ominously back into our headlights through their wild-glassy eyes.

The farmer takes pity on us and pulls over enough that we can scream past him.  And scream on we do, until the Fiesta rolls to a halt with the sight of the big front window of Art O’Neil’s Pub filling our windshield. 

Hangover relieving sleep is just the one hard left from here onto the Castlebar Road.  Then the only places to get, prayerfully, navigated past would be Katie’s in Partry and maybe the Punchbowl in Ballyheane, before I could get home to my bed.

Pat indicates left.

I sigh with relief. 

But, selling the dummy, he doesn’t turn left. 

Instead he drives straight on, the blinker still clicking, as we head down a road I’ve never travelled in my twenty years of being driven down roads.

“We’ll go an’ say hallo, don’t ya see, ta Gerty,” he squints into the darkness of the road ahead.  “I haven’t had a word with her for this longest time.”

“Gerty?” I sit up in my seat.

Never heard of Gerty.

“Aahhh, Gerty’d be, I suppose she’d be near a fourth or fifth cousin a mine, something like that,” he nods, a lot, his glasses glinting the last of Ballinrobe’s streetlights.

The darkness down this road-less-traveled is thick, immense and of a quality that only a place sufficiently distrustful of morally dodgy modernization such as electricity will tolerate. 

I peer out the Fiesta window into the darkness, awed by its depth, its completeness.

They say writing a novel is like driving in the dark:  You don’t need to know where you’re going, just follow the headlights and they’ll take somewhere interesting.  We followed this novel-writing-trick for miles of darkness until we stop at a solitary black and white signpost sticking vertically out of our planet.

Pat reaches back behind my seat and produces an enormous flashlight.

“’Twas a Garda Superintendent above in Dublin, a neighbor of a cousin a mine, gave me this,” he says, clicking the switch, filling the Fiesta with light and crazy shadows.  “‘Pat,’ says he, ‘don’t be goin’ round the darkness a the countryside without a good torch.  ‘Tisn’t safe.’”

Huffing and puffing, he rolls down his window and points the searchlight up at the black and white sign.

“Bally…puckin’…glass!” he snorts, shaking his head.  “Sure Gerty on’y went to Ballyglass for small things.  ‘Twas Castlebar she done her shoppin’ in.  Maybe ‘tis close to here.”

He grinds the car back into gear, and we lurch back into darkness.  But not for long, a lone streetlight and a Smithwicks sign, a Guinness sign, and a Harp sign lure us over to the side of the road.

The Squealing Pig Pub.

“Sure, … we kennit pass here without goin’ in an’ saying hallo to Babs,” Pat says, killing the engine.  “If we kept goin’, they’d be talkin’ about us like we were gone odd.”

He turns the headlights off and on, off and on again, and finally off for good.

We stand out, and I follow as Pat’s thick silhouette in his greatcoat and porkpie hat ambles toward the Squealing Pig’s dim lighting, the loose chips of the road crunching under our shoes. 

Pat yanks the door open and leans half his torso in, the other half hanging on the doorframe.  I see the brim of the porkpie hat turn and look around the room.

“We’ll go in so,” he says to no one, or to me.

Inside the barroom is completely empty, not even a barman.  Noisily, we drag stools back from the counter lined with two each, Guinness, Smithwicks and Harp taps, and one Hoffmans tap. 

“Sit up there now,” Pat says, waving his hand at the stools.  “Is there anyone home at-all-at-all-at-all.  I suppose he’s havin’ he’s tea.”

I tap the bar with my hand.   

Pat coughs.

Somewhere a door opens. 

The sound of the News for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing floats out: “… the Minister for Just…tice reee…jects the pris…oner’s demaaands …:” the door closes again.

“Aragh howaye lads,” a jowly-beer-bellied barman appears.  He’s just a few years older than meself, in a bulging striped dress shirt open a few buttons down; a friendly grin on his face.

“What kin I get ye?” he asks, tapping his fingers off the blue and yellow Harp tap.

He grabs a damp cloth from somewhere and starts wiping the counter vigorously.

“I’ll have a Powers an’ whatever this fella wants,” Pat stares at the barman, waving his hand carelessly in my direction.

“I’ll have …,” me stomach is still that bad that a hair-a-the-dog isn’t even an option.  “A Lucozade.”

“Right so,” the barman makes a done-deal face, slides a glass off the shelf below the counter and turns to the whiskey optics.

“Good man,” Pat makes his own done-deal face.  “Ya done what I told ya, an’ stayed away from that bleddy stuff.”

He nods at the beer pumps.

I lie-nod back.

“There ye go now lads,” the barman slides Pat’s whiskey and my Lucozade across the counter to us.

“Will have you some ice in that?” he asks no one and everyone.

“I will not!” Pat retorts, grabbing his glass off the counter and curling it in toward his chest.  “Ice in whiskey?  Where do you think we are?  Below in the bleddy Canaries.”

The barman sighs silently and looks at me. 

I shake my head.

He starts to turn and go, but stops when Pat asks:

“Is Babs within?”

Pat looks down into his drink, avoiding the barman eyes.

“Eh, Babs, is it?” the barman asks; now looking at me for help.

Pat’s eyes stay down in his drink, but he continues:

“Tell her Pat’s here.  Pat Jer…dan.”

“Awright so,” the barman huffs off, flicking his big head backwards.

The door opens; Coronation Street’s theme music leaks out; the door closes again; silence.

Pat swirls his whiskey around in the glass.

“A biteen a water is what I need now.  Sure, that ladeen shoulda offered me water and never mind tryin’ ta sell me ice.”

I slide off my stool and grab the water jug from down the counter.   

“Sure, there’s no service left in this country at-all-at-all-at-all; not like what you’d get abroad in Leeds.  T’Englishman knows how to serve you – oh yeah, the best of everything is laid on for you over yonder.”

He takes the jug from me.

His shaking hand rattles the jug against his glass.

He waters his whiskey, takes a sip.

“Whooaaw!” he shakes his head, rolls his eyes.  “They’re still making poteen in this country.  I’ll tell you that, I’ll tell you that.”

“Will I get him, an’ tell him there’s something wrong it?” I slide of the stool again.

“No, no, no, ‘twon’t do a fella no harm.  A little of it twon’t.”

I scratch my head, wondering if I should dispute that.

He takes another a long sip.

“I’ll go an’ see if Babs is home.  That fella’s useless.  Babs’ll tell us how to get down to Gerty.”

He shuffles off, placing the porkpie hat delicately back on his bald head.

The door opens to the sound of Vera Duckworth giving Jack the business.

“Hallo, hallo,” Pat near-yells.

The door closes.

Silence.

I slide off the stool and pace with anxiety around the pub; stopping to examine the framed photos of Ballyglass FC’s 1982 and 1983 teams for familiar faces.  I recognize no one.

Times moves slowly as I pace.

Eventually a snippet of Stan Odgen whining signals Pat’s return.

“Ah, grand people, … grand people,” he says, shaking his head, stopping only to remove his hat, fire down the last of his drink, and replace the hat. 

“We’ll go now, Babs gave me t’directions ta Gerty.”

“Should we bring her something?” I ask, surprising myself.

“Ah no, no, no, we’ll only spend a minute.  I’ll bring her flowers the next time.  When it’s daylight.”

Back in the Fiesta, the engine bawls in agony as we lurch through a U-turn, gravel flying, our own exhaust fumes brushing up over the windshield.

“Now, ‘tis on’y down here a half a mile,” Pat says, surprising me as we head back down the same road we came in on. 

Within seconds we’re back in the complete darkness.

“‘Tis within on the right Babs said.  An’ a course the gate’ll be there,” his glasses rise up along his nose as he squints.  “I’ll put on the big lights, I shoulda done that on the way out, an’ we’d a seen the gate.”

He flips on the high-beams and the hedges on either side of the road light up like a brambly tunnel burrowing into the darkness.

I see the cut-stone wall first. 

As I open my mouth to speak, the Fiesta skids to a stop, gravel flying.

“Here she is, here she is,” Pat says with that broad smile of his that overrules all the desperate things he says about the world we inhabit. 

“Now, I’ll go within an’ say hello to Gerty.  Will you come in?”

He opens the driver’s door.  I stare out the windshield at the cemetery wall, the black wrought iron gate frozen in a half open position. 

As much as my innate curiosity wants to hear what a human being with a lot of life under his belt will say to a long-lost-loved one, my Da-installed decency forces me to say:

“No, no, you go on ahead.  I’ll stay put … an’ watch the car.”

Just who I’d be watching the car against in this dark-desolate spot at eight o’clock of a February Monday night goes uninterrogated.

“I won’t be long,” Pat heaves himself out of the driver’s seat.  “Where’s that bleddy torch of mine?”

He struggles to flip the driver’s seat forward, so I reach around behind my seat and grab his huge flashlight.

He clicks the switch, and a stout beam of light flashes across his face and glasses, creating ghoulish shadow-wells at his eye sockets.

“All right so.  I’ll go an’ say me hallos ta Gerty, the poor ould divil, sure the heart gave out her, an’ her on’y young, seventy-seven, a lot a livin’ left in her, … a lot a liv….”

He’s gone, limping over to the cemetery gate.

I open my door and stand out.

“Are ya comin’?” Pat stops, shining the thick beam of light back at me.

I shield my eyes with my right hand.

“No, no, just getting’ a bit a air.”

“Right so, I won’t be long, … a lot a livin’ left in her, a lot a ….”

I watch him work his heft through the half-closed gateway, the light-beam dancing wildly.

When he’s through, the beam settles like a search light scanning the gravestones.

Jaysys, my anxiety overwhelms me, if he trips in there, we’ll never get home!

I scurry over to the cut-stone wall.

“Are you awright there Pat, do ya know where you’re goin’?” I yell over the wall.

The beam of light doesn’t stop moving.

“Ora, I’m fine, fine, sure I do often come out ta Gerty, but I haven’t ben now for a while.  The strange road an’ t’darkness got me tonight.  She’s just down here on the left.”

I take a few steps back from the wall, allowing myself enough view to keep the beam of light visible.

Above me in the clear sky, a trillion stars sparkle in the pure blackness filling me with a hope that fights my body’s alcohol induced depression.

Here I am, a tiny being in an infinitely large universe, staring through the cold air at light from millions of miles away: What does all this mean?

“Aragh, how are now Gert…,” Pat’s words trail off as I crunch further away across the gravel to let he and Gerty have their privacy.

I lean back against the Fiesta, now blacker than tar in the complete darkness and stare up into space, my earth-shackled mind brawling with infinity.