The schema is this, a jug band; the schema’s a clarinet quintet; the schema’s a guitar, a fado, an orchestra. Going with Paul Wiseman on his motorbike to the Boston Symphony; the little girl onstage playing an oboe in Gina’s kindergarten class; John’s saying, frankly, I think letting women into the Century would be as inappropriate as introducing a trombone into a string quartet.
When I learned about the shrew, the poor unevolved, benighted shrew, which will keep jumping high in the air at a place in its accustomed path where an obstacle, a rock perhaps, once was but no longer is, well, I wondered about all those places where, though the obstacles have long been removed, one persists either in the jump or in taking the long way round. It seemed such an unnecessary jolt or expenditure of time and energy. And yet if you have acquired a profound aversion for just such a place simply because of an obstacle that once was there, or an incapacity to discern that the obstacle no longer exists, or an indifference as to whether it exists or not, or if the habit of pointless jumping, or detour, or even turning back dejected has become for you the path itself, or if you have a superstitious need to treat the spot as though the obstacle remained, or even a belief that the discovery that the obstacle is gone is in itself a punishable offense, if any of these things is true for you, then you are lost. Or probably lost, unless the habitual path, the compulsion, the leap, the turning back, the long detour have for you another value. Individuality, for instance, love, obsession. Or for that matter, art.
Is this the way you lead your life? I said. You said no. I said, me neither. And that delayed it for a year.
The road now is sometimes clear, sometimes overlaid for quite a stretch with mist. On both sides still, of course, in that intense, modulated dark, the incredible, unseen beauty of the Irish countryside. I look at my watch, 4:35, and since I’ve taken my eyes off the road, and since we are speeding, I think, Will it be said that she died while/because she was looking at her watch? I look at the fuel gauge. I look at the gas stations, every one of which is closed. I pass the truck, on the right of course, and, hazard lights flashing yet again, I wave, full of hope that he will not leave me now, I wave again for him to stop. I say I’m running out of gas. He looks shifty, suspicious, sly. I point to my fuel gauge. I ask whether there will be any gas stations open on the way to Dublin. He says not before nine-thirty. I say, Are there no all-night stations then in Ireland. He says no. I ask how much further it is to Dublin. He says, About a hundred twenty miles. I have not yet learned that distances in Ireland are so notoriously understated that there is an actual distance that the English call an Irish mile. But I say, I’ll never make it. My flight from Dublin leaves at ten. And I ask, Can I just drive till I run out of fuel, and then ride the rest of the way with you. And he says, That would be all right. And he speaks softly, and has a stammer; but, as I say, I have grown by now to love him. We drive and drive, and there’s a sign reading Ballyhaunis 10. I wonder whether my car will make it that far. I wonder if, when I stop, he will just keep going. But we reach a town. He slows down, and so do I. This is evidently Ballyhaunis. Though there is a parking lot, of sorts, in the village square, with several cars parked, and several empty spaces, he suggests that I park my car elsewhere, beside the curb. I ask again, since I may have misheard him, whether I should lock the car. He says, Oh yes. So I lock the car. He waits. He opens his door. I hand my bags up to him. Since the cab is very high, and I’ll have to be unencumbered to climb on, I also hand him my purse. He shuts his door. I go around to the other side. He leans over and opens that door for me. I manage to climb aboard. I slam the door. I find I am still, for some reason, clutching the rental agency’s Irish map. And off we go.
I ask whether my car will be all right, parked at that curb. He says, Yes, no one will notice; these towns are small. There is a long silence. He says, Where have you come from, then? I tell my first lie. I say, Just beyond Castlebar. Another silence. I say, The car belongs to friends, they can come and pick it up when I phone and tell them where it is. A pause. He says, Yes, with another key. I think, He obviously knows I’m lying. Maybe not. I ask where he’s from. He says Achill Island. I ask how often he makes this run to Dublin. He says, Two nights a week. I ask what load the truck is carrying. He laughs, says, A little of everything. It occurs to me yet again that he may be as much or as little of an outlaw as I am, that possibility. After a long spell, he asks where I’m from. I say, Boston, Massachusetts. He laughs, says, You are a long way from home, then. I say, Yes, I am. I’m flying to London, to see my brother. He says, Why not: To see your brother. I say, Well, he’s just passing through London. A very long silence. He says, Do you work in London, then? I cannot remember whether I have already said anything on this subject, so I say no; and then, improbably, that I may be transferred there. I watch the road, wondering what I shall say is my profession, and how I’ll explain what I’m doing here. He doesn’t, it seems, understand too well what I say, either, so it occurs to me that, if I’m caught in an inconsistency or a lie, he may think he’s simply misunderstood it. I say, I’m on vacation, I was supposed to come early this summer, but I couldn’t, I’m here now instead, and since my brother is passing through London, I’m going to see him. Just for the day. A pause. Come to think of it, I say, I don’t need to phone my friends. I can pick up the car myself, on the way back. He brightens, begins to tell me, in enormous detail, what sequence of buses I’ll need to take to return from Dublin airport to Ballyhaunis. In order to pick up my car. Our longest silence yet. I was going to tell him I work for a computer company, or perhaps a tool manufacturer. Finally, it comes to me. I’m going to say that I work for a religious organization, the World Council of Churches, perhaps, or Joint Church Aid. I am very pleased with this notion. I may even say that my brother is a priest. We drive and drive in silence, and then I ask him whether he belongs to a union. He says he does. I wonder, though I don’t ask, what the union is called. I suppose it isn’t teamster. He suddenly begins to complain, at length, that new rules will soon be in force. No hauls more than eight consecutive hours. A compulsory break every four hours. The speed limit for trucks, all over Ireland, thirty-five miles an hour. He says, No lorry driver will keep to it. I ask how they, they are going to catch every lorry driver who breaks the speed limit. The logs, he says, with some indignation; they don’t even have to catch you on the road and pull you over. They can get you on the logs. I sympathize with him, particularly about the thirty-five-mile limit, and we are now at one in at least this opposition to the law. He says again that no lorry driver will keep to it. I ask him whether they will strike. I do not understand the particulars of his answer, but I gather that the drift is Yes. (In the matter of logs, I am reminded of the black bus driver, on the route from Red Hill to the Port Authority, and the Connecticut trooper who pulled him over. The little insurrection of the passengers, who thought the trooper was questioning the logs because the bus driver was black. On that other bus, the passenger who took out from his flight bag, and held under his coat, a hammer. His shaven head, his pallor, the hammer in his hand.) More than an hour passes, partly in silence, partly in not understanding each other’s conversation. Then he tells a long story about an aunt of his, who came over from the States, near Boston, to see Dublin, and his truck, and the back of it, and its taking a bump, and how she laughed, and what he thought she would say when she got back to the States. I ask how old his aunt is, but this turns out, for some reason, to be an entirely dissonant question. He says, About fifty, and I realize or think he may already have said so. Then I say, You must come to Boston someday, and this seems better, though I still can’t understand what he says in answer. I have said very little about the religious organization for which I work, and he has not asked much about it. We are strangely reserved in what we ask each other. It still seems far from inconceivable that his A little of everything back there is gelignite. I realize that I am free to make up a lie of any kind, and so is he.