Wild Country (1st draft of Part One)

(This is the first draft of Part One of my latest short story...I'll post more as I finish them so stay tuned)


Donegal, Ireland.

That old singing man in Dublin called it Wild Country. What does that mean anyway? Wild country? When I say it…wild country…it reminds me of something I’d hear in an old western movie, a warning whispered through a gritty voice by a cowboy dressed with a jagged scar down his cheek. I don’t like westerns though, not anymore I don’t.

When the old singing man sang it, those words didn’t sound like a warning. They sounded like an invitation...like some sort of drunken ghostly sort of invitation. The memory of that old singing man has stuck with me ever since. Perhaps it was because he reminded me of my Grandfather. My Grandfather loved to sing. And he was Irish. I guess they had that much in common. He passed away a few months before that first trip to Ireland. In fact, his death was what triggered this obsession.
I knew nothing about his life. I was a writer back then and I was interested in secrets. He was a secret man and secrets always make good stories.

All I know is that he came to America in 1941 when he was just twenty-five years old. He never told me why he left. He never told my father either. He never spoke of it. The only way you could tell he was Irish was his accent and the songs he’d reel off at any given time. When I was younger, I was more curious. I was persistent. My Grandfather was stubborn. His stubbornness won out and I lost interest. I remember he had a limp, always had a limp. When I asked him about it, he would always look me in the eyes and tell me that he had polio. As I got older I realized that most people look away from you when they lie…the Irish look you in the eye.

That first trip to Ireland was life changing. I knew relatively nothing about
Ireland other than the various clichés: leprechauns, clovers, beer. I came looking for a good story to write, for inspiration, for answers. My publisher was pressing me for something new, something good. My Grandfather's secret childhood had always lingered in the back of my mind as a possibly good story. I was desperate.

My plane arrived shortly after 6:30 in Dublin that morning. I checked into my hotel just a few streets away from Trinity College near St. Stephens Green. I deliberately picked a hotel near that park because of its history as a place for writers like Yeats, Joyce, and Wilde. I admired Yeats the most of those men. He knew rejection intimately.

I crashed onto my bed expecting to sleep from the jet-lag and the long day of traveling but after a few minutes of lying opened-eyed on the bed, I realized I was too restless to sleep. I decided to go exploring. The streets were relatively empty except for the few people going to work. I walked through St. Stephens Green to the east-side of Dublin near the docks. It was daring, dangerous. I wanted to be near the real people, not the tourists. The docks seemed like a perfect place to explore. It was the rough part of town. The buildings were grey and depressing, covered in graffiti. The graffiti was different though. It wasn’t like the graffiti back home. One tag read “get knowledge, then vote no,” another read “up the IRA”. Homeless men and women were huddled in corners and alleys. Windows were broken and I could see into various tenements where the poor of Dublin would find refuge in abandoned apartments and office buildings.

Despite the depressing tenements, the air had a sweet taste to it, a sweetness I had never tasted before. In fact, I don’t ever remember ‘tasting’ air before Ireland. I liked it. It made me feel alive, like I’d been somehow dead my entire life. As I got closer to the docks, I noticed that buildings looked older and more dilapidated. I came upon an old pub that seemed to be open. I thought it was bizarre that a pub would be open so early in the morning. It was known as an Early-license pub. They are allowed to stay open until 7 or 8 a.m. to allow those who worked the night shifts at the dock to grab a pint before going home. That made me chuckle. They really do love the drink, don’t they? I casually walked in and ordered a pint of Guinness from the barman. Before this trip I was generally a Corona and Lime type of guy. Things change.

I grabbed the pilsner glass full of black Guinness with a tan frothy head. I took my first gulp of Guinness and caught a bit of the frothy tan on the tip of my nose. My eyes opened with wonder. The taste was thick and full. I remember feeling a bit guilty for drinking so early in the morning but I justified grabbing a pint because of the time difference. It was only midnight in Boulder, Colorado where I live back in the states.

After I took my first gulp of Guinness, I examined the pub with a writer’s eye. The pub was dark like the popular drink with low lights hanging above various tables. The walls and tables were made of dark oak that had been stained even darker from years and years of cigar smoke seeping into the pores of the wood. The air didn’t smell like smoke however and I found that to be odd. Pubs are notorious for being full of cigarette smoke and the Irish are notorious for loving tobacco. I pulled out a cigarette and started to light up but the barman stopped me.

“Ya’ll have to do that outside mate.”

“Why?” I replied.

“You’re a yank then are you? What are ye doing ova ‘ere in da earlies?”

“Just flew in...wanted a pint.”

“Aye, dat you can ‘ave in ‘ere. Da woodbine ‘as to go,” he pointed towards the door. "Tis law dey passed last year…bloody rubbish if ya ask me. Sodding eejits over dere in da big white building, trying to act like dey care.”

I nodded my head in agreement and put the cigarette back in my shirt pocket. Inside were only a handful of people. I can only assume they were dock hands. They didn't seem like the socializing type. Nobody was talking. They all just stared into the darkness of their pints, each with a story they weren’t likely to tell, hidden beneath their worn out eyes. I sat down at the end of the bar and pretended to care about the sports analyst commenting about a Hurling match that was played the night before. I didn’t have any idea what hurling was. It looked like a funny sport to me like a mix of hockey, soccer, and baseball. But then again, they probably think football is a pretty funny sport.

After about twenty minutes, onto my fourth pint of Guinness, an old man seemed to appear from the shadows. He was wearing a dark, thick, wool sweater with a matching wool skally cap. His slacks were an old and worn grey that didn’t seem to match his perfectly polished black leather shoes. His shoes were striking. The soles seem to be a glowing gold with a golden buckle over the top. I had never envied shoes until that moment. His cap was pulled so far forward you could only see his mouth and his long pointy nose peaking from beneath the bill of the hat. He started singing without notice or invitation. I thought it was bizarre. I would later learn that singing without invitation was something the Irish often do. But on that first trip I was taken back, uncomfortable. Thought I was seeing the ghost of my Grandfather at first.

Perhaps it was because he seemed to be singing at me, staring curiously through the darkness beneath his skally cap. He was bent slightly forward like many old people do whose spines are bent with time. He shuffled over to me slowly as he sang. He wasn’t a ghost nor was he my Grandfather. I was reminded about something my Grandfather used to say. When my Grandfather’s spine began to bend with age, he would joke “the wiser you get, the heavier your brain becomes.” I never doubted my Grandfather. Perhaps this old singing man was a relative, a brother maybe.

We never talked or even exchanged greetings. He just sang and shuffled over to the bar for another shout of whiskey. His eyes barely came level with the bar stool. He was awkwardly short. He motioned for the barman’s attention like a soldier in a foxhole, raising his shaking hand as high as he could. He ordered his drink without breaking his song, turning to me so I could see his eyes. His eyes were more than just young, they were mischievous. He winked at me as the barman handed him his shout of warm whiskey and he shuffled back to his corner.

He sang, “Lets go up to Ol’ Donegal, where its wild country…beware for the little folk because they aren’t what they seem.” He sat down in his corner and seemed to disappear into the shadows while his voice continued to carry to my ears. He sang of Donegal, mixing English with what seemed to be gibberish to me then. I didn’t know the Irish had their own language. I turned to look at the other men in the pub to see if they cared about this old singing man. They didn’t seem to care about anything further than their next gulp of Guinness, staring blankly still.

He ended his song by standing up from his corner, his head peaking into the light from the lamp above his table, staring right at me. He sang, “Go up to Donegal, Young Setanta sitting here, there you’ll find God’s country, where your destiny will appear.” He sunk back into the darkness of his corner, quiet. I was shocked. I felt a sudden sense of fear because he knew my given name, Setanta. Perhaps it was just a lucky guess. Setanta was an Irish name, perhaps the only Irish thing my Grandfather gave me. He requested my parents call me Setanta.

It was his name.

I stared into my pint and then looked at the bartender confused. Perhaps I drank more than I thought. How could he have known who I was? Nobody has known my given name since I was twelve. Kids can be mean. I’ve been called Brian ever since.
I got up and walked over to the corner booth where the old singing man was sitting. As I bent over the table to talk to him, he was gone. The old singing man who had been shuffling slowly to the bar moments earlier had somehow left the pub without me noticing. I can’t possibly be THAT drunk? I whispered into my fifth pint. Perhaps the beer here is just stronger. I paid the bartender and went back to my hotel to rest until the afternoon.

That first trip was a failure except for the bizarre old singing man. I came to Ireland to learn about my Grandfather but I soon felt like I was chasing a Ghost and I eventually returned to America empty handed. My publisher was not happy. They sent me back five more times before giving up on me. I came back five more times, ten times in four years. Each time I would rent a motorcycle and ride around various counties to see if I could find anything about my Grandfather. I found nothing about him or our ancestors. I couldn’t even find the origin of our last name. In a country where people were very proud of their surname and where records and origins of surnames were highly regarded, ours seemed to be missing from the records. Our last name, O’Sid, had somehow been lost. I began to wonder if my Grandfather was ever really Irish. My Grandmother dismissed that notion saying that he was more Irish than Ireland herself. I thought maybe she was saying that to humor me.

My Grandma grew up in the quaint little town of Castleknock just outside of Dublin, bordering Phoenix Park. She would often talk about her childhood and about Ireland but she rarely spoke of my Grandfathers life in Ireland. It was as if that world was off limits to everyone but themselves. It was their secret, their world.
On one occasion when we both had too much to drink, she told me how they met. This single morsel of information felt like five Christmases rolled together into one.

She revealed the story for me as she sat in her favorite chair, sipping hot whiskey, never looking at me. I never understood why she liked her whiskey hot. She said thats how it's supposed to be taken and being that the Irish invented whiskey, that was the way it's meant to be taken. I love my Grandmother.

She told me that she met him on a cold November morning in 1932. She was walking her dog during that time in the morning between darkness and light when the air was full of a comfortable mist. She loved to walk Phoenix Park at this time because she felt that it had a certain magical aura about it. The deer would be more willing to be out grazing on the vast grassy fields. As she approached the Wellington Monument, my Grandfather seemed to appear out of the mist to flirt with her, as if materializing out of the moist air just beyond that old reminder of British colonialism. My Grandmother would always scowl when she spoke of that old obelisk. It reminded her of an oppressed people by a colonial society. This is why I don't like westerns anymore.

She was as tight mouthed as my Grandfather was. In frustration, I asked her once if there was a secret about Ireland that they didn’t want anyone to know, a secret about my Grandfather that would ruin the way I viewed him. She would always laugh and say with a wink, “tis no secret my dear.”

The Irish are a slippery bunch of people.