Well to start with, you know, I was irretrievably lost. I had been walking all day, farther and farther out there, following a single-track road with stone walls on either side, and dead trees here and there, and great big pokey clumps of grass and sticks rolling around in all directions. In my drafty raincoat I was freezing, but I was more preoccupied with how I was thirsting. You know what I’m talking about. It was bad, friend. Big angry clouds raced each other from the sea, straight over my hatless head and inland, back to the relative safety and warmth of the last place I’d been, and the danger and cold of it too. Now, here, the wind was whipping off the ocean. There was no place to hide. Not a pub, nor a town, nor a house in sight.
Up another hill, then down another hill. I’m telling you, I was screwed! The sun was dimming somewhere in the sea clouds ahead. There has to be a town out here, I kept telling myself. There has to be a pub. This road has to lead somewhere.
A strange sort of Gull-bird appeared to my left. It was huge, magnificent, unlike any seagull or osprey or cormorant or anything else I’d ever seen. The Gull-bird fluttered, stretched its yellow legs out, and landed on a dead tree branch over the road. It looked left, then looked right—quick and jerky—and then stared straight down at me. There was something familiar about this bird, I remember thinking. Like I’d had a dream, and this bird had told me something important. And now this weird-ass Gull-bird was clearly about to tell me something. I was so sure of it that I stopped and waited. I really wanted to hear what the Gull-bird had to say. What now? What next? But then the great bird jostled its smooth gray wings and flaunted away.
At the same moment there was a noise behind me; the growl of an engine. A beat-up black sedan appeared on the horizon. The car raced past my outstretched thumb, then skidded to a halt—almost sideswiping the stone wall across the way— backed up to me, and swung the door open.
“You’re welcome, you’re welcome! Only, get in the car. The sun’s going down and you’ll be dead in an hour. A Yanker you are, aren’t you, and quite a specimen of Yank-hood. Only, get in the car, will you? Get in the car! For god sakes, this time of year, you’ll be dead in an hour.”
So, I got in the car. The driver’s name was Patrick Boyle, but his friends called him The Boiler. “And to whom may I have the pleasure?” he said in a haughty, comical voice.
“Henry,” I said. I made up names all the time, you know. “But my friends call me Hank.”
“Well, we can’t work with that name, not while you’re riding in The Boilermobile!” The Boiler said, rather serious.
“We can’t?”
“No we can’t! From this time on, I hereby call you by your proper name—Hank the Yank! And I’m going to make you walk the wooden plank! At the dance that is, the county dance. Introducing Hank the Yank! Hank the Plank! Hank the Wooden Plank Yank!” The Boiler burst into high-pitched giggles. Banging his plump palms on the steering wheel. He couldn’t take it. He couldn’t breathe. He started choking.
Now the track opened up to a long stretch of gravelly asphalt, maybe a lane-and-a-half, with a bay or a long lake stretching out beyond a thin strip of guardrail. Little snowflakes fizzled into the grey splash. The car swerved back and forth from the left lane to the right. I considered where I could jump, if I needed to jump, but I couldn’t see a soft spot. This is an important thing to consider, you know. Jumping out of a moving car is no easy feat. I had to do it once before, in Indiana, but I got lucky, and landed on a pile of garbage bags filled with expired chicken breasts, right there on the guardrail on old I-70. I got up and ran, and that was that. But this was different. This Boiler guy was swerving like crazy. Thankfully there were no oncoming cars in sight. The Boiler righted the ship, and I stared out the streaky windshield of The Boilmobile.
“The Dance,” The Boiler repeated. “The big, big dance.”
“Yeah, The Dance,” I said. “What Dance is this?”
The Boiler cleared his throat; a gargle. “Why it’s the dance of all dances, the great festive, the miracle of miracles.”
“Oh!” I pictured a long bar with bottles and a bartender, like the Shining. “Where will the dance be held?”
“In the basement of my church,” The Boiler said. He shrugged; a roll of his round body. He lit a cigarette and handed me one, holding the flame of his lighter an inch from my nose. “But oh, there will be plenty of good Craic. The whole county will be there. All the boys, my boys will be there! They come down from the hills! And the girls! The dancers, the very best dancers! You’re in for a treat, Hank, Hank the Wooden Plank Yank. A treat it will be. You’ll thank your lucky stars you were picked up stopping, out there in the devil’s Frigidaire, by your new pal The Boiler. You’ll never go back to your discos and your base-ball games again. We’ll make you walk the plank, we will, you wooden plank yank-Hank! With those looks of yours, we’ll be dancing in no time. We’ll be dancing with the very best, we will. You’ll forget about all those disco-girls you left behind in that big sad country where they still-haven’t-found-what-they’re-looking-for….”
The Boiler jerked the steering wheel just before a blunt truck that came out of nowhere. We were pitched against the rail, my face pressed on the cold, dirty glass. A flutter of wings circled out there in the dim; the startled gull-birds again, glaring at me. Then the Boilermobile rocked back into place.
“No, sir!” The Boiler snorted, beaming over the steering wheel, red-face bundled tight in a leather hunting-cap. He battered his palms together, in step to imaginary music. “The big, big dance. Everybody’s coming, I know it. I wouldn’t miss the dance for the world!”
For another ten miles, we rode without passing another car or truck. Rocky, craggy ledges pressed down on up from the heights; on the other side of the road, rolling waves pounded on the crumble.
The Boiler repeatedly tried to tell me a story about one of the boys, but he kept interrupting himself.
“…and so I told Sean Finney, I said to him, I said hey, you lout, you lousy presbyterian son of the devil, mind your own affairs, and…where was I? Wait, Yank. Wait for it, Hank the Wooden-Plank Yank. I didn’t tell you about Sean Finney now, where was I. Yes. John Finney. Sean Finney’s Brother. Now, John had a huge head of hair, you know, like a big sheepdog. But he had no charm! None whatsoever! He sold used records up Tralee but he came down here at the end of the weekends to sell new ones here. Can you imagine that? He had an aunt, you know. Where was I again?”
A town appeared, tucked into the cliffs. The Boiler swerved suddenly off the road, splashing into a puddle-filled parking lot alongside an old stone church. The steeple looked like it was bent in the wind and the windows were all shuttered. There were another half-dozen compact cars parked there, old and weather-beaten and splattered in mud.
“Here we are, Hank the Yank! Are you ready? Are you ready to walk the plank?”
“Well, you know,” I said, unfolding myself from my side of the car. Self-doubt was soaking into my insides. I was eyeing a boarded-up pub at the corner, wondering desperately if it may be open. The lights were off. Above the pub’s sagging roof, whitened with a splatter of bird poop, a cackle of Gull-birds circled. “I mean, I really appreciate it. But you know, I kind of have to sort of keep moving.”
Half-out of the car, The Boiler crumpled, rolling up on himself. He stood there smoothing his tie against his shirt, the hunting cap still wrapped around his head. He looked down at his polished shoes, then up at me. He spoke in a whisper.
“But you have to come, Hank. The boys will be so glad to meet you. The most beautiful girls in the world. You have to come in at least. Come in and have a drink. We’ve all brought something to drink. Come in and if its not what I told you—if its not the most beautiful dance in the world—you’re sure to be free to go.”
I looked up at one Gull-bird, perched on the pub roof, staring at me intently. Was it the same Gull-bird?
“Okay, then,” I said. “I mean, I’ll come in for a drink.”
“You won’t be disappointed. I tell you that—you won’t be disappointed.”
I followed The Boiler to the front of the church. Three teenagers slunked, sharing a cigarette.
“Step aside now! Yank coming through!” The Boiler yelled at them. He was small and squat and they bent just barely out of his way. I followed The Boiler down a staircase and through a door. Four sullen old men leaned against one wall in crumpled suits, hunched, smoking. An elderly nun sat by a record player, playing a record of fiddle music and tapping her foot. On the table next to her there was a pitcher of red juice and sugar cookies spread out on a paper plate. The rest of the room was empty.
“The girls will be here soon enough, you’ll see,” The Boiler whispered again. “Always late, they are. But I know they’re coming. I just know it.”
The men stared at me first, then looked at The Boiler. Their faces lit up in unison.
“The Boiler’s here! The Boiler!”
“Look fellahs, look what I found!” The Boiler yelled, beaming. “On the side of the road! Ladies and gents, boys and girls. Introducing Hank, the Wooden Plank Yank!” The Boiler announced. “On the side of the road, like he was walking the plank! A wandering Yank!”
The Boiler introduced the four, then turned to the nun, gesturing as if he was already dancing.
“Sister Mary Paul, will you have the first dance with me?”
“I will not,” she said. She turned her head the other way, toward the record player.
When she did so, and while The Boiler danced with himself in the middle of the room, the four men pulled little bottles from their pockets. They poured the contents into the paper cups of fruit punch they held in their hands.
“Have a drink, Yank?”
Three of the men handed their cup to me; the fourth, pale and gaunt, glared angry. I figured it would be it impolite to refuse, so I drank all three cups, burning a hole through the back of my throat, and heat-pumping my empty stomach. The Boiler came over with five cups of punch balanced between his thick fingers.
“Give them to the Yank, man,” one of the men said. I took what was offered. The Boiler went for more cups of fruit punch. Sister Mary Paul stood over the pile of records, looking at the covers, pretending to be considering the next choice very thoughtfully.
It was warm, standing there with those men in that basement. The music, I began to think, was not half bad. The cups of punch stopped coming, each man nursing his own, but I didn’t see this as a bad thing, and I was sure I could charm more out of them. One of the men asked me where he was from. Another had a cousin in a city Henry had never been to, and asked if he knew him. The man described the cousin’s physical characteristics in great detail. “Surely you’ve seen him about,” he insisted. Another explained the unique characteristics of the sheep in these parts, and how he himself had once had 400 head, but he’d sold most of them, but held onto 50 for insurance. I was just about to ask him what insurance had to do with it when the Boiler, who’d been dancing by himself with a great smile on his face, reached up to pat me proudly on the back like we were old pals.
“Hank, the Wooden-Plank Yank!” The Boiler burst out. “Isn’t he something, boys? I told you he was something.” The Boiler handed me an empty cup he’d held crumpled in his hand and filled it with another small bottle from his pocket. “You’ll see Hank, the girls are coming, I’m sure of it,” he said, patting me on the arm. “You’ll be walking the plank soon, you Wooden-Plank Yank.”
When the Boiler danced away, one of the men–Sean Finney, I guessed it was–leaned over to me.
“By the way, there are no girls coming,” Sean Finney said. “I’m sorry to say it but The Boiler’s been a little dingy for some time now, since his wife passed. It’s a shame. It’s a terrible shame. He met her here at the dance, you know, when the dance was the dance. Nobody’s come in years; nobody’s left in the village, just us,” he whispered to me. “They’ll sure never come again. But we come every year, once a year, just the same, for The Boiler.”
“Down on your luck, Yank?” the glaring man spat out suddenly through broken, orange teeth. Then he turned away, clutching his cup.
The men closed together, falling into a deep consultation about some property somewhere up the road. The Boiler danced by himself in the center of the room, his eyes closed. I stayed on for a bit, swaying to the music. I was there now more for the heat pattering from the radiators, to be honest. I heard sleet pinching the basement’s ground-level windows. Darkness shadowed the glass. The room had a spin to it. I didn’t want to go out there, but no more punch was coming, and I was clearly, in the eyes of those men, just hanging around to pinch more of their booze. So I patted the Boiler on the back on his arm.
“I’m just going out for a smoke,” I said. “I’ll be right back.”
The Boiler opened his eyes; they looked gummy, unfocused. “But you’ll be coming back, won’t you Yank? They’ll be here any moment! Oh, they’re a sight to see.”
“Oh, sure. I can’t wait! I’ll be back in a minute.”
I climbed the stairs and walked to the darkness. The sleet had stopped but the wind was whipping again. The fresh air hit me hard, pushing the strange punch deeper into me. Dizzied, I walked to the boarded-up pub. I tested the windows, and I tested the doors, but no luck. Then I walked across the road, over the guardrail and into the blackness. I found myself on a long length of beach, and walked, and walked until I found a cove of boulders. Away from the wind, wrapped in my raincoat, I lay down on the cold wet sand and, spinning just a little, fell into the deepest of sleep.
Next thing I knew I was splashed awake. I’m telling you, buddy. I was sprawled on his back in the sand, hands stuffed in pockets, legs tightly crossed against the cold. A glance of light seeped through a thick gray fog. I was lying between two green boulders, crusted with barnacles, sheltering me from the whistle. I had sunk into the sand, and was comfortable there, but the tide was coming in and the waves were reaching the rock directly below my feet. I felt good for a moment, but then I remembered the Boiler, and a great uneasy wash of remorse filled my veins. I had abandoned him. I had disappeared on him. I had embarrassed him in front of his friends. The remorse seeped through me, cold and wet. It pinned me to the sand and held me there. Another splash of water, colder and closer, didn’t matter. Nothing mattered. I had gotten really wasted, again. I could still taste the burning booze in my throat.
“Don’t feel bad about The Boiler,” a voice said calmly.
On my right boot, sticking up from the sand, the Gull-bird, the giant Gull-bird, perched.
“Huh?” I asked.
“Don’t feel bad,” the Gull-bird said.
“I suppose I should go back and apologize, or something,” I said.
The Gull-bird blinked twice. A strand of seaweed clung to its beak. It slurped it up like a piece of spaghetti.
“You can if you want to,” the Gull-bird said. “But you really don’t have to.”
“Good.” Another spray of sea water followed. The hiss of a wave reached into the sand between the rocks, looking for me. “I won’t, then.”
“Good decision, Yanker,” the Gull-bird said. “You had no business here to begin with.”
“But I’m lost,” I said. “I just got lost.”
“Yer lost, uh-right,” the Gull-bird’s voice turned into a bird-cackle. “Yer-LOST! Yer-LOST!”’ He stretched out his wings again, then hopped off my boot. “Another lost little Yanker, searching for his roots.” He paddled around the corner toward the light, toward the sea.
I remember waiting a few more minutes, the smell of rich salt and sea grass. I stood up and dusted the sand off my raincoat, my pants. Then I remember walking in the opposite direction from the Gull-Bird, up from the beach. I’m telling you this, friend. I had to figure out. I had no idea where I was going.