When Irish Eyes Are Smiling

Chapter 1-2

All Felix wanted to do was close his eyes and go back to sleep, but that was not going to happen. As the truck shambled along, Felix slid from gearshift to door on the broad bench seat. He cranked the window up as far as it would go, which turned out to be not quite all the way up, and wrapped his arms around the dog who was happily panting at his side.

“‘Fraid you’re gonna fly out?” Ronan asked with a wink.

“Yes, actually,” Felix said. “No offense.”

Ronan only chuckled as they rushed along a narrow road, low stone walls and hedgerows making it appear smaller still.

“Can you please slow down?” Felix asked.

“We’re only going twenty-five, friend.”

“That’s what, like sixty in American?”

With another good-natured bellow, Ronan said, “I have no idea. It’s not very fast, I can tell you that.”

“Well, we’re terrified, aren’t we…” Felix leaned down to read the name tag dangling from the dog’s grubby collar. Caoimhe was not a name he’d seen before. “Cow-eem-hay?”

“Try again.” Ronan smiled and shook his head.

“Cay-O-I’m-he?”

“It’s pronounced ‘kweeva’.”

“Kiva?”

“Close enough.”

“Well,” Felix said as he hugged the dog to his chest once again. “Kiva and I are terrified. Also, she’s says you confuse her by calling her Kiva but spelling it C-A-O-H—however in the hell you spell it.”

Ronan’s face clouded over. “It was my Gran’s name.”

“Oh,” Felix said. “Sorry. I’m sure she was a nice woman.”

Ronan’s playful eyes were the first to break, but he soon lost himself to laughter once again. “Just messin’ with you. My Gran’s name was Ruth. You shoulda seen your face though! Sputterin’ like a mackerel. ‘Oh no. Golly.’”

Felix tried to pout but Ronan’s laughter was contagious and he found himself smiling. “I have never said ‘golly’ in my entire life, thank you very much.”

It wasn’t long before the scant ribbon of a road slipped over one final hill and Felix let out a low whistle. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“What?”

“This has got to be a movie set, right?” The road crossed over a stacked stone bridge before splitting off in two directions. On either side of that division were two-story shops and pubs with brightly colored facades and trim made of more of the ever-present limestone. A lively creek bounced from rock to rock in a wide channel slicing its way along the far side of the road. “How can this be a real place?”

Ronan stopped his truck on the bridge for Felix to get a good look. “Handsome, isn’t she? This, son, is Doolin, Ireland, in all of her glory.”

Felix mouthed a silent “Wow,” before saying out loud, “Is the whole town like this?”

Putting the truck in gear and idling forward, Ronan said, “This is the whole town, more or less. Don’t you recall seein’ it before?”

Felix shook his head as Ronan was pulling into a parking spot outside dark windows of a pub. “I don’t think it’s open.”

“Someone’ll be around. I’ve got some business here and I’ll ask after your friends. You comin’?” Ronan smiled and wiggled one raised eyebrow.

“Kiva and I are fine, thanks.” Felix hugged the dog closer to him and she licked the side of his face.

Felix spent his time looking around the truck’s interior before rolling down the window to stick his head out. A shiver ran up his spine. He was coming out of his hangover daze enough to appreciate how vulnerable he was. He truly did not recognize anything in this town and it was such a singularly beautiful place, he felt sure he should have some recollection if he’d ever seen it before. f*****g Sam. He blinked to keep his watery eyes from spilling over. Kiva leaned into him, solid and reassuring.

Ronan hurried out the door of the pub with a dark look on his face that he soon replaced with his usual jovial grin. He walked up to Felix’s window and passed through a shirt and pair of pants. “Don’t say I never got you anythin’.”

Felix wasted no time in pulling on the clothing, not even bothering to look at what he was putting on. The clothes felt warm and comforting. “Oh, thank God.”

“No shoes, but that should do for now.”

“Mickey’s?” Felix asked as he spread his shirt out and looked down to read it upside down.

“Yeah. They sell ‘em to the tourists.”

“Thanks for buying me a shirt!”

“I didn’t buy it,” Ronan said. “They loaned it to you on my good word, so you’ll be payin’ them back once you locate your own trousers.”

At the mention of trousers, Felix looked down and noticed the pants Ronan had given him, most definitely not new. “Oh, no. Whose pants are these?” Felix stiffened his legs in an attempt to somehow hover in mid-air to avoid any part of his skin touching the cloth.

“Phil says he thinks Fat Charlie left them. They seem clean enough. Not sure how he got home without pants, but that’s a concern of Fat Charlie’s now, isn’t it?”

Felix did not relax back into the seat at that news. He added a high-pitched, “Eeee,” and looked to Ronan with wide, panicked eyes.

Ronan’s booming laugh did not help the situation. “Pipe down, you eejit. I smelled ‘em. Didn’t smell any piss or anythin’. You’ll be fine.”

A woman passing by with a basket of groceries in the crook of her arm stopped to stare. Felix stopped squealing and settled into his seat, taking deep, calming breaths. Ronan called out the window to the passer-by. “Y’all right, Margaret?”

The woman, Margaret apparently, nodded but didn’t take her eyes off Felix.

“You see a pack of Americans out roamin’ last night? Maybe with this git in tow?”

Margaret shook her head.

“Alright, love. Thanks,” Ronan said to Margaret who slowly went back to going about her business. To Felix he said, “Well, no luck. My only guess is you came from Lisdoonvarna. Lucky for you, I was already headin’ there next. Ya wanna roll your window up before we head out? Can’t have the baby bird fallin’ out o’ the nest now can we?”

“Lisdoonvarna sounds familiar. How far is it?”

“Not far. Ten minutes, maybe.”

Felix kept the window where it was as Ronan backed out of his parking space. “And I will not roll my window up. Maybe if I get flung out the window, Fat Charlie’s pants will stick to the seat and I’ll die happy.”

The drive to Lisdoonvarna was more of the same scant pavement between a patchwork of fields separated by low stone walls. Felix was nervous that he didn’t remember this.

“So, how do you think ya got down here from up the road?” Ronan asked after a few minutes. “You mentioned your friends. Seems like they’d be looking out for you.”

After a deep sigh, Felix said, “I’m pretty sure my friends are the reason I was out there in my underwear.”

“Don’t sound like very good friends to me.”

“They’re not. Not really.”

“Why do ya call them friends, then?”

“It’s, well,” Felix absentmindedly stroked Kiva’s back. “It’s complicated.”

“You want me to find ya a ride somewhere else, then?”

“I don’t really have any other options. They’ll laugh about it and brush it off. It’ll be okay.”

“If you say so,” Ronan said.

“What were you doing out by that fort-looking thing anyway?” Felix asked.

“I was on me way into town. She’s the reason I stopped.” Ronan pointed to his dog. “She likes to stick her head out the window. She spotted you straight away and started barkin’ to beat hell. Musta thought you were road kill or somethin’.”

Felix looked over to catch Ronan’s playful wink. “So, you live out there?”

“My Grandad does,” Ronan said. “I guess I do, too. I’m helpin’ him out ‘round the farm. He’s gettin’ on in age.”

Felix nodded and the men settled into silence, no longer in the mood to talk.

Lisdoonvarna was a much larger town than Doolin, but it didn’t look any more familiar to Felix. Ronan stopped the truck outside another pub at the edge of town but quickly came back out. “No luck,” he said. “But that wasn’t where we’re headed anyway.”

They threaded their way through the town. The streets were not much wider, but buildings, cars, and people crowded into the roadway instead of hedgerows and stone walls. Ronan pulled the truck into an alley between blocks of businesses and barely had enough room to open his door wide enough to squeeze out. “I’ll be a minute. You two sit tight. Ya need anythin’? Food? Drink?”

The thought of either turned Felix’s stomach and he shook his head. After Ronan went through the back door of what Felix assumed was another pub, he settled against the door and closed his eyes. His head was pounding and he’d gone from feeling anxious to feeling exhausted.

His short nap was interrupted by a horrific blaring horn. Felix bolted upright, the sound bouncing off the nearby walls and filling the truck’s cab. Kiva was barking and turning in circles. Felix’s brain was having trouble processing the chaos through his headache. He turned to see the view behind him totally blocked off by the white bulk of a huge delivery truck with an equally huge driver gesturing toward him. Felix could not read lips, but he guessed that the driver was asking him none-too-politely to move Ronan’s truck.

Felix tried his best to scramble past the panicked Kiva and over the middle of the cab and all its shifters and knobs. Fat Charlie’s pants got tangled up in the mechanical components but Felix guessed he didn’t mess things up too badly as he extracted himself. He looked down at the pedals and hoped that the gas and brakes were in the same order as he was used to. Was that a clutch?

Just to be safe, he pushed both pedals on the left side down with his bare feet and turned the key. Ronan’s truck roared to life. As Felix was trying to manipulate the gear shift into something that felt right, the back door of the pub banged open. Over the growl of the engine and the blaring horn, Felix thought he heard Ronan asking to take over moving the truck. Felix nodded and moved to open the door, intending to get out and let Ronan in.

In a course of events no one would be able to properly analyze later, the truck began to inch forward. Ronan yelled out, “The brakes, man! The brakes!” He grabbed hold of the truck through the open window and planted his feet into the slick cobbles of the alley trying to stop his vehicle.

Felix heard Ronan’s directions but they took a precious few seconds to filter through his panic. He looked down and smashed his foot down as hard as he could against what he thought was the brake pedal. The walls flashed past as Felix, Kiva, and the ancient farm truck zoomed down the alley before listing to the side and coming to a violent stop, the truck thoroughly wedged diagonally. Felix’s world dissolved into steam, horns, licking, and Ronan’s screams of pain.