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Edited on Wed Mar-18-09 10:11 PM by nuxvomica
A croud had gathered because old McFlaherty had been going around town giving folks directions on where the fellows were going to meet.
"Now ya head strite out past the rect'ry," he told them, "till you see a great stone monolit wedged into a soome stony groned. Sure an' that's the sign ya gone too far. Now dooble back and you'll see a stream just away from the road. It's coovered by some tangly bushes but you can find it if you're carrful to measure out the distance from the roadside, it being the same length as me poor sainted wife Mary, toe to bonnet, as she lay thar on the table at Flannagan's pub during the wake -- McPherson's wake I think it was. Once you find the stream, follow it north past where the old church burnt down just before the war. Be carrful to turn west thar and you'll be seeing many old bridges. Cross the one the damn English made us build in '09! Then you'll see the two contenders in the clearing by the great oak -- not the one they jailed O'Connell for chopping down but t'other."
At the glen, Seamus, with fists clenched and arms flailing, hopped sideways, one way then back the other. Some of the onlookers thought he was displaying the preparatory footwork of the trained pugilist while others spurred him on with rhythmic clapping and foot tapping, thinking he was dancing a fine jig. Flannagan had been there early with a waggon stocked with whiskey, which he had been selling to the crowd in small paper cups for 10 schillings a shot. Seamus had already consumed a day's-pay's worth and he was fit for fighting, dancing or anything else he considered a manly activity, like drinking. But his focus now was on the hated, despiccable piece of humanity who stood, though somewhat wobbly, before him.
Limey "Dutch Courage" Mick had done a sorry, sorry thing, indeed, at least in the eyes of one Seamus O'Shitfabrines. He had only four hours earlier engaged in a drunken rant that managed by circuitous means to connect all the sins, both the few real and the numberless imagined, of William Butler Yeats, Eamon de Valera and Albert Shanker.
"I will not have ya speak in that way about Mr. Shanker!" Seamus shouted, "Nor Mr. De Valera, neither. And what you said about Yeats, well that's not something a Irishman should bear hearing, if ya catch mee drift!" At which point, in perfect synchrony with his words, in a moment of precision, focus and emotional coolness that he had never before experienced and could never hope to again, he delivered a knockout punch that entered Limey's face at lightning speed. Some in the crowd gasped noting that they could see the contours of what appeared to be Seamus's knuckles emerge from the back of Limey's head on that day. Limey's body appeared to lay lifeless but, after a few moments, he pulled up his shoulders and rested on his elbows.
"S'you s'were s'right, Seamush," said Limey in an oddly muffled voice. "S'you s'were s'right s'about s'Yeats and s't'others. S'I'm sorry s'I said s'those s'tarble s'tings."
Limey's goofy smile soon disappeared when he noticed the look of horror on Seamus's face.
"Yer not lookin' too healty, Lime" said Seamus with a shudder.
Limey's face had been pushed almost inside out, making him quite a sight, even for a Kerryman. Only very slowly did it regain its shape. In the meantime, Seamus and Limey were back at Flannagan's enjoying their pints, talking about merit-based teaching and occasionally going outside to relieve themselves on a pile of stones nearby. Sadly, those were the carefully placed stones that, for poor Mary McFlaherty, formed her burial...
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