Walk without a reason

WE WENT for a walk, just a walk. Took ourselves out upon the road and walked ourselves. Headed up the hill towards the hospital, veered off there and single filed to the east. It was Mick Kelly’s idea.

Mick just calls people to ask if they would like to go for a walk. Rory, Tommy, three Pauls and two Micks, Clare, Therese and myself met at Mick Kelly’s house, and wandered off. Actually, a couple off this list just slipped in along the way, ultimately disappearing with the same silence.

Hadn’t heard the name Newtown Road being said for a long time. It immediately conjures up all kinds of childhood memories. That, and the early morning cut of wind, draw my mind to pleasantries from the past, that happened during this time of the year.

St. Stephen’s Day at the racecourse with me Da drinking porter in a tent, plates of sandwiches and crisps flying around, and me all giddy on sugared lemonade. Bright, fresh air, potent enough to make a mark on every nerve as it travels to the lungs.

I keep sucking it in today, and relishing it – ‘this is doing me good’ – I insist. The hill up to the hospital was a bugger, especially as a first manoeuvre after porridge. But my fears of future failure were abolished after we were done with that climb.

When my father used to take himself for a walk, he would often take me too. He couldn’t afford a long walk to be spent on Newtown Road, long walks had to be reserved for his sister’s in the opposite direction, out towards Johnstown and Rathaspick, where me Aunt Nelly lived with her husband Jem Powers.

Along the way he would talk about the goldfinches and sparrows, the foliage and the brooks. I knew the gist of what he was saying, but didn’t let it interfere with my priority of throwing stones at nothingness. With hands behind his back, he recited observations to my deaf ears.

That was the same air as this! – it is a certain taste, the taste of winter sun.

Mick fills me in. ‘Wait till ye see Carrig, is been dere for hundreds of years, were ye ever dere before?’

‘Maybe. I recognise this road.’

‘Diss was the main road to New Ross.’

‘Nawh!!’

‘Yiss, a hundred year ago.’ ‘Musta been horse and carts, it’s fecking tiny’

Biscuit doesn’t want to go into the graveyard, doesn’t want to ruin his new sneakers. He’s not a dog now. He’s actually one of the Pauls. Clare suggests it might be good for them, to stop them squeaking, but Biccie won’t go. Tommy races up the hill to where the old Church walls still stand, his baby sister is buried there, he disappears behind the mossed stones. In the beyond there is an ancient tomb, home to the gentry, the Percivals, wonder do they feel any better inside there?

Mick Kelly points at the ground ‘Look at that, wild garlic.’ We gape in silence.

Carrig was a parish in the 1400s, I could feel the spirits in the proximate fields and stone. We turn towards town, passing houses that are connected to people we know. ‘That’s where Tom from New Jersey lives’.

‘An dat house belongs to Mick Tierney from the Stores.’

‘Does it? It’s huge!!’

We walk ourselves past the racecourse, and Mick advises me on Bitcoins. I tease that he’s a cute whore, he’s not comfortable with that, and so he shouldn’t be. What cute whore would call nine people up and invite them to just go for a walk without a reason?

‘

Along the way he would talk about the goldfinches and sparrows. I knew the gist of what he was saying, but didn’t let it interfere with my priority of throwing stones at nothingness