Buried in a Bog (21 page)

“Of course.” Then a thought occurred to her: maybe Maura could seize the time and go visit her grandfather’s grave. It seemed like a fitting ending to the afternoon. “Mick, could you tell me how to reach the cemetery where my grandfather is buried?”

“No problem.” He snagged a paper napkin and began sketching out a simple map; Bridget leaned over to correct him at the last bit leading to the cemetery itself. She also kept up a running commentary. “It’s not hard to find—just go down the bog road till it ends, then turn right, up the hill to Drinagh,” she said. “But you won’t be wanting to stop in Drinagh, though the new church is there, for the family’s in the old cemetery up the hill. You’ll turn right at the main road through Drinagh—if you pass the creamery you’ve gone the wrong way. Then there’s a small road on the left that goes up the hill, until you see a tall stone tower on the left—that’s all that’s left of the old church. The cemetery’s just below it. They couldn’t move the dead, now, could they?”

Mick added quietly, “Can you manage that?”

“I think so. There aren’t enough roads to get lost, are there?”

“Most likely not. I’ll see you later down the pub—no need to hurry.”

When Mick left to get the car, Maura turned to Mrs. Nolan. “Who else is there in that cemetery, do you know?” Maura hadn’t thought beyond her grandfather, about whom she knew very little. She felt a pang: the last time she’d visited a cemetery, it had been to bury Gran. She’d known that cremation would be cheaper, but Gran had been careful to hold aside enough money to pay for a real burial, and a few Masses said for her as well, and Maura had honored her grandmother’s wishes. She had been pleased when the priest said some very nice things about Nora Donovan, and it was clear that he’d known her grandmother and hadn’t just been reading off a standard text. Gran would have been happy.

“No other Donovans, I’m afraid,” Mrs. Nolan said, “but quite a number of Sullivans, and a Herlihy or two. When your grandfather died, we all thought your grandmother would be laid to rest alongside—that’s why he’s there, rather than with his own people.”

“Were they from far away?”

“Only the next townland over, but in a different parish, so they went to another church.”

Maura looked around before saying, “Can I ask you something?”

“Of course, love. What is it?”

Maura tried to choose her words carefully. She had a strong suspicion that Mick had stayed around mainly to take care of his grandmother, but she didn’t want to make Mrs. Nolan look too hard at Mick’s motives or think that she was
holding her grandson back. “Ellen’s told me a bit about Mick, but he seems kind of out of place working in a pub. What’s his story? I mean, did he go to college? Does he have a profession other than barkeep?” Maura wasn’t sure she’d managed to hide her real question: why would anyone want to hang around such a dead-end place?

“Ah, and would you be thinking of making a run at him? There’s no woman in his life, although I’ve told him time and again he’s not getting any younger.” At Maura’s horrified expression, Mrs. Nolan laughed. “I’m just having a bit of fun with you. He studied business at uni, but there’s not many that’s hiring these days. I’ve told him he should be in Dublin, or at least Cork City, but he claims he’s happier here. I know he wants to keep an eye on me, see that I don’t get into any trouble.”

“What if the pub closes, or the new owners want to bring in other people?”

“Well, we’ll just have to wait and see, won’t we? He knows which way the wind is blowing, and he’ll be all right, whichever way things fall out. If you’re going up the hill, you should start now, give yourself a little time to spend there.”

Maura stood up. “I’ll report back to you tomorrow, then.”

“Say hello to your grandda Jimmy for me, will you? He was a grand figure of a man,” Mrs. Nolan said.

Jimmy. James. Her grandfather. It took Maura a moment to put it together. “I’ll do that. See you tomorrow.”

T
hey said their good-byes to various friends and acquaintances, then Mick escorted his grandmother out of the restaurant, and Maura retrieved her car from behind the Keohanes’ house and headed north. It was only when she was halfway there that she realized that she hadn’t given a second thought to driving. There were no problems with the car, as far as she could tell, but she didn’t know a whole lot about fixing cars. That had always been a guy thing when she was in school, and she’d never had a car anyway. But the fact that the old car had stood up to some pretty serious abuse was strangely reassuring; Maura felt protected, like she was driving a tank. Patting the steering wheel affectionately, she promised the car that she would avoid small roads in the future, at least whenever she could. She’d already learned that most of the roads around the area
would be called “small” by any standards, clearly meant for a horse cart. Of course, she wouldn’t have any more luck managing a horse—she’d never been near one. She suddenly realized that she was laughing at herself.

Taking her on that little excursion to Drombeg this morning had been a really nice thing for Mick to do. It was almost embarrassing that she had been in the country nearly a week and hadn’t done any sightseeing—all she’d seen was Leap and the inside of the pub, and a bit of Skibbereen—including the garda station. She wasn’t going to count the hospital in Cork, a place she’d rather not have seen. None of it was the stuff that made it into tourist brochures. Maybe Mick had wanted to show her a different side of the place, a more mystical, primal one. Strip away all the organized religious stuff—easier now that the Catholic Church was losing its grip—there was still this weird underlying sense of unseen forces lurking, particularly out in the country. Maybe leprechauns had been invented to sell beer and greeting cards, but at the same time, maybe they held just a dash of truth. Maura was almost willing to concede that there were spirits here, and if there were, some of them lingered at Drombeg.

As she followed Mick’s napkin map, Maura realized that none of the roads except the main highway had road signs, much less directional signs. The road that she turned onto when the bog road ended was the Drinagh road because it led to Drinagh, nowhere else. You had to know where you were going, or know someone who did, or you’d be hopelessly lost.

The Drinagh road took her to another T-intersection, where she stopped. Looking left she could see what Mrs. Nolan had called the creamery, so she must be in the right
place. When she’d heard the term “creamery,” she’d pictured something small and quaint, but in fact it looked like quite a modern thriving operation, with multiple buildings and a few tanker trucks in sight. At least one business around here seemed to be doing well. Maura turned right, and the road took her by a lovely small lake, below her on the right. But she was looking for a road on the left, leading uphill. She crept along, grateful that there were no other people on the road, or she would have missed it. She turned carefully, passing some ramshackle sheds with a couple of chickens scurrying around, and after a few hundred feet she could see what had to be the tower from the old church, looming through the trees.

Just past the tower there was a wide turn-in on the left, and Maura pulled over, close to the well-kept stone wall. When she got out of the car, she could see an old cemetery spread out below her, its headstones canted in all directions. The tower was near the wall, and the empty space to its left had to be where the old church had stood. It was a good landmark, but why had whoever demolished the building bothered to leave just the tower? Noisy black birds she couldn’t identify flew in and out of the open windows in the upper stories. She glanced briefly around her. To her right there was nothing but open fields. Further up the hill, there appeared to be a home and some farm buildings, and the lane petered out in the farmyard. She couldn’t see any people around. So much space, so much silence—it all felt so foreign to her.

Before heading for the gate, Maura stopped to read a large and new-looking sign. Apparently the local Cork County authorities had recently decided to allow only
approved grave diggers to work in county burial grounds. Maura smiled: what did it take to be approved as a grave digger? Did the sign mean that until now family members could just show up, dig a hole, and deposit their dearly departed? Looking out over the small graveyard, she could easily believe that people might do just that.

She unlatched the gate and let herself in, carefully closing it behind her. There was nothing as orderly as a path, just space between the rows of headstones, which ranged from short stubs to a few that were taller than she was; from old to a few that looked like they’d been put up last week. Were people still using this place, even though there was a newer cemetery down below? Or were they only coming to visit their dead? Someone was taking care of the place, because the grass was short; she spotted a rusty scythe resting against one side of the tower, and tattered bunches of plastic flowers on some of the graves, so at least there were occasional visitors.

Just like her. What was she doing here? Maura didn’t like cemeteries—they were depressing. She’d visited her father’s grave a few times, but only with her gran. Looking at the headstone of a man she’d barely known didn’t do much for her. So she was here now to pay her respects to her unknown grandfather, mainly because she knew her grandmother would have wanted her to. Burying Gran had been hard, but only because it drove home that she would never see Gran again. Whatever had been buried in that cemetery was not the person she had known and loved, the strong, kind woman who had raised her.

Mrs. Nolan had said to send her greetings along to James Donovan—how odd to think that she had known him. Were
Mrs. Nolan’s people buried here? Maura had forgotten to ask. She wandered along the rows, trying to avoid tree roots, silently apologizing to whoever she was stepping on, even though they were long gone. After she saw two stones with the exact same names on them, she started counting, and ended up with four. They had certainly stuck to naming patterns around here, hadn’t they? Was it confusing or comforting if everyone had the same name? It must have been hard on the schoolteachers.

Her grandfather’s stone turned out to be a fairly modern one—well, he had died in 1968, which was probably a hundred years later than most of the burials here. Who had erected it? As far as she knew, the family hadn’t ever had much money, and not only had Nora had a child to support, but she’d also somehow paid the fare for both of them to come to Boston. But the stone looked professional, and expensive. She’d have to ask Mrs. Nolan, if she could figure out how to do it tactfully. There was plenty of room left on the stone, probably intended for Gran at least, if not her own dad and his family.
Like me
, Maura realized.

The ground in front of the stone seemed dry enough, so Maura sat down cross-legged and tried to figure out what to say. She shut her eyes for a moment, listening to the birds and what sounded like a distant cow, or maybe sheep. And to the silence: no cars, no airplanes, no useless annoying noise. It could be any century. She opened her eyes again and looked at the stone erected for a man she had never known. One whom her grandmother had loved, and had had a child with. If he’d lived, there might have been more children—Gran had always loved taking care of people. Of course, if he’d lived, Gran probably wouldn’t have gone to
America with Maura’s dad, who then might never have met Maura’s mother, meaning that then Maura wouldn’t have existed, and wouldn’t be sitting here now, surrounded by relatives she had never met but who shared her blood. And they had all mattered to someone, because there were stones to honor them; and they apparently mattered still, if the garish plastic flowers were any indication. It certainly wasn’t like any cemetery Maura had seen before; the ones in Boston were big and impersonal, and suddenly she felt bad for her father and grandmother, parked in the middle of hundreds of strangers, with only her to remember them.

Her increasingly maudlin thoughts were interrupted by the sound of an approaching car. Another person coming to visit a dead relative on a Sunday afternoon? As far as she knew, this road didn’t lead anywhere but the farm. She sat still, waiting to see if the car kept going, but instead it stopped next to the cemetery. So much for privacy.

Maura stood up, brushed off the back of her jeans, and turned to check out the newcomer: a young man wearing a baseball cap, leaning against the gate, with a dusty brown car behind him.

M
aura’s senses went on high alert at the sight of the man and his car, which she recognized as the one that had pushed her off the road the day before. This wasn’t a random meeting; this guy, whoever he was, must’ve followed her here. What did he want?