School Days

There should have been no surprise. Martin seemed to be related in one way or another to almost everyone, or at least he had met someone related to one person or another. Like the time we went to visit his brother Danny at the rehab ward the Ennis Hospital after hours. He may have said hello to Danny of they may have simply exchanged nods from across the room; but it wasn't long before Martin was down at the far end of the ward chatting it up with some poor fellow who was bored to tears for having been there for weeks with hardly a visitor and that day, being Sunday, the ward was filled with friends and family.

Martin and this chap seemed determined to find out who they both knew in common. Back and forth it went, whether this or that person had black hair or maybe it used to be black but now he had none at all, in an effort to make it into the same person. Well, neither of them could hear very well, so the entire floor reaped the benefit of their negotiations. The more they described the attributes of their so-and-so friend, the further apart they got. "Well, my friend was tall and always wore a knit cap", and "no, because my friend was shorter and rarely wore anything but a brown jacket." Well, wouldn't you know it but half an hour later, it turned out that they were talking about the same man! It always seemed to come around . . . and so it went throughout the ward until it was time to go. I'm not sure that Martin and Danny ever spoke before we left an hour later.

So the following week when we were up at Saint Brigid's well, there was hardly a headstone left unscrutinized or that failed to be commented upon, and there were a lot of headstones! But at the very back of the cemetery there was one in particular that held Martin's attention. Flaherty was the name. He kept coming back to it.

Now, it is quite common to find bits and pieces of small finger and toe bones and the occasional tooth that had worked its way to the surface, what with the subsequent diggings and buryings in the older family plots over the years.

Martin had become somewhat stiff as the years went on and I noticed that of late, he didn't turn his head, exactly. He tended to shuffle around to face things and his whole body took new aim, pipe and all as one unit. Flaherty's headstone continued to draw him back. His mind was working.

Slowly he bent down to retrieve something quite small. We couldn't see exactly what it was, but we were sure that all would be revealed by the wise Professor in due time. He examined the item quite carefully as he rolled it over and over between his tobacco stained fingers. Quietly he turned towards the headstone and eventually back to us. Pointing to the name on the stone, he proclaimed the words "Flaherty, Michael Flaherty . . ." Holding out his find, he presented a tooth, and a bad one at that. "I went to school with him", he announced. "He had bad teeth then too!" There was a long pause. With a flick of the thumb the tooth was airborn, back to the stone curbed plot which was mostly covered with gravel, weeds and plastic flowers.

We departed in silence, our witness having been borne.

David A. Lang

2012