Hold on to people; they're slipping away.

-Moby

I was sitting on a mild afternoon at the taps in the Marina bar. I was having an afternoon pint; it was a midday week and not too many of us but the regulars and of course, bearded Billy sitting in the corner as usual.

Kevin came in, covered with masonry rubbish, his maroon woollen jumper thick with dust and his pants ripped and dried with mud. His blond hair was full of dust. He sat down next to me and ordered a pint.

Kevin was your typical fiftysomething lone Kerryman; gentle going and perhaps drank a little too much, hard-working, polite and disinterested in airs and falsehoods. His eyes were gentle and bright, and showed a little too much pain. I knew he was going to talk to me. He had that look; Oh, a woman, she is on her own; I don't see this very often.

Women in Kerry often do not sit at the bar, alone; they are more likely to flock in their families and bother over other people's children, they stomp in well-dressed and always on business or seeming to be, without the bother of taking time for a pint; or come in attached at the hip to their husband or boyfriend, or in nauseating cliques who still don't know how to walk in heels and who wear too much perfume, clack-clacking, giggling and wobbling. I am not any of that; I am a lone American woman who moved myself to County Kerry to play my guitar and love this place and one man in it. I do not interest myself in rumour or nonsense, and I need no one's hand to hold while going to the loo. I can sit and have a pint myself and mind it.

Men here in Ireland know it. Something tells them that they can talk to me and I will keep it pretty much between us. There's no sense in spreading round what amounts to far less vice and strangeness than I have done and experienced and repented myself.

So Kevin started talking to me. He asked me if I would like a pint. He had a very gentle and caring voice and knew that if I wasn't going to be scared away by a man covered in rubbish, that I was worth buying a pint. So I said yes.

His blond hair was tousled and dusty. His face was clean though, and his eyes were bright blue, with an ageless face creased with sunshine and crying; thin gentle lips and a playing smile.

"It's not too often you see a lady at the bar," he said, sitting alone. "What's your name?"

"Allie," I said.

"That's a lovely name," he said. "I'm Kevin Johnson," he said. "I work with stones. I'm a stone mason. "

"I see you've been at work," I said. "Long day?"

"Yes I was just working up at a house off of Slea Head, building a wall for three days now. Are you American?"

"Yes," I said, "but I moved here to Ireland a year ago."

"How do you like it?" He asked.

"I love it here," I said; "Dingle is wonderful."

"I live in Ballydavid," he said, "it's just up the road and west of here. I have a caravan out there. Have you ever been to Ballydavid?"

"No I haven't," I said. "How far is it up the road?"

"Only about seven miles, it's a lovely place, my caravan is there. That's where I build my houses."

"What, big houses?"

"I've built plenty of those, sure," he said, "but I like making little ones too. You know the one in O'Flaherty's?"

In O'Flaherty's there is a perfect little stonework model of the pub itself down to the timbers in the red wooden doors to the back yard. I was so thrilled at learning it was him who made it, that I nearly squealed out loud; I was wondering who would put so much love and devotion into a doll's house.

"THAT'S YOU! I never thought I would meet you! You're amazing! I was wondering who did that! It's really you who made that?" I had lit straight up like a Christmas tree and nearly hugged him to pieces the second I knew it was him, the artist.

It was almost as if I had slapped him. My American outburst of enthusiasm and joy was completely alien to West Kerry. It was as if I had thrown him into a pool of the strongest sunshine and given him a standing ovation by the Albert Hall.

Kevin was thoroughly charmed. His blue eyes sparkled and he was smiling the whole time we talked, grinning permanently, the masonry rubbish he was covered in meaning nothing, and in smiling his face lost ten years. That's when he started really talking.

And in building his loving sculptures, he makes in his workshop shed perfect, tiny Irish buildings; the stone masonry in them an art, each stone in his dolls-houses a pebble he selects from the beach and cuts himself, every tiny slate on his dolls-houses roofs chipped perfectly, every timber in the windows made perfectly, and the windows set with tiny lace curtains.

"…I walk along the beach in Ballydavid," he said, "and I pick up the stones and pebbles, and when I tap them like this…" he mimicked tapping two stones together and holding them close to his ear, head bent down, listening. "…I can tell if they would be good to cut for my houses."

"The stones talk to you and tell you that?" I asked.

"They do," he said, and smiled widely.

A man who makes something like that has a tenderness of heart which is rare enough on this earth; he treasures and loves every human being in his life with so much devotion that his faith is the stone itself, and the people who inhabit the buildings he builds are the dollies in his perfect world, where they look at him from his windows and invite him in and kiss him hello.

I knew this the second he told me that he had made the replica of O'Flaherty's pub. I knew by the little lace curtains, the little timbers, the little paintings, even the slates on the roof were chiseled in tiny microcosm like slates on any house in Ireland. The people in his life were his dolls, because there, in his little houses, they loved him as much as he loved them. I knew this. My heart knew it. So I squealed out loud with joy when I found out. Every weekend I had played in O'Flaherty's I would sit and meditate upon the house in the corner, with its perfectly set, chipped, chiseled pebble masonry, and marvel at what I was later told was a stupendous mystery of accomplishment to the engineers and architect tourists that had graced the doors of O'Flaherty's in Dingle.

"Marry me," he said.

I gave him a kiss on the cheek. I said, "I'm sorry, I came here to Dingle with my heart set on someone I've loved for five years."

"Sorry, I'm sorry," he said. "Don't apologise, Kevin," I said, "you're wonderful."

He was so charmed from that moment forward, that he told me he made a manger for Christmas of his stonework, and that he was painting it powder-blue; and he would give it to me, even after I turned him down.

After that, I couldn't buy myself a pint, and he confided things to me that I won't discuss here. After several hours I knew who he was; the most tenderhearted man in Kerry; plagued with a broken heart for seven years, with children who had flown away and disappeared, a divorce where he was little more than a passenger and observer, and him, left broken, sad, wishing desperately for a world where he still had all the love he had lost, where the constancy of the stones he built were like himself, looking up at Heaven day and night.

I knew I had charmed him more than I had intended. An older Irishman falls hard, falls fast, and means it. "If I could come home to you every night, Allie," he said after most of our talking was done for the evening, "I would be off the drink forever." And something in me knew it was true, regardless of everything that had gone before. And it pained me so much that I could not kiss him there and then and tell him to prove it, and if so, I would love him forever. Like a doll from his perfect world who stepped out of the door of his house and became real, kissing him right there, without judgment. But I couldn't. I was in Dingle for someone else. And not even he knew.

Kevin was the stone, staying patiently constant and true in Ballydavid, caring not for worldly things, and as the freezing disinterest of this world and the disdainful bother of his family and loved ones widened a permanent, weeping crack in his heart, he lost his modest income on horses and drink.

We had a cigarette outside the Marina and I sat quietly on the bench. He stood next to me and his eyes were those of a man with one foot in his perfect world. He peered painfully down at me with his gentle eyes, and in his haze of drink he put his hand on my shoulder. "Sorry, sorry, I'm sorry." He kept saying. "I'm sorry."

After that we would see each other and talk here and there, say hello outside Paddy Bawn Brosnan's, and I hugged him hello a few times. But after a month, it seemed that he withdrew and disappeared further and further away; a couple of weeks ago he was just a shadow standing smoking outside, and he looked terrible. Not right; someone who was stepping off of this earth. As a passionate member of the living contingent of this earth, my spirit's instinct is shameful; I did not pursue him to try and see what was the matter. Perhaps I was afraid of someone who would grip on to me while sinking. Perhaps I did not think it was my place to interfere. But his gentle face was beginning to fade and shift until it was hard to remember his name. Maybe he wanted that to happen; to disappear and join his stones and to gaze up at Heaven to the Angels forever, desperate to forget how much he loved those on this earth who did not love him.

On Monday evening, Kevin sat inside John Benny's with his best friend. He had a headache. He complained a little about the pain in his head, and went into the men's room. They heard a thud outside, heard him fall, and ran in to find him. Kevin had fallen unconscious and hit his head in the stall. They pulled him outside and found a tourist doctor from the States who gave him CPR. They brought back a pulse for a few minutes but it was pointless. On Monday, August 27, 2007, Kevin Johnson of Ballydavid died aged 54 of a brain aneurysm. As Pat Coughlan told me later, he died the same age as his mother, 30 years ago, of the same thing. It was probably just rotten bad genetic luck. But I also knew that he wanted to leave; he had had enough, and he had cried himself to sleep heartbroken and drunk for long enough already.

I was in Dick Mack's on Wednesday when I heard what had happened. I was in shock. The whole bar was whispering, and people looked shaken and quiet. Sure, you never know when it's your time. People were saying. One day you're fine and then the next day…but he was so young, it's a crime this day and age to go so soon. Blah, blah, blah.
Joe Hayes looked at me with his great brown eyes, which were usually mischievous and black as buttons. Not this time, they were wide as saucers and frightened, and he looked at me when we had heard the news. "It's scary," he said, how young he was. "It makes you think, doesn't it, girl. "

Yes, it does, I thought. But I didn't tell him. I had enough that I haven't told him already. Like why I was in Dingle.

I stayed up all Wednesday night, I could not sleep. I had a bad dose of bronchitis two weeks ago and I was very nearly over it; now it's back because I had been crying. I thought, well, Kevin, it seems the whole world didn't care about you; you're dead and everyone's scared, everyone except me, and I'm just so very sad. I'll be your wake if nobody else will. I will stay awake for you. So I sat on the settee downstairs wrapped in a blanket, weeping like a child, all night, coughing my lungs out because the drainage wouldn't stop, and finally settled into a quiet zone of empty grief for several hours as the sun came up and the house began to move and thump around me with its hostel guests.

The next day I tried to get a few hours of shuteye in the morning, but nobody would let me. People kept knocking on the door asking for the Italian girl on the bunk next to me, who was gone. What. What. WHAT!!!! I kept asking as I pulled the pillow over my face. Then the rude staff came in and insisted on mucking out the bathroom, which we had never used since the last time it was cleaned, with the world's most obnoxious bleach, going straight up my nose. Then the hoover outside and the manager yakking to get in because buyers were coming to see the place at 1. I was on my last nerve.

I was cornered into the loo gripping onto my Kleenex and roaring with grief and annoyance. CANNA YOU PLEASE LET ME CLEENA DA BATHROOM came the harried staff. I just roared and kicked the door. They left. Then I breathed in, flushed the loo, wiped my face with a cold towel, put on my shoes and coat, and left. I rang a friend to find the time of the funeral. 3.30 in Carrick Church outside Ballydavid. I walked down to the flower shop at the corner and looked at flowers. 4 Euro per single rose. And no yellow roses. I wanted yellow. Bollocks. I almost heard Kevin laugh. I went across the street to Garvey's Super Valu and got 100 Euro from the servicetill. And there in the buckets of flowers, one single bunch of a dozen yellow roses. 5 Euros 99. I was pleased as punch and grabbed them up, paid for them and went to O'Flaherty's. I looked at my watch. 2.30. Fergus couldn't find Liston's taxi number so I looked it up. I rang John Liston, pulled a single rose out of the bunch and left it at the doorway of Kevin's little O'Flaherty's, popped out the back and got a cab up to Carrick Church.

The church was packed. Kevin had no idea how his death would affect the community. But I was surrounded by massive amounts of both grief and some guilt, I could feel it as well as my own. I held in the crying but I couldn't hold in the tears, during the entire mass, which was in Irish, I wet the front of my coat. I was too exhausted to dress up for the funeral, so I just wore my black coat over my t-shirt, dock pants and sneakers. The church was roasting but I didn't notice. Kevin's daughter was singing the recession in Seán-nós, and I was a sniffling mess. I left the church and saw the hearse full of flowers. I felt like a heel asking them to open it up to let me put my flowers in so I gripped onto them, feeling like an ass, but finally my grief pushed me to his family and I asked if they were related to him, and I thought, could they put these flowers on his grave for me…I met his sister. She was thrilled to give me a lift to the cemetery. I could put them on myself.

Kevin was buried in the same tomb as his beloved, doting uncle in the cemetery above Ballydavid. Officially it was full, but the Council gave them permission to have Kevin join his uncle. The cemetery overlooked the Three Sisters, seacliff-mountains sweeping up the north end of Dingle with clouds boiling up from the peak of each one in the close, low, sparking rain and sunshine. The Hail Mary in Irish created an unearthly twilight of tribal callback that reflected the silver light through the clouds, dappling the Three Sisters peaks across the bay. The wind shivered the great thorn tree growing on the tomb as they pushed his coffin into the earth and covered his grave. I placed my flowers after they put him in.

There was food and drink at Begley's afterward, and I told his sisters of my brief knowledge of Kevin before he died. I quietly found out he had told me more in just a few afternoons than his family and all of Ballydavid had known in his entire life. Why is it, that someone finds it easier to confide such love and pain to a complete stranger.

I got a cab back to Dingle and to Dick Mack's after two pints. My buddy Paddy was there roaring his nonsense away, and when I arrived he hugged me more than ever, leaping on me repeatedly with as much desire to comfort and play as his mad little cow dog. He kept me smiling the rest of the evening.

Later, a friend was outside the Marina, her willowy form curled over. "Ballydavid is where I'm from," she said. "They're a great bloody load of hypocrites, they are; crying crocodile tears for a man who's dead and wouldn't be arsed with him while he was alive."

This is all too familiar, I thought; so many of us are guilty of the sin of passing by the lonely hearts who stand quietly amongst us, trying to be strong and proud, who weep quietly at home. Mine is one of them. Perhaps the sin of pride is what keeps us all from loving one another as much as we should.

"He stayed with us for Christmas the past two years, nobody else could be bothered with him at all. He didn't care about money but he had a heart full of love."

She was shaking with grief and rage so much so that she was unable to shed a tear.

I could not judge anyone since I didn't know anyone, so I stayed quiet, gave her a hug and walked home.

Want to comment on this Short Stories? Sign up to Edit Red and you will be able to comment on Short Stories and get access to: Upload your own stories and poems, get readers and their feedback, promote your work...