Speaking with the garda informally outside, Donovan learned that the tiny Austin Healy convertible had been crushed like a beer can, McKenzie’s body mangled beyond recognition. The lorry driver had escaped with some minor bruises and was not charged.
People stood around outside the chapel in small groups, expressing their grief and outrage at the ‘speeding’ lorry driver. Questions came in spurts with few answers, but no shortage of speculation.
What had Father McKenzie been doing on the Dublin Road when he was supposed to be saying mass? How could he not have seen the lorry? It was on a dry straightway, visible for half a mile. Why had he been going to Dublin so soon again? Hadn’t he just come back? And why hadn’t he told anyone he wouldn’t be saying mass if he’d had to leave in such a hurry?
Donovan didn’t wait for the gossip-driven post-mortem. Sean Dowling was waiting for him outside the chapel with an impatient look on his face.
“Hey, Billy, what gives? What am I supposed to make of this? I was hoping to hear the BIG NEWS you promised first hand, but second hand will do. What was Father McKenzie going to announce?”
“That’s confidential, Sean,” Donovan replied. “I’m not at liberty to say. I’m under oath not to divulge anything beyond what I already told you. Besides, the accident and its surround should be news enough to hold your editor for one day.”
Donovan moved to get in the Vauxhall, but Dowling, flushed with anger, blocked his path, an insistent hand held up in protest.
“Wait a feckin’ minute, Billy! You lure me down here with a breathless tip about a news scoop—with me asking my editor to hold a full page for a guaranteed hot news feed tomorrow—and this is all you have to say? What d’ya take me for, a proper eejit? Well, I’ll have a few things to write about you, you can bet your Yank’s arse on that.”
“Suit yourself, Sean. A man just died. And now you want me to betray his confidence before his corpse is even cold? I thought you guys had a taboo against ambulance chasing in Irish journalistic circles. Or is that just when you’re in high dudgeon in your anti-American polemics?”
“So now we’re a full-fledged Yank, is it? Looking down on the primitives. You’ve come a long way, Billy D., from a Killgarson culchie to a fucken Yank. I can’t say I notice any improvement. Read all about it in the next edition.”
They locked stares as they backed away, stepping into their respective cars at the same time without another word.
“Feck you, Dowling,” Donovan muttered, still angry and stunned. “Always was a bit of a gobshite. I still haven’t forgotten that you sided with Crowley and his boys back in the day. Always thought it was about the Great Sean Dowling. No change there.”
Donovan had one more call to make, this time in Kilkenny. He gunned the Astra onto the northbound road toward the walled city, looking forward to the familiar drive and excited about what awaited him at the end of it.
He suddenly realized he was famished, blood sugar in his shoes. Glancing at his watch, he saw that if he was lucky, there was a chance he could still make the Craigmore Nursing Home in time to take his old friend to a late breakfast.
Donovan found Tommy Dixon in robust health, now is his eighties, powerful shoulders still square, gray curls overflowing onto his tweed collar. The only impairment he could detect was a slight deafness in Tommy’s left ear, which Billy quickly accommodated with rearranged seats.
“Oh, God, Billy D., I’d know you anywhere,” was Dixon’s delighted opener.
“Tommy Dixon, you look like a million bucks,” Donovan declared, as they shook hands. “What are they feeding you?” He smiled inwardly at the powerful grip of his old mentor whose huge hands were still gnarled from the years of farm labor.
They went to breakfast at Mt. Juliet Hotel—an upscale restaurant, Donovan’s treat. They talked for hours: of the great kickboxing champions and their moves, of the championships they’d won together, of the opponents, and of the legacy Tommy had bequeathed to Kilkenny.
Near the end of the conversation, Tommy brought them back to that June day in 1978, under the giant oak in Dixon’s meadow—the day Billy D. found his deliverance lifeline.
“Ya know, Billy D., even before that, I always knew ya was special, even before the kickboxing. There was something about ya, as a young lad, the way ya carried yerself, the look in yer eye. I don’t know how else to say it.”
Looking at the beloved, wrinkled face, remembering what he owed this legend of a man, Donovan fought back the tears. He reached across the table, squeezed Tommy’s hand, and said, “You know something, Tommy? Without you, I wouldn’t be here. That’s the truth. You literally saved my life. There’s a place reserved in heaven for great souls like yours.”
Tommy looked back at him, tears brimming over in the kind, blue eyes. Embarrassed, he coughed into his hand and muttered, “I’d better be getting back. They’ll think I’ve skipped town up at the nursing home.”
They drove to Craigmore in silence, content with the comfort of each other’s presence, taking in the beauty of the picket-fence stud farms, the newborn thorough-bred foals racing in the clovered meadows—free as the wind that whipped through their blonde manes.
Walking up the gravel path to the majestic nursing home, Tommy turned to Donovan and said, “Now don’t be a stranger, Billy D.; ya know where to find me. Maybe we could talk you into giving a kickboxing exhibition down at the Dixon Center wan o’ dese days.”
“That’s entirely possible, Tommy,” Donovan replied. “But right now, I have to go see a girl about a bike tour. She promised me that all I have to do is pedal.”
Tommy grinned. “I’m sure ye’ll do a lot more than pedal, or yer not the Billy D. I know.”
They beamed at each other, shook hands firmly, standing close, and parted—the heavy, brass-plated door of the nursing home closing solemnly behind the beloved head of gray curls.
Donovan paused in front of the closed door and fought off an unbearable pang of sadness before getting back in the car.
Then, with a rush of excitement, he turned the Vauxhall south, and gunned it down the winding road toward Glendunne House.
(The End.)