The Last Storyteller Read Online Free PDF

been with her. Whether they reunited in the mighty and bright hereafter, I cannot tell. We are not permitted to draw aside that curtain that reaches from the sky to the earth, and from pole to pole, because we are not gods
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    And so that has to be the end of my story of Malachi, or Mal MacCool, the brother of Finn MacCool, the greatest man who ever lived. And as long as I keep a clean heart and an open mind, another story will come along presently to fill that story’s place
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11
    The rain slapped down, wide and flat, forcing me to reduce my speed. Elma leaned far into her corner and closed her eyes. My good and familiar feeling of insulation returned. In my car I felt safe and sealed from the world, and that activated an orderly side of myself that I liked. On this “traveling desk” I had retrieval of all my pens, notebooks, and address files, the tools of my trade.
    Nothing ever cluttered the seats, in case I took aboard unusual travelers, such as the pair now dozing in my rear seats. Or gave a lift, as I often did, to some walker on a country road, such as the man who suddenly flagged me down in the driving rain.
    Naturally, I stopped for him. That’s what we did in Ireland in those days—we gave lifts to hitchhikers in all their variety: students, housewives shopping in the local town, home-going drunks. I kept the passenger seat beside me covered with a special waterproof cover from a mail-order firm in England.
    And I needed it that day. The man, tall and angular as a long shadow, had been walking into the driven rain. It had soaked his coat, his hat, every cubic inch of him. In the wide, flat land around us now, no trees cushioned the skyline; he had no shelter or protection from that drenching gale.
    I leaned across and opened the door. He scrambled in, knocking his hat half off.
He’s exhausted. He’s too old to be walking the roads in this rain. He’s too well-to-do. What the hell’s he doing?
    Lowering his sodden hat to his sodden knee, he pinched the water from his eyes.
    “Thanks, oh thanks, thanks for stopping. There wasn’t a soul on the road—you’re the first car I saw. Thanks, thanks.”
    I said, “You’re all right.”
    “Oh, thanks, you’re my good luck today.”
    “Did you come far?”
    “D’you know Urlingford?” he said, and as the words left his lips and hung there between us, I knew what was coming next. I glanced in the mirror and saw a frozen, wide-awake face, horror alive in her aghast young eyes.
    The rain-soaked gentleman either caught my expression or felt the mood. He half-turned, looked back over his shoulder, and I thought that he would forever hold his head in that position. High drama may last for no more than a moment, but in our memories it lives on as an hour, an aeon. On impulse I slowed the car.
    “God,” said the stranger.
    “Oh, God above,” said Elma.
    “What are you doing to me, Elma?” he asked in half a whimper. “What are you doing to me?”
    “Dan, you’re after me, aren’t you?” she wailed. “Aren’t you?”
    “What-what?” said Jimmy Bermingham, also waking up—at which moment the stranger clasped his hand to his own upper body and said, “Elma, I think ’tis the case that you’re after poisoning me.”
    At those words he turned back to face the windshield and began to convulse. He grabbed his left biceps and fought for breath as his face turned first red and then ash-gray. Twisting in the seat, he scrabbled a hand toward his door, as though to escape. Then he slumped. His head, heavy as a rock, fell onto my shoulder.

12
    At a later time, I asked Mr. O’Neill where he had learned his trade. He gave me a curt answer: “It’s not a trade, it’s an art.”
    I could tell that he had read Homer. Where Homer repeats phrases such as “Dawn came with rosy fingers,” he, in that first story, repeated three or four times, “Finn MacCool, the greatest man who ever lived,” and “The world took its turns, as the world always does.” I