Malarkey by Sheila Simonson

wind
freshened.
    I walked around the dolmen several times and even stuck
my head under the huge capstone. I was searching for meaning, but
the symbolism eluded me. When Dad began to shiver in the rising
wind, we headed back to the car. As we walked, I kept looking over
my shoulder at the massive stones. Just east of Carlow, a roundabout
shunted us north onto the N9, and it began to sleet. I turned the
windshield wipers on without messing with the turn signal, a sign of
progress.
    We had a snack for lunch at a pub in Castledermot, a town
with Celtic high crosses we didn't pause to investigate. The sleet
stopped, and the sun peeped out.
    We reached Ballitore at two and found the museum. A
Quaker academy and meeting hall had been restored as a public
library. Museum exhibits—working tools from the village grist mill,
items of clothing, ledgers in neat copperplate—ringed the main floor
library. Up a flight of stairs from the foyer lay a small meeting hall
that was still used for religious purposes.
    I looked. I listened while Dad talked to the nice librarian. I
followed the two men upstairs and admired the rows of plain
wooden pews, two and two, facing each other, in the tiny meeting
hall. The Friends who met there had no visual distractions. They
would have to look at each other's faces. Not a bad idea,
philosophically. I found the museum interesting, but my mind kept
drifting back to the dolmens.
    What did they mean? How did the dairy farmers who owned
the land cope with their daily presence? A Quaker cemetery lay not
far from the Ballitore museum. I was looking at a Quaker meeting
hall and thinking about neolithic dolmens. The artifacts of religion
are sometimes very strange.
    We left Ballitore before four-thirty. I believe my father
would have stayed until the library closed, but I wanted to get back
to the cottage and settle in.
    I drove past the ruins of the huge mill around which the
Friends had built their settlement, then turned onto the N9, retracing
our route as the simplest way to get back. There were any number of
one-lane alternatives. I took a wrong turning and we missed the
dolmens.
    As we left Tinahealy, Dad said, "You didn't like the
museum."
    "I thought it was fascinating!" I braked for a manure hauler,
passed it.
    "Really?"
    "Really. The bride's gray bonnet was especially
fetching."
    "Edmund Burke was a student at the academy."
    "I heard that part, Dad." And Napper Tandy, the nationalist. I
wondered why my father didn't mention him.
    I met with Napper Tandy and I took him by the
hand,
And I said how's poor old Ireland, and how does she
stand?
She's the most distressful country that ever yet was
seen.
They're hanging men and women for the wearing of the
green.
    My father sighed. "I've never asked you what you feel about
the Friends." His tone warned me the indirect question was a serious
one.
    I geared down behind a slow-moving car and tried to focus
my mind. "I have great admiration for their courage and
patience."
    "Did you always feel that way?"
    A straight stretch of empty road permitted me to pass. I
waited until I had pulled back into my lane then said, "When I was
small, I didn't think about it much. I loved my grandparents and the
farm."
    My Quaker grandfather had suffered a stroke in his sixties.
Unfortunately, he had been driving a car at the time. Like Kayla's
parents, he and my grandmother were killed in the wreck. It would
be natural for my father to brood about that, given his own
stroke.
    After a moment, I added, "I remember the funeral service.
I've always thought that was the way funerals were supposed to be.
'I will teach you, my townspeople, how to conduct a funeral.'" The
quote from Carlos Williams was inappropriate, but my father didn't
object.
    We drove for a while in Friendly silence.
    Dad eased his seatbelt. "I left the Meeting when I married
your mother."
    "Would the Friends have disapproved of Ma?" My voice
squeaked with surprise. My mother was not of Quaker descent, but it
was she,