Harvest Visit

    Máire was coming up on Hallow E'en. "Up", that is, to the country from Dublin. She had been gone for three years now, exactly three years on November Second, All Souls Day. The Harvest had always been an important time for her, when she had often felt compelled to visit her family in County Mayo.
    As she waited on the wide cold walk of O'Connel Street for the bus, she thought of Conor and Donel, her ancient uncles, sipping cups of strong tea by a glowing turf fire. She especially thought of the effects of light on early autumn evenings, the elusive shadows cast by the turf flames and coals on the ceiling competing with those of the unshaded electric lights arching to the walls and floor. The men would be jolly and snug in the warmth of their cottage, one of only four situated at Keene's Cross. The thoughts of warmth and crossroads brought her back to the present. Now she looked forward to the half-warmth of the bus. It arrived from nowhere, and equally from nowhere three-dozen passengers appeared.
    Máire's black winter coat was sensible, overlapping in the front, with a broad collar, and falling nearly to the ankle. Her long hair was tucked up into a brown knit cap. Cap and coat would keep her warm on the five-hour trip to the west: two hours to Athelone, a brief stop, and three hours on to the coast. She climbed aboard the unofficial "tour" bus. She worked her way about half-way back the narrow aisle and sat next to another young woman.
    "It's a dreadful day, no?" she said as she slid into the seat.
     The girl, maybe 18 or 19, undoubtedly one of the factory commuters who've sprung up from the West in recent years, kept her eyes fixed on a fashion magazine.
    A long cold trip! thought Máire. She didn't attempt any more conversation but leaned back in her seat and tried to sleep.
    Visions of uncle Conor filled her mind as she listened to a young man behind her talk about the fairies and how they traveled on this evening and could, without a bus mind you, cover the length and breadth of the land. So you wouldn't really want to be out and about on All Saints Eve, now, or the fairies find you. Though they might not mean you special harm, it would be dangerous to encounter them on a gloomy Oiche Shamhna.
    The bus agent arrived at the seat, looked hard at the ticket of the reading girl, and then looked at Máire and said, "Well, this one's free tonight; and a hard night it's becoming, eh?"
    "'Tis," the girl sighed, drawing in air, though it was still only half-conscious assent. She went back to her magazine.
    Máire somehow couldn't think of anything to say. She just looked up at the man, watching him move on back to the next row, and thought that her feet and hands were dreadful cold.
    The rest of the trip was equally uneventful. She drifted across Ireland on the play of surrounding conversations, pieces of words and parts of sentences, floating about her in disarray. Nothing from which to make whole sense.
    Máire woke as the bus passed through Keene's Cross. She quickly collected her purse and started toward the front to have the driver stop, but as she approached a young man tapped the driver's shoulder and the bus slowed. She followed the man off the bus, and he hurried up the lane toward the lights of a cottage. Máire was perhaps a mile beyond the cross, and she turned in the last light of dusk to retrace the distance to her uncle's cottage.
    The wind whipped from the west, almost blowing her along the road into the blackness of the cloudy night. As she walked, Máire felt the cold biting through her coat and penetrating her cap to chill her scalp. She followed the road by instinct, not so much watching the way with her eyes as looking through the black edge of sight toward the farms and fields, the holy well half-way along the way to the cottage, the gate of Púca's Field.
     She could just see the rock walls along the road as she approached the dark corners. Though the cottages would be lit on the inside at this early hour of the evening, none of the little houses cast light far into the outside through the small windows penetrating thick walls.
    Finally, she arrived, and though tired and chilled to the bone she sat on the rock ledge under the window. The place under the window was sheltered from the wind, so she decided to comb her hair. Suddenly, she felt a warmth of heart, though her limbs and face were chilled to insensitivity. She slipped the coat from her shoulders and let her hair fall free against her neck and the white lace of her collar. Taking an ivory comb from her purse she began to comb her hair. She combed hair white as frost, falling on skin white and cold as snow; and then she began to sing soft and low. She sang sonorously and sadly, but oddly with no sense of eagerness to enter the cottage, she thought of her uncle Conor's great gray face, his whiskered cheeks and the shorter white stubble on his chin. She thought of him somehow smiling at her song from the warm window inside. And then he was with her.
    "Come, my dear, you'll catch yer death," he cooed, "Sit down at the hearth with me!"

                                                        *     *     *     *

    Morning's light brought Donal quickly out the door of his cottage, running as well as he could to Old Nellie's little shop at the cross.
    "Conor's gone!", he cried as he pushed his head into the heavy door.  "Conor's gone ... Conor's gone in his sleep! .....  And I heard her last night too! the badhb... an bean sí wailing her keen at the window."
    "Please God, say No! It can't be now!" said Nellie, "and so close to the anniversary of Máire's passing three year's ago, God rest her soul!"