Last edited Mon Mar 18, 2013, 05:57 PM - Edit history (2)
Seamus O'Pud were an ignorant lad what went missing last week with…
…Mary O'Byrne's finest sack of potatoes. Constable O'Feany was informed but reacted in the usual manner.
"Oh he's just a young fellow blowin' off steam, he is. Get yerself back in the kitchen ma'am, and stop complainin' about a fine Irish lad feelin' his wild oats, etcetera."
Danny O'Pud, the janitor at the peat-processing plant, called sick to work and gathered his thirteen children to form a search party for their ignorant sibling.
"I will never forget Seamus and the way he would pick his nose," said Danny, crying. "He dug deep, he did. Deep. There were times I swear he pulled some brains out. He's not made like the rest of us. Not anymore."
"Tis a sad day, then," said the bartender, Aloysius O'Flaherty. "Would you be wantin' anudder pint there, Danny."
"Aye."
"And what about the children, then?"
"They can buy dere own damn drinks, is what I say."
"Please, father," said little Mary O'Pud, barely six years old, smudge-faced, her blue eyes big as saucers and shimmering like the spittle on the Blarney Stone. "Please can we look for Seamus. I am awful warried about me brudder." Her lower lip quivered. "I'm afeared he could die!"
* * *
In a place called the Fell-Glen, where no man in his right mind dare travel, even in the daylight, lay the body of Seamus O'Pud. A rumbling in his belly that sounded like a cat fight, but in a lower pitch, signaled to the ignorant boy that eating raw potatoes was probably not entirely a good thing. He clutched his belly and tried awkwardly to stand up while potato skins lashed against the linings of both his small and large colons.
"What's all the commotion?" said a spritely little man dressed in green felt suit. The wee fellow stood with arms akimbo and a stance as proportionately wide to his height as fabled American Republican Larry Craig's. "I had taken to a good sleep for a few centuries when I heard a sound like two cats fightin', but in a lower pitch. Would that be comin' from your fat belly, child?"
"Aye," said Seamus. "I figger it were from eatin' the raw patitahs, sir."
"That it would be," said the humonculus, extending his tiny hand. "Permit me to introduce meself: Bath-Salts McFlurry, the last of me kind and sleepin' a fine sleep till ya had to et them patitahs. Now I'm wide awake and ready for mischief-makin' or cheatin' a dumb fool out of his youngest, so's I can have me breakfast at long last."
"I ain't the youngest of my faddur's childrun," said Seamus proudly. "So's you woont be having meself on your table. I'd be sittin' dere, maybe, eatin' fine cakes and such, perhaps, but not as a roast of me, on one of yer plates, dead. 'Tis me sister Mary, you be wantin'."
"Aye. Tell me more, dolt," said the grinning creature. "Where can I find dis Mary?"
"Back at the village, wee sir," said Seamus, pointing behind himself. With that, McFlurry was gone and Seamus continued down the trail, clutching his sore stomach.
"Hey, kid!" said a reedy voice. "What the hell are you doing in this glen? It's dangerous here."
"I stole some patitahs and feared troubles fer it back in the village."
"Laying low. I getcha."
As Seamus' eyes adjusted to the light, he could see the speaker was a seven-foot-tall rabbit.
"Me stars and garters, what manner of God's cratures are ya, sir?"
"I'm what's called a 'pooka', kid. I was a tourist and I didn't wave back to the locals when our train went past your village. Some kind of crazy rule you've got here. So now I'm stuck, looking like a big bunny. Forever."
"Me maimeo told me a story once about your like. She said if a pooka gives the wavers some gold or saves a child's life he'll turn back to his old self."
"That's it? I could go back to my old life?"
"Me maimeo said it's happened, sure as banshees scream."
"But I've got no gold and I don't think they'd let me in the village, looking like this."
"No warry, sir. We even had a Kerryman visit once. Me village is powerful tol'rant of stringe-lookin' folk."
"But there's still the problem of the gold."
"Well, I just met a wee fellow I think was a leprechaun. He might supply the gold, but you'd have to be catching him fairst."
"Cool. Where'd he go."
"Thither," said Seamus, again pointing behind himself.
* * *
When McFlurry arrived at the tavern, Danny was on his third pint and loudly grieving the loss of Seamus. The wee fellow sidled up to him.
"It's most fartunate," he said to Danny. "That I may have a clew to your son's location this very night."
"Ya seen him, then?"
"Aye. He was sore from raw patitahs."
"That'd be Seamus. Where be me dear, ignorant son?"
"I'll tell ye if ye can answer me a riddle."
"Yer a leprechaun, then," said Danny angrily. "I heard of yer kind. Go ahead, then. Ask me, and no trickery!"
"Wait before I ask," said Bath-Salts, grinning. "If you can't answer on tree tries, you must give up yer youngest."
"Then I could lose two of my children. I'd be down to eleven, or twelve, not sure which."
"There ya have it, then. Barkeep, give me a whiskey so's I can wet me whistle while this fellow cogitates."
"I'll do it," said Danny, with all the confidence three pints can accord. "Ask your foul riddle."
"Very well," McFlurry snickered. "Here it is, then: What's Irish and stays out all night?"
Danny thought for a moment, then answered, "Sure and that would be me good friend, Dooley O'Hearn, who can drink all night and still be up for plowing at dawn."
"Wrong as what the British did to this fair island," came the leprechaun's reply. "You have two more chances."
Danny thought some more. "It would be Maggie O'Flynn, then. There's always gossip about her dancing all night and her loose morals."
The leprechaun laughed. "Wrong as the Laffer Curve, I'm tellin' ya. You get one more try." As he said it, his beady eyes fell on little Mary, sleeping on the floor at last. He smacked his lips and tucked a handkerchief in his collar.
Before Danny could name another villager, the tavern door burst open and standing there, in a hipster slouch, was a seven-foot rabbit. Most of the patrons paid no attention as they'd been used to seeing fanciful creatures when drinking.
"Excuse me, people," said the rabbit. "Is there a leprechaun here, or, like, a child in danger?"
"Aye. Sure an' there be both tings," answered Danny, pointing to McFlurry with one hand and to little Mary with the other. "I have one more chance to answer this fellow's riddle or he takes me little one."
"Really? What's the riddle?"
The leprechaun was worried now and he seethed as Danny said, "What's Irish and stays out all night?"
"Easy one," said the rabbit. "Patty O'Furniture."
The leprechaun screamed and started to vomit. A steady flow of shiny gold pieces poured out from his every orifice. Danny became the richest man in Ireland. He quit his job and spent all his time with his dear children.
The giant rabbit had fallen to the floor but when he woke up, he was a human again, in a cold sweat, in the middle of the night, in his apartment in Hoboken, NJ. All he remembered was heading out on St. Patrick's Day with his buddy, Dr. Strange, who was annoying him with puerile and sometimes offensive Irish jokes. He hadn't wanted to hear any more but Dr. Strange was relentless, as though it were important, so he'd drunk himself silly and somehow made it home. He remembered a taxi and the rabbit's foot that hung from its rear-view mirror. After collecting his thoughts, he felt sleepy again, and fell into slumber, and had a nightmare about…
…snakes.
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