An Irish Gathering

An Irish Gathering Thomas said you can’t go home again but I did for my sister and the christening of her first. Everyone, on folding chairs, against the whitewashed basement walls, was there for ham and beef and beer, the better bourbons, music, argument and talk. Maura came; she hadn’t married. Paddy, fist around a beer, declared I owed my family the sight of me more often. Hannah, thickset now, gray and apronless, rose beside the furnace, wolverined me to the coal bin door and asked me in the face, with sibilance and spittle, who or what it was that kept me anywhere, everywhere, but there. Donal Mahoney