The Whole Mad Arrangement Waiting

In honor of Bloomsday, a San Francisco GAA odyssey that follows a young hurler from the Sunset to Páirc na nGael on Treasure Island. This work is a piece of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to actual events is purely coincidental.

The cold catches me in the morning still, two weeks and no wiser, Karl the Fog squatting over the avenues and the grey light squeezing through the blinds while somewhere below a truck reverses beep beep beep and Christ the bins rattle and scrape and a bus exhales at the corner and somebody is already buying coffee and another suit and tie already late and somebody is already running for Ocean Beach while sensible people are still asleep. California they said and I thought sunshine and palm trees and instead the cold creeping through the cracked window and the fog sitting over the Sunset as if it has signed a lease and intends to stay. Bigger than home. Louder than home. Wider too. Dublin gathered around itself. San Francisco forever arriving from somewhere else. Croatian tourists consulting maps. Chinese families dragging suitcases. Construction lads from Mayo and Galway. Tech fellows from places nobody ever heard of building things nobody understands. Students. Backpackers. Dreamers. Drifters. A girl from Nebraska on my second night asking where Ireland is. Nebraska. Somewhere in the middle where the sea never reaches. Wheatfields for days. Tractors. Sky. A horizon you could spend your whole life walking towards. San Francisco the sort of place where everyone arrives and nobody entirely leaves.

The room not mine yet. Two weeks is camping indoors. Duffel bag half-open. Boots beneath the chair. Hurleys against the wall. Jamie murdering a song in the shower. Somebody battering cupboard doors. Coffee drifting under the door. My phone lighting up. The Sunset girl. Some bar after the airport days. Couldn't find it again if I tried. What is hurling she asked and I made a complete balls of it because nobody has ever explained it to me either. You playing today? Yeah. Good luck. Grand. Treasure Island. Sounds invented. Like Atlantis. Neverland. A place made entirely of fog and geese and lads arguing about county hurling beneath container ships bound for Japan.

Mam and Dad asleep now. Eight hours ahead. The arithmetic of distance. If I am waking they are sleeping. If they are waking I am heading for bed. The championship carrying on without me. Limerick maybe. Cork maybe. Galway if things fall right. Clare if Tony Kelly can. Everybody's an expert from three thousand miles away. Arguments survive the journey. Counties packed carefully into carry-on luggage. Clearing customs without difficulty. Somebody from Cork still convinced Cork are God's chosen county. Somebody from Clare equally convinced. The certainty itself more important than the truth.

Matt's outside. Engine running. Jamie already there. Seamus in the back. Hurleys rattling together. Ash on ash. Comfort in that sound. Through the city then. Towers catching sunlight above the fog. Cable cars climbing impossible hills. A cruise ship tied up at the waterfront larger than villages, larger than common sense, preparing to leave for Alaska or Mexico or somewhere else. Then the Bay Bridge lifting us above everything. Alcatraz in the water like a stubborn thought. Cargo ships in the bay. The Golden Gate beyond them all. The Pacific beyond that. Hawaii somewhere out there. Asia beyond Hawaii. Distance measured not in miles but imagination.

Limerick says Jamie. Cork says Seamus. Galway maybe. Nobody knows. The bridge carries us over the argument. Then there it is below. Treasure Island. Páirc na nGael. Goalposts and geese. The Bay Bridge one end. Golden Gate the other. A hurling pitch dropped into California by mistake and nobody bothered correcting it.

By throw-in the fog has gone and the sun cream is on. The smell of it mixing with liniment and grass and goose shite and salt blown in from the Pacific. Somebody already striking balls. The clean crack carrying over the water. Construction workers. Students. Accountants. Electricians. Whatever we are tomorrow. Hurlers today. The sliotar climbing into blue sky above. Above the city. Above all of it.

Winning matters. Jaysus it matters. No parish depending on it. No county. No Liam MacCarthy waiting at the end of the road. But still. For the lads beside you. For the lifts. For the training. For not wanting to be the fella who let one slip through his hands. Pride. Still the right word.

The whistle. Everything narrowing. No city now. No bridge. No cargo ships. No Nebraska. No Sunset girl. No Cork. No Tipperary. Only the yellow blur dropping from sunlight and the hand rising after it.

Man on.

Time.

Over the bar.

Again.

Again.

Again.

Wind carrying the ball farther than it should. Aim for the near post. Trust it. Watch it drift. Over. A cheer. Sharp and brief. Satisfaction lasting a heartbeat before the next chase begins. The next ball. The next run. The next score. Legs burning. Hands stinging. Sun overhead. The whole world reduced to fifteen thousand square metres and a sliotar.

Then because all things end, the whistle again. Silence for a second. Water bottles. Handshakes. Hard luck. Good man. The city returning piece by piece. The Bay. The bridges. The Pacific. The championship. The girls. Home. The ref. Somebody checking scores. Somebody into the pints. The ordinary miracle of a Sunday completed.

And there it is again.

The whole mad arrangement.

Still waiting.