Chapter 1: Taking in a Stray

I know I am running a little late, driving along in the pouring rain to collect my daughter. The potential client who I lunched with in a Cashel pub for over three interminable hours just droned on and on about his damned family. It was all, ‘the wife does this’ and ‘then the wife does the other thing, do’yer believe that?’, which made the lunch even more tortuous than business lunches usually are. I’m a computer engineer, I like fiddling with hardware and software, and love being left alone to get on with installations, upgrading or repairing, but I do have to drum up sales in the form of new custom, too, part of being a one-man band of a huge international company tucked away in a quiet out of the way outpost. Every great job has its downsides. Anyway, discussions about other families just get to me more than they really should.

Yeah, thanks Mac, when he casually asks me if I believe it, when he really doesn’t care if I believe it or not, I do believe it. Yeah, been there, done that once but not recently and never again, probably.

There are some fading memories that never quite fade out to nothing, like those old monitors used to. I know it’s off and will never be switched on again but that little glow lingers on in perpetual torment. So, yeah, sometimes I am only hanging on in the present with more than a foot and half a leg into the past. It’s not that the past was so good for very long but the future just takes me where I really would have no wish to go at all if it wasn’t for Caoimhe being my whole world now.

So, you’re wondering, who’s the grumpy dude you’re reading the sorry thoughts and miscellaneous musings of? Yeah me. I’m Richard (never Dick or Rick or Rich) Kloss and I am also running late because of the Irish weather as well as the overlong lunch. Heavy was the rain until just a minute ago, and the spray from the road thrown up by all the Friday trucks, trying to get the shops supplied for the weekend, is absolutely crazy. I can’t see much of the road in front of me, the rear view is a blur and I have to go slow for safety. Better that Caoimhe wait a few minutes in the sheltered entrance outside the school than forever wait for some loved one who will never come, I know how that feels.

At the moment I am driving Northwards between Cashel and Thurles on the Slievenamon Road, otherwise the N62, which is on the south side of Thurles, County Tipperary.

OK, I know what you’re thinking, ‘Richard Kloss’ doesn’t sound Irish at all, not even an Anglo surname that is still common in the area. So, you might ask, what am I, an American, a single, well-preserved 39 years of age computer engineer from Santa Monica, Sunny California, doing here in the rain in the rural centre of Ireland?

Well, I’m of Irish extraction mixed with German (one side of my family moved to the States from Ireland in 1846 and the other side from the Palatine region of Bavaria in 1848, according to the immigration records, then moved across country by the 1920s to become a middle class white family in Pico District, my great-grandpa working the aircraft building industry).

As far as I know I’m the only one of my family who has returned to Ireland to live. I and we like it here, ‘we’ being my daughter and I.

It’s all Caoimhe has known anyway, other than the odd Thanksgiving trip ‘home’, and even ‘home’ has changed in her lifetime. My parents moved to Culver City while I was in college for a while and retired to Florida five years ago, so Ireland, Thurles in particular, is definitely home for my little family of two.

I moved to Cork from California about twelve years ago as a post-grad at University College Cork doing my Masters Degree in Computer Science. I met an adorable local girl, redhead Ella Bernadette Walsh, we married, we had a kid, my wife El died while giving birth and my baby and I stayed on in the cottage that we bought in Thurles. When I say in, I mean a couple of kilometres south of the town centre, on the very road we are travelling on, as it happens.

I’m playing Leonard Cohen on Bluetooth, that’s the kinda mood I’m usually in when I’m on my own, so bite me, why don’t ya?

When I pick Caoimhe up from school in a few minutes then of course I’ll be willingly forced to play song after song of Olivia Rodrigo, a singer that she is so into right now. Well, she is 10 going on 20, my girl.

The windscreen wipers are wiping on max and barely coping with the wet even though I suspect the rain has slowed or even stopped. There is so much spray, though, it’s like driving through a thick cloud. I’m doing barely 60km/hr on the N62, the visibility is that poor. Especially as there’s a big silver truck ahead of me with no wheel flaps, that’s sending up a wall of spray so my view of the road is rivalling one from the Maid of the Mist at Niagra Falls. I can’t see enough of what’s coming towards me from beyond the truck to risk overtaking, so I drop back a few feet to improve my view of the road.

Now my view is a little bit clearer and I see the big truck go through a huge puddle spreading halfway across our side of the road, sending a huge tsunami wave right across the sidewalk and high hedgerow behind. I slow down as I know there will be a back wash in whatever casual water lies on the road that could drag me off the road.

And there in the middle of the sidewalk after the wave hits the ground, stands a person absolutely drenched from top to toe.

“Damn!” I exclaim and automatically press harder on the brakes.

Well, what would you do? Drive by and toot? No of course not, we’re all perfect gentlemen at heart, aren’t we? It was the truck driver’s fault, maybe he was deliberate splashing or simply couldn’t see the person and drove by unaware of what they’ve done? It must be another 5 or 6km to Thurles. A long way to walk when you’ve stepped out of a dirty cold shower in the clothes you’re dressed in. Can’t just abandon them, someone has to stop, I mean we regular motorists are the modern-day knights of the road.

So I check the mirror. I can’t see anything in the misty cloud coming up behind me, yup, cautious and careful’s my middle name when I’m driving in Ireland, even after 12 years it still feels like I’m driving on the wrong side of the road.

Yeah, I know, the locals would call me an eejit, but here I am stopping for someone on a lonely road on a miserable day. Not all hitchikers are Texas chain saw handlers, I tell myself. Well, I have picked up the odd one here, much more readily than I ever would Stateside and have never met a murderer yet. As for safety in stopping, I’ve got my fogs on front and rear, so I should be seen even if I stop for a minute or so on what passes as a fast road in Ireland.

I indicate left and switch it to hazards, and slow to a stop next to who I can now see is a woman, well, a girl really, very slim build, 5 foot 5 or 5 foot 6, I guess, probably a student who can’t afford to use the bus up from the Horse & Jockey. She’s just lowering one hand after no doubt delivering a suitable sign language message to the driver. It could have been a middle finger but I’ve noticed that the two-finger reverse ‘Victory’ sign seems to find most favour around these parts.

The girl is wearing running gear, a T and shorts, trainers without socks and carrying a large purse over her shoulder, sorry a handbag — El was always correcting me on that. Her dark hair plastered flat against her head. Everything she has is streaming water.

I step out of the car without thinking and step straight into the feckin’ puddle up right up over my ankles, the very puddle I knew was there but had forgotten already.

And these are my best court shoes that I only ever wear to meet clients or potential clients. Usually, like the soaked girl here, I favour trainers for everyday wear. Hey look, I do jog ... not every day, no, but three times a week before work, to be honest three times some weeks.

“Hey, there,” I call across the roof of the car. “Do you need a lift, ma’am? I’m heading towards Thurles?”

The woman is wet through and dripping, no, make that streaming. But she smiles, quire sweetly, considering circumstances, saying, “No thanks soir, I’s fine.”