“OK,” Cal says. “Gimme some advice.”

“Now,” Mart says approvingly. “That’s better.”

He settles himself deeper into the banquette and gazes up at the damp-stains on the ceiling. The music has slowed to something old and haunting, the tin whistle spinning a tune whose shapes are strange to Cal, the fiddle a long low drone underneath.

“After the brother died,” Mart says, “I was at a bit of a loose end. All on my ownio in them dark winter evenings, no one to chat to. I wasn’t myself, like; my mind wouldn’t settle. ’Twasn’t healthy. So I’ll tell you what I did. I went into a bookshop in Galway, and I got them to order me a load of books on the aul’ geology. I read them books from cover to cover. I can tell you everything there is to know about the geology round here.”

He points at the little window, coated thickly with darkness. “D’you know those mountains out there,” he says, “where you went for your wee bit of a saunter the other day? Those are red sandstone. Four hundred million years ago, those were laid down, when the land was right down by the equator. ’Twasn’t green then; it was nothing but red desert, hardly a living thing on it. But it got the rain then, too, torrents of it. If you go up in those mountains and you dig about a bit, you’ll find layers of pebbles and sand and muck, and that tells you there were flash floods out in that desert. A few million years after that, a coupla continents smashed into each other, and they crumpled up those mountains like bits of paper; that’s why some of those rocks do be standing up vertical. A volcano shot rocks into the air and sent lava flowing down the mountainside.”

He reaches for his pint, smiling at Cal. “When you went for your wee wander,” he says, “that’s what you were wandering over. It’s a great comfort to me, knowing that. The things we do up those mountains, your walk and Malachy’s still and all the rest of it, they don’t make a blind bit of difference. No more than the midges.”

He raises his pint to Cal and takes a long swallow. “That’s what I did,” he says, wiping foam off his lip, “when I caught my mind getting restless.”

Cal says, “I don’t know if geology’s my style.”

“Doesn’t have to be the geology,” Mart reassures him. “Whatever you fancy yourself. Astronomy, maybe—sure, haven’t you the whole sky at your disposal, now you’re away from the city lights? Get yourself an aul’ telescope and a few charts, and away you go. Or a bitta Latin might suit you. You strike me as a man who never got all the education he could handle. We’ve a great tradition here of going out and getting our own education, if no one offers it to us on a plate. Seeing as you’re here now, it’s only right you should join in.”

“Is this like buying Bobby a harmonica?” Cal asks. “Keep me busy, so I don’t start doing crazy shit?”

“I’m looking out for you, is all,” Mart says. The twist of mockery is, for once, gone from his voice; his eyes are steady on Cal’s. “You’re a dacent man, and I’d like to see you happy here. You deserve that.”

He claps Cal on the shoulder, his face breaking into a grin. “And if you go alien-mad like Bobby, I’m the one that’ll have to listen to you. Get yourself a telescope. And go on up there and get me a pint, in exchange for all that good advice.”

By the time Cal returns, walking very carefully, with Mart’s pint and his own, the conversation is clearly over: Mart is deep in an argument with a couple of the guys about the relative merits of two TV game shows Cal has never heard of, and breaks off only long enough to throw Cal a wink as he takes his glass.

The night goes on. The argument about TV shows gets heated enough that Cal keeps a hand on the table in case someone tries to turn it over, and then somehow dissipates in a burst of insults and laughter. Deirdre sings “Crazy” in a mournful contralto, her head thrown back and her eyes closed. The Lucozade bottle empties, and Malachy produces another one from under the table. The musical corner takes off into a wild reel that has people stamping and slapping tables to the beat.

“D’you know what we thought when you first came?” Bobby shouts over the music, louder than necessary, to Cal. His hair is straggling out of its neat combover and he’s having trouble focusing on Cal’s face. “We thought you were one of them American preachers, and you’d be standing in the road shouting about Judgment Day.”

“I didn’t,” Senan says. “I thought you were one of them hipster shites and you’d be asking Noreen for avocados.”

“It was the beard that done it,” Mart explains to Cal. “We don’t see many like that around here. It needed accounting for.”

“This fella thought you were on the run,” someone else says, nudging his neighbor.

“Just lazy,” Cal says. “I let the shaving slide for a while, and next thing you know, this happened.”

“We’ll give you a hand with that,” the deep-voiced guy in the corner says.

“I’ve got used to it,” Cal says. “I think I’ll hang on to it a while longer.”

“Lena’s got a right to see what’s under there, before she gets herself into anything.”

“You’ll be only gorgeous.”

“Noreen’s got razors.”

“Barty! Give us the shop key there!”

They’re all grinning at Cal, leaning forwards, glasses going down. The reel beats in the air like a pulse.

Cal has been sizing them up all evening, just in case. The deep-voiced guy in the corner is his top priority. He and Senan are going to be trouble, and probably Malachy; if Cal can take care of them, the rest are likely to back down. He readies himself, as best he can.

“Get outa that,” Mart tells them, throwing an arm around Cal’s shoulders. “I told ye all from the start, this fella was sound as a pound. And wasn’t I right? If he wants a big Chewbacca head on him, he can have one.”

For a moment the alcove is still, balanced on the edge and ready to tip either way. Then Senan roars with laughter and the rest join in, like they were just kidding all along. “The face on him,” someone says, “thought he was about to be fuckin’ sheared like a sheep,” and someone else shouts, “Look at him there, ready to take on the lot of us! Get up, ya boy ya!”

They settle back into their seats, still laughing, with their eyes still on Cal, and someone shouts to Barty to bring this madman another pint. Cal stares right back at them and laughs as long and loud as the rest. He wonders which of these men is the most likely to spend his nights in a field with a sheep and a sharp knife.

Senan sings something in what must be Irish, long melancholy phrases with a quaver at the end, his head back and his eyes closed. The deep-voiced guy, whose name turns out to be Francie, slides over to introduce himself to Cal; this somehow spirals into a full account of how Francie’s true love left him because he had to look after his mother through her twelve-year decline, a story heartrending enough that Cal is moved to buy Francie a pint and they both need another shot of poteen. At some point Deirdre is gone, and so is the buck-naked window guy. Someone sets off the rubber fish behind the bar when Barty isn’t looking, and they all sing “I Will Survive” along with it, at the top of their lungs.