“Doone,” said Snell-Orkney. “Or perhaps Hoolihan. Your an-them sprinters!”
Everyone smiled, proud of his intuition.
“Now,” said Timulty, his voice husky with emotion, his eyes squinted off at the scene, “at this very moment, not one hundred yards down the slight hill, in the comfortable dark of the Grafton Street Theatre, seated on the aisle of the fourth row center, is—”
“Doone,” I said.
“The man’s eerie,” said Hoolihan, lifting his cap to me.
“Well …” Timulty swallowed. “Doone’s there, all right. He’s not seen the fillum before—it’s a Deanna Durbin brought back by the asking—and the time is now … ”
Everyone glanced at the wall clock.
“Ten o’clock!” said the crowd.
“And in just fifteen minutes the cinema will be letting the customers out for good and all.”
“And?” I asked.
“And,” said Timulty. “And! If we should send Hoolihan, here, in for a test of speed and agility, Doone would be ready to meet the challenge.”
“You people don’t go to the cinema just for an anthem sprint, do you?” asked Snell-Orkney.
“Good grief, no. We go for the Deanna Durbin songs and all. But if Doone, for instance, should casually note the entrance of Hoolihan, here, who would make himself conspicuous by his late arrival just across from Doone, well, Doone would know what was up.
They would salute each other and both sit listening to the dear music until finis hove in sight.”
“Sure.” Hoolihan danced lightly on his toes, flexing his elbows. “Let me at him, let me at him!”
Timulty peered close at me. “Lad, I observe that the details of the sport have bewildered you. How is it, you ask, that full-grown men have time for such as this? Well, time is the one thing the Irish have plenty of lying about.
With no jobs at hand, what’s minor in your country must be made to look major in ours. We have never seen the elephant, but we’ve learned a bug under a microscope is the greatest beast on earth. So while it hasn’t passed the border, the anthem sprint’s a high-blooded sport once you’re in it. Let me nail down die rules!”
“First,” said Hoolihan reasonably, “knowing what they know now, find out if these gents want to bet.”
Everyone looked at Snell-Orkney and me to see if their reasoning had been wasted.
“Yes,” we said.
All agreed we were better than human.
“Designations are in order,” said Timulty. “Here’s Fogarty, exit-watcher supreme. Nolan and Clannery, aisle-superintendent judges. Clancy, timekeeper. And general spectators O’Neill, Bannion, and the Kelly boys, count ’em! Come on!”
I felt as if a vast street-cleaning machine, one of those brambled monsters all mustache and scouring brush, had seized me. The amiable mob floated Snell-Orkney and associates and myself down the hill toward the multiplicity of little blinking lights where the cinema lured us on. Hustling, Timulty shouted the essentials:
“Much depends on the character of the theater, of course!”
“Of course!” I yelled back.
“There be the liberal freethinking theaters, with grand aisles, grand exits, and even grander, more spacious latrines. Some with so much porcelain, the echoes alone put you in shock. Then there’s the parsimonious mousetrap cinemas, with aisles that squeeze the breath from you, seats that knock your knees, and doors best sidled out of on your way to the men’s lounge in the sweet shop across the alley. Each theater is carefully assessed, before, during, and after a sprint, the facts set down.
A man is judged then, and his time reckoned good or inglorious, by whether he had to fight his way through men and women en masse, or mostly men, mostly women, or, the worst, children at the flypaper matinees. The temptation with children, of course, is to lay into them as you’d harvest hay, tossing them in windrows to left and right, so we’ve stopped that. Now mostly it’s nights here at the Grafton!”
The mob stopped. The twinkling theater lights sparkled in their eyes and flushed their cheeks.
“The ideal cinema,” said Fogarty.
“Why?” I asked.
“Its aisles,” said Clannery, “are neither too wide nor too narrow, its exits well placed, the door hinges oiled, the crowds a proper mixture of sporting bloods and folks who mind enough to leap aside should a sprinter, squandering his energy, come dashing up the aisle.”
I had a sudden thought. “Do you … handicap your runners?”
“We do! Sometimes by shifting exits when the old are known too well. Or we put a summer coat on one, a winter coat on another. What else? Now, Doone, being fleet, is a two-handicap man. Nolan!” Timulty held forth a flask. “Run this in. Make Doone take two swigs, big ones.”
Nolan ran.
Timulty pointed. “While Hoolihan, here, having already gone through all Four Provinces of the pub this night, is amply weighted. Even all!”
“Go now, Hoolihan,” said Fogarty. “Let our money be a light burden on you. We’ll see you bursting out that exit ten minutes from now, victorious and first!”
“Let’s synchronize watches!” said Clancy.
“Synchronize my back-behind,” said Timulty. “Which of us has more than dirty wrists to stare at? It’s you alone, Clancy, has the time. Hoolihan, inside!”
Hoolihan shook hands with them all, as if leaving for a trip around the world. Then, waving, he vanished into the cinema darkness.
At which moment, Nolan burst back out, holding high the half-empty flask. “Doone’s handicapped!”
“Fine! Clannery, go check the contestants, be sure they sit opposite each other in the fourth row, as agreed, caps on, coats half buttoned, scarves properly furled. Report back to me.”
Clannery ran into the dark.
“The ushers, the ticket taker?” Snell-Orkney wondered.
“Are inside, watching the fillum,” said Timulty. “So much standing is hard on the feet. They won’t interfere.”
“It’s ten-thirteen,” announced Clancy. “In two more minutes—”
“Post time?” I said.
“You’re a dear lad,” admitted Timulty.
Clannery came hotfooting out.
“Ready! In the proper seats and all!”
“ ’Tis almost over! You can tell—toward the end of any fillum the music has a way of getting out of hand.”
“It’s loud, all right,” agreed Clannery. “Full orchestra and chorus behind the singing maid now. I must come tomorrow for the entirety. Lovely.”
“Is it?” said all.
“What’s the tune?”
“Ah, off with the tune!” said Timulty. “One minute to go, and you ask the tune! Lay the bets. Who’s for Doone? Who Hoolihan?” There was a multitudinous jabbering and passing back and forth of small change.
I held out four shillings
“Doone,” I said.
“Without having seen him sprint?”
“A dark horse.”
“Well said!” Timulty spun about. “Clannery, Nolan, inside, as aisle judges! Watch sharp there’s no jumping the finis.”
In went Clannery and Nolan, happy as boys.
“Make an aisle, now. Yank, you and Snell and Orkney over here with me!”
We rushed to form an aisle between the two closed main entrance-exit doors.
“Fogarty, lay your ear to the door!”
This Fogarty did. His eyes widened.
“The damn music is extra loud!”
One of the Kelly boys nudged his brother. “It will be over soon. Whoever is to die is dying this moment. Whoever is to live is bending over him.”
“Louder still!” announced Fogarty, head to the door panel, hands twitching as if he were adjusting a radio. “There! That’s the grand ta-ta that comes just as THE END jumps on the screen.”
“They’re off!” I murmured.
“Hush!” said Timulty. “There’s the anthem! Tenshun!”
We all stood erect. Someone saluted.
But still we stared at the door.
“I hear feet running,” said Fogarty.
“Whoever it is had a good start before the anthem—”
The door burst wide.
Hoolihan plunged to view, smiling such a smile as only breathless victors know.
“Hoolihan!” cried the winners.
“Doone!” cried the losers, myself and Snell-Orkney. “Where’s Doone?”
For, while Hoolihan was first, a competitor was lacking.
“The idiot didn’t come out the wrong door?”
We waited. The audience shuffled off and was gone.
Timulty ventured first into the empty lobby.
“Doone?” he called.
Silence.
“Could it be he’s in there?”
Someone flung the Gents’ door wide. “Doone?”
No echo.
“Good grief,” cried Timulty. “It can’t be he’s broken a leg and lies on the aisle slope with the mortal agonies?”
“That’s it!”
The island of men, heaving one way, changed gravities and heaved the other, toward the inner door, through it, and down the aisle, Snell-Orkney, chums, and myself in hot pursuit.
“Doone!”
Clannery and Nolan were there to meet us and pointed silently down. I jumped in the air twice to see over the mob’s head. It was dark in the vast theater. I saw nothing.
“Doone!”
Then at last the mob bunched near the fourth row on the aisle. I heard their boggled exclamations, staring at Doone.
He was still seated in the fourth row, his hands folded, eyes shut.
Dead?
None of that.
A tear, large, luminous, and beautiful, fell on his cheek. Another tear, larger and more lustrous, emerged from his other eye. His chin was wet. It was certain he had been crying for some while.
We peered into his face, circling, leaning.
“Doone, are ya sick?”
“Is it fearful news?”
“Ah, God,” cried Doone. He shook himself to find the strength, somehow, to speak.
“Ah, God,” he said at last, “she has a voice of an angel.”
“Angel?”
“That one up there.” He nodded.
We turned to stare at the empty silver screen.
“Is it Deanna Durbin?”
Doone sobbed. “The dear dead voice of me grandmother come back—”
“Your grandma’s behind!” exclaimed Timulty. “She had no such voice!”
“And who’s to know, save me?” Doone blew his nose, dabbed at his eyes.
“You mean to say it was just the Durbin lass kept you from the sprint?”
“Just!” cried Doone. “Just! Why, it would be sacrilege to bound from a cinema after a recital like that. You might as well jump across the altar during a wedding, or waltz about at a funeral.”
“You could’ve at least warned us it was no contest.” Timulty glared.
“How could I?
