Deaths Excellent Vacation

the buildings. Long trestle tables and benches were ranged around it. Lamplight gushed from the open door and all the windows. The tables were full of people happily tucking into shepherd’s pie. Every hand held a glass. The smell of the lamb and potatoes was enticing.
    Pat picked up a plate and a glass. Perhaps he’d wait until tomorrow to make his getaway.
    The fire grew higher, sending out sparks in bursts of blue, red, gold, and green. In a haze of alcohol and peat smoke, Pat thought what a neat trick it was to make it seem as if the fireworks were coming out of the center of the blaze.
    There was singing and drinking and dancing and drinking and wrestling matches far into the night. Pat soon realized that he had imbibed more than he could stand. He knew this because he tried to stand and failed. He began to crawl back to the trailer, blaming his lack of stamina on the jet lag.
    His eyes must be going, too. He’d hardly gone ten yards when he felt someone fall on top of him.
    “Oops-a-daisy!” a lilting feminine voice giggled. “Sorry, mate! I didn’t see you down there.”
    Pat muzzily looked around for the source of the body and the voice, but didn’t see anyone. Jerry must have been right. The porter in Ireland was much stronger than the kind they drank in the States. He continued on to the trailer and fell into bed.
     
     
    HE awoke the next morning feeling completely disoriented. The silver curve of the ceiling gave him the impression that he was lying inside a metal ball that was rolling uphill. After several moments spent clutching the edge of his bunk to avoid falling out, he realized that it was only the wind sweeping from the ocean across the treeless land that was rocking the trailer. The door to his parents’ cubicle was ajar. Pat peeked in and found they were gone. The clock on the wall said half past ten.
    As Pat dressed and boiled water for coffee, he read the program that he found on the table.
    “Welcome!!! Welcome!!! Welcome Home!!!” it began.
    Pat liked their enthusiasm. He skimmed down the page. It seemed that he had already missed the full Irish breakfast. The morning seemed to be taken up with seminars, not what he had expected. However, if everyone was inside listening to edifying talks, he should have no trouble creeping off.
    The kettle whistled and Pat sat down again with his mug. He looked over the program more carefully.
    “What the hell . . . ?” he said, reading the titles of the seminars. “ ‘How to keep your pot of gold in trying times.’ ‘Invisibility, the best defense.’ ‘Which end of the rainbow?’ ‘To jig or not to jig: fighting the stereotypes.’ ‘Making shoes that last.’ What kind of nonsense is this?”
    Burning with curiosity and no little annoyance, Pat gulped down his coffee and set out in search of someone who could tell him what this was all about.
     
     
    THE sun was beginning to burn off the morning fog as he crossed the field to the central buildings. Wisps of smoke still rose from the coals of the bonfire. Pat saw no one, although he could hear music coming from the far building. A banner above the door proclaimed this the meeting hall.
    Inside, the building was a typical Irish shotgun house, if much larger than most. A long hallway stretched from front to back, with rooms branching out on either side. The subjects of the talks were posted on the doors. Pat first looked into the one on invisibility, but it was empty. The next room was the talk on keeping a pot of gold. This one was packed. He edged into a space near the door. No one noticed him as they were all intent on the speaker, a solemn woman with thick spectacles and a mound of white hair pulled into a bun.
    “Of course,” she was saying, “apartment living makes subterranean deposits difficult. However, a well-constructed space beneath the floor-boards, preferably in a bedroom, can be used in a pinch.”
    “But what about fire and thieves?” a man in the front row asked.
    “We always have to worry about thieves,” the speaker told him. “As for fire, don’t they teach the protection charms anymore? Really, that should have been explained to you about the time you were weaned, young man. What is this race coming to?”
    She gestured to the audience. “How many here never learned the five essential charms?”
    Over half of the group raised their hands. The woman sighed. “Eithne, add that to the seminars for tomorrow. Just because you’re living away from home