The Last of the High Kings Read Online Free

he fell. “What’ll the young lad drink?”
    â€œI’m fine,” said Donal.
    â€œIndeed you are fine,” said Mikey. He turned to J.J. “Will he have a small drop? For the night that’s in it?”
    â€œHe won’t,” said J.J. “He’s only nine.”
    Mikey poured three large glasses anyway, and then, leaning on the furniture, he made his way back to the fireside chair. As he lowered himself down into it, he groaned. “Oooh. All my joints are seized up, J.J.”
    â€œYou need a drop of oil, so,” said J.J.
    â€œI do,” said Mikey. “But I can’t find out where to put it. Amazing they wouldn’t tell you that, isn’t it?”
    J.J. laughed. “Do you not have the manual, Mikey?”
    â€œWhatever about the manual, you have the cure there in your hand.” He pointed to the fiddle case, and J.J. and Donal began to unpack their instruments.
    As they played, J.J. wondered whether there wasn’t some truth in what the old man had said. The music might not have freed up Mikey’s joints, but it, and nodoubt the whiskey too, certainly lubricated his spirits. They played tunes that he knew, and he called out their names and began keeping time, first with his fingers on the arm of his chair, then with his palms on his knees, and finally with both feet on the ash-strewn hearth. Between the sets of tunes he reminisced about old times: the dances he had attended; the people he had met at them; the sweethearts he had never, in the end, married. By eleven o’clock, when he got up to refill his glass, he was a lot steadier than he had been, and his cheeks had lost their unhealthy pallor. By eleven-thirty, when J.J. announced that it was time for them to go home, he looked ten years younger, and he refused to let them leave without one more tune.
    So Donal played “The Cow That Ate the Blanket,” and J.J. quietly poured their untouched whiskey back into the bottle. There was no chance Mikey would notice. He was sitting up straight in his chair, slapping his knees and roaring, “Go on, ya, boy, ya!” and “Up Galway!” Donal played the tune through five times and finally wound up with a dramatic chord. Then he and J.J. packed up their instruments, and Mikey accompanied them, slowly but very steadily, to the front door and out into the yard.
    The last of the clouds had drifted eastward, and the sky was clear. The moon was so bright that they could see one another’s faces.
    â€œYou should lock your door, Mikey,” said J.J. “You never know who might come wandering around these days.”
    â€œSure, if I lock the door, how will I ever get out?” said Mikey mischievously. “And besides, who would I be afraid of? Amn’t I the last of the High Kings?”
    J.J. had heard this before, many times. Not just from Mikey either. There were people all over Ireland making the same claim. But it was new to Donal.
    â€œAre you?” he said.
    â€œI am,” said Mikey. “And when I’m gone, that will be the last of the Cullens. The last of the High Kings.” He swept an outstretched arm in a semicircle that might have encompassed the tiny yard, the whole of Moy and Funchin, or the entire county of Galway. “It all belonged to the Cullens at one time.”
    The moonlight was even strong enough for J.J. to see the face of his watch. It was eleven forty-five.
    â€œWell, Happy New Year to you, Mikey,” he said, edging toward the car.
    â€œThe same to you,” said Mikey, “and many happy returns.”
    â€œGo in now, before you get cold,” said J.J.
    â€œI will,” said Mikey, “but come here. There’s something I want you to do for me.”
    â€œWhat’s that?”
    â€œI won’t be seeing another new year.”
    â€œAh, now—” J.J. began, but Mikey cut him off.
    â€œNo, no. Hear me out. There’s one last thing I want to