The Ring of Kerry

As a girl, Eena one day heard someone make mention of the Ring of Kerry. To her childish mind then, a title so grand could never be given to a thing so ordinary as a route for tourists to traipse; a magnificent name such as that could only be fit for a splendid piece of jewelry, a ring that might grace the finger of a queen. Even after the mundane truth became known to her, there was always a spot set aside in her heart for the real Ring of Kerry, the genuine, golden, gem-laden article of fabulous beauty and imponderable worth.

And so the first time she laid eyes on her grandmother's ring, there it was. "You should have seen the thing, Mister," she told Lafferty. They were in the bed of her room above the restaurant, she with the sheet up to her chin to hide the flatness of her chest. She was a stray, a mutt, skinny as a reed, unruly red hair immune to the brush, ears that stuck out like the handles on a jug, and brown eyes so big they could occupy her face entirely. Thin light from the cloudy afternoon squeezed through the blinds of the window, and he could hear the warble of a tin whistle from the Commodore Pub across the street. "The grandest thing I ever seen," she said. "Fine, delicate carvings, little circles and twirls all around it, they might have been etched there by the angels. Lovely emeralds like clusters of green stars, and gold thick and shiny as the icing on a cupcake."

"The Ring of Kerry," said Lafferty. "Old, was it?"

"Ancient. My great-great-grandda discovered the thing one day in the bog when he was gathering turf for his fire. In a rotted old leather packet, as though it had been hid there long ago and somehow forgot."

"Whatever become of it?"

"That's the thing of it, Mister. My grandda buried it with her."

He caught his breath. "In the ground?"

She nodded. "Like the bloody Egyptians. He said how she loved it, her only treasure in the world, and he buried the bloody thing with her in her grave."

"Surely someone would have . . ."

She shook her head. "He told no one, you see. Folded her hands just so."

"He told you."

"I was a lass on his knee. Forever talking about the Ring of Kerry. And doesn't he let it slip out of himself one day when he was well in his cups."

At that moment, the possibility had already unfurled itself before him. He could persuade her to go away with him, to retrieve the ring from the grave of her granny, and they'd run off together, just the two of them. He could do it, he was certain, easy as persuading a flea to hop, for he was aware of his own powers of persuasion with members of the gentler gender, attributable largely to the sincerity of the dimple on his chin.

But would it be right? He was not keen to use the innocent young thing for his own greedy gain. She was a waitress, or tried to be. After his meal at the Sugarshack Restaurant, the first time in the spring he'd ever laid eyes on her, she'd followed him out into the street. "Wait, Mister," she'd called. Ever since, he'd been Mister. "Wait—you're after leaving your money on the table in there."

"Why, that's yours," Lafferty had said. "That's your tip."

"Tip?" she'd said, her freckles all up in a bunch.

There were other considerations as well. His wife, Peggy, for example. The degree of their estrangement notwithstanding, they were still man and wife, and for all the cause he might have given her, she'd never once betrayed him. Lafferty drew the line at betrayal.

And there was a man, Lafferty had learned, an abusive man by the name of Ray, from Dublin, a criminal of some sort, though the exact nature of his criminality remained a bit of a mystery. What Eena...