I had not intended to leave Georgia, where the Almighty provides a perfectly adequate misery in the…read moreform of red clay and summer heat, but I found myself in Killarney. It is a town that appears to have been constructed entirely out of damp wool and roaming Americans weeping over their distant ancestors. It was raining, naturally. It has been raining since the beginning of time in this country, a fact the locals accept with the grim fortitude one normally reserves for original sin. My bones, accustomed to being baked in the Milledgeville sun, were practically singing a dirge. I required meat, and I required it immediately, if only to anchor my soul to my body before the damp washed it away entirely.
They directed me to a place called the Porterhouse. It is a name that implies a slab of beef large enough to induce a revelation, which I took as a sign of divine providence. Inside, it was a cavern of dark wood and comfortable booths, bustling with the sort of frantic, joyous noise you hear right before a tent revival gets out of hand. The hostess, a girl with the kind of bright, untroubled face that suggests she has not yet realized the world is fallen, led me to a corner table.
The menu was extensive, boasting of prime Irish beef--a creature I suspect was raised in a pasture significantly greener than any patch of earth the Lord saw fit to put in the American South. There were also, heaven help us, modern vegetable concoctions on offer, an affliction I decided to ignore in the same way I ignore folks who claim they don't believe in the devil. I ordered the steak, medium rare, on the principle that meat should bleed just enough to remind you that something had to give up the ghost so you could have your dinner.
When the plate arrived, it was not an elegant thing, but it was honest. The beef was flanked by onions and mushrooms that had been sautéed into a state of profound submission. I cut into it. The meat was tender, rich, and tasted of the heavy, rain-soaked earth of County Kerry. It was a good steak. Across the aisle, a family of four was making quick work of a towering plate of cheese and fried bread, eating with a gluttony that was entirely unselfconscious. I watched them chew, pondering the peculiar grace that allows humanity to find such violent comfort in the consumption of food, even while the sky outside continues to weep.
I paid my bill and stepped back out into the drizzle. The Porterhouse did not offer me a vision of the saints, nor did it cure the damp in my joints. But it provided a thick cut of beef and a temporary reprieve from the cold, which, in this sodden, beautiful purgatory of a country, is as close to a miracle as one has any right to expect.
