Keash

Keash is a rural cave site encountered by Patrick Mullaney and Tee-J during a winter of living out of the White Hitachi van. The caves momentarily suggest shelter and an alternative to their precarious life on the road, but their visit ends in speculation rather than refuge.

Setting and Visit

After losing access to an apartment complex, Patrick and Tee-J drive the van through quiet places during the winter. On one trip they travel past Boyle and through the hills, then reach Keash by way of forestry land. They park and climb up to look around the caves, treating the site as a possible place to stay.

Folklore and Shelter

A tourist sign at the caves recounts that a high king of Connaught was raised and cared for there by she-wolves. The brothers also read that hunter-gatherers had used the caves as shelter while on expeditions. These accounts give the caves both a legendary past and a practical association with refuge, prompting Tee-J to ask whether they are hunting and gathering. Patrick’s response makes clear that this is an imaginative possibility, not a plan they pursue.

Narrative Significance

Keash briefly brings the brothers’ homelessness into contact with a landscape whose caves promise shelter across radically different periods of life. Yet the promise remains provisional: the caves strike them as an impractical notion, and they ultimately spend time at a travellers’ camp outside Manorhamilton instead. The stop therefore marks a moment of considering refuge without resolving their insecurity.