World Without End, Amen

by Jimmy Breslin

  “Yeah,” Dermot said. “Well, what about this old man O’Neill today? For Chrissakes, he hid behind women.”

  “Oh, Joe O’Neill is not a soldier. He’s a bona fide gunman,” the mother’s uncle said.

  “Murderer is more to fit,” she said.

  “Notatall,” the mother’s uncle said. “He gave ’em the warks like a good Irishman should.”

  “What about the ones up on the rooftops here? They stay behind chimneys. I don’t see them standing up to get shot.”

  “Once again, they are your gunmen, your murderers,” she said. “But the others, these wee boys and many of the men, they believe it’s a mortal sin to kill a soldier if he cannot see you.”

  “What the fuck do you call this?”

  “Irish Catholic,” she said.

  9

  HE WOKE UP WITH Deirdre’s hands digging into his coat sleeves. Her face was down inside the top of her parka coat. Somebody in the street was screaming without stopping. He was either on the sidewalk outside the window or in the gutter. No farther away. The more he screamed in the street, the more Deirdre’s fingers dug into Dermot’s coat. There was plenty of shooting at the end of the block. Single shots and then little bursts of triple-tonguing of automatic fire. He did not want to move a fraction of an inch, but the screaming was loud and ceaseless.

  “Let’s go, I have to see,” he told her. Her hands came off his arm. She shivered and hunched herself more into her coat. He moved his head up the wall, the plaster like ice cubes pressed to his forehead, until the edge of the window sill hooked into his cheek. He fingered the blinds and looked out. The guy was in the gutter, on his back, the top half of his body rocking from side to side while he screamed. The legs were still. A couple of others were on their bellies, trying to drag him. Something buzzed and whined into the bricks right under the window. Dermot’s head jumped back a foot. When he came back to the window the ones on their bellies in the street were motionless. Dermot saw there was no fucking around now, they were shooting pretty good from up at the Falls Road. Then one of the three got into a crouch and got his hands under the screaming guy’s shoulders and he began pulling him backward, like he was walking a wheelbarrow. The other one came off his belly and grabbed the body under the rear end, and they got to the corner quickly. There must have been shots close to them, because they all seemed to jump while they were going past the edge of the saloon.

  Dermot crept the few feet to the staircase and went up the little flight of steps. At the top there was a one-or two-step turn and two doorways, one to the front bedroom, the other to the rear. Not bedrooms really, a pair of freezing closets under a low ceiling. The beds in the rooms were almost flush against the doorways. Martin and the little girl were crouched on the end of a bed which came almost to the window over the street. They acted like they were watching a football game.

  “Go away from there!” Dermot snarled.

  “Go where?” Martin said. ”Just get your head down.”

  In the back bedroom, one of the babies was standing in a crib which barely fit between the end of the bed and the wall. The baby’s hands chased the reflection of the fire on the next street as it snaked across the wall over the crib. The reflection kept moving in the water which streamed down the wall in the coldness. The mother was in bed with a dark coat buttoned to the neck. She had a hand pressing against the back of the other baby, who was in bed next to her struggling to get up.

  In the front room, Martin still had not left the window. Dermot stepped in to grab him. Two of the kids were on a bed that was almost flush against the doorway. The kids weren’t asleep. They were in a tangle of sheets and bedspreads that smelled of cold piss. Dermot got around their bed, pushed Martin back onto his own, and looked out the window himself.

  It was like watching a war movie. An armored car was inching along, it was halfway down to the street. Machine-gun bursts came out of the turret of the armored car. From what Dermot could see, the firing was at a house on the other side of the street. But everything seemed a hundred miles away. He was in a half-trance watching an armored car with a machine gun hitting, the same kind of toy house he was in. The toy house bulged as the machine-gun slugs hit it. The bulges grew larger and larger and the walls folded in on each other and the slate roof collapsed. When Dermot’s focus came back to the real street, the armored car was about thirty yards away. It stopped and backed up. It stopped again and the machine gun went to work in short bursts. There were plenty of single shots from every place on the street.

  Dermot got back from the window and pulled the blinds down. The kid had pulled them up again. Dermot took him by the arm out of bed and through the doorways and into the mother’s room.

  “Keep him in here, I don’t want any problems.”

  “They fancy bein’ at the window and lookin’ out and pretending,” she said.

  “Let him pretend here.”

  “They all like to pretend.”

  “Bad as the street, being here.”

  “ ’tis, ’tis.”

  “For Christ’s sake now, keep Martin right where you have him now. Right next to you. Martin, don’t you move. Christ we all can get killed,”

  “Aye. It’s a wonderful thing that you get for bein’ a Catholic, isn’t it?” she said.

  “What about your husband?” he said. “Is he coming here or what?”

  “I haven’t a clue.”

  “Tell me one other thing.”

  “Aye?”

  “Have we got anything in here we don’t want the soldiers to find?”

  “Ah, he takes care of those himself.”

  “You’re sure now?”

  “Aye, I’m sure. We’ve not a thing. Not a thing. It’s a wonderful thing that you get for bein’ a Catholic, isn’t it?”

  Downstairs Dermot put a hand on Deirdre’s shoulder. The shaking came through her coat.

  “If I could get you out of here.”

  “I’d only be someplace else.”

  “Anyplace is better than this.”

  “I see no safety in hiding.”

  He worked his hand through the folds of her parka until he came to the back of her head. He ran his thumb and forefinger onto the softness of her neck. He began massaging the neck cords. Her neck arched against his hand. “There’s shootin’ and riotin’ wherever you go,” she said. “That’s my trouble, I guess. Too much shootin’ for my Christ-forgotten nerves.”

  The shooting up the block was coming closer. Over the shots now you could hear the whine of the armored car. It moved a few feet. It would stop and make this different noise as it backed up. After machine-gun bursts, the car would whine forward again. The car was close, three or four doors away, when Dermot sneezed. The right nostril held the lightness in it and he could feel the lightness run up into the sinus over his eye and then curve through his cheek inside his face and he sneezed again. Tears came out of his eyes. The eyes started to hurt. Right away, one of the babies upstairs was crying. Deirdre’s neck came out of his hand. “Get whoever it is,” she said. She was crouching and moving quickly to the kitchen. Upstairs, everybody was coughing. The woman had the baby from the crib in her arms. The baby was screaming, the bare mouth wide open and the eyes shut. Tears came out of the slits. There was plenty of gas in the room, more than there was downstairs, and Dermot closed his eyes and held his breath and felt for the baby, took the baby from the woman and came downstairs. The baby’s arms were thrashing. Deirdre had the back door open and he went into the little enclosure. He put the baby’s face right up against the cement wall. Dermot put his own nose into the wall and took deep breaths. The baby kept crying and Dermot’s eyes felt like they had razor cuts in them. The air at the wall was moist, almost a drizzle. Wind blew in the enclosure. Gas wouldn’t last long in this. The gas coming into the house had to be coming from the front from one of the rooftops. Once it got inside a house it was critical. But wet air could dissolve it.

  “Tell her open the window,” Dermot said.
>
  Deirdre shouted inside the house. The window over him opened. There was a noise above the window up on the roof. A leg hung in the air from the roof. The leg lifted and began crabbing up the slate roof. On the other side of the enclosure a rifle was pushed up. Whoever was up on the roof reached down. The hand grabbed the barrel, a young voice cursed when the hand nearly dropped the rifle. The rifle was lifted. Whoever was up on the roof— because of the sharp slant and the darkness you couldn’t see—gathered the weapon in and crawled up in the blackness at the peak of the roof.

  A woman’s voice on the other side of the wall said, “Now how’s that?”

  “Good girl yourself, Mary,” the voice on the roof said.

  “Get the fuck inside,” the voice said to Dermot.

  “He’s minding where he is,” Deirdre said. She came out of the doorway and looked up to try and see him.

  “And he’ll get himself and the wee baby fuckin’ killed.”

  “And they were chokin’ to death inside, your man had no choice,” she said.

  “We’re sayin’ to get in,” another voice on the roof, an older man’s voice, said.

  “And we’re sayin’ fuck off,” she said.

  A chink spat out of the bricks around them. There was a whine. A window broke. Now you could hear something automatic firing from up the block, firing down the space between the backs of the houses trying to belt out anybody climbing around. Dermot got down and came through the doorway, the baby in his arms like a package. Deirdre was erect in the doorway. She dropped wet cloths onto the baby’s head. Deirdre’s face showed she was concentrating only on the baby. There was a ping! close, only a couple of feet away. Deirdre still showed nothing. Dermot ran upstairs with the baby. The cold moist air coming through the open window had cleared the gas from a space over the bed. The woman was on her back on the bed. She held out her arms and Dermot gave her the baby.

  Downstairs, Deirdre was sitting up, the top of her head just below the window line. She was smoking a cigarette.

  “There’s Dermot,” she said.

  He said nothing. The armored car was two, maybe three doors away at most.

  Deirdre called upstairs. “I’m your sister from Derry. Which wee baby is mine?”

  “The wee girl,” the woman called down. “Kathy her name is.”

  “Aye, Kathy.”

  Deirdre dragged on the cigarette. “You’re the uncle,” she said. She tapped Dermot’s hand. “And you’re the cousin visiting from America. We all came here to see the wee baby Kathy. Only the bloody villains livin’ here started a war.”

  The vibration of the armored car filled the room. The car moved past the house and was in front of the saloon when shots went off from the top of their roof. There were shots from the street and a lot of shouting. The front door banged open. Some glass squares of the inside door were slapped in. A rifle butt came through the rest of the glass, splattering it over the room. A hand came through the broken glass to turn the doorknob. Dermot stood up as a soldier in a steel helmet and gas mask stepped in with his rifle. Another soldier crouched in the vestibule. The one in the room said something through the gas mask. He poked Dermot with the rifle. He came out with a small flashlight and played it around the room. The mother’s uncle sat on the floor next to Deirdre with his hands over his head. Deirdre smoked the cigarette as if the soldier wasn’t there. A couple of shots sounded from up on the roof and the soldier in the vestibule jumped into the room. His shiny boots creaked as he inched back out to the doorway. He stuck his rifle out the doorway and began squeezing off shots. In the house it sounded like cannon going off. With the sharp slant of the roofs, he hit nothing but the sky. Through the broken front door Dermot could see the tail of the armored car right outside the house. A soldier was on his stomach on the sidewalk alongside the tail of the car. There were shots from one of the roofs. The soldier on the sidewalk threw himself into the doorway and the armored car backed up. Its side was covered with luminous paint somebody had thrown. In the light from the fires in the neighborhood you could see the machine gun in the turret pointed up at the roof of the house now.

  “Boy, I hope those kids—” Dermot said.

  He went for the stairs. The soldier in the room kicked sideways without looking at him. His boot missed Dermot’s groin and caught him on the inside of the thigh. He sat down on the couch. Deirdre was off the floor, brushing past the soldier, and up the stairs yelling for the kids to get under the beds. There were shots from the street and the soldier in the doorway began pumping more shots in the direction of the roofs up the block, but he still couldn’t have been coming close. The machine gun on the armored car turret swung and men stopped. The pivot went only halfway around and the machine guns could not shoot behind the car. The car began backing up. On the rooftops they must have been waiting for the armored car to pass, and then they were firing down at the soldiers following the armored car. The men and kids up on the roofs were taking on armored cars and a full army. There was a racket out in the back. The soldier turned around and hunched over to see out onto Leeson Street again.

  The armored car came back in front of the door and kept going past it. The soldiers left the doorway and followed the car. The one who had kicked Dermot was pushing against them to get out.

  The mother’s uncle giggled. “He didn’t feel like stayin’ here case a stranger comes through the back door.”

  “The fuck,” Dermot said.

  “A fuck with a gun,” he said. “Best ye can do is keep the wee soldier nervous.”

  “I’d like to fucking kill him.”

  The shooting in the street stopped. The sound of the armored car faded a little when it whined around the saloon corner and went down Balaclava Street. Martin was down the stairs and in the doorway.

  “Get out of there,” Dermot said.

  The kid flopped on his stomach and made believe he was shooting. Dermot kicked his foot. “Get out of there,” he said. The street outside sprang into light. The Army had turned on searchlights. Martin was yelling out the doorway and kids across the street were calling back to him. Dermot reached for his jacket collar but he was gone, running out into the middle of the street, and two other kids came running out from doorways across the street. They began playing that they were shooting each other. Then they began making believe they were shooting at the rooftops. They got prone and started crawling and stopping to shoot and then they’d crawl again. For kids, they knew how to do it right. Then the last kid got up. He pretended he was shot as he got up. He doubled over and began staggering toward the doorways across the street. Staggering the real way with the feet shuffling. No kid ever played this real. A soldier was standing a few feet away from them. He was taking off his gas mask like one of the Giants football players taking his helmet off at the end of the game.

  The little soldier who had kicked Dermot was strutting in front of the saloon. There was an explosion around the corner from the saloon, on Balaclava Street. The soldier brought his rifle up and ran around the corner and some others went with him. Dermot turned to yell at Martin but he was gone already, running with the other kids onto Balaclava Street so they could see what was happening. The soldiers were shouting and ducking and there were shots on Balaclava Street and the armored car started for them. In the light from the searchlights Martin gave a little skip into the air and fell on his shoulder. At almost the same instant the kid with him jerked and went down on his side. For a moment it was crazy, soldiers playing for real while kids stand alongside them and pretend. Then a soldier on his belly was pointing to the two kids and Martin’s leg was moving back and forth in slow motion and Dermot was out on the street running for the kid, when the lights went out. A soldier came off his belly, holding his rifle at high port. He pushed it at Dermot, who tried to go around him. The soldier swung the rifle butt. Dermot stuck out his left hand to stop it. The butt hit the tips of his fingers like a foul tip in baseball. The soldier slapped the rifle against his chest and pushed him back into t
he house. He got into the vestibule and stood there, pointing his rifle out onto the street.

  Deirdre and the mother were down the stairs and bumping against the soldier as they tried to get outside. The soldier leaned backward into them and spread his elbows. The mother made a hissing sound and clawed at him. All she could get was the back of the flak jacket and, with the shoulders hunched up, the back of the steel helmet coming to the top of the flak jacket. The mother was snarling to him that one of the boys in the street belonged to her. The soldier didn’t move. None of them had bothered to chase the kid out of the street. He gets shot and they won’t let the mother out of the house to go to him, Dermot thought. It was insanity. Give a moron soldier like this some authority and look what happens. Dermot reached out with his right hand and shoved hard. The soldier went forward. But he spun around with the rifle butt swinging. The mother and Deirdre were thrown against Dermot. The mother began screaming. Deirdre’s hands flew at the soldier. A jeep ran past the house and you could hear it stop at about where the boys were on the street. Now the mother shook all over trying to get out of the house.

  “Here’s your door,” the mother’s uncle said. He was still flat on the floor and Dermot didn’t pay any attention to him. “Here’s your door,” he said again. He was tapping the blinds. Dermot yanked them open. The cord broke and the blinds hung crazy. He pushed the window open with his right hand and stepped through the space. A rifle butt hit him in the back of the head.

  The blackness went away very fast, but he couldn’t move. He was down on the sidewalk grabbing his hair with both hands. He was running his hands through the hair on his head and opening and closing his eyes. When the searchlights went on, the jeep started up. The soldiers sat on the sides of the jeep, holding the kids in the back. One of the heads in the back was flopping. The mother, came out of the doorway, her flat shoes flapping on the cement, and she tried to grab the jeep as it went past her. She began screaming. Deirdre walked past her. She was pointing at the soldiers in the street as if she were in charge of them. A tall guy, an officer’s cap on, was standing with his hands behind his back. One of the soldiers with him jumped up to block Deirdre.