World Without End, Amen

by Jimmy Breslin

  Fuck it, Dermot said to himself. He didn’t know why he was on the block, he didn’t know why he’d stepped out at the soldier and he didn’t know why he had to stay in this small, smelly house. His head throbbed in the two places where he had been slammed. The pain ran into the corners of his eyes. He closed them. The blackness inside him made him dizzy. He opened his eyes again and kept his head still. He did not move or say anything and finally the sleep rose up through the pain and his eyes drooped and closed.

  10

  THE SMALL BOY PULLED Dermot’s arm to wake him up. The searchlights were off. In the cold, natural light the street looked like somebody had dumped a bucket of dirty water over it.

  “Terlet are broke,” the kid said.

  A bottle came out of the saloon doorway and broke on the street. There was a loud laugh in the doorway of the saloon. A lot of them must have been inside the saloon. Another bottle flipped in the air and broke on the street. The breaking glass sound was no good at all.

  “Terlet,” the kid said again.

  Dermot went out in the back with him. The door to the outhouse hung on a hinge. The toilet inside was smashed. One big triangular chunk of china was jammed point down in the mouth of the pipe. The tank hanging over the toilet was smashed. Water spilled down the tank pipe. The water was spreading in a puddle because the drain was covered with the coal the soldiers had spilled out of the coalbin. Dermot kicked the coal away until the puddle rushed down the drain.

  Dermot had to go himself. He started to take a piss in the corner of the enclosure. Even the slight effort of pissing caused his head to throb. “Come on,” he said to the kid.

  “Shit,” the kid said.

  “We’ll have to take care of that, then,” Dermot told him. He went to the front door, the kid in front of him so the soldiers would see him when the door opened. The soldier in front of the house had his rifle under his left arm. A bottle of stout was in his right hand.

  “Toilet’s broke. Can I take the boy here next door?”

  “Get yourbloodyfuckin’ face back in there.”

  “You guys broke the toilet and the little boy here has to go.”

  “Shit himself.” The soldier swung his hips to make the rifle under his arm wave forward.

  He threw the bottle of stout into the street, pulled the door out of Dermot’s hand and slammed it.

  Deirdre was on the stairs behind him. “You’ll just have to take him out back,” she said. “I’m tryin’ to make the place livable for the kids upstairs.” When Dermot didn’t move, she said, “Oh, use your flamin’ mind. Don’t be standing there like an eejit. Find something to use. We’ve no time for your Yank niceties.”

  There was no paper bag in the kitchen. Dermot looked at the cereal boxes on the shelf. They were American cereals, corn flakes and puffed rice and Quaker Oats. The round cardboard container with red-and-blue paper and the guy with the Ben Franklin hat on. He took the top off. There was only a little bit of white oats left at the bottom of the container. He shook them into an empty dish. He took the kid out in the back and told him to pull his pants down. The inside of his undershorts was crusted. The mud streaks came up his legs right to the cheeks. Dermot reached into the outhouse for toilet paper. It was sopping wet and came apart in his hand. He pulled off chunks of it and gave it to the kid. He put the Quaker Oats box up against his rear end and pushed him on the head and told him to get himself down and go to the bathroom.

  Dermot turned his head away. The kid grunted like a cow. Finally, he stood up straight. “All gone,” he said.

  “Here, wipe yourself.”

  “Wipe my shitter,” the kid said to himself. He took some sort of a pass at his rear end, dropped the toilet paper on the ground, and pulled up his pants and went into the house, leaving Dermot with the steam coming out of the Quaker Oats box. He put the toilet paper into it and left the box in the outhouse. He went right for the kitchen sink. There was a sliver of brown translucent soap which did nothing in the cold water.

  “Afraid of dirt?” She was downstairs with the little girl now. “Only thing around here that won’t kill them is dirt, you know.”

  She sat the kids at the small table alongside the sink. She looked through the kitchen. “I guess we’ve no milk.” She took out a box of corn flakes and made games out of eating dry cereal. In the front room she pulled one thing at a time off the pile on the floor because of the bits of broken glass from the television screen. Her hand came out with a coloring book that was wet, then a few broken crayons. She patted the book pages with a rag. Dermot used his feet to clear out the fireplace. When he got the fire started, Deirdre sat the kids down with coloring books in front of the fire.

  Outside, two soldiers stretched out on the sidewalk, using their helmets as pillows. Another soldier sat on the saloon steps. He held a bottle of whisky up and took a suck. He held the bottle up again. It was empty. He threw the bottle out onto the street. He got up, tripped coming off the steps, and nearly fell on the two soldiers sleeping. One of them woke up. He rolled onto his side, pulled himself up, and took a dizzy step. He picked up two stout bottles from the saloon steps and went into the middle of the street. He threw them down hard. The breaking glass sounded dangerous now. The soldier began kicking all the glass in the middle of the street into a pile. Brown glass, some of it in big chunks, the necks of stout bottles, the curved bottom halves of whisky quarts. The soldier’s foot began to swing through the pile of glass. The boot kept swinging, spreading the glass wider. He spread the glass so wide that he had to take two full steps in one direction to spread around one end of the pile of glass and a few steps back to run his boot through the other end of it.

  The soldier came lurching back to the front of the saloon. He waved. Across the street, in front of the doorway of the corner house, the one with the warehouse behind it, they had a man who was in his stockinged feet. The soldier in front of the saloon waved again for the man to cross the street. A soldier ran up and slapped the man on the head. He grabbed the man by the arm and ran him into the street. The man wore black socks and bare skin showed through a hole in the ankle. The bare skin kept moving and then it stopped and hung over the glass while the man tried to keep his balance. Then the foot came forward, the toes picking a spot between pieces of glass. But he couldn’t balance himself on the one set of toes and the other foot came down on top of a curved chunk of whisky bottle. He tried to keep his weight on the toes but his head was too far forward and his body began to follow his head and all his weight came down on the foot on top of the piece of whisky bottle. The foot crushed the piece of whisky bottle. The man’s body came straight up. He tried to leap clear of the glass, but the good foot couldn’t reach an open place and the foot came down full onto a choppy-topped sea of brown glass. He threw himself straight out on his stomach, the feet coming up in the air behind him. He made it clear of the glass. He landed almost at the soldier’s feet, his body moving in pain. The soldier’s thick boot came across in a soccer kick. The boot went deep into the man’s side.

  Dermot started for the door, but Deirdre had a hand out and she was out the door and into the middle of the street before anybody could stop her. She was looking up the block and yelling. “We’ve no milk for the wee children!” she shouted. Women began to hang out from upstairs windows. They started shouting with her. A soldier had Deirdre by the arm and another tried to take her other arm but she kept waving it and screaming about milk. The noise on the street was very loud now and the soldiers were looking up at the windows and waving their rifles but the women were leaning far out now and their arms moved while they started a chant for milk.

  They pushed Deirdre back into the doorway when the officer came into the street. His hands were behind his back. His head was bent while one of the soldiers with Deirdre ran up to him. The officer said something, the lips barely moving. He walked over to Deirdre. He watched the tips of his shoes and brought his foot down with the leather heel first.

  He had no eyebrows. The
eyes under the forehead were colorless.

  “Yes?” he said through his nose.

  “We’ve no milk for the wee babies,” she said.

  “Yes,” he said through his nose. Behind him, soldiers were walking around in the street with bottles of stout. Deirdre pointed at them. “Your fine men have their sustenance. Now the wee children need theirs.”

  “Milk, yes, milk,” the officer said to himself.

  “Is it official military policy for children to be hungry while soldiers are drunk?” she said.

  “Here!” one of the soldiers with the officer said.

  “We’ve two wee children who’ve been up vomitin’ all night and now there’s no milk in the house for them.”

  “Well,” the officer said.

  “I’m sure there are wee babies ready to die all up and down this flamin’ street.”

  “Well.”

  “I’m sure that’s how you gain advancement in the Army, by allowin’ wee babies to die.”

  The soldiers started to push her back into the house.

  “While your soldiers get drunk.”

  The officer said something to the soldiers and they stopped pushing.

  “Milk. Well, actually, we’ve got to do something about milk.”

  He spun around on his heels. The soldier pulled the door shut in Deirdre’s face.

  She stood in the vestibule with her eyes closed. “That should keep them.”

  The man was sitting on the sidewalk, his socks off. He was picking at the glass, covered with blood, in his foot.

  “He needs more than his hands for that,” Dermot said.

  “They wouldn’t have stopped if I even looked at him,” she said. “Christ but they would’ve run him through thirty more times. Wee children, the smaller and sicker the better, that’s what you must use against them.”

  Deirdre sat on the floor smoking cigarettes and playing with the kids. She told them that while the soldiers were watching the house, their father was helping the IRA steal all the soldiers’ trucks. It was almost noon when the fat woman across the street came out onto the sidewalk. Nobody stopped her. She was waving to others. Soldiers walked in the street, but there was no trouble. Deirdre was up and at the door. The man with the cut feet was gone. Now, in the street, wearing a bright-red stole, the old priest clutched a missal against his chest and kept nodding his head at people. Down Leeson Street a crowd was out walking to church. In the other direction, up at the corner of the Falls Road, soldiers were in a line in front of armored cars. The area was sealed off.

  Deirdre was in the next doorway, talking to the woman. “She’s gone to the hospital, the big boy was hurt.”

  “Aye, Martin,” the woman in the doorway said.

  “She’s got the two wee ones.”

  “Aye.”

  “Royal Hospital, you know.”

  “Aye.”

  “All right then,” Deirdre said.

  A girl of about fourteen stepped onto the sidewalk.

  “Go on, now,” the mother said.

  “No!”

  “Be off with you!”

  “Why?”

  “I said.”

  The girl stamped her feet and went past Dermot into the house. The kids inside shouted when she came in. “You little fuckers,” the girl said.

  “Cheerio,” Deirdre said. She and Dermot were in the street walking with the stream of people going to church. Soldiers stood in groups at each corner, rifles pointed up, red eyes searching the crowd. Kids ran past them sticking out their tongues. Women far outnumbered the men. The women had lined faces which sagged against handkerchief knots. They paddled by in loose shoes, not looking at the soldiers. Nearly all the men had no hats on and their hair was matted and uncombed. They were hunched over, heads down, staying as close to the largest clump of women they could. A couple of streets down and over, the charcoal-gray church climbed out of the red row houses. The doors of the church were open and people were backed into the vestibule already. Most of them still coming would have to hear mass in the street. Deirdre edged up the side of the crowd and got to the side of the vestibule. A young priest stood in the archway of the room where they had the baptismal font. The priest stared through thick glasses with his mouth open. Deirdre pushed to get to him. The priest drew in one shoulder to allow her into the baptismal room. His shoulder came back out to block Dermot. Deirdre said something to him and the shoulder pulled in again. All the time he stared ahead with his mouth open. They sat on the floor alongside the legs of the copper tank holding the baptismal water. The bells sounded dimly for the start of the mass. The exaggerated rising and lowering of the priest’s voice, the altar boy ringing the bell during the consecration, and the people coughing through the silence. The praying out loud and the feet shuffling as people started down the aisles at the end of the mass brought him awake:

  They stayed there while the church emptied. The priest came and shook car keys at them. Deirdre and Dermot got up and followed him through the empty church and out a door on the Epistle side of the altar. The back of the church came onto a school building. The door opened as they came to it. They walked through a dim hallway. Some guys jumped out of one room to see who was coming.

  “A school’s a school,” the priest said. “Got to hide guns someplace. School’s as good a place as any.”

  “We tried to keep them out of use,” Deirdre said.

  “Couldn’t be done,” the priest said. “Why would they listen to us? With my own pastor frothin’ to bless their grand efforts.”

  “Aye.”

  “And why didn’t you come here right off?” he said.

  “Stayed too long and then there was no way out,” she said.

  “For Jesus’ sake ’twill teach you to be early.”

  They went out a door and onto an empty street. A blue car was at the curb. Deirdre and Dermot got in the back. “Jesus, you could look a wee bit sick for me,” the priest said. Deirdre’s head came onto Dermot’s shoulder. “For Jesus’ sake, I said sick, not sufferin’ headache.” She turned onto her side, burying her face into Dermot’s coat. The car rolled slowly, the priest waving his arm out the window. Soldiers saw him and turned back to themselves as the car went past. They drove for a couple of minutes until they came onto a factory street. At the end, soldiers leaned on a jeep parked alongside a barbed-wire barricade. The arm waved while the car rolled toward a space at one end of the barbed wire. Two soldiers jumped off the jeep, pointing their rifles. The car jerked to a stop and the priest jumped out,

  “Are you blind? Are you blind? Can’t you see I’m a priest? Are you blind?”

  The authority ran out of them. They didn’t move while the priest got back into the car and rolled past them, around the barricade, and out onto an avenue.

  “The bloody bastards would’ve shot us,” the priest said.

  He went up the avenue for several blocks and stopped. Deirdre was off Dermot’s chest and out of the car.

  “There’s a good Father Miles,” she said.

  “Aye,” he said. He drove off.

  “We’re out of it now?” Dermot asked her.

  “Aye, we’re out of it now.”

  “Well, what do we do about the kids back there?”

  “Do you want to go back and sit with them?”

  “No.”

  “Come on, then.”

  They walked up the avenue. Small leafless trees shook in a wet wind. They hailed a taxicab. The taxicab came over a low bridge by the railroad station and into center Belfast. The International Hotel was behind City Hall. Past the registration desk a narrow staircase led to a barroom in the basement. The mother’s uncle was at the bar talking with two men. He picked up his pint to wave hello. He had a small basin of Irish behind the pint.

  “Too many visitors, the man on the horsepital door says to us, said he wasn’t lettin’ us in to take the wee ones to the horsepital tea room. She tucks the wee one under the arm and she has a go at him. She says to him, I’ve an eleven-ye
ar-old son there and if yez don’t let me in I’ll ransack the lot of you. She’s pushin’ while she’s yellin’. In we went. There was lots of people to look after her in the tea room. So out I went. The doctors seemed to be lookin’ after her boy. Shot in the belly, they told her he was. This is Joe Donahue. He came today up from Tipperary. He was here last year for the trouble over the Springfield Road. And this is O’Brien. Dublin lad. So. These houses on Brookfield Street had no back doors. A mill wall ran as a common back wall. To get the wee old ladies out in the shooting, the lads had to take the old ladies out the front door. That was some walk down the garden path, that was.”

  O’Brien interrupted to ask if they wanted a drink. “Fantastic,” Deirdre said. “Paddy’s. Dermot, a Paddy’s?”

  “A double.”

  “Ah, there’s Dermot. Up for the riots, are you?”

  “We are,” O’Brien said.

  “Oh Christ, ten times worse,” Deirdre said.

  “What about the border campaign?”

  “Christ, a hundred times worse. Chokin’ soldiers to death in front of your own eyes.”

  “I told yez,” the mother’s uncle said. “Let’s have a drink.”

  “Do you think we could get into the Falls?” O’Brien said.

  “Depends why,” Deirdre said.

  “Just to have a look. I teach in Dublin.”

  “Teach where?”

  “At University College Dublin.”

  “Preparin’ a paper,” the mother’s uncle said.

  “I’m here only three years,” O’Brien said. “I was in New York. At Columbia. I’ve got no family. So I decided to come over and view my heritage.”

  “Ah yes.”

  “Through the bottom of a glass.” He drank his pint like he was playing the trumpet.

  Dermot gagged but got the first of his whisky down. The rest went quickly and he put out the glass for more. A tray of sandwiches was under a plastic cover on the back bar. He pointed at them while he drank. The bartender put one on a plate in front of them. It was an Irish sandwich, they give you a third of an American sandwich at best when you order a sandwich, and what they give you is slices of hard-boiled egg and midget tomato on bread thin enough for a Jewish holiday. Dermot waved to the bartender for a stack of them. He held out his glass for another drink. “I’m from New York,” he said to O’Brien.