World Without End, Amen

by Jimmy Breslin

  A man said, “I worked in Manchester two years ago.”

  “And what?” somebody said to him.

  “I gave it up as a bad job.”

  “Damien?” Liam said.

  “I have a resolution!” Damien was against the wall in the back of the room. “Oppression is a world-wide tactic of capitalism. Therefore, duPont is one of the major oppressors in the world. We must set an example for workingmen everywhere by closing the duPont plant here in Derry. Demand that it be turned over to the workers.”

  “Well,” Liam said, “what do you think of Damien’s resolution?”

  A man got off the floor. “Will not this take away from me time in the plant?”

  “Aye,” Liam said. “Not just a wee dispute, you know. A full workers’ strike.”

  “I want me job,” the man said.

  “Your job?” Damien said. “What of the people in Rhodesia? They suffer because of the very work you do. What of Angela Davis?”

  Deirdre was up now. “I stand second to nobody in despising duPont. But we know that duPont pays the highest wages to workers in Derry. We know that duPont hires more workers from the Bogside than any place in Northern Ireland. Therefore, I believe it not to be in our interests to close down duPont.”

  Another man got up. “No worker in his right mind would strike his job at duPont.”

  “The workers will strike duPont for the good of all,” Damien said. “If the workers cannot see it for themselves, then we will show the workers what is good for them.”

  Somebody called out, “How would you know what’s good for a worker?”

  “The last job you had,” a woman yelled, “you was elbowin’ your way out of the mother.”

  “Now, that’s no example,” Liam said. “Lenin never had a job and he was the best friend the workingman ever had.”

  Deirdre held up her hand. “A strike at duPont would hurt our working people more than it would hurt duPont. I say that if we are to conduct strikes, then we must start with the shirt factories, where the workers are most exploited.”

  A group of girls cheered.

  A heavy-set man in a dark-blue suit jacket and maroon sweater came to the front of the room. Liam introduced him. “This is Michael Heaney. He is the chief of staff for Northern Ireland of the Official Irish Republican Army.”

  Michael Heaney spoke in a low voice. The people stopped moving so they could hear him. “I just got out of Belfast,” he said. “We cannot afford any more of that. When you fight the British Army, you’re fighting trained troops.”

  Dermot recognized Eamonn, the cafe owner, when he jumped up. “I totally agree with everything you say. We don’t fight an army.”

  “Civil disobedience can bring the people together,” Heaney said. “First you need the people together before you can think of fighting. We can be together, and we can bring down Stormont. The political activity will give us a strong voice in Westminster. And while we do this, we can begin the long-range strategy of taking people over the border for weapons training. But violence should be our last resort. For self-defense.”

  “We’re no animals,” the woman shouted.

  Eamonn started clapping. The whole room broke into applause.

  Deirdre glanced over and saw Dermot. She picked her way through and came next to him.

  “What did you do?”

  “Went to the dog races.”

  “How did Mickey O’Kane’s pup do?”

  “They were beating him with sticks a half hour ago.”

  “Finbar doing it first,” she said. She began laughing. “I wonder why Finbar has not done permanent injury to his shoulder. Hitting the dog so often.”

  Somebody was shouting and Liam began thumping a table for quiet.

  “Gerard Hagerty?”

  “Are we not through with the meeting?” Gerard Hagerty said. He had a long chin that he used like a pointer.

  “Aye, you have the last statement,” Liam said.

  Gerard Hagerty’s chin waved in the air. “Do you not give out the guns now?”

  Liam closed his eyes. A few people groaned. But over half the place came alive.

  Heaney stepped forward. “We said there’ll be no guns.”

  “How do you expect us to fight soldiers if you don’t give us guns?” Gerard Hagerty said.

  “You fight a government with strikes. You don’t fight soldiers,” Deirdre said.

  “That’s all very nice,” Gerard Hagerty said. “But we’re going to have to go at the soldiers, you know. If yez don’t give us guns. Then we’ll just go to the people who give us guns.”

  “Gerard,” Liar? said, “why did you stay here all night sayin’ nothing while we made it plain there’d be no guns?”

  “I thought you was just talking, you know,” Gerard Hagerty said.

  He picked up an Army jacket. He put it on. His hand into a pocket. He pulled out a black beret and slapped it on.

  “I’m ready to fight and I’m ready to fookin’ die for Ireland. Up the Provos!”

  “Up the Provos!” somebody else yelled.

  Gerard walked out. Old women with, mean mouths followed him. One man left. Then another. Then they were leaving by the twos and threes. They looked at Deirdre with disgust as they went past. The young ones were moving around and looking at each other. Deirdre went to the front of the room. Her right fist went up. In a high clear voice, with a little moan to it, she started to sing. “Arise ye prisoners of starvation …”

  The whole room was standing, clapping in rhythm, singing loudly.

  “ ’Tis the final conflict

  Let each man take his place,

  The International-alley

  Shall free the human race.”

  Dermot was out the door while they were still cheering. He walked down the street and through the wall. As he started across the Guildhall Square, Dermot saw the sky alive with orange from a fire off to the left, up William Street. Orange cinders spiraled into the sky. Alive with color, they blew over the rooftops. He walked to the pillbox by Chada Fashions and looked up William Street. A small crowd stood in the doorway of a fish-and-chips shop and looked up the street trying to see the fire. Every place else on the street was dark. Dermot walked into William Street and started for the fire. Soldiers leaned against the buildings on both sides of the street. They were in helmets with thick plastic visors. They killed time knocking batons against green metal shields. They did not stop Dermot. He walked up William Street to the corner of Rossville Street. A left turn at the corner takes you into the Bogside. The street with the high flats and Free Derry Corner. A right turn led through an empty lot and the rear of a paint store which was in flames. The fire trucks were out of sight, around on the street, directly in front of the paint store. Firemen from the trucks were in the lot at the rear of the paint store. They lugged a hose and aimed it up at flames reaching into the night from a second-story window. Water came out of the hose in a splurt. It died. Then it came out again, first in an arc and then in a thick white stream. The firemen aimed it at the window. The flames became a red throat around the stream of water.

  There was a yell behind Dermot. On Rossville Street, all the way back to the high flats and to Free Derry Corner, kids were shouting and running to see the fire. There were a couple of hundred of them already. They came out onto William Street and cheered as the red throat swallowed the stream of water. Four policemen came up from the paint store and began pushing the crowd back. Dermot went with the kids, back across William Street and into Rossville Street and the Bogside. Two policemen stayed in the middle of William Street watching the fire. They kept looking at the crowd and then up William Street to the soldiers.

  A kid came out of the crowd. In a blue polo shirt, bare arms in the cold air, hips swinging. A girl was a little behind him, hands in her raincoat pockets. Deirdre came out of the crowd after the kid. Deirdre’s coat was open. The blue sweatshirt did not lump over her hips. Her walk came right through her clothes, the firelight playing on
her.

  “Be careful, Boxo,” she was saying.

  “That’s no fun,” the kid said.

  He grinned. He had a front tooth missing. The rest of the teeth, even now at night, were yellow with green tartar at the bottoms. Even when he grinned, there was this sadness in his face.

  “I’m not sayin’ you can’t have fun,” Deirdre said.

  “What’re ye sayin’ to me, then?” he said.

  “I’m sayin’ don’t get caught,” Deirdre said.

  He buried his face into the shoulder of her coat. He kissed her on the coat and then danced back. Wrapped around his right hand was a chain, not too thick to swing but still thick enough to hurt somebody badly.

  “Ah, there’s my Boxo,” Deirdre said.

  Boxo laughed. Kids were running around in the darkness and now this big tall kid came out to stand with Boxo.

  “Dutsy,” Deirdre said to him.

  “Eh?”

  “Tie your shoelaces or yell trip.”

  He dropped to a knee and tied the frayed laces of pointy black shoes. He scrambled up as Boxo went swaggering up to the corner of William Street. He had a big piece of broken cement behind his back. Boxo came so close to the policemen that they didn’t bother to look at him. They looked back at the crowd, then the fire, then at the crowd again. Boxo walked straight into them and he brought the cement from behind his back and, still walking, threw it side-arm. It caught one of the cops in the back of the neck and his hat flew off and he went onto his knees. Dutsy threw a rock at the other cop, who twisted away, and the rock missed. Boxo, Dutsy, and the girl were running back to the crowd with the cop chasing them. A small boy in a suit jacket came running out into the orange firelight throwing a bottle at the cop. Now the cop saw that if he came any farther into Rossville Street he was going to be trapped. The soldiers around the corner on William Street could not see him.

  There was a shout and the crowd in the darkness on Rossville Street started running for the cop. Everybody in the crowd had bottles or rocks. The cop started running away as bottles broke around him. The cop who had been knocked down was going backward onto William Street and now he turned and broke into a run. He was gone, and the second cop turned the corner. He stopped dead as a rock hit him square in the back. He started up again and he was gone. The crowd kept going straight, across William Street and into the lot at the rear of the paint store, and the three firemen working the hose on the flames coming out the back window of the paint store heard them coming. One of them turned to look. He held up his hand. A bottle just missed him. Now there was a shower of rocks at the firemen. They had their backs to the crowd and a live hose in their hands and the rocks and bottles came around them and all they could do was drop the hose, the water squirting crazily on the ground. The firemen ran out of the lot and toward their engines, which were out of sight on the street running in front of the paint store.

  Deirdre and Dermot walked out into William Street with the crowd. A loud “woe” ran through the kids. To the right, halfway up William Street, running as hard as they could in a tight formation, like a football team coming under a kickoff, came perhaps forty soldiers. The kids ran out of the lot and everybody went back into Rossville Street. The soldiers racing in this V formation came wheeling around the corner into Rossville Street. They came with helmets, plastic face shields, gas masks, untapered white-ash clubs in their right hand. The green metal shields went up. The shields and wire-screen tops for the soldiers to peer through. The crowd of kids had been giving way. Now the kids were running as the soldiers came racing at them.

  The tall kid and Boxo were the first to stop. The tall kid wheeled and sent a big piece of rock low. It bit the ground and skipped up against the creased fatigue pants of one of the soldiers. Boxo threw his rock. It went on a line, low, and came skipping up. A soldier’s polished boots jumped into the air. Not high enough. The rock kicked off his ankles. Now they all were bouncing rocks at the soldiers’ shins. Bottles broke, the glass spattering. The soldiers stopped running, their shields up, clubs waving around their ankles trying to ward off rocks, they began backing up and going around the corner into William Street.

  From the high flats and the cement huts back in the Bogside, old men were walking down the streets, knotting handkerchiefs. Dermot was looking at the handkerchiefs when the first pop sounded on William Street. A plume of smoke rose in front of the crowd. A barrage of gas was fired now. Soldiers came around the corner slowly and tried walking through the gas to get at the crowd. Rocks and bottles had their feet dancing. They withdrew back up William Street.

  The kids began running out of the darkness and jumping into the gas. A little girl stood in the gas with her hands over her head. She took deep breaths.

  “Give us more, it’s good for us!”

  Boxo was dancing and swaggering in the gas. “More, ye fookers! More!”

  Across the street a crowd was in front of a three-story brick building. A sign said it was a whisky and fruit warehouse. The older ones came out with empty bottles. Kids grabbed the bottles and ran up toward the corner so they could be ready to throw them. Kids pushed empty barrels out of the warehouse. They turned the barrels upright and began to bang on them like drums. The light from the fire was brighter now. With not enough water on it, the fire in the paint store was licking through the roof. The flame from the window went high into the sky with a color which had the flatness of lightning.

  The crowd was now about three hundred. Growing, too.

  “Is this your nonviolence?” Dermot said.

  “Aye,” Deirdre said. “I don’t think it’s so bad, do you?”

  “Christ it’s a riot.”

  “Well, is it a riot as bad as Belfast?”

  “No. But sure as hell could get there in a hurry.”

  “Aye. It could build into something. And it will some night soon if the government do not recognize what this is about.”

  “They turn this place into Belfast, you can forget about me,” Dermot said.

  “Oh, it will get possibly worse than Belfast,” she said. “They’re not going to listen to anything we have to say. Governments only listen to dead bodies. The government will keep mucking about and then the gunmen here will take over.”

  “Then what are you doing with all your meetings and politics?”

  “Trying.”

  “But it’s not going to work.”

  “Aye, that’s not going to work.”

  “So why try?”

  “You’re supposed to, you know.”

  A lot of kids were standing out in William Street calling to the soldiers and throwing rocks. The rest of the crowd milled in the street Gerard Hagerty in his beret was pointing at people and yelling. Finbar was across the street. Deirdre laughed and they walked over to him. A handkerchief was knotted around his neck, a cigarette in his mouth. He watched three girls, the oldest no more than thirteen, break up a piece of pavement. The girls were striking the pavement with pieces from another flagstone. The pavement came apart one piece at a time. Somebody would grab the piece and run into the crowd with it. Finbar shook his head. “Stay easy,” he said to Dermot He walked back into the darkness. The girls kept breaking the pavement.

  There was a noise from the corner. The first kids came running back into Rossville Street Gerard Hagerty came backward through the crowd. The last kids coming into Rossville Street were tearing, mouths open, arms pumping. The football formation of soldiers right after them did not have time to figure out the number of people waiting for them. There was a shout and the whole crowd rushed the soldiers. Now the rocks and bottles had them backing up and half running away. One of the soldiers was going back when he stopped and took a swipe with his club at a very small boy. The soldier missed and his arm dragged him off balance. He put out his hand to keep his whole body from falling. Boxo was out of the crowd and on the soldier. The chain came around once. The soldier’s helmet flew off. The soldier was upright again, short hair wet from sweat, a very young red-ch
eeked face. His hands went out to catch the chain. Boxo brought the chain half around. Now with the soldier’s hands out, Boxo whipped the chain sidearm. The double-up links went over the soldier’s arms and caught him full on the side of the face. Boxo took off and came flying back to the crowd as a flock of soldiers, shields up, ran out to help the one being beaten. Dutsy paraded through the crowd, wearing the soldier’s helmet. Boxo grabbed it from him and put it on. Boxo walked to the front of the crowd with the helmet on. His right fist went up in the air and he began singing:

  “A nation once again

  A nation once again.”

  The crowd started singing with him. Men with handkerchiefs knotted around their necks, young boys in rumpled suit jackets, girls in raincoats, women in broken shoes, their seamed faces alive in the light from the fire that the firemen could not get near.

  Finbar came back with a sledgehammer on his shoulder. Saying nothing he brought the sledgehammer up over his head and swung it down onto the pavement. Finbar worked automatically, smashing one pavement block, stepping up to another, and smashing it without changing the rhythm of his swing. Hands grabbed the pieces of pavement as quickly as they broke under the sledgehammer. Sweat covered Finbar’s face. He stopped and wiped his forehead with his hand. Finbar looked at his hand to see what it was that he had wiped from his face.

  Down the street, under a light in front of the high flats, a crowd gathered. Michael Heaney and Liam were walking toward it. Deirdre began running. Dermot had to take long steps to stay with her. In front of the high flats, two boys, fourteen at the most, were standing with a child’s wagon filled with milk bottles of gasoline. Wicks of torn cleaning rags were, packed tightly in the necks of the bottles.

  What’s this now?” Michael said.

  “Good enough show without them,” Liam said.

  Eddie Canavan came out of the darkness on the side of the high flats. Three men were with him. “They’re all right,” Canavan said.

  “El Humpo!” Johno shambled out of the shadows after Canavan.

  “They’re all right?” Michael said. “One thing leads to another. We’re at rocks now. Let’s keep it there.”