The Promise of Light

by Paul Watkins

  “He’s just a kid.” I tried to stand up. My soda bread-and-jam breakfast was climbing back into my throat.

  Another soldier jumped down from the truck. He carried a rifle. The steel of his helmet looked rough, from sand that had been sprinkled on the wet paint and then painted over again.

  The boy touched his hand to the bald patch on his head. “You bloody tore my hair out. You bloody bastards tore my hair out!”

  “You won’t have any hair at all by the time we’ve finished with you.” The soldier twisted the boy’s arm so that the boy had to stand on his toes.

  The boy’s mouth was locked open with pain.

  “He’s just a kid,” I said again. I was standing now. Chips of lightning wove in front of my eyes. “You’ve got no right to beat up on children.”

  The soldier kept the boy’s arm twisted. “Well, someone’s got to take the blame for this.”

  My temper snapped and I spoke without thinking. “Fine, I’ll take the goddamned blame.”

  “Right you are then,” said a voice behind me.

  Then my head exploded.

  * * *

  Powder-blue sky filled my eyes. I was lying in a room and looking out through a doorway. Then the sky went away and a face cut out the sun.

  It was a woman. “That Tan hit you right on the temple.”

  “Clarissa?” I tried to sit up.

  The woman’s arm held me down. “Rest a while longer.”

  Another face appeared. Crow. He looked watery and out of focus. “What did you think you were doing?”

  “I don’t know.” My jaw hurt. My bottom teeth and top teeth didn’t seem to match up the way they used to.

  “But what did you expect was going to happen after you back-talked that soldier?”

  “It was a kid. Just a kid with a rock. They tore out a clump of his hair.” I saw where I was now, on the kitchen floor at Gisby’s Hotel. The same place where I took my naps. There was the underside of the sink. Here were the brick-red tiles below me. Forks and knives clinked together as people ate breakfast in the dining room. “I wasn’t thinking about what they’d do to me. I guess I was still half asleep.”

  “Damn right you didn’t think. Another time, you let that boy fend for himself.” Crow’s white apron was painted with food.

  The woman had long black hair tied in a ponytail with a blue ribbon. It was Ruth, the waitress at Gisby’s, the one nobody was supposed to talk with, since her father was an RIC man. “You can’t blame that boy, what with all the things they’re saying in school since that ship ran aground.”

  Crow held a lit cigarette to my lips. “What are they saying?”

  “They’re telling the story of that ancient chieftain and how he never died. Instead, he took his best warriors and led them to a cave somewhere up in the hills. He made them all lie down and sleep, with a promise that he would return one day to rescue the land.”

  “I know that story. My mother told it to me.” I thought of the old dream rising through my memory, like a whale coming up from deep water to breathe.

  “And the thing of it is, these boys talk of that ship as if it were the chieftain’s and it was him who walked ashore with all those guns. Now the boys in the school don’t see some gold-armored knight riding down from the hills after sleeping for a thousand years. They see the IRA men in their grubby trench coats and wool hats and rifles gone rusty from being hidden in the hedges.”

  “Did they let the boy go?”

  Gisby called for Ruth from out in the hallway.

  Ruth brought her face close to mine. “Are you sure you’ll be all right?”

  I nodded and a fleck of cigarette ash dropped onto my chest. When she was gone, I squinted up at Crow. “What happened to the boy?”

  “They let him go. But they almost took you up to the barracks. By now, they’d know who you are. Instead, they just dumped you in the alleyway outside. They said they didn’t want you showing up late for work. Who’s Clarissa?”

  “Not someone you’d want to meet.” I rested my hands against my face. “I took a punch.”

  Crow started to laugh. His cackling grew louder and louder until a surprised look appeared on his face and he began to cough. He jammed his fist against his mouth and spluttered. “They snuffed you out like a candle.”

  “Thank you, Harry. I know.”

  * * *

  Guthrie sat with his feet in a basin full of water. Steam coiled around his legs.

  I stepped into the room. It was three in the afternoon, but I thought I should still bring him his milk. The pain was a sluggish thump inside my head.

  “Is that you, Ben?” Guthrie pulled the glasses from his pocket and held them up to his eyes. “I could have opened my own dairy by now.”

  “I got stopped.” It felt as if some gargoyle was pacing on my brain.

  Guthrie pulled his feet from the basin and pattered them on the floor. “Any trouble?”

  “None. Did you give up on the udder balm?”

  “Mrs. Tarbox gave me a recipe.” Steam curled like smoke off his toes. “Damn stuff smells worse than the balm.”

  “But does it work?”

  “I can’t tell. It hurts too much.” Guthrie kneaded the steam from his feet. “I’ve made up my mind about something. I’m going to ask Lil to marry me. I’ll ask her the next time I see her. Yes. I’ve said it now. That’s what I’m going to do.”

  “Congratulations. People will say it’s about time.”

  “They can say what they like. They always do, anyway.”

  “Is there anything you want me to tell Clayton when I see him tonight? I don’t think they’ll be bringing him straight here.”

  “The less you tell me, the better.”

  “No messages?”

  Guthrie slowly hooked the wire temples of his glasses around his ears. “It’s dangerous for the two of us to talk. He knows that. It’s the cost of what he’s doing.”

  * * *

  Old bundles of flowers lay at the Black Virgin’s feet, their colors bled away.

  I searched through the trees that clumped behind the shrine. Wind clattered the branches. Someone else was there. I could feel it, and started to think it might be the Virgin. She glowered at me from her chiseled stone veils.

  Then a man stood up from the hedge. He wore a trench coat and leather gaiters and carried a rifle. The man raised his hand slightly, spreading his fingers, cautiously waving hello.

  “Crow?” I couldn’t be sure. Shadow cloaked his body and his face.

  “Yes, it’s me. Isn’t anybody on time any more?” Thistles clung to his legs. “I told Tarbox to be here by ten. That’s the trouble with him. He wants independence for Ireland, but he can’t be bothered to show up on time to collect it.”

  Crow had dug a foxhole. We both sat in it, shoulder to shoulder.

  I wasn’t afraid, the way I had been crossing the open fields. With night closing in, the darkness belonged to us now and not to the soldiers. “How close are you to getting independence?”

  “Depends on who you talk to.” Crow pulled a piece of fruitcake from his pocket, broke it in half, and gave a piece to me. “If you read the Irish Times, you’d think we never had a chance. Each time someone makes a speech about Irish freedom, they’re all applause and high hopes. But then when someone actually does something toward getting that freedom, like landing these rifles on Lahinch strand, they call us murderers and thugs.”

  “So who else do you listen to besides the Irish Times?” I picked out the slivers of candied cherry and ate them first.

  “You can listen to Clayton if you want. He’d have you think that independence was so bloody close you could smell it. Or you can listen to Mrs. Gisby. She doesn’t even know what independence is. She just wants to see blood, like an old hag at a boxing match.” Crow’s voice disappeared as he stuffed the fruitcake in his mouth.

  The sky was purple now. Mist crept from the hollows and spread across the fields in slow grey ranks.

  �
��Look at this.” From his coat, Crow pulled a wooden pistol holster. He opened it and took out a strange looking gun with a long barrel. The number 9 was carved into its rounded butt. “It’s a broom-handled Mauser. Belongs to Clayton. They gave it to him in Dublin when he joined the IRA. I heard it came ashore in a German shipment of arms to Bana Strand during the war. When the Tans brought Clayton in, I ran over to his house and took the gun away, as I knew the Tans would search the place and find it. I buried it out in the fields for safekeeping. He’ll have it back tonight.”

  I listened, ear to the wind. “I hear someone coming.” My backside bristled with pins and needles against the damp earth.

  “It would be about bloody time.” Crow pulled a thistle from his trousers. He reached across and stuck it on my coat.

  Then came the sound of boots on the road. And whistling. Tarbox appeared, followed by wandering sheep with muddy tails and splats of blue dye on their backs. He stopped by the Virgin, poked his head inside the shrine and kissed her on the cheek. Then he faced the hedge and threw open his arms. “I know you’re in there, Harry. I can smell you.”

  Crow stood slowly. “I said to be here at ten o’clock. It’s damn near eleven.”

  “It is?” Tarbox pulled a brass-cased watch from his waistcoat. It was the one he had taken from the soldier on the beach, the day I arrived in Ireland. He shook it and held it to his ear. “Oh. Well, there we are then. My wife’s been on at me again about having children. I swear to Christ, I’ll pay you half a crown for an excuse that will keep her off my back even for a week.”

  “You should just have children and stop fussing.” Crow stood with his arms folded, jutting up from the hedge like the stump of an old tree. “I wish I had a daughter or a son. I daresay it would get me out of this mess for good.”

  “And into another one!” Tarbox jumped the wall and his boots squelched on the damp earth.

  Crow took the revolver from his belt and folded out the drum to see that the chambers were loaded. Then he took off his hat and set the gun on top, keeping it out of the dew. “If we get split up somehow, we’re all to meet in Mrs. Fuller’s basement at one o’clock this morning. Stan’s going to tell them that we headed off to Ennistymon. It should give us some time before the Tans come rooting through Lahinch to find Clayton.”

  Tarbox’s face swung out of the dark toward me. The whites of his eyes were like flakes of dried bone. “There’ll be changes now, with Clayton free. For better or worse.”

  I smelled the smokiness of Tarbox’s clothing, hung over a fire to dry. I thought about the change that was coming, delivered in the steel and canvas wrappings of the truck. On a constant twitching balance in my head was the need to go and the need to stay and learn more, but no one was going to tell me anything here, and it was far too dangerous to ask. I decided that I would just try to get home and live with what I didn’t know. I had come to think of it in the same way that Crow saw my arrival in this place. Some kind of prophecy. I was not meant to know, just as Arthur Sheridan was meant some day to come back, wading from the sea onto the wide flat beach at Lahinch.

  * * *

  A truck puttered out of the hills. The whine of its changing gears drifted in on the breeze. Headlights carved bolts out of the dark. It stopped when it reached the shrine. The engine clunked into neutral.

  I started to get up, but Tarbox shoved me back down again, his hand sinking into beads of dew that had gathered on my coat.

  The truck’s engine sputtered dead and Stanley climbed out of the cab. “We’ve got a flat.”

  A head appeared from a flap in the canvas roof. “You’re fucking kidding, Stan.”

  Stanley pointed at the tire. “See for yourself, Desmond.”

  The head disappeared. A moment later, two men jumped down to the road. One man was a soldier. The other was dressed in civilian clothes, barefoot and with hands cuffed behind his back. It had to be Clayton.

  Desmond grabbed Clayton by the collar of his shirt, lifting him onto his toes. “I don’t want any pissing around from you. All right, my old pal? All right?” Desmond bellowed in his ear.

  “Yes!” Clayton hunched down, waiting to be struck.

  “Lie down there.” Desmond kicked him behind the knees and dropped him onto the gravel. “And don’t move until I tell you, or I’ll come back and pull the pin on that bomb strapped to your chest. You hear me?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Desmond reached down, grabbed a handful of Clayton’s hair. “What’s your name? The one I gave you. I want to hear you say it.”

  “Seamus.” His Adam’s apple was stuck in his throat.

  “All Irishmen are called Seamus. We should rename the lot of you and save time.”

  “Leave him alone for now.” Stanley crouched by the tire. “Come help me with this.”

  Desmond let go of the hair and Clayton’s face smacked on the road.

  “It doesn’t look flat, Stan.” Desmond walked across. He bent down, hands on knees. “Seems all right to me.”

  Stanley had stepped back. In one fluid movement, he drew the gun from his belt, cocked the hammer, and shot Desmond in the back.

  The air cracked and Desmond jolted backward. Quickly, he struggled to his feet. “Stan.” His voice had grown suddenly hoarse.

  Stanley held the revolver out at arm’s length.

  “What did you do to me?” Desmond’s legs started to give way.

  Stanley fired again and Desmond collapsed into the ditch. For a moment Stanley stayed looking down at the body. Then he walked over to Clayton.

  “No!” Clayton lifted his chin off the gravel. “No! I didn’t do anything!” He kicked his feet against the ground. “I didn’t … do … anything!”

  Stanley lifted him to his feet.

  “I didn’t do anything!” Clayton’s voice was a high-pitched whine.

  “Harry!” Stanley still held the gun in his hand.

  Crow slipped through the hedge and walked down to the road.

  I sat for a moment with Tarbox. I didn’t remember having breathed in the past few minutes. I felt a sudden stillness in the air, from knowing that Desmond was dead. It was a sadness, too, and I felt it against my face like the sigh of a ghost. Then the two of us followed Crow down.

  “Is that you, Harry?” Clayton’s hands stayed locked behind his back.

  “Of course it’s him. And me as well.” Tarbox dragged Desmond’s body out of the ditch. He turned the body over. Desmond’s arms slapped down on the gravel. Tarbox opened the pockets on Desmond’s tunic and made a pile of cigarettes and coins.

  “No looting!” Crow set his boot on Tarbox’s back and shoved him away from the corpse. “You just don’t get it, do you? There will be no looting!”

  “It doesn’t make any sense. There’s useful things he’s carrying. They’ll all go to waste otherwise.”

  “No, they won’t. They’ll be sent home to his wife. Same as I hope your things would be sent home if it was you lying there.”

  At the mention of his wife, Tarbox slumped into silence.

  Crow held his hand out to Stanley. “Do you have the handcuff key?” Stanley laid his revolver on the hood of the truck and unclipped the key from his belt. He threw it to me instead of Tarbox.

  Tarbox removed a hand grenade from the leather ammunition pouch that had been strapped across Clayton’s chest. He weighed the gridded apple-size bomb in his hand. Then he guided Clayton to where I stood. “I was just telling Ben here how the Tans are going to rip Lahinch apart looking for you. We might as well all be living in the dunes from now on.”

  Clayton stared straight through me. He didn’t wait for the cuffs to be unlocked. Instead, he walked over to Desmond’s body and kicked him in the chest so hard I thought I heard the ribs crack. He was shaking with anger.

  I undid the cuffs and it seemed to calm him down. Clayton’s hands, twisted for so long behind his back, looked crooked like the claws of a bird.

  Crow held out a fist of bills to Stanley. “Here�
�s the rest of the money. A hundred and fifty dollars.”

  “Hide it and I’ll get it off you later.” Stanley waved him away. “Let’s just get this over with.”

  “I don’t know if I can.”

  “You have to do it. If you don’t, they’ll find out what really happened. I’m trusting you now, Harry.”

  Crow pointed at the body of Desmond. “Did you know him very well, Stan?”

  “What the hell do you care? Now shut up and do your job.”

  Crow cocked the hammer of Desmond’s revolver. Then he shot Stanley just below the knee.

  Stanley’s leg jerked back. He tried to stay on his feet, spitting out breath through clenched teeth. Then he dropped onto the road. He curled up in a ball and pressed his hands to the wound.

  Crow knelt next to him. “Will you be all right for now, Stan? They’ll come looking for you soon. Can you hear me, Stan? I’m going to put a bandage on you. Can you hear me? It’s only a nick and you’ll be up again in no time. We both had plenty worse than this over in France, didn’t we, Stan?”

  Stanley nodded. His forehead scraped on the gravel.

  Clayton pointed at me, as if singling me out from a crowd. “You must be the Yank. The way I heard it, they were looking for an old man. But it’s you they’re after, isn’t it? Tomorrow, they’ll be bringing that crewman off the Madrigal down to Lahinch. As soon as Sutherland has him, the crewman will talk and they’ll come looking for you.”

  I wanted to ask now if he would help me to find Hagan. I had no time to waste and wanted to set out while the dark still sheltered me.

  Clayton smoothed his fingers over his wrists, where the handcuffs had dug in. “We should be gone by now.”

  We left Stanley on the road, still curled in a ball. As we vanished into the ranks of night fog, Stanley’s groaning reached us on the wind. Once I turned and saw a splash of white from the bandage on Stanley’s leg.

  The white rocked slowly back and forth, as Stanley cradled the pain.

  CHAPTER 11

  Clayton sat in a puddle of lamplight. On a bare wood table in Mrs. Fuller’s basement, he sketched a plan of the Lahinch barracks. Shadows carved into his face. Lying next to him was the Mauser’s wooden holster. It had been buried so long underground the soil had mottled it.