The Promise of Light

by Paul Watkins

  “I’m sure this was the armory room. I was in a cell opposite, and I heard rifles being pulled off racks the night that ship went down. I heard people loading the magazines as they ran out to the truck.”

  Crow leaned over him, squinting at the plan. “But you’ve got to be more than almost sure. I can’t be responsible for sending a group of men into a building with the wrong floor plan.”

  “That’s all right, Harry.” Clayton set down the pencil. “You aren’t responsible any more.”

  I sat next to Tarbox, waiting for the talk to die down so I could ask if there would be anyone to guide me north. Veils of spiderweb coated empty jars on the windowsill. Their lids were fused by ginger rust.

  Crow eased himself into an old chair whose wicker seat had collapsed and never been repaired. “I got you that dairy pump, Clayton. The one you wanted just before the Tans pulled you in. It’s over there in the corner if you still need it.”

  The pump looked like a beer keg with a hose attached to the top.

  “It’s a bloody milk pump for sucking the milk out of cow’s tits.” Tarbox hugged his ribs. “Have you lost your bloody minds?”

  Clayton pressed his fingertips together. They were black with pencil dust. “If we fill it with kerosene and invert the pumping mechanism, then smash a hole in the barracks roof and pump the fuel in after it, the whole place would go up in flames.”

  “How do you get close enough to smash a hole in the roof?”

  “Ladders.”

  Tarbox held his hand out, waiting to collect a better answer. “How do you get close enough to use them?”

  “We lay down covering fire. We’ve got enough ammunition for that.”

  Crow stared at the drum. “But what if they shoot a hole in it? The Tans are armed to the teeth. They’ve got crates of hand grenades and at least three Lewis guns and all the ammunition in the world. The place is built like a bunker. What good are we against all that?”

  Clayton walked over to the milk pump. “We need to make a strike at a barracks. We need to keep up the pressure. Attacks are due to take place all over Ireland, all at the same time. The whole thing’s already arranged.”

  Tarbox spat on the floor. “It will be a massacre. How much longer do you want to live? Or is the grey dog following you and you don’t care?”

  I looked at him suddenly. “What did you say?”

  “I said it would be a massacre.” Tarbox ground his spit into the dirt.

  “About the grey dog. What did you say about that?”

  “It’s just another way of saying he’s at the end of his rope. It’s from an old story. Don’t look at me like that, boy. It’s just a children’s story.”

  Clayton had gone back to his map. He shaded in the barracks with the stub of pencil. “Has my father gone and married that idiot woman Mrs. Gisby, yet?”

  Before I knew what I was doing, I had stood up and barked in his face. I didn’t know if it made any sense, or even what I had said, except that I was angry. I’d already given up hope that anyone would guide me to Connemara. One good look at Clayton had told me enough about that.

  Now Clayton looked across, as if noticing me for the first time. “What’s he doing here, anyway?”

  Crow rested his forearms on the table. He cleared his throat. “I thought you should meet Ben here. He’s Arthur Sheridan’s son, after all. He’s heading up north to find Hagan and he needs a guide. I was thinking I could take him there myself.”

  “Do you know where Hagan is?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “And who’s going to do your job while you’re gone?”

  “It won’t take long. We could set out tonight. The Tans will be busy searching Lahinch.”

  Tarbox smacked his hands together. “Well, it’s another night in the dunes, boys.”

  “I am giving you an order.” Clayton stared, as if he could not believe they would dare talk back to him. “And you, too, Crabman. If anyone under my command leaves the area without my permission, I’ll shoot them myself.” Clayton turned to me. “Everything your country stands for is going on in these towns and in these fields. You’re looking at a people who want their independence and a ruling class that won’t give it to them.”

  Tarbox raised his hands and let them drop again. “Oh, don’t start with this again. And don’t cough up that bit about President Wilson’s speech, either.”

  Clayton didn’t hear him. His words had become like a chant. “How different is it from your Bunker Hill and Yorktown and Lexington? How different are these members of the Republican Army and your Minutemen? I can’t see a damn bit of difference myself. Even Wilson said that in Boston, in 1919. He said ‘We set this nation up to make men free and we did not confine our conception and purpose to America, and now we will make men free.’ And what the hell are you doing about it, Mr. Sheridan?” Clayton folded his arms and sat back. The chair legs creaked underneath him. “The same damn thing as your father; looking for the first excuse to run away.”

  I lunged at him across the table and I had him by the lapels of his coat. The Mauser went flying off into the dark. I swung Clayton toward me and cracked his nose against my forehead. Then someone grabbed hold of my ankles and dragged me back until I fell off the table. I thumped down to the floor. Clayton’s hands were pressed to his face and blood trickled out between his fingers. I stood up and lunged at him again, but Crow had hold of my collar, which dug into my throat and held me back.

  “It’s not worth any more.” Crow’s knuckles were warm at the back of my neck where he still held my shirt.

  I tried to think of something to say, but my head was all jumbled. The right words would come later, the way they always did, too late to do any good.

  Clayton took out a handkerchief and dabbed at his bloody nostrils. “I was only telling the truth. I did not deserve that.”

  Tarbox had stayed silent until now. “You deserved worse, you horrible little man.”

  Clayton ignored him. He kept his eyes on me. “And how do you like sleeping in my bed?”

  * * *

  Lahinch was empty again. I went back to fetch the revolver that Crow had given me and to help Guthrie out of his house, if he had not already left.

  Clayton stayed away, in case the Tans were waiting in the town.

  Guthrie was still at his house, feet wrapped in bandages because he had half-boiled his feet in Mrs. Tarbox’s remedy. They looked like giant snowballs.

  I put him in his wheelbarrow and untethered Roly Poly and Margaret. They would follow us down to the sand.

  We set off along the high street. On his lap, Guthrie carried a tattered leather suitcase.

  I thought of what Clayton had said and I wondered if he was right. Perhaps it was cowardice to leave after what I’d seen. But I didn’t have a picture of the whole war, packaged neat and clear in front of me like Clayton’s map of the barracks. All I had seen were the little wars, flaring like tinderbrush fires across the countryside. I doubted if Crow or Tarbox knew much about the whole war, either. Even the Tans seemed drawn into the local chaos. The freedom of the country seemed so far away that neither side could picture it.

  Only Clayton seemed to know, as if he had been brought to some secret room in Dublin by others who knew the whole war, and he had been shown a vision of the free Ireland. They had also shown him the cost, and he carried it hidden inside.

  “How did Clayton look, Ben? Had they beaten him badly? I dreamed that they had hurt him terribly.”

  “No. He’s fine. He’s out here someplace and he’s fine.” I didn’t tell him about the fight.

  We moved on for a while in silence. The barrow’s weight rubbed blisters on my hands. “What story does it come from, Guthrie, when people talk of being followed by a grey dog?”

  “Well, now let me see. That would be the story of Cuchulain’s dog. After Cuchulain had died, the dog ran away to the hills. Then what happened, you see, is it would come down again to hunt for the people who had been his master’
s enemies. So whenever these people saw themselves followed by a huge grey dog, they knew their time had come. It meant they were going to die. And why do you ask me that?”

  I told him why.

  He clicked his tongue while he listened. “I doubt Arthur could have forgiven himself completely for not coming back to Ireland like he promised. Perhaps he meant to send you in his place, the way people say over here. But perhaps, as you say, with him not being your real father, he only wanted you to know the truth.”

  A splash of white caught my eye. Then I saw, in arm-thick letters painted on the wall of Gisby’s Hotel: GOD BLESS THE BLACK AND TANS.

  Roly Poly and Margaret and I all shambled to a halt outside the hotel.

  Mrs. Gisby stood in the doorway. Her head was a quilt of hairpins. “They made me do it, just before they left to find a man of theirs who’s missing. And they said if they couldn’t find him, they’d be coming back to burn the place down.”

  Wind sifted through Guthrie’s grey hair. “I’ll help you clean it up, Lil. After this is over. For now, you must come to the dunes.”

  “I’ll be there soon enough.”

  Trickles ran down from the clumsily painted letters. They wandered over cracks in the stone.

  “Won’t you come with us, Lil?” Guthrie gripped his suitcase. His fingernails dug into the chafed leather.

  “I’ll come when I’m ready.”

  “Lil, I been meaning to say. After all this time … This can’t wait, Lil. I’m going to say this now, or I’m not going to say it at all. We’re getting married, you and I.”

  “Are you asking me or telling me, you old man sitting there in a wheelbarrow?”

  I set down the barrow and pressed my reddened hands together. I was a little embarrassed to be there, in the middle of Guthrie’s proposing. But just then I had no place else to go.

  “I’m saying this has gone on long enough!” Guthrie banged his fist on the suitcase. “My house is too big and my time is too empty. Do you want me to drop to my knees? Is that it?” He started to heave himself out of the barrow. “I didn’t think you’d want a song and dance.”

  “Stay where you are, old man. Wait until your feet are better. That way I won’t have to walk down the aisle and see you there by the altar in your barrow.”

  “We could decorate it with flowers.” I closed my hands on the splintery wooden handles. “I could wear a tuxedo.”

  “I should have stuck with the udder balm. That’s what I should have done!”

  “We’ll be having a talk about you and your balm, Mr. Guthrie.”

  * * *

  “There!” Guthrie’s voice was almost a shout, as I wheeled him down to the sand. “I really went and did it!”

  “Congratulations. I know it’s the right thing to do.” It was hard pushing the wheels over the sand. I knew that in a minute, I’d have to stop. I thought of Lil and Guthrie together, and realized that I’d already been thinking of them as married for a long while now.

  “About time!” Guthrie waved his fist in the air. “About bloody time it was, too!”

  * * *

  Fires glowed on the beach. Smoke from burning driftwood sifted through the dune grass.

  I left the barrow and carried Guthrie piggyback over the sand. He weighed nothing at all. Roly Poly and Margaret followed, chewing at grass along the way. As I stumbled down the slope of a dune, I saw someone huddled by a fire. It was a woman, her hands reached out to the crackling orange for warmth. A man sat next to her.

  The man was Crow. And now I recognized Ruth. She had been beaten. Her face was puffy with bruises and her eyes had both been blackened.

  Crow covered her head with his hand. His fingers caged the bluish welts on her forehead. “Ruth’s father found out about her being with me. He said he’d warned her too many times already. So this is what he did to her as punishment.”

  Ruth’s head bowed lower as Crow spoke.

  Guthrie whispered in my ear. “Move along, Ben.”

  I staggered on through the sand and Crow disappeared behind the flames.

  * * *

  Low-tide sand stretched down toward the water. I saw other fires burning, and people crowded around them, but Guthrie looked so cold and tired that I decided to build him a fire of his own.

  I gathered strangely twisted driftwood branches from the webs of dried-out seaweed, while Guthrie stayed in a hollow, coat pulled up over his head to cut out the sand-speckled wind. The cow and the sheep settled down. They closed their eyes and slept.

  I made the fire and slowly the wood began to burn. Salt made the flames flicker blue. It wheezed and popped and the dune grass lit up like shreds of brass wire.

  There had been no time to eat dinner and I was hungry. And not knowing where my next meal was coming from only made the hunger worse. I imagined the kettle boiling on Guthrie’s stove, how the tea would taste smoky and how I was used to the taste of the smoke. It seemed to be everywhere; in the meat, in the beer, in the bread. “Would you like me to go and find Clayton?”

  Guthrie looked down at his snowball bandages. “He’ll come to me when he’s ready.”

  “I’m leaving tonight, Guthrie. It’s only sixty miles to Connemara. I’m going by myself.”

  “With no one to help you?”

  Smoke pinched at my eyes. “No.”

  Guthrie bowed toward the fire. The cold was skirting his bones. “Then you may as well know. I made a promise and now I’m breaking it. So now you wait and see if that same grey dog doesn’t come looking for me. Ah, Jesus.” He touched his fingertips against his closed eyes. “Arthur Sheridan is not your father. Hagan is. And Mae was not your mother. Her name was Helen, and she was Hagan’s wife. Hagan put you in Arthur’s care when you were six months old. You were born here, Ben, just up the road. I saw you when you weren’t an hour old.”

  Suddenly the coils of my stomach felt like glass. If I moved, they would shatter. I didn’t know why I was surprised. I think I had hoped all along that Dr. Melville might be lying and news of it would reach me any day. Or I had come to accept that I would never know. I tried again to picture Hagan, but still found only a cloudy presence far to the north. Further than Connemara. It was as if he lived out on the ice floes of the Arctic.

  Guthrie stabbed at the fire and sparks coughed into the air. “The soldiers were looking for Hagan. They burned his house when he and you and your mother were still inside it. Your mother died in the fire. Hagan took you out through the smoke. I remember the blanket you were wrapped in. The wool was all scorched. Hagan went into hiding. But he knew the soldiers would find him in the end. And then what would happen to you? Arthur and Mae were leaving for America and he knew you’d be safe there. So he put you in their keeping. Hagan thought he’d be dead in six weeks. He gave you up for good, Ben. Not to have you brought back years later and have your life turned on its head. For good.”

  For a long time, we sat without speaking. But there was no silence in my head. Voices clamored inside. All the pictures that made up my life thundered through my mind, too fast to understand. I searched for clues in my past that should have led me before now to this knowledge. But I found no difference in the eyes and skin and bones that I had believed were an echo of my own. No tone of voice. No memory of whispered conversations rising like smoke through the floorboards to my room at night. If it had been a smaller lie, I knew I might have found it. But this stretched so vast across the years that I had never thought to question.

  Guthrie had fallen asleep. His chin rested on his chest.

  I stood. Blown sand sifted from the ripples of my clothes. “Good-bye, Guthrie. Thank you for helping me.”

  “Eh?” Guthrie raised his head. His eyes were blurry.

  I thanked him again and said good-bye. I said I’d come back and see him someday.

  He told me not to promise, so there’d be no word to keep, but I promised anyway. I missed him already, and it brought tears to my eyes to see him lying there all helpless. But he would be wi
th Lil soon, so there was no need for crying. Both of us had always known that I’d be moving on, and this had come between us. His was the voice that had broken the secret, so I would never forget him, and never forget the memory of myself standing here by the fire, with no clue how to get home.

  * * *

  On my way out to the road, I found Clayton. He sat by himself on an old tree trunk which was half buried at the high-tide line. He had a fire burning.

  Tarbox’s cart stood nearby. Two pairs of shoes stuck out from a pile of blankets on the cart.

  Clayton put a finger to his lips when I stepped into view. “Tarbox and his wife are fast asleep,” he whispered. Then he pulled a stick from the fire and held it out to me. On the end of the stick was a roasted potato. “Hungry?”

  I nodded thanks and took the smoke-billowing potato. I waited for him to say something about the fight, or even do something about it, but he seemed to have forgotten.

  “Come and see this.” Clayton led me to the top of a dune. The sky glowed orange over Lahinch. “It’s Gisby’s Hotel. The Tans said they’d burn it down if she didn’t write that thing about God save the Tans. So she painted it up, then burned the bloody place herself.”

  I watched the distant flames. Bubbles of light from smaller fires showed across the waves of sand. Silhouettes scrabbled up and then dropped down again. I knew we were all watching it. I thought of the dining room’s salmon-pink walls, of my sleeping place on the kitchen floor, the benches in the pub, and the beer-splashed copper sheets across the top of the bar. If it had to burn, I was thinking, at least it was Gisby who set the place alight.

  “So you’re leaving now, are you?” Clayton took the potato out of my hand and bit into it.

  I nodded again.

  “Good luck to you.” Steam billowed from his mouth. “I think luck is about all you have left.”

  I pointed toward the place where Guthrie lay sleeping. “Go and look after your father.”

  CHAPTER 12