by Paul Watkins
By dawn, I was on the way to Ennistymon. Sad crying gulls drew rings in the air above me, then dropped into the plowed earth of fields beyond the road.
Crow had made me a map the day before, on a guest receipt from Gisby’s Hotel. His smoky fingerprints walked across the paper.
From Ennistymon, I would bear north to Lisdoonvarna, Ballyvaghan and Kinvarra. I’d pass through Galway to Rosscahill and Maam Cross. If I reached the Cross, Crow had told me, I’d see the Maamturk Mountains in the distance. Then I’d probably be safe. Hagan was out there, someplace among the peat-bogged hills and bottomless sapphire lakes.
I had a little money. My pockets jangled with change.
Horse-drawn carts trundled by. They were filled with seaweed. Men with pitchforks spread it on the fields as fertilizer.
A river ran through Ennistymon, water foaming cream and brown as it broke across the rocks. The trees were crowded with blackbirds, cackling in the leaves.
An army truck rumbled past and diesel coughed in my face. The driver leaned out and squinted at me.
Ennistymon was busy with soldiers and shops. Rabbits hung outside the butcher’s. Joints of meat, speckled with parsley, crammed the window.
Loaves of bread slipped one by one from the bakery, carried in string bags by women with shawls on their heads.
The soldiers moved in pairs, black polish on their boots blinking silver in the sun. Sam Browne belts pinched their stomachs.
I walked up a steep hill to a churchyard that overlooked the town. The roof and windows had gone from the church and grass grew through the flagstones on the floor. From here, I could see far across the water. The houses of Lahinch bunched near the horizon.
I sat down to rest on a grave. it had been raised above the ground, the earth too crowded below. Slate panels that hid the coffin had slumped. The rotten wood showed through and I could make out the rough-edged sticks of bones. A skull, worn thin as paper by the rain and wind, lay staring at the grey roofstone.
Each time I tried to fasten in myself the knowledge that Hagan was my father, my heart beat like a clock’s chimes gone mad. Understanding would come only fragment by fragment. Maybe just to see Hagan would lock all the pieces calmly into place. But I couldn’t imagine it. The idea only threw me further into confusion.
* * *
I headed north toward Kinvarra. Tucked under my arm, I carried a loaf of bread.
The Crossley truck had stopped a mile north of Ennistymon. It clogged up the road. The driver and another soldier were replacing a tire. A rifle with fixed bayonet stood propped against the spare wheel.
By the time I caught sight of the machine, the soldiers had already seen me. They were from the barracks at Lahinch. One of them was Sergeant Byrne, Ruth’s father. The other was an army corporal. By now, I even knew the rank badges. Two stripes for a corporal. Three for a sergeant. I knew then that I couldn’t turn around. So I looked down at my shoes and tried to shuffle by.
“You.”
Panic rained through my guts. I kept moving. The chafed toes of my boots appeared and disappeared in front of me.
“I’m talking to you, Seamus. You. I’m talking to you.”
Now I stopped and raised my head to meet their stares. If they searched me, they would find the gun.
They stood with their hands in their pockets.
The corporal stepped forward. “You’re the one I hit that other day.”
I hadn’t known it was him, since he came at me from behind. “Snuffed me out like a candle.” I remembered the way Crow had said it.
Byrne pointed at the ground in front of him. “Come and change this tire.”
“What’s the matter? Don’t you talk? What’s your name? Don’t you work at the hotel?”
“Ben.” My lips had dried out. They rustled together like blades of old grass.
“What’s a Yank doing here except to cause trouble?”
“No trouble.” My Adam’s apple had jammed in my throat. If he came any closer, I knew I’d have to shoot him. I dug my elbow into my side, trying to hide the gun.
Byrne snatched my arm from behind. He swung me around until I was facing the truck. My loaf of bread fell on the ground. “Put your hands up there. Legs apart.”
For a second, my fingertips rested on the taut canvas of the truck’s roof. I filled my lungs, but the air seemed thin and useless.
Then I sprang away to the side, fingers raking across the holster as I tried to pull it open.
The corporal rushed me, screaming.
I had my hand on the butt of the Webley.
He smacked me in the face and I started to fall, still trying to pull out the gun.
Byrne ran at me. He jumped in the air and his boot slammed into my chest.
The wind punched out of me. My gun went clattering down the road, barrel spinning in circles.
I heard them shouting, but pain blurred their words. A boot pressed my face to the ground. They twisted my arms. Then came the brush of hands down my legs and sides as they searched for more weapons.
A stripe of burning spread across my skull. For a moment, my consciousness fizzled. Then my thoughts came back and I knew they had kicked me in the head.
They lifted me up off the ground and I had trouble keeping my balance.
Byrne’s face was close. “If you so much as breathe funny, I’ll put a fucking window in your chest.” They had fetched my gun and now they held it up in front of my face. “Where did this come from? Who did you kill to get it?”
Before I could think of an answer, rage spread across Byrne’s face. It twisted his lips and his cheeks. His eyes vanished behind the narrowed lids. Then with great care, he brought his arm back, the revolver barrel locked in his fist.
I closed my eyes. I knew what was coming. The butt of the Webley crashed into my head. Vaguely, I felt myself falling. Then my body jolted on the ground. I thought they might be hitting me. But as the darkness settled, I realized it was my heart, trying to kick its way out of my chest.
* * *
My toes scraped along the ground. When I raised my head, I saw a large stone house with metal-shuttered windows and sandbags set out in a waist-high ring around the door. It was the barracks at Lahinch.
Byrne and the corporal were dragging me. They breathed through clenched teeth with the strain.
The hedges had been cut back around the house, so that no one could approach without being seen. Only stumps remained of trees that had grown on the lawn. Tar was spread on the stumps to stop the sap from bleeding.
A soldier sat behind the sandbags and propped on a tripod next to him was a machine gun. A bayonet had been stabbed up to its hilt into the bags. The soldier flicked away his cigarette. He put his helmet on.
A shutter squeaked open. Pale faces peered from inside.
My feet bounced up the steps and past the steel-plated door.
They dragged me down a corridor. The floor was gritty with sand from spilled sandbags. Piles of them lay by the windows.
In a room to one side, iron-rail beds were lined up against the wall. Sheet music and postcards decorated the walls. By each bed was a chair, on which the soldiers had folded their clothes and set their leather bandoliers. Rifles hung horizontally from straps at the end of every bed.
* * *
I stood facing the wall in a room with no windows, hands on top of my head. The place smelled like a locker room at a gym.
Byrne took hold of the back of my neck, pinching his thumb and index finger into the base of my skull. “Don’t go away.”
My shirt was soaked under the arms. I rested my forehead against the cold wall, smudging the sweat. Salt leaked into my eyes.
The door crashed shut. The only light came from one bulb that hung from the ceiling. The bulb had a shade, green on the top and bone-white underneath. It looked more like a dinner plate than a shade, and only seemed to make the light stronger. The walls were bare and duck-egg blue. A space the size of a loaf of bread had been cut in the brick, far
above my head.
When I turned, I saw a table in the middle of the room. Two chairs were pulled under it.
I had to get a story straight. Any story.
The door opened and shut again. “Are you all right?” It was the officer named Sutherland, the one I had seen that night at Gisby’s. “I asked if you were all right.”
“Yes.” I squinted in the glare.
He pointed to a chair. “Sit there, please.”
I sat with my back to the door.
Sutherland folded his hands and rested them on the table. The knot of his fingers reached almost to where I sat. “Please keep your hands on the table.”
I held my fingers tucked in, as if they were too fragile to lie there unprotected.
“We’re going to ask you some questions.” Sutherland leaned forward. “All right?”
I wanted to wipe the sweat from my forehead. It was cold and itchy now. But I didn’t dare move my hands. Sutherland seemed ready to latch on to them as soon as they shifted.
Someone trampled down the stairs.
Sutherland took a notebook from his top pocket. The book was leather-bound, with pale-blue pages. From the spine, he pulled a thin pencil and licked the tip, ready to write. “What’s your name?”
“Benjamin Guthrie.”
He didn’t look up. The pencil still hovered over the tiny notebook pages. “Your real name, please.” He held out his pencil and rested it on my right shoulder. “This worn patch comes from carrying a rifle. The gun strap rubs away at the cloth. You aren’t Guthrie’s nephew from America. So tell me your real name.”
I hadn’t noticed the worn patch before.
“I know who you are.” Sutherland breathed out with a small whistling sigh. “I’m going to give you one more chance to tell me your name.”
“If you already know, then why are you asking me?”
“We start out asking the things we do know. We get you to tell the truth. Then we move on to whatever else you can tell us. Like who you delivered those guns to and who paid for them and how many there were and what your orders were when you reached Ireland and how your father is involved. Do you see? Because at the moment, the correct answers to those questions are all that’s standing between you and a hole in the ground.”
The air in the room bristled with violence. It was like static.
“Nothing to say?” Sutherland looked at his watch.
I stared at a drop of my sweat as it sank into the wood of the table.
Sutherland stood up. His chair scraped on the floor. “I’ll see you in a little bit.” He walked out, resting a hand on my shoulder as he passed by.
When Sutherland comes back, I thought, I will ask to be released. I’ll ask if there are any charges being brought against me and if there are no charges, I will ask to be let go.
When the door opened again, I stood up. Someone walked in. I screwed up my eyes in the brightness and raised a hand to block out the tiny sun of the bulb.
It wasn’t Sutherland. Byrne stood there with his arms folded. “Captain says you’re not being helpful.”
“Are you arresting me or not?”
Byrne’s raised eyebrows were thin licks of blond. “What?”
“If you are arresting me, then I would like to know the charges. If you aren’t, I am asking to be released.” The breath caught in my throat. “I’m asking to be released immediately.” Stand your ground, I thought to myself. Don’t let him know you’re afraid. I was still telling myself this when I took Byrne’s knuckles full in the face.
Then I was lying on the floor and from all around came hissing and thunder. Pain clamped onto the bridge of my nose and blinded me. I breathed in and liquid caught in my throat. It trickled into my lungs and choked me. Something burst against my stomach and the shock rolled me over. The floor dropped away and something like seasickness made me want to throw up but I couldn’t.
Now I was sitting on the table. Someone had hold of my shoulders. Byrne’s voice rumbled like waves breaking.
My skull seemed to drift in a slow wobbly arc out into the room and my body followed somewhere behind. I thought about protecting myself but by the time my arm reached out I’d already hit the ground. I landed on my face.
Back in the chair. My lips kept sticking together. I opened my mouth to speak and speckles of blood sprayed across Byrne’s cheeks.
Byrne shouted something.
Once more my head seemed to catapult itself off into space, leading me down to the floor.
Now someone else was in the room. It was Sutherland. He yelled at Byrne and the door slammed.
Someone had me by the chin. Then something metal clinked against my teeth and fire poured into my mouth. I choked and fell off the chair.
Back in the chair. “Bastard,” I tried to say. But the word came out “Bathtud.” I said it again and louder. “Bathtud!”
Sutherland’s voice hummed in my ears. “As soon as you answer some questions, we’ll fix you up. We just need to know a few names. Can you hear me?”
“Eth.” My tongue flopped in my mouth.
“Good.” A chair scraped on the floor and Sutherland sat down at the table. “This shouldn’t have happened.”
“Eth.” Pain shrieking behind my eyes.
Someone else was in the room now. Another man. I stayed looking at the table. I didn’t think I could raise my head even if I’d wanted to.
“Well, is that him or isn’t it?” Sutherland whispered to the new man.
“I can’t see his face.”
A hand rested on my shoulder. It was Sutherland’s. “Would you mind looking up for a moment?”
I flexed the muscles at the back of my neck. My head wobbled a little but I couldn’t raise it.
Sutherland swung out of his chair. He grabbed my hair and lifted me up. “Is this him or isn’t it?”
I tried to focus on the new man. Then I knew.
It was Baldwin. His face was all beaten to hell. “How can I tell after what you’ve done to him?”
After what they’ve done to him. The words repeated in my head, then tears trickled into my eyes.
“It’s him.” Baldwin left the room.
Sutherland let go of my head and my nose slammed against the table. A huge pendulum inside me painted one stroke of dark after another over my thoughts. Soon there was only the quiet plodding of my heart to keep me company.
* * *
The light was on. I lay on the floor. My jacket had been taken off, rolled up as a pillow and stuffed under my head. I could hear the sea through the air vent.
Boots tumped up and down the corridor.
I raised my arm to look at my watch but the watch had disappeared. My fingers touched the bloated skin around my nose. When I raised my head, I saw my shirt crusted with blood. The blood had dried and turned brown. From the ache in my ribs when I breathed, I could tell I had been kicked. I tried to breathe through my nose but nothing happened except a pressure built up somewhere in my throat.
I rolled over onto my hands and knees, and realized that I was barefoot. They had taken my boots and socks. I crawled around the room. In one corner, blood in spots and smeared fingermarks splattered the walls and floor. People had trod in the blood and tracked it across to the table. I ran my hand across the marks where I had fallen off the chair and landed on my face. The blood came away in burgundy dust on my fingertips.
Sitting against the wall, I blinked and blinked, trying to clear the pressure around my eyes.
It was dark outside. I’d been lying there all day.
Whispering. It seemed to come from inside my head and I ground my thumb-knuckles into my temples to clear the noise. But the whispering kept up. It was coming from outside.
A door slammed in the barrack building. It thundered through the walls. Hobnailed boots ran past and a draft blew against my bare feet.
“What do you mean he’s not there?” It was Sutherland, followed by someone who took shorter steps and mumbled.
“He’s pr
obably just checking the grounds, sir. But I thought I ought to tell you.” It was an Irish voice, the throaty purr so different from the English.
The front door of the barrack house swung open. Its armor-plating dragged across the floor.
“Stanley!” Sutherland yelled.
“Probably just checking the grounds, sir. As I said.” The Irishman mumbled again, as if he had trouble assembling the sounds into words.
“Stanley! Stanley, is that you?”
It was quiet for a moment. I leaned closer to the cold metal of the door. Then came a sound like a damp log bursting in the fire. The sound came again. Gunfire.
Someone cried out in pain.
Suddenly the barracks shook with footsteps. Shouts piled up on shouts. A long scrape traveled the length of the corridor. Then the light went suddenly away from under my door as a falling body blocked the space. Footsteps running away.
“Raid!” Frightened voices came muffled through the brick. “It’s a raid!”
Bullets clanked against the metal window shutters.
I crawled into the corner and wrapped my arms around my knees. I had begun to shake. I waited for the door to burst open and for Sutherland or one of the soft-talking RIC men to drag me out and shoot me.
The man on the other side of the door was trying to sit up.
Gunshots banged at my ears.
“Oh my God.” The man slumped down again.
More footsteps. Someone crouched down next to the door. “Captain Sutherland, sir? I’ve got morphine for you, sir.” It was another English voice. “It’s me, sir, Sergeant Gillis.”
“Oh, Christ.” Sutherland was trying to sit up.
“You’ve been shot, sir. I’ve got some morphine here. I think they might try to burn the place, sir.”
“Take me home to my family.”
I stared wide-eyed into the black, waiting for the fire. My blood-crusted nostrils searched for the first threads of smoke.
“Sir, I’m putting a bandage on you. This is all I can do for you at the moment. I’m going to take charge of the group, sir. Do I have your permission, sir?”
“Shoot the hostage.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Kill him.”
“Right, sir.”
The door creaked as Sutherland pressed himself against it, trying to get up. “Home to my family.”
