by Paul Watkins
A part of me had already given up hope that I would reach home again. That part began to call this place home, and had sunk roots into the black soil. Even now, it didn’t want to leave.
I wondered if Guthrie would be all right. Perhaps the word of him sheltering me never reached Ennistymon and now, with the Lahinch Tans gone, there would be no one left who knew.
Someone passed a canteen down the line. I shook it to see if there was anything left. The canteen was cloth-covered, with a wine-cork for a stopper. When I took a mouthful, I felt my eyes open wide with surprise. Whiskey. Perhaps even Dunhams. It sent the same bright fire down inside me.
Mist billowed across the fields and I could no longer make out the shapes of men lying near me. I only heard the rustling of their clothes, as if the fog itself had voices. I corked the water bottle and slung it on my back, then crawled along the wall to where another man was sitting. I had met him once at the pub but couldn’t recall his name. Coogan, maybe. Culligan. Cadogan. I held out the canteen.
The man pulled out the cork with his teeth.
Culligan. Countryman. I still couldn’t remember.
He wiped the mouth of the water bottle on his sleeve, then drank three heavy swallows. “I’m going home.” He breathed alcohol in my face. “The Tans have turned around and left. A while ago, you could hear them down in the hollow. Now there’s nothing. They’ve all buggered off.”
It was true that the voices had stopped.
“Besides, I have to show up for work tomorrow.” He tucked the rifle under his arm and set off towards Lahinch.
I stood by myself, barely breathing as I listened to the fog. Then I returned to my spot by the wall.
Stanley and Crow were there. Stanley carried a Lewis gun. Its barrel was as thick as Stanley’s leg. In a satchel on his back were spare magazines, round like plates and two fingers thick.
Crow unclipped the bayonet from his rifle. He ground its blade a few times on a stone. “It’ll be like old times, Stan.”
“So it will indeed, Harry.” Stanley swung the Lewis gun back and forth on its stand.
My mouth still tingled from the whiskey. “I just talked to a man who said the Tans have turned back. He was on his way home.”
Stanley looked up. “You’re fucking kidding.”
Crow scraped his thumb across the bayonet’s blade and then clipped it back onto his rifle. “They’re still out there. They can walk around like ghosts. And the last thing the Tans are going to do is turn around and go home. They’re probably looking forward to this. Bloody useless, isn’t it? Have to fight the damn war by ourselves, Stan.” He stepped back into the fog and his footsteps faded away.
Stanley fixed a drum of bullets onto the Lewis. “We shouldn’t be here at all. There’s only about twenty of us and there must be at least fifty of them. When daylight comes, hundreds of them will be crawling all over this place. We should just get up into the hills.”
I stared at the fog. It wove into shapes that I recognized, then scattered and left me straining to make out what I’d seen.
Stanley took three grenades from his pockets. A bar stretched along one side of the dull gridded surface, held there by a pin. He brought one of the bombs close to my face. “It’s a Mills bomb. All you do is keep your fist wrapped around the bomb and the lever bar. Then you pull out the pin. Don’t let go of the lever. Once you do, you’ve got seven seconds. Do you see?” Stanley set the grenade back on the wall. The grid pattern stayed printed on his palm.
“When are you leaving for America, Stanley?”
“Soon as I can. I’ve had false papers made up. Passport. Work permits. I paid to have it done.”
“But they’d recognize your face.”
“Not after I’m through with it.” Stanley grinned. Then suddenly his smile collapsed. “I can hear them.”
All I could make out was the far-away burble of the stream. The saliva wouldn’t go down my throat, so I spat it on the grass.
Something rustled by the wall. I grabbed the rifle and aimed it at a patch of fog. Stanley swung the Lewis around. His legs were braced to take the shock. The rustling kept up and then we saw a man moving toward us on all fours. A rifle was strapped to his back. It was Clayton. When he saw the Lewis aimed at him, he rose to his knees and waved his hands in front of his face. “They’re here.” His voice was scratchy with whispering. “Tarbox just caught one of their forward scouts up on the ridge. We found these on him.” Clayton pulled a clip of bullets from his pocket. The copper tip of each bullet had been filed down so that it looked like the end of a chisel. “Dumdums. If one of them’s done that, then they all have.”
Clayton set the bullet in my hand, then curled my fingers over, as if the bullet was a gift. “They don’t fly straight through the air. Instead, they cartwheel end over end. So when they hit you, they don’t just leave a little hole. They tear out a space the size of your hand. Are you sure you didn’t tell them anything at the barracks?”
“If I say I didn’t tell them anything, then I didn’t.”
“It’s good for you that you didn’t talk, Ben.” Then Clayton’s head snapped around towards Stanley. “It’s you I don’t trust.”
Stanley used his sleeve to rub damp off the barrel of the Lewis. “Well, you don’t have a lot of choice, do you?”
“Give the Lewis to Sheridan.”
“He doesn’t know how to work it.”
“Well, teach him.”
“No time.” Stanley’s voice was growing hoarse.
“I don’t trust you with the only decent weapon we’ve got.”
“Look you.” Stanley held out his hand. His fingertips rested against Clayton’s chest. “I got as much to lose in this as you do. More, if they catch me.”
Clayton watched Stanley’s hand. The space between them had vanished, cut off by the outstretched arm. “If you break formation before you get the order from me, I’ll have you shot.” He didn’t wait for a reply. He continued down the wall, with the slow, loping tread of a hunchback.
I settled back into the quiet. Hagan’s face shimmered in front of me, as if seen from underwater. I was afraid to finally set eyes on him. It seemed as if I had never thought past the idea that he might exist and never dared to give him shape and character. I wondered if he knew that I was here and plodding my way north to find him. People in Lahinch spoke of Hagan as if he knew everything, watching down from the treeless rock of the Connemara hills. He had gone away and left them years before, but they would not leave him. They made Hagan keep them company in the stories that they told.
There had never been anything in my life that I thought worth fighting for. But having come this far, I would do anything to finish what I started. If people stood in the way, I’d do whatever it took to push them aside. It was all that mattered now, and for the moment I didn’t care if I keeled over dead the second after I caught sight of Hagan, because it was as far ahead as I could think and as much as I dared ask for.
Stanley jerked his chin at the place where Clayton had disappeared. “It’s him you want to watch. Not me. I been in worse places than this.” He’d been muttering to himself for a while now, but I had not been listening.
“Why?” The damp rested in my lungs.
“Because he thinks he’s got the whole bloody war planned out in his head. Who’s going to die. When they’re going to die. Why they’re going to die. I think he must sit down at his desk every night with a slide rule and figure it all out.”
Noise came from the fog. I crouched down behind the wall. With my thumb, I pushed forward the gridded metal stub of the Enfield’s safety catch. I flexed my hand, trying to drive out the chill.
The noise came again, metal on metal. Whispering. A rustle as someone crawled forward.
Stanley hugged the butt of the Lewis against his chest.
There was a shout. Then a slow growl came from the fog. The growl rose to screaming. Footsteps thumped toward us.
I shouldered the rifle and tried not to bl
ink.
Howling echoed around us. Boots trampled the ground.
Fire burst along the wall. Shapes appeared from the fog. Running men. They held rifles out in front of them, bayonets fixed on the ends. Their mouths were open and the dew was wet on their helmets. Bayonets swished through the mist.
A blast of wind struck my head. Then the hammer of the Lewis gun surrounded me.
The Tans all jumped back at once, rifles spinning through the air. The flash of the Lewis’s firing reflected off the fog. Soldiers slammed into the ground.
Boots scrabbled over the wall. Then came howling and the thud of bodies colliding. A man appeared from the fog. He ran toward me, helmet shoved back on his head. The chinstrap dug into his throat.
I pulled the trigger and the air blurred for a moment. When it cleared, the soldier was gone. I pulled back the bolt and sent the empty, smoking cartridge flying over my shoulder. Then I looked again for the soldier, but the man had fallen. His rifle lay across his chest. Hobnails shone on the soles of his boots.
Orders boomed at the Tans to regroup and right wheel and keep moving.
Stanley began firing again. He swung the gun, stabbing light into the fog.
A long scream rushed out of the dark. I raised my rifle and stood waiting.
Stanley scooped his arm under the barrel of the Lewis and lifted it off the wall.
A khaki blur rose up in front of him. He cried out and the shout suddenly quit. A shred of silver punched through Stanley’s back. It was the point of a bayonet. Stanley dropped the Lewis. He staggered.
The Tan screamed in Stanley’s face. Their bodies were touching. Then suddenly he turned and saw me. He stepped away, trying to pull out the bayonet. But Stanley’s hands were clenched around the gun barrel.
I swung my rifle butt into the soldier’s head and the Tan’s arms flew up. He dropped his gun and fell.
Stanley sank forward. The Tan’s rifle dug into the earth and held Stanley there on his knees. He made no sound. His hands still gripped the stock, hands red where the web of his thumbs held the rifle. Blood leaked in streams across his wrists.
The Tan was trying to get up. He moved like a blind man, hands groping against the wall stones, but couldn’t find a grip.
I raised the rifle high above his head and brought it down like an ax on the Tan’s uplifted face.
Stanley hadn’t moved. He stayed on his knees, held there by the bayonet. I could see from his eyes he was dead.
I couldn’t bring myself to touch his body. Each time I tried to make my hand go forward, the muscles locked. My breath slipped out around his head.
The sound of an engine echoed across the fields. It strained uphill in low gear.
The stock had broken on my rifle, so I dumped it. I picked the hand grenades off the wall and stuffed them in my pockets. My eyes passed once more over Stanley’s body. Dew spread across the dead man’s back in a cape of silver beads.
The noise of the truck slowed and then stopped. Its engine puttered in neutral. It had to be a captured truck. All the roads from Ennistymon were blocked. Clayton would be using it to bring back wounded. I ran toward the sound, the grenades weighing me down. I hoped Crow would know about Stanley before I saw him again. I’d rather have done anything than tell him his best friend was dead.
Darkness faded from the sky. Grey blue sifted through the clouds.
A wall of brambles gathered in the fog, blocking my way. Behind it lay the road. I stopped and listened. The truck was coming toward me. Then it appeared, sliding past behind the brambles. I brushed back the spiked vines of the hedge.
A dull mass of metal rolled by and I stepped back in surprise. My heel caught a root and I fell. The machine moved very slowly. It was something armored, painted the same dark green as the Crossley trucks. In the dingy morning light, I made out the welding of its metal panels. Its hatches were shut and mud clogged the heavy-treaded tires.
Brambles scraped at my face. I waited for soldiers to follow, but the road stayed empty and blurred in heat from the armored car’s exhaust.
I took a grenade from my pocket and pulled the pin. The lever bar flipped over my shoulder and a thin sliver of smoke leaked from the grenade. I threw it at the machine. The Mills bomb wobbled out of my hand and clattered on the road.
I turned and sprinted, sucking in breath through clenched teeth.
The explosion slammed through my body. Sheep-trampled mud rose up to meet me and my hands smacked into the dirt.
The armored car’s engine changed pitch. It plowed into the hedge. The engine stalled and stopped. Immediately, its ignition began to cough as the driver tried to start again.
I took out another grenade and pulled the pin. Bitter smoke from its burning fuse wafted into my face.
The fat egg wobbled over the hedge. It clanked off the armored car’s roof and someone shouted inside.
The air clenched and burst open. Metal clanged against metal and shrapnel sliced through the brambles.
It was quiet now. I lay flattened against the earth. Dark smoke puffed from the car’s engine grill. Several minutes went by and I didn’t dare to move.
The armored car’s top hatch squeaked open. A head peeked out. It wore a black beret. Then the shoulders appeared, and a hand holding a revolver settled on the top of the car. “I think they’re gone.”
“Are you sure?” This voice came from the belly of the machine.
“I think so, sir.” The man climbed higher. He wore a brown leather coat and had goggles around his neck. On his belt was a Webley revolver. “We’re leaking petrol.” He jumped down to the road.
I pulled out my revolver and breathed in the heaviness of dead leaves and earth. Bramble vines crisscrossed in front of my eyes.
Another man appeared from the hatch. He wore an officer’s peaked cap. “I don’t know where the bastards went. I can’t see anyone from here. I don’t even know where we are.”
The driver on the ground crouched down and dabbed his fingers in the spilled gasoline. “Our back tires are gone as well. We should head back to Ennistymon on foot.”
My chin rested in the dirt. A snail wandered its sticky path along a branch right by my face.
The driver took off his beret and used it to wipe sweat off his forehead. “Shall we head back then, sir?”
“No.” The officer climbed down to the road. “I’m going to stay here with the machine. You’ll have to go back and get help.”
“What? By myself?” The driver stuffed the beret on his head. “It’s a good two miles back to the barracks, and I don’t know who’s between us and home.”
“Look, Parsons. I’m not asking you to do this as a favor. I’m ordering you to run like hell back to Ennistymon and get someone out here with a Crossley so we can tow in the armored car. We’re going to catch hell as it is. We’ve only had this bloody machine for a week. And do you think I’m looking forward to spending the next hour by myself in the middle of nowhere with all these Paddymen creeping around?”
“No, sir. I don’t suppose you are.”
The officer climbed back up to the turret, dropped back inside and screwed the hatch shut.
Parsons turned around. For a moment, he just stared along the road. Then he began a slow, flat-footed run toward Ennistymon.
I’d be safer with a hostage, I was sure of that, so I followed the man. The road led down toward the hollow and crossed the river at a small stone bridge. Parsons picked up speed as he went down the hill, but at the bridge he stopped. He fetched out his gun. “Who’s there?”
I crouched in the tall grass. My clothes were splattered with mud.
Parsons wiped his face again with the beret. “Fuck.” He peered up through the brambles. Then he put the gun away. “Fuck!” He started across the bridge.
I slid down a dirt bank to the road, held out the Webley and cocked back its hammer.
“Oh, Christ!” Parsons heard it and stopped. He didn’t turn around.
I walked toward the man, gun held
out.
“I’m not moving.” Parsons’s shoulders hunched down into his neck. “I’m just standing here. Oh, Christ.”
I rested the Webley’s barrel against the back of his head. “Take off your gunbelt and then hold it out in your right hand.”
Parsons unstrapped the belt from around his coat. “I’m undoing the buckle. I’m doing it slowly. See? I’m doing it slowly. Christ.” He took off his belt and the revolver.
“Throw it in the river.”
Parsons tossed the belt and the holster’s dark slab of leather into the water. “I got a family.” Sweat ran down from his temple to his cheek. “I never hurt anybody, I swear. I only been here two weeks.”
Water rustled underneath the bridge.
I kept the gun at the back of his head while I patted the damp leather of his coat, searching for other weapons. When I found nothing, I stood back. “Now we’re going toward Lahinch.”
We walked along the river bank. Trees with mottled bark grew by the water.
Parsons stumbled over the rocks in his hobnailed boots. He still kept his hands in the air. “I got a little baby girl at home. I’ve been married almost two years. My wife’s name is Thea.” He talked without pause, as if only the words were keeping him alive. “I joined up in the Oxford and Bucks Light Infantry in ’16. I got shipped over to France in two months and when I got back in ’19, I couldn’t get a job. Not anything. I even applied to be a tea server at Fortnum & Mason. And the buggers turned me down and all.”
“All right, pal,” I had to raise my voice over the rushing of the stream. “I’ve heard enough about it for a while.”
“I can’t help it. I’m sorry.” Parsons stumbled and fell to his knees, but stood again and kept walking. “I’m sorry.” He started to cry.
A fish jumped in the river. It was swimming upstream, and in the second it spent in the air, I saw the gold-spotted belly of a brown trout. Both of us looked at the place where it had disappeared. The ripples folded quickly away into the current.
