by L. D Beyer
Tired and haunted, I set out at first light.
___
Padraig lived in Kilteely, nine miles from Ballygowan and five miles from Lough Gur, or at least he had when I’d last known him. Gray clouds filled the sky, but thankfully it wasn’t raining. Other than a few men in the fields, I saw no one on my journey. The roads were dry and two and a half hours later, I found myself outside Padraig’s shop.
I heard the rhythmic tap of the hammer, and I peeked through the window. Padraig was sitting on a stool, an awl in hand. The leather that would become a shoe was stretched over the wooden last. I watched as Padraig slipped the awl through, then first pushed then pulled the needles, drawing the thread tight. When he finished, he tapped the hammer along the seam, spinning the last as he did. Thankfully, there was no one else in the shop.
I glanced in both directions and, seeing no one on the street, I slipped inside, careful to make no sounds. The smell of leather and oil was strong as was the smell of peat from the stove in the corner.
“It’s a fine boot you make, Padraig,” I said softly.
He spun on his stool, wide-eyed.
“Frank Kelleher!”
I felt a moment of pride, having surprised him—the IRA had taught me well. My skills hadn’t left me, on the run as I had been for the last year. But Padraig had settled back into a boot maker’s life, his days as a soldier and the skills that Billy had taught us soon forgotten.
“Is it yourself, Frank?” Padraig smiled and shook his head. “Jesus, it’s good to see you!”
He dropped his hammer on the bench, slid off the stool and hobbled over, an awkward gait with one leg dragging behind him, never quite able to catch up. I sensed he meant me no harm, and I stepped forward to meet him.
“Ah, Jesus,” he said as he threw his arms around me, “I was afraid they’d killed you.”
There was a noise outside, and I felt him stiffen. He let me go and pushed past me, moving faster than I thought possible with his leg.
“They still might,” he said over his shoulder, “if you’re not careful.” He bolted the door then closed the shutters on the window. He came back, slower now, and I could see the pain on his face.
Seeing my reaction, he forced a smile. “Ah now, Frank. There’s many worse off than me.” He pulled another stool over. “Here. Come,” he said, patting the seat. “Sit with me.”
I did.
We talked, sharing our journeys over the last year. He told me how he had been wounded, the Crossley Tender, the military vehicle favored by British soldiers, coming on them by surprise. When the machine gun roared, they were defenseless. With no bombs and no machine gun of their own—theirs was hidden in the weapons dump, the ammunition exhausted weeks prior—there was nothing they could do but duck below the wall and pray.
Padraig had told Billy and the men to make their escape, to slide along behind the wall until they were clear. He told them he would stay and provide cover fire.
“They began crawling off, Billy and the others, while I slid the other way, hoping for an opportunity to take a shot.” He shook his head slowly, his eyes suddenly far off, back on that lonely rain-soaked road. “I don’t know how I was hit, behind the wall like that. Glanced off the stones, the bullets must’ve, but I was hit twice in the leg.” He tapped below his knee, the sound of knuckles on wood. He was silent for a moment, his face becoming dark. “He left me like that, Billy did.” He shook his head and I could see the pain in his eyes, pain that came from the memory and not from the wounds to the flesh.
But as quickly as the darkness had come, it was gone. He waved the memory away and smiled again.
“Ah now, Frank. You didn’t come all this way to hear about my troubles.”
I smiled back and answered his questions, most of them anyway. I spoke mostly of America but little of what I had done since I returned. He had been Billy’s friend long before he had been mine and, despite his story, I was wary.
“America’s grand, sure, but with the war over, I had to come back.”
“What are you on about, Frank?” he asked as he shook his head. “It’s a fine time you’ve picked, coming home now and another war certain.”
“Aye, I know.”
He smiled again, but the question lingered in his eyes. Why had I come back? I had come back for Kathleen and our child, but I wasn’t about to tell him that. The real question was: why had I stayed? I wasn’t sure how to answer, how much to tell him.
“What happened that night?” he asked softly. There was no malice in the question, no judgment, just curiosity.
I took a breath and told him about the raid on Argyll Manor, how I had been outside when the British, who must have been hiding somewhere inside, had opened fire. I told him that with Dan, Tom, and Sean all wounded, I had no choice but to hit the plunger.
“They knew we were there, the British did,” I said. “There was an informant alright, but it wasn’t me.”
He nodded slowly. “I know.”
I stared back, not certain I heard him right.
“Sure, I thought it was you at first. We all did.” He waved the thought away, as if it never mattered. “Do you remember the lookout?”
“The lookout?” I asked, confused. “That was the problem, we didn’t have any.” As soon as I said it, I realized I was wrong. An hour before the raid, we had been hiding in the heather, waiting for the scout, a boy of sixteen named Rory Conklin. He finally came, and while Sean, Tom, and I provided cover, Dan went out to meet him. The road was clear, he told Dan. The British patrol that had been sighted an hour earlier were now miles away.
“Rory?” I asked, not believing my own question. He seemed a good lad, I thought, and would make a fine soldier one day.
Padraig nodded. “I went to see Billy the next night. I had heard what had happened, and I was sure he was going to ask me to do the job.” He sighed as his eyes drifted off again.
Do the job. He was to be the one who would put the bullet in my head.
“Rory was there,” Padraig continued. “He was crying, and Billy was shaking him, hitting him. ‘You don’t know what you’ve done,’ Billy said over and over.” Padraig’s eyes found mine again. “Rory disappeared that night. Put on a boat to Canada, I heard later.”
“Rory was the informant?” I asked as my mind tried to put together the pieces. “Billy knew?”
“Aye. Billy knew.”
“And he still tried to kill me?”
Padraig nodded slowly. The color had drained from his face. “I wish I had done something. I told him it was wrong, that he’d already lost three men and here he was sacrificing another and an innocent one at that.” Staring at the ground now, he shook his head, not meeting my eyes. When he looked up I could see the tears. “I didn’t think he would do it, Frank. I swear on my mother’s grave, I didn’t.” He shook his head again. “By the time I heard about it, you had already escaped and Liam had been captured.”
He sighed, his breath loud in the silence between us.
“Something had changed in him,” he continued after a moment, his eyes far away again. “I never trusted him after that. And then when I was shot…” His voice trailed off.
“Why did he let Rory go?” I asked, confused. “Why did he blame me?”
“You don’t know?” Padraig stared at me for a second then shook his head. “Of course you don’t. How could you? Rory,” he continued as his eyes narrowed, “Rory is Billy’s nephew, his sister’s child.”
I felt a hollowness spreading in my stomach as it all became clear. Someone—Rory—had informed the British, and Billy needed to make an example. Spies and informants were dealt with swiftly and brutally. But he couldn’t sacrifice his own nephew so he chose me instead. Me, the only one left alive, and with no other witnesses, I was guilty.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
By the time I left Padraig, my anger was slow, simmering. The injustice of what Billy had done—sacrificing me to cover for the sins of his nephew—left me wanting more
than what I had returned to Ireland for. I wanted vengeance. A bounty on my head, placed there by the British, was expected, something that likely would have happened anyway, if not for Argyll Manor then for crimes I had already committed or those I soon would. But to have my own men turn against me and all for a lie? I crossed over the now-empty fields, leaning into a heavy wind as dark clouds roiled overhead.
It was a harsh land we lived in, and I often thought that’s what made Billy who he was. Cold and calculating, he was loyal when it suited his purpose. He could brutally inflict pain and punishment on his friends one day and then defend them until he was bleeding the next.
I never understood why Billy had taken up his rifle against the Ottomans, nearly spilling his own blood in a far off land against an enemy he didn’t know as he fought side by side with another. But then what else could a man like Billy have done? With war raging across Europe and beyond, he must have jumped at the chance. And when he returned, how different the country must have looked through eyes that had seen what his had in Basra and Bagdad. And how much it must have looked the same. Maybe for the first time he saw Ireland for what it was. But I suspected that he had always known.
Billy joined the IRA not because the cause burned in his heart, but because he still had enough fight left in him when he came home. He joined because there was nothing left for him to do. And now that men were choosing sides, some joining the Free State and others staying true to our oath, it had always been clear, I suppose, which side Billy would choose. An end to the war was something he couldn’t fathom. And if the Republicans ever decided to lay down their arms, he would find a new war, in Ireland or elsewhere, it didn’t matter. As for the men he had fought side by side with, I wondered how he saw us. Were we nothing more than cannon fodder for a war that only he understood?
Maybe this was how I saw Billy now, but the signs had always been there.
___
I was nine at the time. We were playing in the churchyard, Sunday mass long over and no chores to do until the evening. Liam placed a small stone—his duck—on a large flat rock near the wall that surrounded the cemetery. Sean, Tom, Dan, Billy, and I stood ten paces away, our own stones held ready. One by one we took aim, trying to knock Liam’s off. Billy had the same aim then as he would later with a rifle. As Liam’s stone skittered away, we scrambled after it, our own version of Duckstone.
Billy ploughed ahead of us, the first one to hit Liam, with shoulder and head down like he would do on a football pitch years later. In the tumble of arms and legs, somehow, small as I was, I got my hands on the duck. Never one to lose, Billy tried to wrest it away. We tumbled and rolled on the ground, oblivious to the pain from the elbows to the ribs and the sharp rocks that found our shins.
It wasn’t surprising that I found myself on my back, Billy on top jeering at me. Not surprising but it had filled me with shame nonetheless. Billy sat on my chest, pinning my arms below me, the duck held triumphantly over his head. He was twice my size then, and there was little I could do to push him off. That didn’t stop me from trying.
“Get off!” I screamed.
That only seemed to amuse him. He began taunting me, bouncing up and down on my chest. His grin spread, his eyes dancing with malice as I struggled to breathe, thrashing all the while below his weight.
“Get off me, you shite!” I screamed again, or tried to, but with not enough air for any of the words, it came out as a grunt.
I heard the laughing and jeering from the lads, all except Liam who I saw out of the corner of my eye. Blood was streaming from his mouth.
“Get off!” I screamed again, or maybe it was Liam.
It’s a terrible feeling, not being able to breathe, and I began to panic, feeling trapped and helpless. That only seemed to excite Billy more, and he began to bounce harder. No sooner could I suck in a mouthful of air when it shot out with an ooomf as Billy came crushing down again. My vision began to blur and, as the tears slid down my cheeks, the laughing seemed to grow louder, a crescendo flooding my ears.
“Get off!” I heard again, or maybe I imagined it. Darkness began to creep across the edges of my vision, and suddenly I welcomed it. Oh, how I wanted an end to the helpless feeling, to the panic.
Suddenly the darkness receded and Liam was kneeling beside me, brushing my tears away. Gasping and sputtering, I sucked in a lungful of air, fueling the wails and screams and anguish that had been trapped inside. My small body shook with sobs. Through the tears, I saw Billy, hands over his own face, the blood streaming through his fingers as Dan led him away.
Liam would pay dearly for that later.
___
It wouldn’t do to confront Billy, not now, not while I was filled with anger, and not until I could figure out how to gain an advantage. Still, I felt as if I was being drawn to him, the confrontation inevitable as he sought to exact a punishment he had no right to and I sought to right the wrongs of the past. And now with Tim missing—likely run off with Billy, his head filled with the romance of war—our clash would come sooner rather than later.
Padraig didn’t know where Tim was, but the little he told me was enough. Billy, he had heard, had been drilling the men twice a week, six miles east of Limerick in a godforsaken, rock-strewn, heather-covered stretch of land near Mullin’s Cross, good for neither planting nor grazing. I remembered it from my own training. I would have to wait until Wednesday, though, to do some reconnaissance.
Meanwhile soldiers continued to march on Limerick, and the country continued to edge closer to war.
___
I stopped by Mary’s later in the evening, but she hadn’t been able to get what I needed. A wheel on the trap had broken and, by the time Mary had arranged for a neighbor to fix it, dusk was at hand. She only just made it back to the cottage before me.
Still she brought me news. Limerick City, she told me, was filling with soldiers.
“Brennan’s forces have the Castle Barracks,” she said. “And the Strand as well.” They had also commandeered the RIC police posts on Williams Street and Mary Street, she added.
“And the Republicans?” I asked.
“Just the local men,” she responded.
Where were the troops I had seen yesterday? I wondered. They must have billeted somewhere outside of the city. Why were they waiting? Had they sent in scouts? Or had they sent in one or two men to negotiate, keeping the rest out of the city to avoid fighting? As it was, since I had returned to Ireland, I had more questions than I had answers.
Mary promised to try again tomorrow. She offered to put me up for the night, but still nervous about Billy, I declined. Still she provided some bread and potatoes and, after I stole some more peat, I spent another night in the castle. The conversation with Padraig swirled in my head; it was a long while before I fell asleep. I woke well before sunrise and, while it was still dark, I set out to find Mrs. Murphy.
___
Sean’s mother was a widow, his father’s death coming the same month I joined the IRA. Sean was a soldier by then, a source of pride for his father and one of worry for his mother. When his father died unexpectedly—his heart, everyone said—Mrs. Murphy was suddenly left to deal with her loss and the silence of an empty house. Sean was the youngest, the only boy out of six children, and by then, he was spending more time on IRA business than he was at home.
Mrs. Murphy’s worries were not unfounded. A year and a half after her husband died, Sean joined him, dying in the flames of Argyll Manor. Bad luck never comes alone. The Tans, not satisfied with Sean’s death, took their revenge on Mrs. Murphy as they had on Billy’s mother. As neighbors held her back, Mrs. Murphy cursed and screeched as the Tans set fire to her house, the flames leaping into the dark night.
When Sean died, Mrs. Murphy was left without a husband, without a son, and without a home. Sean’s sister, Siobhan, two years older and married and living not ten miles away in Croom, took her in.
Mrs. Murphy lived above the pub, Mick had told me. While her son-in-law, Mart
in, stood behind the bar—in the same spot as his own father had and his grandfather before him—Mrs. Murphy helped Siobhan prepare the stew and the bread, something for the men to wash down with their pints. The Tans didn’t know it, Mick said, but they had done Mrs. Murphy a favor, forcing her out of an empty house into one full of children and with a pub downstairs that needed minding.
I avoided the lanes and roads, tramping instead across fields, under a black sky. Two and a half hours later, as I crested a hill and clambered over a wall, I knew Mick’s cottage was only half a mile away. I thought about stopping in but, given the hour, I continued on. A half hour later, I heard the soft rush of the River Maigue and soon saw the outline of buildings in the mist ahead. Although the last two days had been dry, the clouds on the horizon told me the rain was coming. I approached cautiously, stopping by a chestnut tree on the edge of a field to survey the village. Other than the river, there wasn’t a sound. The houses were dark, silent. I checked the windows one by one, thankful to find them still shuttered. Seeing no one, I took my chance and sprinted across the last field, some hundred yards to the stone wall that edged the road. Crouching behind, I peered over and found Martin’s pub several buildings down across the way. The houses were quiet, sleepy, the soft baying of animals from the fields beyond and the smell of burning peat carried by the wind. From my position behind the wall, I had a view of the road, disappearing in both directions. I couldn’t see the river but could smell it now, its dampness filling my nose. It was early still, and I settled down in the tall grass behind the wall to wait, keeping an eye on the dark clouds overhead the whole while.
Over the next thirty minutes, I caught the soft glow of light peeking out from the shutters as, one by one, lanterns were lit in the homes that lined the road. Above the pub, the curtains fluttered occasionally as shadows passed by, young children to mind and morning chores to do. I waited. The wind swept across the field, stirring the grass at my side, and I glanced up again at the clouds building above my head. I heard the clank of a stove, the bang of a door, followed soon by another. A few people came and went, leaning into the wind and the day’s work ahead of them. Soon, a soft rain began to fall, and I turned up my collar and pulled my cap low, all the while watching as the occasional horse and cart or bicycle passed by.