by Shaun Herron
“Three,” Kiernan said, staring out at the rain.
“Three?”
“Aye. He raped her before he killed her.”
“Raped her? Jesus Christ!” Sorahan felt sick. Perhaps it was the fall. “And you’re goin to help him kill the brother?”
“Aye.”
“You mean that’s the kind of scum I got these young fellows out to help?”
“Aye.”
“Don’t depend on it, Kiernan!”
“Aye, well, I will, Mr. Sorahan. I will. You’re all in this army like the rest of us. I mean, they’re in, Mr. Sorahan, and they don’t walk out and in as if they joined some oul women’s social club, do they now? You and me knows that. You’ve all been sittin on your arses down here, doin nothin but raisin pennies while our boys is gettin killed and crippled. I’ll depend on you and the young fellas. I will, Mr. Sorahan.” The threat was in his voice, not in his gnomish look.
“Don’t try to scare us. There’s not a man among us who’d lift a finger to help a bastard like that.”
“If it makes you feel any better I’ll tell you somethin, Mr. Sorahan.”
“You can’t make me feel better. You’ve already made me feel I want to vomit.”
“I can try, Mr. Sorahan. The story’s this, sur. Powers was in charge of a tar-and-feather job and he got one of his men shot dead. He said McManus wusta blame for disobeying orders. then one of the women that was there let out that it was Powers sent McManus off the job. So that’s one man lost and a bloody lie to cover it. Then he lost McManus the day he was supposed to kill him. Then afore he started after him he had t’have a night on a wee widow-woman up the street and his mate was took by the British army and he niver lifted a finger. He was seen comin outa the widow’s house by a sick oul woman lookin out the window in the house across the street. Then he took the wee widow with him t’Strabane on his way here and they had a dirty-mouthed shoutin match in the hotel after he’d been up her till the cook said he was shakin the house. The polis is keepin the rape outa the papers, but they sneak wee things out when it suits their book and we got the word. They’ll niver find Powers and they know we’ll save them a wee bita work.”
“You said three?”
“Aye. I did. That’s it. You twigged on quick. He has t’finish the job w’McManus, Mr. Sorahan. I have the black cap for him when that’s done. That’s one thing y’can say for us, Mr. Sorahan, we’re terrible hard on bad morals. The only help I’ll need from y’is a good place to bury Powers. That makes y’feel better, doesn’t it, sur?” Kiernan had found his smile again.
“Christ!” Sorahan waited in his country school for twenty-five years. He waited through all the years for The Day. Now he had it, raw and close. He opened the car window to let the rain blow on his face and wished he could talk to his wife Liz.
“Don’t let nothin bother you a bit, Mr. Sorahan,” Kiernan said comfortably, and meant it sincerely. “When Powers is done w’McManus, you and your young fellas is off duty. I’ll do the rest of it.” He seemed to think he had pronounced a benediction.
When they came on the pack in a farmer’s field beyond Foilakill, the wind had fallen away and the rain was a thick, gentle drizzle—a soft day, warm and clammy.
The men were huddled under a drystone wall and behind two cars and the motorcycles, getting what shelter they could.
Kiernan parked the car among them and did not get out. The food cartons were in the open trunk of the Stranorlar car, covered by a large plastic sheet that hung to the ground. The beer cases were on the grass. The eating was over, the drinking well begun. Powers paced impatiently among the young men, scowling at their miserable leisure. Young Barney brought food and beer to Sorahan and Kiernan and hurried back to the wall beside his hulking friend Colum. They were all past talking. They had found no trace of McManus and were soaked to the skin, chilled on a warm day. What commitment they might have had was gone. Powers had turned it to resentment, the rain had added misery.
The sheep dog came cautiously towards them from the farmer’s cottage in the next field. It walked into the circle and stopped beside the plastic sheet, its head up. The men watched it with cold curiosity. It was something better to look at than their mutual discomfort. The dog jumped into the open trunk and sniffed about. Then, intelligently, it jumped to the ground and took the hanging edge of the sheet in its mouth. Tossing its head from side to side, it backed away and slowly dragged the sheet from the cardboard cartons.
Powers was pacing away from the car. When he turned, the dog was back in the trunk, its head among the sausages. “Get that bloody dog outa there,” he bellowed.
Nobody moved. They were smiling slyly. It wasn’t great entertainment, but it was mild relief.
“Get the dog out!”
Colum heaved his bulk from under the wall and crossed the circle. He did not move the dog. He patted its wet rump, bent down, and pulled two bottles of beer from a case.
“Put them back and move the bloody dog,” Powers yelled at him.
“Move it yourself.” Colum walked back towards the wall. He was as big as Powers, but much younger; and cold, and full of his strength.
Powers blocked his way. “You’ve had enough,” he said, “put the beer back.” He was suspended between two problems, Colum and the ’dog that was now busy eating the sausages. Powers was not good at dealing with problems in pairs.
“I’ll tell you what I’ve had enough of. I’ve had enough of your big mouth,” Colum said deliberately, and evidence of warmer life ran through the cold circle.
“Mr. Powers,” Kiernan shouted from the dry comfort of Sorahan’s car, but Powers could hear only the sound of Colum’s voice.
“Put the beer back and take the bloody dog where it belongs. That’s an order,” Powers said.
“I’m drinkin the beer. Take the dog back yourself. You’ve been shoutin orders all day. You’ve been barkin like a mangy dog yourself, playin the bloody general or the bloody corporal till we’re all sick of you. Give it a rest, you silly bloody playactor. We’ve all been wonderin just who the hell you think you are and who the hell you think you’re talkin to....” He wanted to go on, full of a resentful spleen that spoke for all of them. They weren’t revolting against an idea or an objective but against being wet and bullied and abused and especially by an Ulsterman and no bloody matter whether he was Catholic or Protestant, he was a hard-nosed, hard-tongued, pushy, bullying bloody northerner.... The young man stood where he was, waiting for Powers to swing at him.... But that was the naïve expectation of a man not greedy for short answers.
Powers drew his gun.
“Mr. Powers!” Kiernan was out of the car.
But Powers was not listening. Colum’s voice was roaring in his head. The dog jumped down from the boot with its mouth full of sausages and Powers shot it as it landed. The sound of the shot rolled down to the heaving seas. The men sat still, staring at Powers or the dog.
Sorahan was watching the dog. It lay on its side, its eyes open and the meat beside the open mouth on the grass. It cried quietly for a moment and then was silent. Blood came gently in a small stream from its mouth, staining the wet grass. Sorahan thought it looked like lava.
“Now put the beer down and carry the dog back to the farmer,” Powers said.
“Put the gun away and make me.”
Kiernan was beside Powers, his own gun pressing. “I’ll take the gun, Mr. Powers,” he said, and snatched it from Powers’ hand.
Colum dropped his beer and charged. He had been waiting most of the morning to make the charge. He had been drinking all through their lunch break to make ready for the charge.
But when he reached Powers the man was not there. His great right hand dug into Colum just above the groin and the huge boy went over, double, crying out in agony. He went down on his face like a sack of dropped potatoes from a swinging thump on the back of his falling head. He felt the boot in his side, felt himself lifted and propped against the wall, and briefly but distantly fel
t the sledgehammers that beat his face, and he fell, feeling nothing, his face in the grass. Powers didn’t want to shoot him. He wanted to beat him, see him bleed, feel flesh giving under his knuckles, feel the shrill joy that shrieked in him when his hands dug into the belly and his bone cracked on splitting skin over bone. He threw Colum up onto the wall and flailed away....
Then suddenly he stopped and turned slowly and looked around the circle of huddling young men with fear in their faces. His power leapt in his head. He was a foot off the ground, levitating on a cushion of supporting air. He screamed, “You’ll take orders!” and turned like a figure on a turntable, to see all their faces and taste their young fear.
His eyes came to the ridiculous and scanty little figure of Kiernan, who stood in the center of the circle, his gun pointing at Powers’ stomach. “What the fuckin hell d’you think you are?” Powers screamed at him.
Kiernan’s voice was as soft as the rain. “Pick up the dog, Mr. Powers,” he said, “and carry it back to the farmer, and pay him his price. Or I’ll put you down beside it.”
Powers saw the face he had seen in the car when he made the little man angry on the way down. This was not the time and this poor little shit was not the man. There was no glory, no ballad in this scrawny weed’s gun. His head cooled. He tried to remember what he had said to Kiernan in the car, to make him so angry. He couldn’t remember. He said to himself with detachment, “Thon wee man’s a fuckin killer,” and picked up the dog and walked before Kiernan to the little farmhouse in the next field.
The farmer stood in his doorway and stared without expression at the dead dog in the big man’s arms, and at the little man with a gun that looked far too big for him. He said nothing.
“He shot your dog,” Kiernan said. “He’ll pay you what it’s worth.”
Powers laid the dog carefully on the ground, wiped his bloodied hands on his clothes, and dug his money from his trouser pocket.
The farmer stated the price, Powers paid it, and went before Kiernan back over the field.
The farmer did not watch them go. He left the dead dog on the ground, stepped back quickly into his house, closed the door, and laid the bar in its slots. Then he stood in the middle of his kitchen, silent, staring into the slow-burning turf in his fire.
Daniel Sorahan leaned on his car and watched Kiernan and Powers approaching across the field. “I want to ask you a question,” he said to his young men, thinking like a schoolmaster. “Have any of you ever raped a woman?”
“In the name of God, Dan,” one of them said, “has that bloody madman put you out of your head?”
“I want to ask you another question. What would you feel like doin if I raped your sister or your wife?”
“I’d shoot you the way that black bastard shot the poor bloody dog,” one of them said.
“In that case,” Sorahan said, “we’ll go on home and get into dry clothes and meet at Father Heenan’s house at four—without these two liberators from the North. There’s things I’m goin to tell you. Then we’ll talk.”
When Kiernan came back to the quiet circle, he said, “McManus is not here. We’ll join the Skibereen men tomorrow and work our way all the way down to Mizen Head if we have to. Away on home and get dry.”
Then he got carefully into the back seat of the StranorIar car, with his gun in his hand. He said, his face in the window, “I am very sorry indeed, Mr. Sorahan, about this incident.” It was stiff, formal, an official apology. “I am very fond of dogs myself.” The young men were folding Colum onto the back seat of Daniel Sorahan’s car.
Kiernan said sternly in a loud voice to the back of Powers’ head, “Drive on!” and flashed his gun so that he could be seen to be ready, willing, and able to handle dangerous situations till they cooled.
TWELVE
Mc MANUS was safe. He felt safe. They walked in the twilight, down between the rock ridges and over the lower ones, to the little bay. Mrs. Burke always determined the routes they took. When he tried to choose the paths, climbing to the higher ridges, she said no, too high, and she knew best. He was content. She pointed to a tall thin rock standing alone on a ridge. It looked like a man. It stood out in the twilight in a harsh silhouette. That’s what we’d look like, she said, and he knew she was wise. The rocks and ridges and the mountains behind them closed in, the little fields closed in, the sea closed in. He was safe. England was almost forgotten; the run from Ballycastle was almost forgotten; the American girl on the coach—what was her name?—was almost forgotten. Powers and the Provos lurked, but they were in the North and he was in this fortress and the longer he stayed here the more baffled they would be—then England. But not yet. When the thought that he should go crossed his mind, he put it away; nervously. It disarmed him.
The first night they sat on the shore, listening to the retreating tide, he saw the sailing dinghy lashed to its moorings, high and dry on the wet sand. “It’s mine,” she told him. “The mackerel run just outside the bay. Sometimes I fish. When it’s safe, we can fish.” We. She said we a lot now. They were together day and night.
In the day he thought more and more of the night. It was never spoken of. He called her Mrs. Burke. She called him child. Mother in the day, mistress in the night. But he thought more and more of the night and his lust for her grew. He closed his eyes and could not see her, but he felt her, soft and warm and lustfully inciting. It was his first fulfilled lust. It made him dependent. He wished the days away.
The doctor and his wife brought their groceries. The doctor hinted, his wife nagged, and Mrs. Burke sent McManus to the garden while they argued. He could hear them. He heard them the day the doctor’s wife said they would bring no more groceries. “Get rid of him! How’ll you explain your double rations to Jim O’Keeffe at the shop?” she asked as if she had played her joker.
“There’s more than one shop in Schull.”
It upset McManus, but only till they left. Mrs. Burke always wore her little smile when they left. It was the flag she flew to celebrate small victories, and his cocoon rewove itself. Sometimes, the notion that it was all unreal crept into his head and he put it away. The real was cold; this was warm.
The morning after the doctor’s wife said there would be no more groceries, Mrs. Burke took the bus to Schull “to lay in supplies,” she said.
“You should have a car,” McManus said, thinking of being alone. “You’d be quicker.”
“The bus is fine.”
“Don’t be long.” He felt feebly dependent.
She laid a long rough forefinger on the back of his hand. “Why, child?” The face was severe, the voice a little above a whisper. It was her approach to tenderness in the daylight.
“I want you back,” he said, and because it was more than he meant to say he said more. “You’ll be seeing the doctor and your sister.”
“Oh, yes.” She picked up her handbag, a worn old thing scuffed at the edges.
“She’ll ask you where you. . . .” It was not a daylight question. “Yes, she will.” She shrugged awkwardly and took his hand and turned the thing away. “Walk me to the hedge.” At the gate she said, “Don’t be seen now. Don’t answer the door.” In the time he had been in the house nobody but the doctor and his wife had come to the door.
“No,” he assured her. She was away, striding down the lane. He watched her to the corner where the lane turned between honeysuckle hedges and in another hundred yards reached the road. She was out of sight. He went back to the house and closed the door. It was the first time he had been alone since he came to the house and a lost uneasiness nagged him. The clock slowed down. He wandered the little house and the little garden, tried to read, to lie still on the bed, to see Mrs. Burke on it in the light of day, and all he could realize was her absence. He expected her back long before it was possible; not hungry, for something to occupy his time he ate the stew she left for him in the oven, washed the dishes, made tea, was too impatient for her return to make more tea when the notion occurred to him. He we
nt again and again to the gate to stare up the lane.
Then she was late, well past the reasonable time for her return and uneasiness turned to anxiety, and anxiety to irritation, and irritation to anger. She had no right. He was alone. She was the only human connection he had. The doctor and his wife brought groceries yesterday; why the hell did she need to go into Schull for more today? What was she doing anyway? Making it up with her sister and brother-in-law? They were more important to her than he was. What was he to her anyway? Little more than a schoolboy, with a woman of . . . what, fifty? What did she want with him? Why did her in-laws nag about him? Why did the doctor keep telling her she needed an invalid of her own? Why did the sister go on about where she slept? They knew something he didn’t? That maybe she did things that frightened them? Maybe behind the severe, secret face of the widow of Thomas Burke was a middle-aged woman sick with lust and she saw him as the relief she wanted? Resentful son and jealous lover, when twilight came and there was no sign of her, “To hell with her,” he said, “if she can go out for the day then by God I can look over the wall.”
He went out and walked to the rock ridge across the fields behind the house. They called it The Hill. He had never been on top of it. She had never allowed him. He scrambled up now, through gorse and heather and lichen and bramble and the shock of what he saw brought him to his knees in a bed of ferns.
His isolation was an illusion.
He traced the course of their land to where it disappeared between the honeysuckle hedges and emerged at the road. At their junction were three houses, one of them a grocer’s shop. To the left, below the road and concealed from ground level by the ridges between, was another little house, and up on the slope of the mountain that rose like a great brown rock half a mile to the north was a cluster of green and yellow fields and, on their edge, a white cabin. A man appeared from nowhere on the bus road. He had a pack on his back and wore a tweed suit and a tweed hat and as he walked he swung a thorn stick. His head was down as if his thoughts were far off. McManus crept back among the ferns and scrambled halfway down the slope of the hill.