The Promise of Light

by Paul Watkins

  I had no idea who was right in the war. It wasn’t even clear that a war was going on. To me it seemed more like a local feud, with everyone knowing everyone else’s name, and each with their own agenda of revenge. There was no faceless, charging enemy, and I was too much in the middle to try and see both sides. It seemed to me that the soldiers and the people who fought against them had long ago lost track of why they were fighting. Now they paid back atrocity with atrocity, each side as stubborn and vicious as the other.

  Lahinch was all I knew of Ireland, and for now there was no way to find out anything more.

  Time thundered past someplace beyond the hedges and dunes and the sea, while I stayed strangely motionless, the muscles of my patience growing weak.

  * * *

  I pulled a handful of coins from my waistcoat pocket and sifted through them. The dark walls of the pub hummed with talk. Men in overalls and black coats sat on benches, cradling their mugs.

  “This one, dear.” Mrs. Gisby took a dull copper twopenny piece from my hand. “And how are you liking work at the hotel?”

  “Very well, ma’am.” I spoke as little as I could, knowing how the strangeness of my voice still brought stares from people.

  “And your uncle is treating you well?”

  “He’s a fine man.” I drank off some of the beer, enough to carry the mug back to my seat without spilling any. The heavy drink was bitter, tasting distantly of something burnt. By now I was used to the flannelly smoothness that stayed behind in my spit.

  “Oh, he is not a fine man.” Mrs. Gisby grinned and threw the twopenny coin in a tray.

  “He’s a fine, fine man, Mrs. Gisby.” I grinned at her and took another swig of beer. Its damp cellar chill rested in the back of my throat.

  “You tell him to come and work for me, Ben. He thinks I’ll keep asking him forever, but I won’t. One of these days the offer will be closed.” Then from a smoke-blackened pot at the back of the bar, Mrs. Gisby ladled some stew onto a heavy white plate. She clunked it down in front of me. “There’s that for your supper. And don’t be telling your uncle I gave it to you.”

  When I turned to walk back to my seat, Guthrie was there in his usual spot. He sat on a bench by a grandfather clock, whose dial was painted with a moon that had the face of a child.

  Guthrie had told me I should make sure I went to the pub. I had to be seen. If people didn’t see me in public, he said, they’d think I was trying to hide.

  I sat down next to him. “How are Roly and Margaret today?”

  “They broke off their tether and pulled up all my radishes.”

  “What’s that funny smell, Mr. Guthrie?” It seemed like mint at first.

  “What smell?”

  “Mint. Medicine. I don’t know.”

  “Oh, that. It’s my foot cure.” Guthrie smiled now. His mustache turned up at the ends and he pulled a tin from his pocket. On the lid was a picture of a black-and-white cow. Turnley’s Udder Balm.

  “This is it?”

  “Oh, yes. Good for the arthritis. I suppose, though, it’s better for udders. But it’s cheaper than what they sell in the chemist’s. Almost half the price.”

  “Well, I’ll be damned.” The smell made my eyes water. I was trying not to laugh.

  “You can use it if you want.” Guthrie took a leather pouch from his jacket. It was worn smooth and blackened with sweat. A mother-of-pearl button held the pouch closed. Guthrie dug his pipe into the pouch and with his thumb he scraped the hazelnut shreds of tobacco into the bowl.

  The flame of a lit match bobbed up and down over the pipe, as Guthrie set the shreds burning. Then he jerked his wrist once and the match flame vanished. “She gave you that, didn’t she?” Guthrie nodded at the stew.

  “Told me not to tell you.” I was on my third beer and it had made a beehive in my head.

  “Well, a free plate of coddle from Gisby. What did you do? Offer to marry her?”

  “I said you were a fine man.” I spooned up a mouthful of stew. It was sausages and bacon and potato and carrots, stewed with parsley in hard cider.

  “You said I was a fine man?” Guthrie’s voice changed suddenly. It was no longer drifting and careless, the voice of an old man who forgets. Now it had sharpened and the sharpness took me by surprise.

  “Crow said you liked her a lot.” I hoped Guthrie wouldn’t be angry.

  Guthrie took the pipe from his mouth. He jabbed the stem at me. “A free plate of stew. She must love me, then, after all. I’ve been meaning to ask you, Ben. Do you think I’d make a good husband to her?”

  “I’m sure you would.”

  “And do you think she’d make a good wife? She wouldn’t get bored of me, do you think?”

  “Never.”

  “Well, it’s been keeping me busy with thoughts, I can tell you. Night and bloody day.”

  Twilight crowded the windows. Silver threads of rain broke on the glass.

  A man sat down next to Guthrie. His boots were flecked with manure. “There’s a bloody funny smell in here.”

  “Don’t you say a word,” Guthrie muttered to me.

  “A bloody funny smell,” the man said again.

  Now Guthrie began sniffing as well, craning his neck around the room, as if it was someone else’s udder balm that pinched the air with eucalyptus.

  I could feel laughter swelling in my throat. I looked at my beer and then down at his shoes.

  The man stood up. “Well, blast me, I must have gone and sat in something.”

  I couldn’t help it. I roared in Guthrie’s face.

  Guthrie had turned away.

  I realized suddenly that my laughter was the only sound in the pub.

  The door had opened. Cold air washed through. Embers woken by the breeze flickered red in the fireplace.

  Four soldiers stood in the room. They wore strips of cloth that wound from their boots up to their knees. Their trousers were splattered with mud. One man was an officer. He had just come in from the restaurant and one of the salmon-colored napkins was tucked into the pocket of his tunic. In one hand he held a snifter of brandy and in the other a piece of paper, which he held out toward us.

  I saw my last name printed on it in black letters. My face grew suddenly hot. It was one of the posters that had been stuck up a few days before.

  “We’re looking for Arthur Sheridan.” The officer had sleepy eyes.

  It was quiet except for the slack clunking tick of the grandfather clock.

  I waited for eyes to wind their way toward me. It was too crowded to run. But I knew I’d have to try and I wondered how badly the glass would cut me when I dove through the window with its neat diamond panes, some of them colored like the windows in a church, all held together with thin strips of lead.

  No eyes searched me out. It was as if I had become some stuffed animal in a glass case, ignored and not warmed by the fire.

  “Hats off in the pub!” Mrs. Gisby’s voice scratched at our ears.

  The officer snapped his head around. “What?”

  “Hats off in the pub! It’s the rules and you got to follow the rules.”

  “Arthur Sheridan, please.” The officer folded his piece of paper. He matched the corners up neatly before each fold. “We know he’s here. That’s why I’ve come to offer you a thousand pounds reward, if you’ll tell me exactly where he is.”

  The joints of my spine crunched together. I measured the paces that would carry me running to the window and through it. And I knew that once I hit the ground, I’d have to roll and stand and keep running and not think about the pain. I knew how fast a soldier could shrug a rifle off his shoulder, chamber a round, and fire.

  “Hats off in the pub!” Gisby’s head bobbed up and down behind the bar.

  The officer didn’t turn to face the old woman. “If you open your mouth again, I’ll burn this place to the ground.” He spoke very quietly. “Think of it, gentlemen, a thousand pounds. You could do no work for five years on that money. Besides, we only want
to talk to him.”

  “No, you don’t.” It was Tarbox. He drank off the last of his beer. “You’ll take your stubby little truncheons and beat the life out of him. At least don’t lie about that.”

  Now heads twisted painfully around. Glances fastened on Tarbox.

  The officer hooked his hands behind his back. “Mr. Tarbox. I should think you of all people could do with a thousand pounds.”

  Tarbox looked into his mug. “I wouldn’t live long enough to spend it.”

  The officer’s mouth twitched. “You know where we are if you need to talk with us. Goodnight, gentlemen.” He backed out of the room. The other soldiers were already gone. Dark sucked them into the street. Hobnailed boots shuffled away.

  Tarbox stood slowly, as if his bones were hurting. Then he shouted, “Hats off in the pub!”

  Slowly the purr of talk returned. Smoke wound up around the rafters.

  I felt the cramped pebbles of my back loosen one by one.

  Guthrie nudged me. “That officer’s named Sutherland. Even the Tans don’t like him. He captured a group of Irishmen over past Ennistymon two weeks ago. My son was one of them. I heard a story that when the Irish opened fire on them he ordered his men right into the Irish firing line. When the Tan sergeant said he didn’t think that was a good idea, Sutherland told him, ‘I’m not ordering you to advance. I’m ordering you to die.’” Guthrie nodded, stern-faced, to show it was the truth.

  A new pint of beer clumped down on the tiger-striped wood of the table in front of me. I saw Mrs. Gisby’s brown-spotted hands let go of the pottery mug. “Harry Crow says you’re to meet him on the bridge tonight at ten.” The smile creases were valleys in her cheeks. But she wasn’t smiling now. Her mouth was tight-lipped and serious.

  “Did he say why?”

  She shook her head and beetled away in her slippers. They were too big for her feet, so she moved like an ice skater over the floorboards.

  Guthrie sighed. While Mrs. Gisby was there, he had busied himself with his waistcoat buttons, fastening and unfastening the black wooden stubs. Now he raised his head. “I wonder how close they just came to taking you away.”

  “Should I meet with Harry Crow?”

  “He may have found you a way home.”

  I stood up to leave. No eyes rose to meet mine. I wondered if they were thinking about the thousand pounds and if the only thing keeping their stares away was the shame of turning me in. Then I felt Guthrie’s hand on my arm.

  “You can trust him, Ben. But I can tell you as his old officer that Harry was born to take orders and not give them. Once Clayton’s out, the only way you’ll get someone to lead you up north is by getting permission from him. And Clayton doesn’t care about anyone, or any damn thing except this war. And being his father, I can tell you I know about that.”

  * * *

  It was drizzling and the rain brought silence. I stood on the bridge, looking out to sea. The wind jabbed at me like a boxer. I thought, This is a countryside to make you believe in ghosts. Maybe not in the daytime but at night, with loose panes rattling in windows and foam scudding up the empty beaches, and the wind blowing through these stone-book walls. Then it’s hard not to believe.

  But if there were ghosts, I thought, they wouldn’t be the same as the ones I used to believe in back home. There, I bolted the door and shut my eyes against the spirits of Conanicut Indians, padding across the fog-topped bay in their white bark canoes. I held my breath in case I smelled the smoke of their ghost fires in the black woods at the north end of the island.

  Here, I imagined, the ghosts were small and laughing. You’d only ever see them in the corner of your eye. They spent their time playing tricks, like blowing the foam off mugfulls of beer and into an old man’s face, or pinching the bottoms of fat ladies.

  For a moment, I pictured myself swimming to America. I moved alone across the ocean, kicking through deep ocean rollers, a thousand miles from land. When I reached the other side, I trudged along the roads and beaches of Jamestown. It was dark there. A mist had come down on the place. Dew beaded and dripped from the branches of the trees. People slept deeply in the warm pockets of their beds. The waves made only a faint rustling on the sand, the way they do on flat calm mornings when winter had come to the island.

  Something thumped on the road. A black, fist-sized egg rolled along the ground near my feet.

  For a second, I didn’t understand. Then I cried out and tripped backward. It was a hand grenade. I jumped at the bridge wall, heaving myself over. My palms scraped the rough stone and I dropped into the dark.

  The sound of running water was all around me. The ground slammed into my feet and my fingers dug into the sand. I waited for the shock of the explosion.

  I began to crawl, pain in my elbows and thighs. I scrambled under the bridge and reached a patch of sand between the bridge’s curved belly and the river.

  The grenade still hadn’t gone off. I knew now that it wouldn’t. And whoever had thrown it would come looking for me with something else. I backed up against the stone. The river echoed off the bridge, tumbling and boiling black in front of me. The soldiers could come from either side. They’d have killed Crow. They must have killed him quietly or I’d have heard the shooting. Or maybe it was Crow who turned me in.

  I grubbed in the sand until I found a rock. Then I threw it hard into the water at one side of the bridge. In the same motion, I scrabbled to my feet and ran the other way.

  Head hunched, I moved fast from under the bridge and toward the rounded hills of sand. I rolled through the beach grass, grit in my eyes. Wind pawed at the dunes.

  Footsteps sounded on the bridge. It was Crow. I made out the silhouette of his stooped shoulders and the shredded trench coat draped across his chest.

  “Benjamin!” he hissed. “It’s me!”

  I didn’t move. Sea mist clamped shivers on my ribs.

  Crow paced back and forth. “Benjamin! It was a fucking rock!” He picked up the stone and threw it into the river.

  Now I closed my eyes and breathed out. I let my head fall slowly forward to the sand.

  * * *

  We crouched under the bridge like trolls.

  Crow pulled a flat tin of cigarettes from his coat pocket. He set two of the white sticks between his teeth and lit them. Then he handed one to me. “I brought your suitcase with me. Mrs. Fuller carried it down last night.”

  The sides were all warped. It looked as if it had been put together by someone who had seen a suitcase once but didn’t really know what it was used for.

  We settled back against the mossy arc of the bridge. The thunder of the river filled our ears.

  “Guthrie’s been treating you well, hasn’t he?”

  The first sliver of smoke sent a humming through my head. “He treats me so well that I’m ashamed I have no way to pay him back.”

  “It’s enough that you’re company for him. You probably act more like a son to him than Clayton ever did.” Crow held the burning cigarette cupped in his hand to hide the glowing embers. “I got some news about a crewman off the Madrigal. His name is Baldwin. He was the only one who survived.”

  “I know him.” I thought I could see the bones of Crow’s hand through the glow of the cigarette flame.

  “Well, Baldwin knows you, too. And the Tans got him when he was boarding a ferryboat out to the Arans where he lives. They’re holding him up near Fisherstreet. They won’t touch him there because the RIC man in charge is a decent man. Until now, the Tans have thought it was your father they were looking for. That’s what the rumors told them. So they’re looking for an old man. But as soon as Captain Sutherland gets his hands on Baldwin, they’ll find out exactly who you are.”

  “Well, maybe he’ll tell them I didn’t know about the guns.”

  “Not if he wants to stay in one piece, he won’t. Fingering you may be the only way for him to stay alive.”

  “They’ve offered a thousand pounds for my father.”

  “They had
a thousand for Clayton Guthrie. Five thousand for Hagan. They pay up, too. You’d think they wouldn’t bother, but they do. And in cash, is what I’ve heard.”

  “I’m glad they pay their bills.”

  “But anyone who takes that money would be hunted like a fox. Across all of Ireland and the world. And there again, you’d think maybe we wouldn’t bother, but we would.” Crow breathed smoke in two grey jets from his nose. “There’s other news, too. I made the deal with Stanley for getting Clayton out tomorrow night. He’ll do it for the three hundred dollars. Clayton’s due to be taken out of the country next week and Stan has the job of driving him as far as Port Laoise. Stan will let us ambush him. That way he won’t get in trouble.”

  “Why do you have to spend the money to do that? Why don’t you just ambush him, anyway?”

  “Because it’s Stan, for one thing. But also because the Tans have a trick. I’ve seen it before. They take a leather ammunition pouch, the kind we used to carry first-aid bandages in during the war, and they stuff a grenade in it. They make a slit in the leather so that the pin and the lever bar sticks out. Then they strap the pouch to their prisoner’s chest. If anyone ambushes their truck, they just pull the pin, the lever flies off and seven seconds later the prisoner is … well, dramatically disassembled.”

  “They’d be killing themselves, too.”

  “They don’t expect to be set free. Besides. It’s one thing to set up the grenade like that, but it’s another thing to actually pull the pin. Sometimes they just shoot the prisoner. That’s a little simpler.” The amber fire of Crow’s cigarette smoothed out the crags of his face.

  The noise of a truck sounded in Lahinch, changing gears as it gathered speed. It rumbled over the bridge and then stopped. The parking brake rattled.

  Crow pinched his cigarette dead.