by Paul Watkins
What I realized now was that although the chances of surviving were nearly zero, still they were not completely zero. The pathetic thread of possibility grew in my head until it outweighed any chance of dying. I would be lucky. I would dodge and duck and run and be shielded by angels. I would head for the cave where no one could find me and sleep with the promise of returning to the light someday far into the future. It did not seem possible to me that all my thoughts could be snuffed out. I could imagine almost any degree of wounding and maiming and pain but not the simple vanishing of my mind. It had built a wall between itself and death and the wall would not give in.
The first thin bolts of sun spread whiskey-colored light across the fields.
I heard a truck sound in the distance. It was the Crossleys winding along narrow roads with their canvas roofs battened down. I knew people would be running from their gardens to stand in the trails of exhaust as they watched the trucks move by.
The farmhouse seemed to shudder. Half-asleep men threw themselves at the window. Rifle bolts clacked.
The trucks mumbled toward us. Sheep stopped grazing and raised their heads.
Tiffin’s voice boomed through the house, telling us to wait until the soldiers were in close before we fired.
I wondered about the shotgun’s range. The Tans would be over the wall and halfway across the garden before I could be sure of a target. The world had been reduced to the view from this farmhouse window. I wanted it to begin. I shoved away the clutter of worry and planning for when it was over. It made no more sense to drift on paths of daydream, where I kept myself safe and alive. All that remained of my senses was a tiny, flickering pilot light that fastened me to life.
A truck slipped over the hill on the horizon. It showed itself for an instant, as it dropped into a lower gear. The rest must have stopped on the other side of the ridge. The soldiers would be piling out now, forming in their sections on the road. Soon they would set out across the fields.
In another room, a handful of bullets dropped on the floor. Someone scrabbled to pick them up.
“Let them get close,” Tiffin shouted.
I wiped the moisture from my palms on my trouser legs and rested my hands in the stone dust, chalking them to dry up the sweat.
The truck appeared on a rise. But it seemed too small for a truck. It was a staff car and a man stood in the back seat with a shred of white cloth tied to a stick. Two men sat in the front. The car slowed as it drew near to the house.
Tiffin ran into the room. He pushed me aside. Stubble jutted from his chin like slivers of ivory. “They want us to give up without a fight.”
The car brakes squeaked and it stopped in front of the farmyard.
An officer stepped out. He took off his cap and tucked it under his arm. His short black hair was combed straight back on his head.
Behind him, a soldier stood in the car with the white cloth raised.
The driver kept his hand on the steering wheel. His cap had a red and white checked band and two tassels hung down at the back of his neck.
The officer walked into the farmyard. Mud covered the shine on his boots. He breathed in deep and shouted, “I am Captain Houston. Send out whoever is in charge.” His eyes passed from window to window. “I don’t have all day.”
Tiffin jammed his thumbnail in his mouth. He muttered into his fingers. When he pulled his hand down, he bit off half the thumbnail and spat it on the floor. Then he took hold of my arm. “You follow me out. I want you standing right behind me all the time and bring that shotgun with you.”
We walked down the hall to the door.
I saw men in all the rooms. They crouched by overturned furniture, guns locked in their hands. Then something grabbed at his foot.
It was Crow. He had crawled halfway out of the basement. His face was still sweaty and pale. “Don’t you trust them. You keep looking at their eyes. It’s their eyes that give them away.”
For a second, Tiffin stopped in front of the door. Then he tucked in his undershirt and smoothed the hair back on his head. He gripped the door handle, pressing the latch with his thumb, and swung the door wide.
Houston flinched when he saw the door swing open.
Tiffin walked to meet him, his back stiff and his arms held straight at his sides.
I followed, ducking from the shadow of the farmhouse roof into the bright sun. Puddles flashed and blinded me.
Tiffin stopped and I almost piled into him.
Houston saluted.
“What do you want?” Tiffin breathed as if he had walked miles to meet the man.
Houston snapped his hand down to his side. “There will be no attack. Neither do we require your surrender. We heard on the radio at five o’clock this morning that a general armistice was signed last night. We have been ordered to cease all hostilities immediately. And so have you.”
“How do you expect me to believe that?” Tiffin’s feet stirred in the mud.
The shotgun was impossibly heavy in my hands.
Houston fitted his cap back on his head. He had said what he came to say, and he had no more time for talk. “I could have rounded you up in half an hour with the men I’ve got waiting in that town over the hill. But I’m not doing it. That should tell you something. We’re pulling back now. You will not fire on us as we depart or I shall consider that a renewal of hostilities.” He saluted again. “See you again some day.” Then he spun on his heel and walked back to the car. The engine started up.
The car turned and backed up and turned again. It sped away down the road. The white cloth snapped in the wind.
Men stood up from their hiding places in the fields. Two Tans appeared from a bank of ferns. They looked at the car and then at the farmhouse.
A man in a trench coat crawled out of the hedge.
The Tans started running toward town. They kept looking back.
Tiffin turned to me. “It can’t be true. It’s been going on too long just to end like this. Go into town and find out if the armistice is real. If you’re not back in half an hour, I’ll know they were lying. Leave the gun. You’ve got a better chance without it.”
I left the shotgun behind and walked in the middle of the road.
As I reached the crest of the hill, I could see down into town. People filled the streets. Two Crossley trucks and the staff car were parked in the village square. Tans sat in the backs of their trucks.
A woman poured tea into the white and blue tin mugs that the Tans held in their outstretched hands.
Houston was talking with Gracey, who still wore his overalls and black coat. The officer took a black cigarette case from his pocket and offered it to Gracey.
Gracey picked a cigarette and nodded thank you. He struck a match and held the flame cupped in his hands to Houston, who bent forward and puffed.
Houston breathed in the smoke and then pulled the cigarette from his mouth. He smiled and nodded and rocked on the heels of his muddy boots.
One soldier stood on the thatched roof of a house. He held the white flag above his head and waved it back and forth over the town.
The armistice had come, even if just for a while. I felt the cautious reaching of my thoughts toward home, the distant rhythm returning.
A man walked up the hill, hands in the pockets of a green corduroy jacket. He stopped when he saw me.
I saw my own face looking back, with a haze of age across it. The man took his hands from his pockets and shielded the sun from his eyes.
I walked down the hill. In a moment I started to run. I had a sense of rushing past the frail shell of my body, treading lightly through distance and time.
Also by Paul Watkins
Night Over Day Over Night
Calm at Sunset, Calm at Dawn
In the Blue Light of African Dreams
Stand Before Your God
Archangel
The Story of My Disappearance
The Forger
Additional Praise for
THE PROMISE OF LIGHT
“The Promise of Light is that rare find, an action-packed book written in prose as sharp as the crack of rifle fire, as evocative as the smell of burning peat.”
—The Providence Journal
“Prose of precise and taut elegance … With his intense narrative drive and his ability to be literary without seeming so, [Watkins] is a writer who should richly reward readers of many desires for years ahead.”
—The Miami Herald
“The narrative is thick with the smells and tastes of a strange and violent place.”
—New York Magazine
“Watkins has outdone himself: This gifted young writer has written his best yet.”
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“[A] stunning odyssey of a young man’s coming-of-age under brutal circumstances … Watkins spins his beautifully researched story in compact, tensile, and metaphorically charged prose.… The novel hurtles along with jolting surprises and breathtaking immediacy.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred, boxed review)
“The Promise of Light is a book of self-discovery, a modern odyssey illuminated by startlingly powerful prose.… Buy it, then savor it.”
—Lexington Herald Leader
“This breathtaking novel is bound to make those who consider themselves writers wish they had authored this luminous fiction. [Watkins] has gotten into the heart and minds of people in this country and Ireland in 1921 so successfully that the reader gets caught in a time warp.… An incomparable work of fiction.”
—Communique
“This is Hemingway without the sappy stuff: great adventure, big themes, all bleakly and existentially rendered.”
—Booklist
THE PROMISE OF LIGHT. Copyright © 1992 by Paul Watkins. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address Picador USA, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
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First published in Great Britain by Faber & Faber Limited in 1992
First published in the United States by Random House, Inc.
First Picador USA Edition: November 2000
eISBN 9781466887664
First eBook edition: November 2014