Exit Unicorns

by Cindy Brandner

  Just then, Dacy came running around the corner and stopped sharply in front of them, breathless and winded.

  “There was a—demonstration—up at Divis Flats. RUC attacked the marchers—an’ they’ve pulled back into the Falls,” he gasped for air, “an’ there’s barricades goin’ up. Word on the street is they’re goin’ to call out the B-Specials.”

  “The time is upon us I’d say.”

  Casey took a deep breath, “Right, well, everyone with so much as a trickle of Republicanism in them has been mobilized. We’ll have to take special care of the areas that are mixed with or right on the border of the Protestant neighborhoods. Seamus an’ I’ll take the Lower Falls, Sean you an’ Dacy are in the Ardoyne, Kevin an’ Mack take the end of the Shankill by Unity Flats. John checked in with me before an’ he’s got Clonard an’ the top end of Springfield Road covered. Worst comes to worst, encourage people to retreat into Andersontown an’ the Murph.”

  The men split off quickly, going their separate directions, none really knowing what to expect or what they might return to in their own homes and neighborhoods when the night was over.

  Old rubbish, broken down furniture, vegetable crates and cardboard had been collected earlier for the traditional August 15th bonfires. Here and there they’d been set ablaze already, crimson crackles heady in the twilight.

  “D’ye smell that Seamus?” Casey asked, drawing in a lungful of smoky air.

  “Smell what?” Seamus asked, noting with alarm the number of people milling about the barricades.

  “The smell of change.”

  “Oh aye, if change smells like we’re approachin’ the gates of hell, then I smell it.”

  Hell in a very small place would bear an uncanny resemblance to Belfast tonight, Pat thought grimly as he passed yet another barricade burning, with a goodly supply of youth bent on a long, ugly night of it, illuminated behind it. His own band of rebels had been meant to be protesting up in front of Divis Flats, but he’d been overwhelmed by a sense of futility. Protest in the face of tanks seemed too much like casting pearls before swine, with the pearls being crushed into conformity by the uncaring hooves of the swine. He longed for a different sort of action, to mend rather than wound.

  Ahead of him loomed the Church of the Resurrection, windows ablaze with light, small beacons of sanctuary for those who would fall tonight. It was his destination, this is where the wounded and the frightened would come, and he would be here to do what he could.

  He rapped on the faded door of the service entrance and then rang the bell beside it. He waited patiently for the minutes it took before a hurrying set of footsteps answered his call.

  “Yes?” A tall scarecrow of a priest stood before him, sandy hair, peppered with age, hanging across his forehead, the lace-trimmed edge of his alb sagging below the bottom of his cassock.

  “I—I came to help,” Pat said, uncertain now that he was here what to say.

  “Then ye’d best come in,” the priest said.

  Pat stepped into the light of an entryway just off a kitchen that smelled incongruously of gingerbread and antiseptic. On the table lay piles of gauze, splints and tape. Bottles of iodine were lined up precisely like small brown bowling pins. Kettles boiled on the huge stove and a round, amply-fleshed woman bustled about the floor.

  “Maggie?” he said disbelievingly.

  The woman turned from the cake she’d just extracted from the oven and gave him a shrewd glance. Then her eyes twinkled out from the folds of flesh. “Pat, is it yerself? We’ll not have seen ye the last few nights on the hill.”

  “Pat?” the old priest echoed, though no one paid attention.

  “What are ye doin’ here in a monastery Maggie?” Pat asked, some vestige of his Catholic boyhood feeling shock at seeing a woman where none had been seen before.

  “The same as yerself laddie I imagine, came to help. I’m not much good for sewin’ up cuts an’ such, nor providin’ spiritual help but the stomach prevails through emergencies of all sorts an’ I was thinkin’ people comin’ here may need a bit of tea an’ comfort an’ that I most assuredly can provide. The rest,” Maggie turned her cake out and patted its well-risen top with satisfaction, “I’ll leave to the good Lord an’ yerselves.”

  “Pat?” the priest echoed again and this time Pat turned and said,

  “Yes?”

  The old man stared at him a long moment. Pat noticed that he’d one blue eye and one brown, which gave his stare a concentrated energy it wouldn’t have possessed otherwise.

  “Yes?” Pat said again, beginning to feel distinctly uncomfortable.

  “Ye’ll not remember me,” the old man said softly, “ye were just a wain last time I saw ye, barely crawlin’ about though that didn’t stop ye from eatin’ my potted asphodel down to the roots an’ vomitin’ the results of it up on the cat.”

  “Father Terry?” Pat said in wonderment.

  “Yer brother said ye’d the look of yer daddy about ye, an’ I see he’s right.”

  “I ate a potted asphodel?” Pat said.

  “Oh aye, had to have yer wee stomach pumped out fer it too. Threw up in the car on yer dad an’ yer brother, threw up on the nuns at the hospital. Terrified the lot of us I can tell ye. But two hours after yer tummy was emptied, ye were right as rain. Didn’t stop the nuns from tearin’ a terrific strip off yer dad an’ myself. Tellin’ us the Good Lord hadn’t equipped men for the proper Christian upbringing of a child. We tended to agree with them in principle if not in practice at the time.”

  “I’ve come to help.” Pat said blankly not knowing if Father Terry expected any response to his story.

  “Aye, well that’s good, we’ll need all hands on deck this night. We’ve already had some poor miscreant come in with his hands burned from tryin’ to make a Molotov cocktail. Told the wee fool it might have helped if he’d thrown the silly thing after he’d lit it.”

  Just then, there was a terrific pounding at the door.

  “Merciful heavens what’ll it be now?” Maggie muttered, dusting floury hands on her apron and waddling for the door.

  A white face popped itself in seconds later, “Father, Father ye must come quick, they’ve set the school on fire!”

  The school, situated in close proximity to the monastery was indeed ablaze. Fire licked up one side and across the shingled roof in a merry dance. Smoke rolled in heavy coils into the night, choking in its density.

  “Right then,” Father Terry said briskly, “we’ll go get the extinguishers from the monastery an’ put it out.”

  Father Terry might have been oversimplifying the whole thing, Pat thought moments later as he fought to put out burning desks, books, and shelves amidst the zing and crack of bullets. Outside the mob who’d put match to the school had opened fire and the men inside the school were ducking and dashing trying to quench the fire’s voracious appetite and avoid the bullets that tore through the shattered glass of the windows.

  Outside, the fire had roared like a great deep belly laugh at its own greed. Inside it whispered, a harsh hiss as it licked at fragile papers, caught on to ink, burning words and maps, thoughts and feelings. Pat could feel blisters rising on the back of his hands. It was like being in the heart of an inferno. He saw in the pandemonium Father Terry dash past him numberless times, stamping out spot fires, pulling desks into the center of the room, piling vulnerable books on top of them. He seemed to have the strength and fortitude of a much younger man.

  Twenty minutes later, it was a sorry bunch of men who stumbled out of the school, burned, soot-smeared, blistered, lungs seared with smoke. The fire was out, but whether the effort had been worth it was debatable. One wall of the school was burned away, the roof was on the verge of collapse and all the windows had exploded out in the heat. It appeared the gun-wielding mob had moved on in search of fresh victims, for no more bullets harried the night.


  “Ye alright lad?” Father Terry laid a filthy hand on Pat’s shoulder.

  “Aye. Yerself?”

  “Been worse.” The priest surveyed the bedraggled bunch around him, “At least no one was hit by a bullet. I suppose that’s somethin’ we can be grateful for. Aye, what is it lad?” For a small hand was plucking insistently at his sleeve.

  “Father ye must help, I can’t find Father Joe an’ there’s a boy lyin’ in the street.”

  Pat turned toward the street and saw in the ashy light a very still form lying under a street lamp.

  Father Terry was already halfway there before Pat could take a step. He was kneeling, one hand on the prone figure’s head when Pat caught up to him.

  “Ye musn’t be afraid, yer goin’ to be fine,” he looked swiftly at Pat and Pat read in his eyes that the boy wasn’t going to be fine at all. “Call for an ambulance an’ then stay put in the church.” Pat ran to do as bid and then, against orders, ran right back.

  “The ambulance will be here soon as it can,” he said trying to infuse a reassurance that he did not feel into his voice.

  “Ye see there’s nothin’ to fret about then, we’ll get ye to the hospital an’ they’ll fix ye up.” Father Terry had torn off the bottom of his alb and balled it up to place under the boy’s head. “This here is Finn,” he said to Pat as if he were introducing them under perfectly sociable conditions.

  Finn, Pat noted, was no more than sixteen from the looks of him. He’d a round, snub-nosed face that wore an expression of extreme terror at present, fine blonde hair and a hole in his stomach where a bullet had punched through it.

  “I must confess, Father,” the boy named Finn managed to gasp out.

  “Confess what lad?”

  “My sins, I—” Finn grimaced and tried to put a hand down to his stomach, which Father Terry gently took before he could reach the wound.

  “If it’ll make ye rest easy, then tell me yer sins laddie.”

  “I—I stole petrol,” Finn’s eyelids fluttered and then opened again, though his eyes seemed a bit more hazy than before, Pat noted. “I stole it for the petrol bombs, I’m sorry,” he sobbed then gasped, his body spasming with pain. “I’m sorry Father, will ye tell God I’m sorry?”

  “Did ye take more petrol than was necessary for the makin’ of the bombs?” Father Terry asked, smoothing the boy’s sweat-soaked hair away from his forehead.

  “N—oo,” Finn gasped out.

  “Then if ye only took what ye needed for yer purposes it isn’t a sin. Ye are absolved, Finn. Now is there anything yer mammy used to sing to ye when ye were small, or a bedtime story that ye liked in particular? It’ll help to pass the time until the ambulance comes.”

  Finn blinked slowly and Pat noticed that it took him longer each time to open his eyes again.

  “Mam always sang The Black Velvet Band when I was small,” his eyes fluttered slowly, “’twas the only thing that would put me to sleep.” The hand in Father Terry’s, pale and small against the priest’s, was beginning to slacken a little.

  “That’s one of the more unusual lullabies I’ve come across,” Father Terry said and then began to sing in an off-key croak that sounded like a crow with a severe head cold.

  In a neat little town they call Belfast

  Apprenticed to trade I was bound

  And many’s the hour of happiness

  I spent in that sweet little town.

  Pat didn’t possess Casey’s melting tenor tones but he did have a decent, soft voice that joined Father Terry’s—

  Til a sad misfortune came o’er me,

  That forced me to flee from the land

  Far away from my friends and relations

  Betrayed by a black velvet band.

  Pat realized suddenly that he was singing alone, for Father Terry spoke in low, softly cadenced Latin, his free hand making a cross on Finn’s smooth forehead.

  Her eyes they shone like the diamonds

  I thought her the queen of the land

  And her hair hung over her shoulder

  Tied back with a black velvet band.

  Pat had known the words since childhood and knew they would be with him always now. Finn smiled softly, his eyes closed, lashes like cornsilk against his child’s cheek.

  “Sing me on to sleep mam,” he whispered and then his hand slid from Father Terry’s to lay limply across his chest and so Pat sang on, while around them the pall of smoke grew thicker and bullets cracked and thundered and the world as they knew it burned away.

  Revolutions may have been started on so small an arsenal, but Casey was quite certain not a one had ever been won in such a manner. A Thompson, a .303 rifle and four pistols. Hardly an arsenal to be reckoned with. His own weapon an ancient pistol whose barrel had to be turned manually after each round.

  He was crouched down under a window on the first floor of St. Colum’s grammar school. Around him lay the shattered remnants of glass where the window had been blown out. Behind him, the four men he’d holed up with inside a classroom. Liam Miller knocked out cold against the far wall, a huge bruise flowering across his face where a rifle had kicked back and rendered him unconscious. Above Casey, visible against the dark night, long red tracers split and opened the sky, flowing and flowering in a display of deadly fireworks. In the street, the mob surged back and forth and the police were nowhere to be seen. It had been a solid forty minutes of holding the howling crowd back, denying them entrance any further into the Divis Street area.

  Seamus stood and cocked an eye out to the street, “Do these bastards not know when to call it a day?” he asked and, taking aim, fired out into the night. The answer to his question was a sustained barrage of bullets whizzing above his ear.

  “Shit,” he said and sat down with a decided thump.

  “Are ye hit?” Casey asked urgently, crawling across the paper-strewn floor to him.

  “No, but the damn thing near took my ear off an’ I’ve sat on some little bugger’s compass, aagh, oh— Jayse—there I’ve got the damn thing out.”

  Casey stood, scanned the scene outside, aimed above the head of the crowd and squeezed off a bullet. He crouched back down quickly, smelling the thick tang of cordite heavy in the air.

  “We can’t keep this up much longer, there’s maybe five rounds apiece left an’ then we’re done for. Seamus?”

  Seamus didn’t answer; he was leaning against the wall illuminated by a burst of fire from outside, the reflection of flame licking up his face like a gruesome, shifting deathmask.

  “The bullet,” he whispered, “the one that missed me...” he pointed, words failing.

  Casey’s eyes followed the direction of Seamus’ finger reluctantly, as if by not looking he could change what had happened.

  In the strange, dancing light he saw Liam Miller, still unconscious, mouth slack. Casey blinked, no, not unconscious afterall. A neat round hole, black about the edges, sat where Liam’s throat had once been.

  “Oh Christ,” he breathed, crawling across the floor between the rows of desks.

  He’d seen dead men before, in prison it wasn’t a rare occurrence and so he recognized the form of it. The look of startlement, if death had come hard or fast, the rictus of terror for the ones who had met their end with violence, the peaceful aspect of those who’d gone willingly. But Liam merely seemed asleep, neither profoundly peaceful nor afraid of the departure he’d just taken. Casey took his hand; the skin was already cooling, stiffening with the absence of life. He knew what he would see if the light were stronger. The misted blue that began about the lips and spread slowly across the surface of the body, as if, as the ancients had believed, the soul was breathed out through the mouth at the end.

  He passed his palm gently over the eyelids to be certain the eyes were closed. He then dipped the pad of his thumb in the dark stream of blood that chilled and congealed even now beneath
Liam’s throat. He raised his thumb and tried to recall what he knew about Liam Miller. He’d only met him twice before today. He was an old republican, part of his father’s generation, one of the old guard who’d come out today to defend their neighborhoods and their honor.

  “Seamus, do ye know anything about him?” Casey asked.

  “What do ye mean?”

  “What was special about him?”

  Seamus shook his head, rubbing a thumb speculatively across his chin.

  “He grew roses,” he said at last. “Loved ‘em, was the pride an’ joy of his life. Took first place in a flower show once with some hybrid he’d created himself. Was so damn happy about it he bought everyone at the pub a drink that night.”

  Casey nodded. His thumb pressed into the cool forehead, slid down to the scarred bridge of the nose, rose and glided across the bony ridge above the eye sockets. “May ye grow roses in God’s garden for all eternity,” he whispered. He took Liam’s hands and folded them gently one over top the other and then, grabbing his pistol moved quickly back across the floor to his position by the window.

  He fired off two more rounds over the heads of the frenzied mob, pausing to crank the barrel over each time. The mob outside was quieter now and in the distance there was a steady hum like the sound of a large, lumbering insect moving across dry ground. There was something disturbingly familiar about the noise and he tried to separate it out from the explosions and sharp cracks of gunfire that surrounded it. His ear was distracted however by a scuffle at the door behind him.

  “State yer name an’ business,” he heard the old man guarding the door say gruffly.

  “Casey are ye in there? It’s Dacy. I’ve just come from the Ardoyne.”

  “Let him in,” Casey said tersely, his hands suddenly shaky around the gun. “What the hell do ye mean by leavin’ yer station?”

  Dacy took a minute to breathe, his hands on his legs in an effort to steady himself. “They’re burnin’ out the Ardoyne, there’s nothin’ left to defend. We’re out of ammo an’ Sean took a hit in the arm, he was bleedin’ somethin’ awful. I got him to the Church an’ then I came here.”