Free Falling (12 page)

That shite, Brandon, had the effrontery to lay his hands on him as if to help him up the steps into the caravan!

Their first raid and he had made a bollocks of it. Or rather, Ardan had, and gotten himself killed in the process, the ejeet.

“What happened?” the girl Jules had asked as she bound up his arm. If he hadn’t been so weak from the loss of blood, he would have backhanded her for suggesting the raid had been a cock-up. That moron Georgie babbled out a version of the story to probably the first attentive audience of his young, retarded life.

“It went bad,” Georgie kept saying afterward to anyone who would listen. “It just went bad. And now they got Ardie, and him all dead and everything.”

Jules had cried as secretly as she could manage when she heard about Ardan. Finn knew they were sweet on each other. It turned his stomach that his younger brother could make the girl smile—and more—
and hadn’t he been so nice to her ever since he got back from the clink?
It annoyed him to lose Ardan, he needed all the men he could gather for his plan of owning the surrounding countryside. Ardan was a pain in the arse, but he took orders well enough.

When Finn took a break from his own misery to notice Jules, he found himself  somewhat comforted by the fact that there was a clear road to her now.

As if he wouldn’t have gotten around to taking her from his brother eventually.

He put his hand out to her from where he lay on the cot. She was pretty, he thought, as if seeing her for the first time, even with reddened eyes and that scared-rabbit look in her eyes.

“Hush, girl,” he said. He noticed she clamped her eyes shut as if to will the tears to stop, perhaps worried that they were offensive to him.
 

“Come to me, girl,” he said, taking a withering breath full of pain and weariness as he spoke.

She moved to where he lay and sat next to him.

“I know you loved my brother,” he said, forcing his voice to sound calm. “I loved him, too.”

Her eyes popped open at that one but he could see he had her. She slid her small, sticky hand into his proffered one and he squeezed it.

“And we’ll get the bitch did this to me…and him,” he said. “I promise you that.” The girl nodded and seemed to try to smile.

“In the name of all that is holy,” Finn whispered, his gaze moving away from the girl to stare sightlessly into middle space. “We’ll make her pay in the blood of every living thing she loves.”

CHAPTER TWELVE

They needed more bullets.  

And they desperately needed news.

Since the crisis, Dierdre and Seamus had been getting all their information about the outside world from an old duffer who lived on the edge of Balinagh and who stopped in once a week for a meal. For years he had driven to their place in his second hand Renault. When the crisis happened, he came in his trap, pulled by an ancient polo pony that hadn’t been ridden in a decade. Devon was an elderly widower who knew Seamus from their school days together in the Balinagh boys’ school. His wife had been Dierdre’s sister. Unlike childless Dierdre and Seamus, Devon and his wife had five children, all of them grown and gone and out of the country.

Devon hadn’t visited in nearly three weeks.

“So they assume something’s happened to him,” Sarah said as she fixed breakfast the next morning.

David nodded. “And they’re worried but it’s hard for them to get out. Seamus seems to be getting even foggier and Dierdre knows it just takes one broken cart axel ten miles from home to…you know.”

Sarah stopped and looked at him.

 “Well, it wouldn’t be good,” he said. “Kind of a risk they don’t feel good about taking, you know?”

“Did Dierdre ask you to check on him?”

“No, but you could tell she was really worried about him. Plus, when you think about it, Devon is their only source of news of the outside world and so
our
only source.”

“Sounds like you’ve talked yourself into going to look for him,” she said. She turned her back to him to address the stove.

“There doesn’t seem to be much harm in it,” he said quietly. He had awoken hours earlier to drag the body out of sight. He would spend the rest of the morning digging the trench for it. He was still trying to process what had happened. The fact that thugs had come to the house was bad enough. But knowing that Sarah had shot them and killed one? He still couldn’t believe it. Except for the body he needed to bury.

“David.” Sarah put down his plate of eggs and then looked out the kitchen window to catch sight of where John was. “You have enough to do right here without finding an excuse to go wandering about the Irish countryside.” She sat down with a thump. “What more has to happen to convince you that it is not safe here?”

“Look, Sarah…” He reached out a hand to touch her but she pulled away, refusing to be mollified. He hesitated and picked up his fork instead. “We need news of what’s going on,” he said. “
I
need news.”

“Fine,” she said, getting up again. “Then I’ll go.”

“You?”

“Look, David, I killed a man last night, okay? I think I can handle it.”

He noticed she was breathing fast. He stood up and took her into his arms and held her.

“Of course you can handle it,” he said. “I just hate that you have to,” he murmured into her hair. “I wish I could protect you from all of this.”

The kitchen door flew open and John entered, his hair wild with the wind, his face flushed red from the cold.

“Awwww, mushy stuff,” he said, plopping himself down at the kitchen table. “Are these for me?” He grabbed David’s fork and began to eat his second breakfast of the day.

David grinned and released his wife.

“They are now,” he said.

Sarah broke three more eggs into a bowl and turned back to the stove.

John was on strict orders to stay in the house with the dogs while David worked on the grave. They did a run-through of John yelling from the kitchen window to see if David could hear him from behind the barn where he was digging. No problem. David would keep the gun with him while he worked. John would keep all the doors and windows locked, with the small kitchen window open so he could easily hear and be heard.

Sarah tacked up Dan. She carried a knife and two bottles of Côte de Rhône. She hoped to be able to trade the wine for ammunition or something else more useful to them.

Ballinagh was a little over nine miles to the west, which should take her about two hours at a walk. She fully intended to trot Dan most of the way home to cut her time. He could use the exercise and the light would be fading by then.

She and David had decided that she would go straight to Balinagh to see if there was anyone there who had news. Devon had reported that some of the people who hadn’t left the area were still in the habit of coming to the now deserted village to set up trading markets. Her hope was that she would find a market and be able to trade her wine and pick up any news.

On the way back, she planned to swing by where David thought Devon’s cottage was. This would only take her about a mile off her route. David was very serious in reinforcing to her that if she saw anything at all that looked dangerous or threatening, she was to bypass the place. Sarah wondered, as she rode away from the cottage, waving to her son and husband, what that might look like. If it was totally quiet when she showed up, should she assume someone was waiting for her in ambush or that Devon was hurt and praying that help would arrive? If she saw activity in his front yard—dogs barking, or whatever—should she stop? It occurred to her that if Devon’s house looked like there was no trouble there, that wouldn’t explain why he hadn’t come to Seamus and Dierdre’s in almost a month. She would just have to make a decision based on what she saw and hope it was the right one.

      The ride to Balinagh was cold and although Sarah had volunteered for it—and thoroughly surprised herself in the process—she was pleased to note that the trip already felt like it was doing her good. She stretched out her legs on either side of Dan and relaxed her spine and when she did she could feel him relaxing, too. She held his reins loosely in her left hand and scanned the horizon for any movement or activity. It had been a full eight weeks since she’d been to the village and she wasn’t at all sure what to expect when she arrived.

She realized that the decision to go, herself, was a good one. A part of her couldn’t bear to have David leave so soon after being gone. She was surprised to realize that the burden of protecting their cottage–and her son—was heavy. Every step that took her away from that terrible responsibility seemed to free her just a little. Or was it every step that took her away from the body of the man she had slain?

She had worked hard during the night to not think of it. She had alternately hugged her sleeping boy and her exhausted husband and put thoughts away of the man’s eyes as he’d breathed his last—because of her. She found other thoughts just as disquieting creep into her head, thoughts of wondering about his birth and boyhood.
Had his mother loved and cherished him just as she did John? Did he have children of his own? If this crisis hadn’t happened, would she have known him? Sat next to him in church?

The brutal fact that she had extinguished him came upon her in moments without warning. Staring at the goat butter bubble in a hot pan; watching an arc of
Roseate Terns
swoop languidly over the snowy pasture; cleaning up after one of the dogs. And then his face would appear to her, his startled then glazed eyes, his blank, face full of nothingness now. At one point in the night, she actually found herself thinking with amazement that he was lying out there in their courtyard when any sane person knew enough to find a place for warmth and shelter.

If you do it out of instinct, are you any less culpable?
she wondered. There had been no decision, no thought process, she had simply reacted. And her reaction was an instantaneous action to strike someone from the list of the living. She shook her head and took a long breath.

Dear God, who will I be when and if we finally ever make it back home? 

The burly Irishman hoisted himself into the back of the wooden wagon and raised his arms to the gathering crowd. He had deliberately parked the wagon near the center of the village square in Balinagh, waiting until the peak of trading and marketing had waned. He figured that would guarantee the attention of a maximum number of people but with fewer distractions to contend with since the heaviest drinking had yet to fully begin.

            “If I could have your attention,” he bellowed to the forty or so people milling about the wagon. “Your attention, please.”

            “Oy!” A young sandy-haired youth stood next to the wagon and addressed the crowd. “A moment of your time.” He looked up expectantly at the older man standing in the back of the wagon.

            The crowd, mostly men intent on moving from the trading portion of their day to the drinking portion, hesitated and then began to move toward the wagon.

            Mike Donovan, satisfied he had their attention, lowered his arms but continued to speak loudly.

            “You’ll all be knowing me,” he said. “I’m Michael Donovan from south of Dardagh on the coast. I’m a fisherman and most of you know me for that but some of you also know me as a good neighbor. I’m known in Balinagh and Siobhan Scahill can attest to my character.” He nodded in the direction of Siobhan’s Dairy off the main street.

            “I’m talking to you today,” he said, “because I’m thinking we need to come together as the community we are. Now me and my family are creating a group down by Dardagh that’s near the water—so’s we can fish and provide for our families—and also farm. Now I know…” He raised his arm again and surveyed the crowd that was approaching the wagon. “Farming’s not been good to most of us in the last few years but I’m thinking that’s going to change what with the crisis and all. I’m inviting any and all who want to come and live with us—in the community we’re trying to build—in Dardagh. It’ll be hard work, no mistake, but nobody knows how long all this’ll last…” He swung his arm to indicate the shuttered village street.

“With no laws nor government help,” he said, “there’s plenty among us could use help and plenty able enough to help. I believe there’s strength in numbers and that together we can rebuild, come what may, no matter what mischief the Yanks or the Poms have gotten us all into. And we’ll live better together than apart. That’s all I had to say and if you’re interested, I hope you’ll come talk to me.”

            A man called up to him: “Do you have housing for us, then, Mick?”

            “It’s Mike, and no, we have sheds and barns and strong backs to help those that can build houses.”

            “And food?” an elderly woman yelled out. “Do you have food in this Dardagh of yours?”

            “We have enough,” Mike said to her. “And with more people working to farm and fish and help with the livestock, we’ll have enough for everyone. If everyone pulls their weight, we can build a community that will take care of everyone.”

            “Or we could just leave.”

            Mike and the crowd turned nearly as one to the high-pitched woman’s voice that came from the perimeter of the crowd. People parted as Siobhan made her way forward toward Mike’s wagon.

            “Everybody here knows Siobhan Scahill from Scahill’s Dairy,” Mike said.

            “We could just leave, Mike Donovan,” Siobhan repeated. “And go to the towns that have food and work and laws still working.”

            “Where would that be, now?” Mike’s hands rested on his hips as he addressed her. “Dublin? Limerick? London?”

            Siobhan turned to the crowd.

            “Why would you stay here?” she asked. “When there’s nothing here but hunger and dried up farms?” She glanced up at Donovan. “Most of these farms haven’t been worked in two decades,” she said. “You know that. Are you really going to multiply your fishes to feed the masses? I think Father McGinty will take issue with
that
.”