The Promise of Light (22 page)

Crow stood slowly. “I said to be here at ten o’clock. It’s damn near eleven.”

“It is?” Tarbox pulled a brass-cased watch from his waistcoat. It was the one he had taken from the soldier on the beach, the day I arrived in Ireland. He shook it and held it to his ear. “Oh. Well, there we are then. My wife’s been on at me again about having children. I swear to Christ, I’ll pay you half a crown for an excuse that will keep her off my back even for a week.”

“You should just have children and stop fussing.” Crow stood with his arms folded, jutting up from the hedge like the stump of an old tree. “I wish I had a daughter or a son. I daresay it would get me out of this mess for good.”

“And into another one!” Tarbox jumped the wall and his boots squelched on the damp earth.

Crow took the revolver from his belt and folded out the drum to see that the chambers were loaded. Then he took off his hat and set the gun on top, keeping it out of the dew. “If we get split up somehow, we’re all to meet in Mrs. Fuller’s basement at one o’clock this morning. Stan’s going to tell them that we headed off to Ennistymon. It should give us some time before the Tans come rooting through Lahinch to find Clayton.”

Tarbox’s face swung out of the dark toward me. The whites of his eyes were like flakes of dried bone. “There’ll be changes now, with Clayton free. For better or worse.”

I smelled the smokiness of Tarbox’s clothing, hung over a fire to dry. I thought about the change that was coming, delivered in the steel and canvas wrappings of the truck. On a constant twitching balance in my head was the need to go and the need to stay and learn more, but no one was going to tell me anything here, and it was far too dangerous to ask. I decided that I would just try to get home and live with what I didn’t know. I had come to think of it in the same way that Crow saw my arrival in this place. Some kind of prophecy. I was not meant to know, just as Arthur Sheridan was meant some day to come back, wading from the sea onto the wide flat beach at Lahinch.

*   *   *

A truck puttered out of the hills. The whine of its changing gears drifted in on the breeze. Headlights carved bolts out of the dark. It stopped when it reached the shrine. The engine clunked into neutral.

I started to get up, but Tarbox shoved me back down again, his hand sinking into beads of dew that had gathered on my coat.

The truck’s engine sputtered dead and Stanley climbed out of the cab. “We’ve got a flat.”

A head appeared from a flap in the canvas roof. “You’re fucking kidding, Stan.”

Stanley pointed at the tire. “See for yourself, Desmond.”

The head disappeared. A moment later, two men jumped down to the road. One man was a soldier. The other was dressed in civilian clothes, barefoot and with hands cuffed behind his back. It had to be Clayton.

Desmond grabbed Clayton by the collar of his shirt, lifting him onto his toes. “I don’t want any pissing around from you. All right, my old pal? All right?” Desmond bellowed in his ear.

“Yes!” Clayton hunched down, waiting to be struck.

“Lie down there.” Desmond kicked him behind the knees and dropped him onto the gravel. “And don’t move until I tell you, or I’ll come back and pull the pin on that bomb strapped to your chest. You hear me?”

“Yes, sir.”

Desmond reached down, grabbed a handful of Clayton’s hair. “What’s your name? The one I gave you. I want to hear you say it.”

“Seamus.” His Adam’s apple was stuck in his throat.

“All Irishmen are called Seamus. We should rename the lot of you and save time.”

“Leave him alone for now.” Stanley crouched by the tire. “Come help me with this.”

Desmond let go of the hair and Clayton’s face smacked on the road.

“It doesn’t look flat, Stan.” Desmond walked across. He bent down, hands on knees. “Seems all right to me.”

Stanley had stepped back. In one fluid movement, he drew the gun from his belt, cocked the hammer, and shot Desmond in the back.

The air cracked and Desmond jolted backward. Quickly, he struggled to his feet. “Stan.” His voice had grown suddenly hoarse.

Stanley held the revolver out at arm’s length.

“What did you do to me?” Desmond’s legs started to give way.

Stanley fired again and Desmond collapsed into the ditch. For a moment Stanley stayed looking down at the body. Then he walked over to Clayton.

“No!” Clayton lifted his chin off the gravel. “No! I didn’t do anything!” He kicked his feet against the ground. “I didn’t … do … anything!”

Stanley lifted him to his feet.

“I didn’t do anything!” Clayton’s voice was a high-pitched whine.

“Harry!” Stanley still held the gun in his hand.

Crow slipped through the hedge and walked down to the road.

I sat for a moment with Tarbox. I didn’t remember having breathed in the past few minutes. I felt a sudden stillness in the air, from knowing that Desmond was dead. It was a sadness, too, and I felt it against my face like the sigh of a ghost. Then the two of us followed Crow down.

“Is that you, Harry?” Clayton’s hands stayed locked behind his back.

“Of course it’s him. And me as well.” Tarbox dragged Desmond’s body out of the ditch. He turned the body over. Desmond’s arms slapped down on the gravel. Tarbox opened the pockets on Desmond’s tunic and made a pile of cigarettes and coins.

“No looting!” Crow set his boot on Tarbox’s back and shoved him away from the corpse. “You just don’t get it, do you? There will be no looting!”

“It doesn’t make any sense. There’s useful things he’s carrying. They’ll all go to waste otherwise.”

“No, they won’t. They’ll be sent home to his wife. Same as I hope your things would be sent home if it was you lying there.”

At the mention of his wife, Tarbox slumped into silence.

Crow held his hand out to Stanley. “Do you have the handcuff key?” Stanley laid his revolver on the hood of the truck and unclipped the key from his belt. He threw it to me instead of Tarbox.

Tarbox removed a hand grenade from the leather ammunition pouch that had been strapped across Clayton’s chest. He weighed the gridded apple-size bomb in his hand. Then he guided Clayton to where I stood. “I was just telling Ben here how the Tans are going to rip Lahinch apart looking for you. We might as well all be living in the dunes from now on.”

Clayton stared straight through me. He didn’t wait for the cuffs to be unlocked. Instead, he walked over to Desmond’s body and kicked him in the chest so hard I thought I heard the ribs crack. He was shaking with anger.

I undid the cuffs and it seemed to calm him down. Clayton’s hands, twisted for so long behind his back, looked crooked like the claws of a bird.

Crow held out a fist of bills to Stanley. “Here’s the rest of the money. A hundred and fifty dollars.”

“Hide it and I’ll get it off you later.” Stanley waved him away. “Let’s just get this over with.”

“I don’t know if I can.”

“You have to do it. If you don’t, they’ll find out what really happened. I’m trusting you now, Harry.”

Crow pointed at the body of Desmond. “Did you know him very well, Stan?”

“What the hell do you care? Now shut up and do your job.”

Crow cocked the hammer of Desmond’s revolver. Then he shot Stanley just below the knee.

Stanley’s leg jerked back. He tried to stay on his feet, spitting out breath through clenched teeth. Then he dropped onto the road. He curled up in a ball and pressed his hands to the wound.

Crow knelt next to him. “Will you be all right for now, Stan? They’ll come looking for you soon. Can you hear me, Stan? I’m going to put a bandage on you. Can you hear me? It’s only a nick and you’ll be up again in no time. We both had plenty worse than this over in France, didn’t we, Stan?”

Stanley nodded. His forehead scraped on the gravel.

Clayton pointed at me, as if singling me out from a crowd. “You must be the Yank. The way I heard it, they were looking for an old man. But it’s you they’re after, isn’t it? Tomorrow, they’ll be bringing that crewman off the
Madrigal
down to Lahinch. As soon as Sutherland has him, the crewman will talk and they’ll come looking for you.”

I wanted to ask now if he would help me to find Hagan. I had no time to waste and wanted to set out while the dark still sheltered me.

Clayton smoothed his fingers over his wrists, where the handcuffs had dug in. “We should be gone by now.”

We left Stanley on the road, still curled in a ball. As we vanished into the ranks of night fog, Stanley’s groaning reached us on the wind. Once I turned and saw a splash of white from the bandage on Stanley’s leg.

The white rocked slowly back and forth, as Stanley cradled the pain.

CHAPTER 11

Clayton sat in a puddle of lamplight. On a bare wood table in Mrs. Fuller’s basement, he sketched a plan of the Lahinch barracks. Shadows carved into his face. Lying next to him was the Mauser’s wooden holster. It had been buried so long underground the soil had mottled it.

“I’m sure this was the armory room. I was in a cell opposite, and I heard rifles being pulled off racks the night that ship went down. I heard people loading the magazines as they ran out to the truck.”

Crow leaned over him, squinting at the plan. “But you’ve got to be more than almost sure. I can’t be responsible for sending a group of men into a building with the wrong floor plan.”

“That’s all right, Harry.” Clayton set down the pencil. “You aren’t responsible any more.”

I sat next to Tarbox, waiting for the talk to die down so I could ask if there would be anyone to guide me north. Veils of spiderweb coated empty jars on the windowsill. Their lids were fused by ginger rust.

Crow eased himself into an old chair whose wicker seat had collapsed and never been repaired. “I got you that dairy pump, Clayton. The one you wanted just before the Tans pulled you in. It’s over there in the corner if you still need it.”

The pump looked like a beer keg with a hose attached to the top.

“It’s a bloody milk pump for sucking the milk out of cow’s tits.” Tarbox hugged his ribs. “Have you lost your bloody minds?”

Clayton pressed his fingertips together. They were black with pencil dust. “If we fill it with kerosene and invert the pumping mechanism, then smash a hole in the barracks roof and pump the fuel in after it, the whole place would go up in flames.”

“How do you get close enough to smash a hole in the roof?”

“Ladders.”

Tarbox held his hand out, waiting to collect a better answer. “How do you get close enough to use them?”

“We lay down covering fire. We’ve got enough ammunition for that.”

Crow stared at the drum. “But what if they shoot a hole in it? The Tans are armed to the teeth. They’ve got crates of hand grenades and at least three Lewis guns and all the ammunition in the world. The place is built like a bunker. What good are we against all that?”

Clayton walked over to the milk pump. “We need to make a strike at a barracks. We need to keep up the pressure. Attacks are due to take place all over Ireland, all at the same time. The whole thing’s already arranged.”

Tarbox spat on the floor. “It will be a massacre. How much longer do you want to live? Or is the grey dog following you and you don’t care?”

I looked at him suddenly. “What did you say?”

“I said it would be a massacre.” Tarbox ground his spit into the dirt.

“About the grey dog. What did you say about that?”

“It’s just another way of saying he’s at the end of his rope. It’s from an old story. Don’t look at me like that, boy. It’s just a children’s story.”

Clayton had gone back to his map. He shaded in the barracks with the stub of pencil. “Has my father gone and married that idiot woman Mrs. Gisby, yet?”

Before I knew what I was doing, I had stood up and barked in his face. I didn’t know if it made any sense, or even what I had said, except that I was angry. I’d already given up hope that anyone would guide me to Connemara. One good look at Clayton had told me enough about that.

Now Clayton looked across, as if noticing me for the first time. “What’s he doing here, anyway?”

Crow rested his forearms on the table. He cleared his throat. “I thought you should meet Ben here. He’s Arthur Sheridan’s son, after all. He’s heading up north to find Hagan and he needs a guide. I was thinking I could take him there myself.”

“Do you know where Hagan is?”

“Not exactly.”

“And who’s going to do your job while you’re gone?”

“It won’t take long. We could set out tonight. The Tans will be busy searching Lahinch.”

Tarbox smacked his hands together. “Well, it’s another night in the dunes, boys.”

“I am giving you an order.” Clayton stared, as if he could not believe they would dare talk back to him. “And you, too, Crabman. If anyone under my command leaves the area without my permission, I’ll shoot them myself.” Clayton turned to me. “Everything your country stands for is going on in these towns and in these fields. You’re looking at a people who want their independence and a ruling class that won’t give it to them.”

Tarbox raised his hands and let them drop again. “Oh, don’t start with this again. And don’t cough up that bit about President Wilson’s speech, either.”

Clayton didn’t hear him. His words had become like a chant. “How different is it from your Bunker Hill and Yorktown and Lexington? How different are these members of the Republican Army and your Minutemen? I can’t see a damn bit of difference myself. Even Wilson said that in Boston, in 1919. He said ‘We set this nation up to make men free and we did not confine our conception and purpose to America, and now we will make men free.’ And what the hell are you doing about it, Mr. Sheridan?” Clayton folded his arms and sat back. The chair legs creaked underneath him. “The same damn thing as your father; looking for the first excuse to run away.”

I lunged at him across the table and I had him by the lapels of his coat. The Mauser went flying off into the dark. I swung Clayton toward me and cracked his nose against my forehead. Then someone grabbed hold of my ankles and dragged me back until I fell off the table. I thumped down to the floor. Clayton’s hands were pressed to his face and blood trickled out between his fingers. I stood up and lunged at him again, but Crow had hold of my collar, which dug into my throat and held me back.