The Promise of Light (27 page)

A blast of wind struck my head. Then the hammer of the Lewis gun surrounded me.

The Tans all jumped back at once, rifles spinning through the air. The flash of the Lewis’s firing reflected off the fog. Soldiers slammed into the ground.

Boots scrabbled over the wall. Then came howling and the thud of bodies colliding. A man appeared from the fog. He ran toward me, helmet shoved back on his head. The chinstrap dug into his throat.

I pulled the trigger and the air blurred for a moment. When it cleared, the soldier was gone. I pulled back the bolt and sent the empty, smoking cartridge flying over my shoulder. Then I looked again for the soldier, but the man had fallen. His rifle lay across his chest. Hobnails shone on the soles of his boots.

Orders boomed at the Tans to regroup and right wheel and keep moving.

Stanley began firing again. He swung the gun, stabbing light into the fog.

A long scream rushed out of the dark. I raised my rifle and stood waiting.

Stanley scooped his arm under the barrel of the Lewis and lifted it off the wall.

A khaki blur rose up in front of him. He cried out and the shout suddenly quit. A shred of silver punched through Stanley’s back. It was the point of a bayonet. Stanley dropped the Lewis. He staggered.

The Tan screamed in Stanley’s face. Their bodies were touching. Then suddenly he turned and saw me. He stepped away, trying to pull out the bayonet. But Stanley’s hands were clenched around the gun barrel.

I swung my rifle butt into the soldier’s head and the Tan’s arms flew up. He dropped his gun and fell.

Stanley sank forward. The Tan’s rifle dug into the earth and held Stanley there on his knees. He made no sound. His hands still gripped the stock, hands red where the web of his thumbs held the rifle. Blood leaked in streams across his wrists.

The Tan was trying to get up. He moved like a blind man, hands groping against the wall stones, but couldn’t find a grip.

I raised the rifle high above his head and brought it down like an ax on the Tan’s uplifted face.

Stanley hadn’t moved. He stayed on his knees, held there by the bayonet. I could see from his eyes he was dead.

I couldn’t bring myself to touch his body. Each time I tried to make my hand go forward, the muscles locked. My breath slipped out around his head.

The sound of an engine echoed across the fields. It strained uphill in low gear.

The stock had broken on my rifle, so I dumped it. I picked the hand grenades off the wall and stuffed them in my pockets. My eyes passed once more over Stanley’s body. Dew spread across the dead man’s back in a cape of silver beads.

The noise of the truck slowed and then stopped. Its engine puttered in neutral. It had to be a captured truck. All the roads from Ennistymon were blocked. Clayton would be using it to bring back wounded. I ran toward the sound, the grenades weighing me down. I hoped Crow would know about Stanley before I saw him again. I’d rather have done anything than tell him his best friend was dead.

Darkness faded from the sky. Grey blue sifted through the clouds.

A wall of brambles gathered in the fog, blocking my way. Behind it lay the road. I stopped and listened. The truck was coming toward me. Then it appeared, sliding past behind the brambles. I brushed back the spiked vines of the hedge.

A dull mass of metal rolled by and I stepped back in surprise. My heel caught a root and I fell. The machine moved very slowly. It was something armored, painted the same dark green as the Crossley trucks. In the dingy morning light, I made out the welding of its metal panels. Its hatches were shut and mud clogged the heavy-treaded tires.

Brambles scraped at my face. I waited for soldiers to follow, but the road stayed empty and blurred in heat from the armored car’s exhaust.

I took a grenade from my pocket and pulled the pin. The lever bar flipped over my shoulder and a thin sliver of smoke leaked from the grenade. I threw it at the machine. The Mills bomb wobbled out of my hand and clattered on the road.

I turned and sprinted, sucking in breath through clenched teeth.

The explosion slammed through my body. Sheep-trampled mud rose up to meet me and my hands smacked into the dirt.

The armored car’s engine changed pitch. It plowed into the hedge. The engine stalled and stopped. Immediately, its ignition began to cough as the driver tried to start again.

I took out another grenade and pulled the pin. Bitter smoke from its burning fuse wafted into my face.

The fat egg wobbled over the hedge. It clanked off the armored car’s roof and someone shouted inside.

The air clenched and burst open. Metal clanged against metal and shrapnel sliced through the brambles.

It was quiet now. I lay flattened against the earth. Dark smoke puffed from the car’s engine grill. Several minutes went by and I didn’t dare to move.

The armored car’s top hatch squeaked open. A head peeked out. It wore a black beret. Then the shoulders appeared, and a hand holding a revolver settled on the top of the car. “I think they’re gone.”

“Are you sure?” This voice came from the belly of the machine.

“I think so, sir.” The man climbed higher. He wore a brown leather coat and had goggles around his neck. On his belt was a Webley revolver. “We’re leaking petrol.” He jumped down to the road.

I pulled out my revolver and breathed in the heaviness of dead leaves and earth. Bramble vines crisscrossed in front of my eyes.

Another man appeared from the hatch. He wore an officer’s peaked cap. “I don’t know where the bastards went. I can’t see anyone from here. I don’t even know where we are.”

The driver on the ground crouched down and dabbed his fingers in the spilled gasoline. “Our back tires are gone as well. We should head back to Ennistymon on foot.”

My chin rested in the dirt. A snail wandered its sticky path along a branch right by my face.

The driver took off his beret and used it to wipe sweat off his forehead. “Shall we head back then, sir?”

“No.” The officer climbed down to the road. “I’m going to stay here with the machine. You’ll have to go back and get help.”

“What? By myself?” The driver stuffed the beret on his head. “It’s a good two miles back to the barracks, and I don’t know who’s between us and home.”

“Look, Parsons. I’m not asking you to do this as a favor. I’m ordering you to run like hell back to Ennistymon and get someone out here with a Crossley so we can tow in the armored car. We’re going to catch hell as it is. We’ve only had this bloody machine for a week. And do you think I’m looking forward to spending the next hour by myself in the middle of nowhere with all these Paddymen creeping around?”

“No, sir. I don’t suppose you are.”

The officer climbed back up to the turret, dropped back inside and screwed the hatch shut.

Parsons turned around. For a moment, he just stared along the road. Then he began a slow, flat-footed run toward Ennistymon.

I’d be safer with a hostage, I was sure of that, so I followed the man. The road led down toward the hollow and crossed the river at a small stone bridge. Parsons picked up speed as he went down the hill, but at the bridge he stopped. He fetched out his gun. “Who’s there?”

I crouched in the tall grass. My clothes were splattered with mud.

Parsons wiped his face again with the beret. “Fuck.” He peered up through the brambles. Then he put the gun away. “Fuck!” He started across the bridge.

I slid down a dirt bank to the road, held out the Webley and cocked back its hammer.

“Oh, Christ!” Parsons heard it and stopped. He didn’t turn around.

I walked toward the man, gun held out.

“I’m not moving.” Parsons’s shoulders hunched down into his neck. “I’m just standing here. Oh, Christ.”

I rested the Webley’s barrel against the back of his head. “Take off your gunbelt and then hold it out in your right hand.”

Parsons unstrapped the belt from around his coat. “I’m undoing the buckle. I’m doing it slowly. See? I’m doing it slowly. Christ.” He took off his belt and the revolver.

“Throw it in the river.”

Parsons tossed the belt and the holster’s dark slab of leather into the water. “I got a family.” Sweat ran down from his temple to his cheek. “I never hurt anybody, I swear. I only been here two weeks.”

Water rustled underneath the bridge.

I kept the gun at the back of his head while I patted the damp leather of his coat, searching for other weapons. When I found nothing, I stood back. “Now we’re going toward Lahinch.”

We walked along the river bank. Trees with mottled bark grew by the water.

Parsons stumbled over the rocks in his hobnailed boots. He still kept his hands in the air. “I got a little baby girl at home. I’ve been married almost two years. My wife’s name is Thea.” He talked without pause, as if only the words were keeping him alive. “I joined up in the Oxford and Bucks Light Infantry in ’16. I got shipped over to France in two months and when I got back in ’19, I couldn’t get a job. Not anything. I even applied to be a tea server at Fortnum & Mason. And the buggers turned me down and all.”

“All right, pal,” I had to raise my voice over the rushing of the stream. “I’ve heard enough about it for a while.”

“I can’t help it. I’m sorry.” Parsons stumbled and fell to his knees, but stood again and kept walking. “I’m sorry.” He started to cry.

A fish jumped in the river. It was swimming upstream, and in the second it spent in the air, I saw the gold-spotted belly of a brown trout. Both of us looked at the place where it had disappeared. The ripples folded quickly away into the current.

I thought of a stream not far from my home. It ran past Gilbert Stuart’s mill in Saunderstown, across the bay from Jamestown. Buckeyes spawned there in the spring. The water ran so thick with fish that sometimes I could catch them with my hands.

“I got…” Parsons let his tired arms settle on top his head.

“You got what?”

“I got a first-aid kit in my pocket if you want it. I see you’ve got blood on you.”

“It’s not mine.”

“Oh, Christ.” Parsons started babbling again. “My daughter’s name is Evelyn. She got little blond curls and…” His head sank forward. “Little blond curls…”

I stopped walking. The hostage idea was no good. “Look, Parsons, why don’t you just go home?” I sat down on a rock and spat on my boots.

“I’m sorry. I can’t help it.”

“Go home, will you? It’s that way.” I waved the Webley’s barrel toward Ennistymon.

“You’ll wait until I’m running and then you’ll shoot me in the back.”

“Well, you can stay here with me if you want. I don’t give a damn. I don’t know how the hell your wife puts up with all your talking.”

Parsons backed up toward the stream, hands still raised in the air. He stepped into the shallow stream. Fast-running water frothed around his knees. “Thank you, sir. Thank you very much.” He bowed slightly forward as he spoke. Then he waded to the other bank. The river was only waist deep. Once he reached dry ground, he started running. He disappeared through the trees and his boots squelched into the distance.

I sat on the rock for a while, thinking of the things I’d told myself the night before; what I’d do to anyone who got in my way. It wasn’t true. I couldn’t have killed that man, no matter what was at stake. “Clayton could have done it,” I said to myself. “He wouldn’t have thought twice.”

I headed out across the fields, toward the house of Mrs. Fuller. If anyone had stopped on their way north, I knew I’d find them there. I’d find Mrs. Fuller there too, still waiting for her husband to return. I saw again the brave and useless patience on her face.

CHAPTER 14

Smoke curled in witch’s fingers from the chimney of Mrs. Fuller’s house.

A group of men had gathered in the garden. They were getting ready to leave. Clayton was there with Tarbox and Crow. They were arguing, Clayton shaking his fist at Crow, and Crow had gone stony-faced with rage. Tarbox stood back, leaning on his shotgun as if it was a walking stick.

Wounded men lay on the garden path. The front door was open and I could see wounded lying there, too. Some were covered in blankets and others had their trench coats tucked under their heads as pillows. Mrs. Fuller walked among them, handing out apples. The apples were puckered and dry from storage in a barrel.

As soon as Clayton saw me, he stopped talking. He waved Crow away with a brush of his hand and walked over. “Where’s your rifle?”

“It’s bust. I threw it away.” My boots had soaked through. The laces were clogged with grass and peat.

“You were issued with a rifle, which is either going to be used by us or against us. Have you thought about that? Did you at least destroy the mechanism before you abandoned it?”

“It was already broken.” Wind twisted my hair.

“How exactly?” The front of Clayton’s trench coat was plastered with dried mud.

“How? It didn’t work. That’s how I know it was bust.” I couldn’t even bring myself to be angry at Clayton. None of what he said surprised me. It wouldn’t have occurred to him to be glad to see me or ask how I was. “And I blew up one of their armored cars, so you could call it a fair trade.”

Crow had left the group. “That was you, was it?”

“He lost his gun.” Clayton’s face didn’t budge.

“Leave it alone.” Crow threw me an apple. “Don’t take this all out on him.”

“All what?” I bit into the apple. Its skin was leathery against the roof of my mouth.

“There were attacks planned to take place all over Ireland. But a lot of them didn’t go through, including one planned against the Ennistymon barracks. That’s why we had to stay and fight them off.”

Clayton spoke as if it was his fault. Someone had to take responsibility and because he was in charge, he took it on himself.

“The Dublin office called off the raids because of inadequate ammunition supplies. But they left it too late for all the raids to be canceled. The news didn’t reach us until after we’d taken Lahinch barracks. By then, we were already committed.”

“Do we have a lot of wounded?” I wished I could sit down. At least take off my boots and rub the blood back into my feet. But the other men were already lining up on the road. They were impatient to be gone.