The Promise of Light (31 page)

Tiffin pulled me away.

I followed him upstairs and into the front room. A table had been tipped against the wall and chairs lay in a pile. Our boots crunched over broken glass. Tiffin stood beside the window. He broke open the shotgun and slid two copper-ended cartridges into the breech. Then he closed the gun again and handed it to me. “You’re a Yank.” He said it as if perhaps I didn’t know myself.

I shivered without my coat. “I need to find Hagan.”

“You might have come too late. The Tans will be here any minute.” He held his hand out at the patch of grass beyond the window frame. “This is your ground. Anybody that moves out there, it’s your job to put them away.” He pulled a stiff leather cartridge bag from his shoulder and set it on the floor beside me. then he walked into another room.

I dragged a chair across the floor and sat down by the window. Pain like an old man’s arthritis began to loosen from my legs, like bandages unraveled. I felt myself falling asleep. Then my foot shifted and I knocked over the cartridge bag. The noise of shotgun shells rattling inside jolted me awake.

The land outside seemed empty and calm again. But when a breeze came wandering through the gorse, I heard the rustle of bodies as Tans closed in on the farm.

A rock seemed to shift by the wall. Then a face appeared.

I jumped up out of the chair, squeezed the shotgun’s trigger and realized the safety was still on. I released it and fired, stunning myself with the blast inside the room. Cordite smoke billowed around me.

The face disappeared. Footsteps. Now the fields seemed to shudder with movement.

Suddenly helmeted heads rose up from behind the far wall and gun flashes burst in my eyes. The window frame shattered. Stone dust peppered my skin.

Men were running towards the house, doubled over and carrying guns.

I felt the stun of a bullet pass by my face and rip a chunk of plaster from the wall.

Something flipped past from one of the other windows and I heard one of the soldiers cry out.

The blast of a hand grenade was like a door slamming in my face. It knocked me back into the room and my lungs were outlined with pain. I crawled back to the window and could see nothing but smoke.

When it began to clear, I saw two men lying just in front of the window. Another was dragging himself back toward the wall. His leg was twisted the wrong way.

I broke open the gun and started to reload. Then a shape swung in front of the window and someone lunged through the frame.

It was one of the soldiers. He grabbed my hair and pulled me to him. He had hold of my throat and made me drop the gun. I cried out and jabbed my elbow into his chest but he held on. He was breathing in my face. I smelled old tobacco. He dug his fingers into my windpipe and blue flashes burst behind my eyes. I couldn’t cry out any more. He hooked one knee into the window frame and started to crawl into the room. I smacked him in the jaw with my elbow and for a moment his body grew heavy as if I’d knocked him out. But then he sank his fingers deeper into my throat and I could feel my consciousness bleeding away. I threw myself at the window frame, jamming his body against the glass. I heard the pain in his voice and his fingers slipped away. I jammed him once more and heard the frame crack with his weight. His fingers came at me again and scratched at my eyes. He had hold of my wrist so I bit him, sinking my teeth in and feeling the blood well into my mouth. He yelled and deafened me and as soon as he let go, I tugged the Webley out of its holster. I swung it up toward him. He grabbed my arm, but his grip didn’t hold. I set the barrel under his chin and for a second I could see the brightness of his eyes in the dark. He spat in my face and thrashed forward and I pulled the trigger. His head jerked up and his jaw shattered. Fragments of his teeth dug into my face like shards of broken pottery. Sparks flew out of the Webley’s cylinder and blinded me. Then, while his muscles still shuddered in the last sputters of his dying, I stuffed his body back out the window and heard it fall heavily on the grass.

It felt as if his fingers were still sunk into my throat. I spat out his blood and cocked the hammer on the Webley, in case someone else tried to climb in.

But no one did. One man still dragged himself back toward the wall. His tunic was shredded. He groped his way up the stones and then fell down on the other side.

I hunched down to reload the shotgun, fumbling with the brass buckle of the cartridge bag. Sweat cut trails through the dirt on my face.

The firing continued on the other side of the house. Its thatched roof was held down with heavy ropes that had been weighted with stones. They dangled like strange jewelry and the Tans seemed to be using them for target practice. I heard the ricochet of bullets off the stones and then a thump as the rock smashed back against the house. Orders barked from room to room and another man was dragged coughing to the basement.

I held my hands to my throat and gagged. The muscles twitched in my arms and legs and I could not calm them down. It hurt to swallow. Anger kept flaring up inside me. I wanted to lean out of the window and shoot that Tan a few more times and kill him all over again. I couldn’t help it. My nerves were buzzing with rage. Then suddenly it left me, and all I felt was tired.

My killing ground stayed quiet. If I stared for too long at one spot, it seemed to shift and come alive. The only things that remained still were the dead men lying on the grass. The dew collected on them, just as it had on Stanley.

I was thirsty. The smoke had dried me out and my stomach was sour and empty. Part of me waited for Tans to rush screaming out of the dark, and the rest of me daydreamed about porridge with brown sugar and slices of apple.

Hagan was probably gone. Or the Tans had caught him. They would have sent for reinforcements and at first light they would attack again. Our ammunition would not last. If they brought an artillery piece, the farm would be blown in around us. We could not break out, because now they owned the ring. And even if we did, they would catch up with us after a few miles. For a while I tricked myself into imagining the others, lying dead in the bomb-smashed beams of the house, while I ran safe and invisible through the fields to a place where my father was hiding.

But it was this simple: There would be no running away. After what had happened in the Lahinch barracks, there would be no giving in, either. All of us knew that.

I had come this far, but I would not meet my father. I told myself it was enough to know the truth and enough to have had a man and a woman raise me as if I were their son. Surely, with this war about to swallow me, that had to be enough.

During the Great War, as I read the headlines of Ypres and Verdun and the Somme, I was never able to picture the grand strategy. For me, it always boiled down to single faces in the mud, frozen by a photograph or by the way someone told it in a story. That was how I understood the war. Instead of considering the world’s new order when the war was over, I found myself wondering how it must feel to be there in the trenches and know almost for certain that death was coming with the great rolling thunder of artillery and the iron-hooded soldiers rushing in.

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.