All Our Yesterdays (2 page)

“A bleeding mouse could trot across that tea,” he said. The other men laughed. They were much older than Conn, especially the lieutenant, a short, plump man who’d been a cook with the British army in India.

“’Tis a darling thing, Cap’n, sir,” he said, “to see a fancy fucking Dublin boy drink proper country tea.”

Outside it had begun to rain. A cold rain, barely above freezing’.

“How much ammunition?” Conn said.

“Twenty rounds a rifle,” O’Gorman said. “Some shotguns, and four hand grenades. There are ten or twelve policemen in the Hollyford Barracks.”

“With all the ammunition they’ll ever need,” Conn said.

They were silent. The rain sounded on the roof, the squares of slate, carefully lapped from peak to eaves, resting on close-spaced rafter poles.

“It makes no sense to rush it.”

“None at all, at all.”

“We’ll burn them out,” Conn said.

“How?”

“From the roof,” Conn said. “The gable end has only one window. We can keep people away from it by rifle fire, and go up to the roof there.”

“Man, dear, it’s forty feet. We don’t have a forty-foot ladder in the county.”

“We’ll splice two twenty-footers,” Conn said. “We’ll make some bursting charges to blow off the slate, and we’ll burn them out from above.”

“Might work,” O’Gorman said. “Who goes to the roof?”

“I will,” Conn said. “If I can swallow this tea, I can climb that roof.” He smiled his brilliant smile in the smoky room. “With one heroic volunteer.”

“I’ll go with you, I guess,” O’Gorman said.

T
hey spent the rest of the evening waiting and getting ready. Conn disassembled and oiled the big Webley .45 he carried under his coat. He cleaned and oiled it nearly every day. But he had nothing else to do while he waited. He took the German automatic, 9-mm parabellum, from its holster under his other arm. He oiled the pistol and the magazine spring, tucked bullets into the magazine, put a round in the chamber, and put it back with the hammer cocked and the safety set. The men in the kitchen improvised hand grenades by packing scrap iron in tin cans around a stick of gelignite. Other men arrived, gathering quietly, in the front room, some in the shed; cleaning and oiling rifles, and shotguns, practicing with the spliced ladder against the side of the barn. They didn’t talk very much. The rain pattered on the roof. Mrs. O’Gorman and her daughters stayed quiet in the corner of the kitchen, murmuring the rosary.

It was an hour till midnight when a thin little man in a tweed cap and a black raincoat arrived on his bicycle to say that the Volunteers had begun to fell trees and pile stone barricades across the roads. His name was Feeney.

“In the pass,” he said, “there are no trees handy, and not enough rocks.”

“Can you find a way to block it?” Conn asked.

Feeney grinned.

“I’ll have them throw the road over the ditch, Cap’n.”

Conn nodded. The fire made a dim reflection on Feeney’s wet rubberized coat. Feeney’s cap was sodden and shapeless.

“And the wires?” Conn said.

“We’ll cut them at midnight, telephone and telegraph both, sir.”

At five after midnight they set out. Conn, O’Gorman, five shotguns, and seven rifles. Because he would be climbing the roof, Conn donated his rifle to Dennis Tracy, who would be in charge of the ground party.

“Musha,” Conn said with a wide smile, as they moved out. “I feel like a tinker.”

He and O’Gorman each carried two handguns, grenades, hammers and bursting charges, and on their backs each a tin of petrol. Oil soaked squares of sod hung from ropes around their necks. Oil soaked into their clothes. Four men carried the ladder. Others carried paraffin oil in zinc buckets.

The rain wasn’t heavy but it came without surcease as they walked silently toward the police barracks. In the slippery darkness one of the men carrying the ladder stumbled.

Someone said, “Jesus Christ, man.”

Conn’s voice was soft and sharp as he spoke to them.

“Quiet now, lads. The less the peelers hear us, the less they’ll know what’s happening. A silent assault is a frightening thing.”

In the back one of the men murmured, “Cap’n’s a stone killer, where’d he come from?”

“They sent him down from Dublin.”

Again Conn’s voice cut the darkness.

“Quiet.”

They went forward in silence. Close to the barracks the laddermen took off their boots. The rifles and shotguns took the places they’d been assigned, three to lay down fire on the gable-end window, the rest to cover doors and windows. The men with the paraffin oil put the buckets down at the base of the gable end and retreated to cover. The laddermen raised the ladder.

Conn and O’Gorman went up, heavy with firearms, burdened with ammunition, laden with explosives, and dripping oil.

There was a chimney near the gable end, and another at the opposite gable. Conn slithered his way across the wet slate roof, straddling the ridgepole, trying to be silent, forty feet up in the murky darkness. When he reached the far end he turned, braced his back against the chimney, and sat on the ridgepole as if he were straddling a horse. He couldn’t see O’Gorman at the other end of the roof. He took the hammer from the loop on his belt. It was a long-handled hammer, the kind used for framing, with a twenty-ounce head. He waited a moment, took in a long breath, let it out slowly, and brought the hammer down on the slate. The crack of the roofing slab sounded like an explosion in the still night. He smashed another tile, and poured gasoline into the opening. He unlimbered one of the sods of turf from his neck and lit it and dropped it into the hole. He lit another one as fast as he could and dropped it in, and the flames came up with a yellow roar. He could see O’Gorman now in the blaze they’d started, and they crawled toward each other, breaking through the slate
roof, pouring in gasoline, dropping in the blazing oil-soaked sods. His can was empty. He tossed the can aside and it skittered down the roof and off.

From inside the barracks rifle and pistol fire began. Flames flaunted up through the broken roof now, no longer yellow, but red as they began to feed on the wooden interior of the building. Conn dropped one of the grenades and hunched back as its explosion sent flames and smoke up toward him. He threw the other one and missed the opening. The grenade rolled down the roof and lodged in the gutter. Conn lay flat and the grenade went off too close. The concussion deafened him for a moment and it was minutes before the ringing in his ears subsided. He scrambled back toward the chimney. The remaining slate was hot to the touch. He reached the chimney and climbed up on it, and to himself grinned in the flaming darkness.
Praise-be-to-God the peelers don’t fire up the flue
. The wind turned the smoke and flames now toward him, now away. His hands were burnt. His face felt singed. He pulled out the parabellum and emptied the clip through the roof into the burning barracks. Then he emptied the Webley and sat with his legs dangling over the inferno while he reloaded. It occurred to him as he did so that his clothing was soaked in oil.
One spark and I go down in history as a fiery leader
. He grinned at his own joke, and fired again into the flames below. From the shed that angled off from the main barracks, police were firing up at him through openings in the roof. He returned fire from the chimney. From inside the barracks a Very light went up through the shattered roof, then another, visible for miles against the black sky.

Below him he could hear his men shouting at the
police, taunting them.
Goddamn them
. He screamed down at them.

“Shut up, you fucking gossips.”

But the gunfire was too insistent and the roar of the fire too loud for anyone to hear him. A bullet wanged off the edge of the chimney, sending a fragment of brick to slash across his cheek. Conn laughed out loud. A second bullet hit him. He swayed briefly with the bruise of it as it tore into his shoulder.

“Shit,” he said.

Then he felt numbness. He could see the blood soaking through his coat around the entry hole. There was a medical kit in his coat pocket. He got a gauze out, folded it, and held it against the wound with his chin. He tied a bandage around it using one hand and his teeth. The bleeding slowed. He loaded, fired, loaded, fired. Then he began to work his way across the ridgepole. His hair was afire; he put it out by running his hands through it. Little leaves of flame leapt up from his oily coat and he beat them out with his hands. The flames exploded up through the roof, blocking his way, preventing him from the ladder. Soaked with oil and gasoline, he would burst into flame if he tried to go through it. He would die here on the roof if he didn’t. It was thick fire. The gusting wind made it dance. He thought of that line, was it from Virgil, he used to know it in Latin. Something about it being fitting and beautiful for a man to die for his country.

“Good-bye, James,” he shouted.

“
Slan leat
,” O’Gorman shouted back.

The wind gusted in a different direction. The flames leaned away, and Conn scuttled past them to the ladder.
I’ll have to look up that line
.

O’Gorman went down the ladder first while the men on the ground fired at the windows and gunports to keep the police down. They gathered behind the stone wall. Across the hills, near the pass, the sky was pale gray. It was almost morning. Out of the near darkness behind the wall Feeney appeared on his bicycle.

“Cavalry,” he said, “from Dundrum.”

“How soon?” Conn said.

“Ten, fifteen minutes behind. They’re having slow going picking through the barriers, Cap’n.”

“Pull back and disperse,” Conn said softly. “We didn’t capture the bugger, but we surely caved it in some.”

Dead silent now, the men faded into the thinning darkness, away from the blazing barracks, into the cool, fine rain that fell steadily on the slow dawning countryside.

C
onn lay flat in the ferns, trying for warmth. His shoulder was pounding steadily now. The rain had stopped, but the ground was still wet, and the dew came as he lay there, settling onto his back. His face was blistered, his eyebrows gone, his hair singed short. He could smell the burnt-hair smell of himself. The dawn seemed slow in coming. As it came it brought a low, cold wind that made the ferns rustle. The cavalry went by, column of twos, the chestnut coats of the horses gleaming in the first sun. In the ferns to his left: something stirred. Conn turned toward it, fumbling his Webley from its holster with his fire-reddened hands. The sound was a hare, rising for a look around. Its ears were stiff and canted forward, a slight shiver ran along its flanks. Its nose quivered, then its white scut flashed, and it was down, back among the ferns, and gone. Conn put the Webley back under his arm.

The hoofbeats of the cavalry squad dwindled and then were gone. Conn got to his feet. He was lightheaded and he felt sick. He moved across the fields, away from the road. As day came on it warmed, and the earth began to dry out beneath his feet. There were robins about and larks, that lifted suddenly in front of him, startled by his step. Now and then orange blackthorn berries colored the landscape. As he moved, the heat pulsed insistently in his shoulder. He
needed water badly, but there were only the dark amber puddles in the bog, and he knew he shouldn’t drink from them.

It was nearly noon when he came upon a small thatch-roofed house among outbuildings. A thick, gray-haired woman in a black dress, with a plaid man’s jacket over it, was feeding some hens in the yard. Conn’s head was swimming now, and the heat of his shoulder had nearly enveloped him, and the throb of it pulsated through him. He had dwindled inside himself until most of him was expended in simply staying on his feet. He had no thought of what he must have looked like to the woman as he approached.

“A fine morning to you, ma’am,” he said as clearly as he could. “I need a drink of water.”

“It’s considerable more than that you’ll be needing,” she said, and took his arm, and tried to hold him upright as he pitched forward among her chickens. After that was without chronology. He was carried. His clothes were gone. He was in a bed. The linen smelled of fresh air. Needle. Bandage …
Dublin. We can’t do it here
… truck … smell of livestock … tarpaulin … hay … British voices …
Lie quiet, lad
… jouncing … some pain … hospital clatter … smell of antiseptic … white coats … ether … whirling … faster … down … vortex … bottomless.

The first thing Conn saw when he came slowly up out of the either was a slim blond woman with big eyes, and pale smooth skin. The blond hair was pulled back tight into a twist. He didn’t know her, but he knew she was more than just some Cumann na mBan girl set to mind him after surgery. She wore a very
fine wool dress, he could see that, and an expensive diamond clip at her throat.

She said, “I think he’s waking up,” to someone he couldn’t see.

“You’re American,” he said, “or Canadian.”

“He’s trying to talk,” she said.

“He’s still drunk from the ether,” another woman said. The other woman was Irish.

“Are you American?” Conn said.

“Does he think he’s saying something?” she said.

“Yes,” the Irishwoman said. “It probably makes sense to him.”

“How long before it will make sense to me?”

“It’ll be a half hour anyway ’fore he’s coherent,” the Irishwoman said. “As for making sense, most men never do.”

She smiled. Her mouth was wide, and her teeth were very even. Her eyes were wide apart. She dipped a towel in cold water and wrung it out, and wiped his face. He put his hand up toward hers, and missed widely and then forgot what he had put it up for. She laughed and took his hand and put it carefully back on top of the blanket. When she bent forward he could smell her perfume.

“Do you know how he was shot?” she said.

“Shot by a bloody peeler, probably, miss. They shoot our boys as if they were stray rats.”

“Will he be safe here?”

“Dublin’s not a safe place, miss, for Irish lads that won’t crap under to the peelers.”