No Hero's Welcome by Jeffrey Walker

Author:Jeffrey Walker [Walker, Jeffrey K.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Ballybur via Indie Author Project

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Sean

There was clean hay, unlike places Sean had slept during his first Eastertide with the IRA. He’d bedded down on floors or in doorways during those horrible days—declared glorious now by their leaders and scribblers—when he’d been out with the rebels in ’16. No time to think about the quality of accommodations then, especially once the Brits brought up artillery and gunboats. Accidental, that had been—just a young lad out for a bit of excitement at the expense of the British. The bastards that took his father. No politics in him then, all restless rage.

He kicked the boot of Barry, stretched in the patchy sunlight snoring soft as a self-satisfied dog. The sleeping sentry didn’t react, so Sean gave him a harder kick.

“Jayzus, can you not stay awake for ten minutes all together?”

A hand came up to Barry’s face rubbing it all round, lips smacking over a dry mouth. He opened one eye and looked up at Sean, then raised himself on an elbow, his free hand going to his coat pocket for a packet of fags. He’d bought six at the tobacconist in the station back in Dublin. He was down to his final one.

“Don’t be so fuckin’ skittish,” Barry said. He slid open the cigarettes and sighed at the diminishing rows. “We’re out where God lost his fuckin’ shoes. The neighbour and his boys have already come and gone. What’s up your arse, then?”

“The Royal Irish Constabulary, seein’ how we just shot two people.” Sean said. His exasperation with Barry from Cavan was boiling over with regularity since they’d hiked out from Glenador. He’d also noted their language turning profaner by the hour. But that wasn’t the worst sin on Sean’s immortal soul.

“Finish that fag and get back inside,” Sean said. “I’ll take watch. Wasn’t sleepin’ much anyway. And don’t be smokin’ inside—you’ll set all that hay afire.” He paced in small circles near the open door of the barn, not risking going farther into the open courtyard. He could see straight up the lane rising to the main road from here.

“Settle yerself, boy. What’s done is done. And we’re clear and away from the RIC.” Barry twisted his cigarette on the sole of his boot, careful not to bend the remnant. Pulling a spent packet from another pocket, he placed the butt with the others he’d saved.

Everything the man did grated now and Sean said, “Are you a factory chimney, Barry? Shite, can you not go half an hour without a fag?”

“Waste not, want not, my dear mam always says.” He slapped Sean on the arm as he ambled back into the dusty darkness of the hay barn.

It was all so different, almost four years since that chaos and fear in the General Post Office. The first generation of leaders were gone, lined up against a high wall in the Stonebreakers’ Yard at the back of Kilmainham Gaol. Only Dev had escaped because he was born in New York City and the American ambassador intervened at the urging of his mother.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.