All Our Yesterdays Read online

  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.

  Conn

  Conn 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 et
her,” 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.”

  “But they don’t know he’s here.”

  “Not for now they don’t. We’ll move him soon.”

  He studied the curve of her breast as she leaned over and put the cool cloth on his forehead again. The room was quiet. The canted rectangle of sunlight that came through the high, narrow windows moved infinitely into the corner of the room and became more angular.

  “When they do, will you visit me?” he said.

  “When they do?” she said. “When they do what?”

  “When they move me?”

  “Of course I will. How do you feel?”

  He smiled and closed his eyes and felt the coolness of the cloth and smelled her perfume. She changed the cloth again.

  “Fine,” he said.

  She laughed.

  “Do you know how long ago I asked you that?”

  “A bit laggard, am I? Coming out?”

  “A bit.”

  “You wouldn’t be able to put your hands on a dram of whiskey, would you?”

  “You’ve been shot,” she said. “I don’t think you should be drinking whiskey.”

  “What better time?” he said.

  She shook her head.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Conn Sheridan,” he said. “What’s yours?”

  “Hadley. Are you a Volunteer?”

  He smiled.

  “Brotherhood?”

  He held the smile.

  “I guess I shouldn’t ask,” she said.

  “These are times for secrets, Hadley.”

  “I know. Well, I’m for a free and independent Ireland. I want you to know that.”

  He was beginning to feel the pain of his wound. It wasn’t awful, just a low, persistent jabbing sensation. Whiskey would help it.

  “It’s a fine thing to be for,” he said. “You’re not Irish.”

  “No. I’m American. Boston, Massachusetts. But I’m for the cause and I volunteer every day at the hospitals.”

  “Did you mean what you said?”

  “About being for Ireland?”

  “No, about going with me when they move me.”

  “I’ll certainly come and visit you.”

  “Maybe we can have some secrets of our own,” Conn said, and smiled at her. He had curly black hair, and the kind of smooth Irish skin that would have shown a high color if he were well.

  “I am a married woman, Conn, Mrs. Thomas Winslow.”

  His smile widened.

  “I’ll not hold that against you, Hadley.”

  1994

  Voice-Over

  The wind out of the northeast pelted the wet snow against Grace’s window. Motionless at her end of the couch, Grace waited.

  “When I was in Dublin,” I said, “I walked along the Liffey and thought about Joyce. You ever read Finnegans Wake?”

  “Not all the way through.”

  “Christ, Joyce probably didn’t read it all the way through. I was thinking about the way it starts, ‘rivverrun,’ no capital letters or anything, like in mid-sentence, and then at the end, you know the ending?”

  Grace shook her head.

  “‘A way a lone a last a loved a long the,’” I said. “No period.”

  “Is this how we do it?” Grace said. “You make obscure literary references and I try to figure them out?”

  “I never understood the damn book, but I always liked the circular trick, the way the end is the beginning. It’s like us, it’s all connected backwards and forwards, past and present, ‘Along the rivverrun, past Eve and Adam’s.’”

  “You may have spent too much time reading, Chris.”

  “Yeah, I know, you’re very concrete. But I’m not. I see things and I think of other things. I’m very—what?—associative, emblematic. You look out the window and see a stormy night. I look out and think, Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks. It’s one of the ways we’re different. But it’s not a way that should keep us apart.”

  “It’s not what keeps us apart, Chris.”

  I stood and walked to the window and looked out at the inappropriate lightning flashes in the anachronistic blizzard.

  “It wasn’t so much different then,” I said. “The rifles were mostly bolt action instead of clip fed, and they still had cavalry units, but there were automatic pistols, and Thompson submachine guns. Stuff like that. I’ve seen some of the weapons in a museum in Dublin. The Webley .45 is a big, ugly-looking brute of a thing, but it’s not much different than any revolver that caliber you’d see today.”

  I could see Grace reflected in the dark window. She radiated patience. He’ll get to it if I just remain calm. Easy for her to say. I didn’t even know what it quite was.

  “I’m sorry. I guess I ramble.”

  She smiled.

  “A long way past Eve and Adam’s,” she said. “But that’s all right. We’ll get there. It’s about the rest of our lives; it’s okay if it takes time.”

  I came back and sat down on the couch again, carefully at my end. I felt as if everything needed to be done carefully, as if it could all too easily spill if we weren’t careful, and ruin everything.

  “It’s probably hard for us, late twentieth century, post-Vietnam, to have any real sense of the kind of passion the Anglo-Irish war was fought with. You can still see some of it in Northern Ireland, I guess, but mostly that’s sunk into some kind of ingrown religious economic war that has long since started to feed on itself. For Conn Sheridan, a year and a half after the end of the World War, fighting for freedom, everything must have been heightened, enlarged, elongated by the times. Free Ireland, throw off the yoke of tyranny, rid our land after—what?—ten centuries or so of what he must have thought of as foreign oppression. Boys could go through the blood rituals of manhood and never leave the neighborhood. No pushing up poppies in Flanders field to prove yourself. You could do it in Dublin, or Cork, or Kerry. It was certainly awful in many of its moments, but it must have been fun as hell too.”

  “You sound wistful,” Grace said.

  “I am wistful. I’ve spent my life not doing anything.”

  “That’s a little harsh,” Grace said.

  I shook my head.

  “Always read about it, always studied it, always observed it, even taught it. Never fucking did it.”

  “Did what?”

  “Anything. My grandfather fought a war, my father fought a war, I went to grad school.”

  “That’s doing something.”

  “Sure, but it ain’t high deeds in Hungary, is it?”

  “Does it have to involve guns?” Grace said.

  “At least it ought to involve courage,” I said. “Enough courage to at least act, and not just be a poor weak fool seeing both sides of every issue.”

  “Last fall involved courage,” Grace said.

  “What the hell did I do?”

  “Enough.”

  I shrugged.

  It was
hard to concentrate. Grace’s eyes were very large, and dark blue. She had a lot of thick auburn hair, and smooth skin and a wide mouth. She was five feet nine inches tall and strong looking, like the California beach girls that play volleyball on ESPN. I had met her in law school and loved her neither wisely nor well ever since. In the years we had lived together I had seen her naked a thousand times. I knew every hint and nuance of her naked body. I could remember exactly how she looked. And now, sitting four feet from her on the couch, I could hardly breathe with wanting to see her naked again. It was barely about sex. It was about possession. I wanted to be the one to see her naked. Not another guy. Me. The insubstantial room around us seemed to coalesce. The momentary couch on which we sat seemed random and kinetic. I could hear my heart. I could feel my breath going in and out. Reality seemed to heel beneath me the way a plane often does at takeoff. I centered on her eyes as she looked at me; held on them as the phenomenological world scattered and regrouped around her, and slowly settled and steadied and became again a small room in a nice condo inside while an odd early spring snowstorm raged and huffed outside, and the girl of my dreams sat quietly at the other end of the couch.

  Conn

  Under an empty blue sky, half a block from Merrion Square, Conn sat wrapped in a blanket, on a chaise, in the high-walled garden of a house on Clare Street. Against the back wall of the house, snaking up one of the porch pillars, was a thick trumpet vine, leafless yet at the earliest edge of a raw Irish Sea spring. Conn’s wound had healed and he was almost well. Hadley was reading aloud to him, some poetry by Yeats. She had kept her word, she had come to see him as he healed.

  “Why,” she read, saying it right, understanding it, “what could she have done, being what she is?” And he joined her, reciting from memory. They spoke the last line in unison. “Was there another Troy for her to burn?”

  “That’s a good one,” Conn said.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Does your husband know you come here?”