At Swim, Two Boys - Jamie O'Neill [237]
Not literally the first, of course, for the boy was still dead at the park gates.
The sergeant wanted to know was he all right there. Southside, he called him. “You keeping out of trouble there, Southside?”
“I’m keeping fine,” Jim answered him. He heard himself sounding unnaturally loud. “I’m fine sure,” he repeated more composedly.
It was this sergeant last evening who took Jim’s rifle from him. It was dark when Jim got to the Green and the streets about were all but deserted. There were barricades across the junctions, carts and motor-cars, but they were loosely thrown, obstacles more than barriers. They too seemed deserted. He approached the park gates to find them locked. People moved against the shadows inside, figures only. It took a while to catch anyone’s attention. Even then they were dubious of him, though he told them about Doyler, that he was ill under doctor’s orders, that he’d be in tomorrow for definite; in the meantime Jim was here to stand in his place. The sergeant was called, this man Bill, and he took one look at Jim, demanded his rifle and told Jim go home out of that, they had sufficient of bleddy chisselurs already.
It had been on the cards all along that appearance might disfavor Jim—folk had a disposition to finding him young-looking and inadequate. It was against this eventuality he had borrowed Doyler’s uniform in the first place. To no avail. He had to keep following them round the outside of the park, calling through the railings his knowledge of semaphore and bandaging and to strip a rifle. It was an astonishingly trying time. The worse for he could see other lads his own age, sure some of them positively infants.
One of these lads asked him was he hungry, and he brought a custard pie. “Sure why don’t you hop the railings anyway?” he suggested.
“Can I do that?” asked Jim.
“You there,” came a bark behind. A short fellow pointing at him, clipping along the street. “What do you mean, leaving your post?”
Jim said, “I don’t know, sir.”
“This barricade is to be manned at all times. And where’s your rifle?”
“It’s inside in the park, sir.”
The man told off the lad to fetch it. “Don’t you know that’s a military offense,” he said to Jim, “to leave your equipment behind you?”
He spoke with a thorough conviction, such that Jim could nearly feel shamefaced for his dereliction. He said, “It won’t happen again, sir.”
“Be sure of that. Are you hungry?”
“I’m not, sir.”
“Stay there now till you’re relieved.”
The lad came back with a rifle and a bandoleer of cartridges. That was the Commandant, he told him. He gave Jim another custard pie. They shook hands through the railings.
That lad was dead now. In a way, he was still dead, lying by the park gates. But another boy had fallen since and the Commandant himself dashed out to fetch him. He heaved him home to cheers from the men, and the bullets spurting about him, one through his hat even. It was the bravest thing, a conspicuous bravery, and Jim had stood out, loading and bolting and shooting, fast as his fingers would fumble, to give a covering fire. Till the sergeant again had him ditched in the trench. That time Jim had turned. “I’m not here to be cowering,” he said.
“Ye’ll bleddy obey yer elders. D’ye know at all the pains we had getting of them bullets? Firing them off at the bleddy masonry, snip of ye.”
At last word came of action. Action at last, for it was mad holed up in these slobby trenches. It was not a retreat. It was a withdrawal. They were to make a tactical withdrawal to the far corner of the Green where a hump in the ground would better give cover. They would gather their forces there. Jim nodded his head listening to this, encouraging agreement among the men. “And then we’ll charge,”