Chapter One – The Heart of Ireland
What makes a man?
The heart to fight,
Or the heart to build?
Or the wisdom to know
When to fight,
And when to build?
—From Patrick’s notebook
When they came, on a cold night in March 1941, I learned what kind of man I could become. The learning took time but began at that moment.
Earlier that day, my father, brother, and I had finished pruning the last apple tree in our small orchard. With my mother and sister, we celebrated the end of that early spring chore and the promise of a new, warmer season on the way.
The aroma of beef roast, a rare treat in those times of food shortages, lingered past our mealtime. The scent reminded me of Christmases past and urged me to forget the world at war around us.
It seemed we had all forgotten what Ireland called “The Emergency” and everyone else on Earth called World War II.
My sister, Nan, plucked her twelve-string harp and sang “The Rattlin’ Bog” while Mum danced. Above us in our loft room, my brother, Patrick, scratched drawings and neat rows of words into pages of poetry and stories.
I sat on the floor in front of Dad. His gentle, calloused fingers, roughened by years of building walls and archways of stone, tapped the rhythm of Nan’s carefree song on my head.
Fists pounding on the door ended the music.
“Seán McGrath!” a man yelled. “We’re the Guardians of the Peace. Let us in.”
Dad moved toward the door and called back, “Go away now. There’s no need of you here.”
A silent pause preceded a boom like an explosion as the door flung open, ripping off its hinges and knocking Dad onto his back.
Five men wearing dark blue uniforms and holding rifles stomped inside.
Gardai. Irish police.
Mum and Nan clutched each other screaming. I eyed the meat knife still lying on the dinner table. For an instant, I imagined myself an Irish knight protecting home and hearth.
In a blink, Patrick stood next to me. “Have peace, Brian.”
His hand on my shoulder made me realize my fists were clenched and trembling. I flexed my fingers loose beside my legs.
Patrick stepped in front of me, Mum, and Nan. “What’s wrong, sirs?” He sounded calm, but he rubbed his inky index finger on his thumb behind his back, his habit when he was deciding what to do next.
The man with stripes on his sleeve ignored Patrick and spoke to Dad. “Will you come with us peaceably, Seán?”
Dad paused. “I have done no wrong.”
Patrick’s voice spoke just above a whisper. “Please, sir, we need our father here.”
The officer kept his gaze fixed on Dad. “Seán, will you spare your family having to watch us drag you out?”
“No!” Mum screamed. “No! We’re Irish. You’re Irish. How can you do this?”
The officer tipped his hat to Mum. “I’m sorry to be bothering you, ma’am, but the Emergency is on, and all IRA men will have to pay a visit to court. He may be gone for some time.”
Nan’s green eyes flashed with rage. “So you can just break in here and drag him out with him having done nothing?”
One of the officers grabbed the harp out of her hand and dashed it to the floor.
“No!” Nan bounded to pick up the harp’s pieces and tangled strings. “Why?”
Dad stepped towards her. “There was no need for that.”
An officer responded with a blow to Dad’s face.
Mum began to cry and struggled to speak. “He’s done nothing wrong. He’s not IRA. You’re doing a grave injustice here.”
I eyed the knife again. A silly idea, me a lad of twelve, them, five men with guns. I looked at my shoes wishing I could save my dad. Wishing I could avenge the broken harp, treasured and refurbished over several generations. Wishing we could go back to beef and song and dance, to Patrick and his ink and papers and Dad keeping time on my head.
Wishing Dad would fight to stay.
Dad stood up tall. “I’ll go, but first let me speak to my family.”
The man in charge nodded and stepped back.
“Nan, they can’t take music from your heart. A broken harp is not a broken spirit. You keep music in there.” Dad pointed to his chest. “Help your mother while I’m gone. Temperance, my girl, not temper.”
“Yes, sir.” She tried to smile through tears, but the anger of a warrior queen had entrenched itself on her brow.
“Patrick and Brian,” he said, “keep to your books, help with the planting, and don’t leave off the digging of rocks. I’ll need a big pile when I return. You’ll not be idlers, you hear?”
“Yes, sir.” We answered together, but Patrick’s voice was stronger.
“Patrick?” Dad said. “You have prudence. Seek justice.”
“Yes, sir.”
Dad turned to me. “Brian, your eyes tell me you want to fight.”
I looked at the floor.
“There’s more than one way to fight, son,” Dad said. “Building, it’s another way. Build, the both of you lads.”
“Yes, sir.” Again, Patrick’s response was strong. My voice squeaked, hardly the sound an Irish knight would make. Dad’s words confused me. Build? What could we build? We who had only made mud castles as wee ones? Structures washed away in the next rain. How would we build something that would matter to anyone?
Dad’s eyes met Mum’s. “Sarah, Love, there’ll be a better day ahead. Keep faith. Keep hope.”
Mum silently stared at him through her tears.
“You children, help your Mum. She’ll need you in ways you don’t yet understand.”
“Yes, sir.” We chimed in unison, but my voiced faltered.
We stood like statues and watched them push Dad into their van and drive away. Then Mum began to sob, and we held one another in the darkness until the full moon rose above the cottage.
After she collected herself and wiped her eyes with her apron, Mum placed the broken harp in a corner of her room. I had no hope for its repair. Before heading up to the loft, Patrick and I set the door back on its hinges.
He pointed to an early white primrose that had bloomed a few feet from the stoop. “Would you look at that?”
I stared at the flower, which shouldn’t be there for at least another month. A falcon with unusual white markings on its wings landed beside it and hopped over to me. I jumped, surprised that this enormous bird, unlikely to approach people, would come so close. I stood still to see what it would do next. It ambled closer and pecked its beak on my boot before launching itself into the night.
Patrick smiled. “You have a new friend.”
Later in the loft, I fell asleep as I did most nights to the sound of Patrick’s pen scratching across the pages of his notebook as if nothing had changed. I wrestled a Garda in my dreams. He fought to tear down our family’s stone wall. Throughout the night, I held my ground.
Chapter Two – School Days
From our school days, they have told us,
We must yearn for liberty.
—Frank and Seán O’Meara, “Grace”
I felt like I’d just shut my eyes when Mum called us to breakfast the next morning. The aroma of beef had fled. Even the honey that Mum and Nan collected from the hives they kept couldn’t improve the indigestible black bread made from rationed flour. Our mouths were as dry as a pile of stones in a drought.
Dad was gone. Our house lacked his booming presence that made every meal—even one of flavorless black bread—a feast of fellowship. Mum sat like a ghost staring into space. Nan wiped tears away from her expressionless eyes.
We washed our food down with water since tea also remained in short supply. Then, as we did every other day, Patrick and I stacked wood and peat for Mum and Nan to keep the house warm.
Finally, Mum delivered Dad’s daily speech modified since Nan graduated two years earlier. “Off to school with you, lads.” She paused and swallowed hard. “Learn all you can and come back better.” She blinked away tears. “Off with you now.” Even stalwart Patrick squinted away the moisture on his eyelashes.
In turn, Patrick and I hugged Mum. I felt the shudder of her silent sob and choked back my own.
Patrick and I pushed the empty rock cart we would load after school that day. The path to the village seemed uphill the whole way.
The schoolhouse door screeched open, and Mr. Kerry held it for us to silently enter. He held a ruler in one hand and slapped it into the palm of his other hand. No one ever spoke except the teacher unless we were reciting or answering a question. Once we had all arrived, he let the door bang shut.
Our schoolroom held three classes: fifth, sixth, and seventh. Since Mr. Kerry had seated us alphabetically, Patrick, two years older than I was and in his last year of school, sat beside me. Next year, my brother would be a grown man going off to work instead of toiling in books all day.
The morning lasted an eon as we worked first on numbers, multiplication, and division. As we recited, we sat with our right hands extended into the aisle in case we needed “correction.”
“Four times five are twenty.
“Four times six are twenty-four.
“Four times seven are twenty-eight.
“Four times eight are thirty—”
Thwack! Mr. Kerry’s ruler came down on Craig O’Shea’s hand, which was red by the time we got to 144 divided by 12. Mr. Kerry delivered one thwack for every mistake Craig made, a frequent occurrence. The lad took the beatings well, making it nearly through the nines in division before tears trickled down his face.
Next came Latin. Mr. Kerry stood over Donnie Mahoney, who had trouble making the s sound.
“Amo, amas, amat.”
Donnie never made it to amat before his palm received the thunderous sting of the ruler. When we weren’t reciting, Donnie hardly spoke.
After Latin, we practiced our Irish.
“Ba chóir go mbeadh Tuaisceart Éireann saor in aisce. Northern Ireland should be free.”
Floggings over mistakes happened less often, but Mr. Kerry scattered our punishment throughout the room. It helped that we sometimes used Irish with each other outside of school and at home, so proud we were of our heritage. The English had nearly eradicated our native tongue over the centuries of their oppression of our island. Since we earned our freedom from them in this part of Ireland, our language and heritage became even more dear to us.
History became the last ordeal before lunch and recess. Mr. Kerry enlightened us with his personal experiences as a member of the rebellion in the War of Independence and his participation in hunger strikes as a prisoner of the British enemy. He highlighted one hero of the Easter Rising in 1916 every day. This day, he selected a fellow schoolteacher, a great man I imagined carried a calmer demeanor than Mr. Kerry’s.
“Patrick Pearse’s parents did not name him for the saint of Ireland but after the American Patrick Henry. In 1775, Patrick Henry famously said, ‘Give me liberty, or give me death!’ Patrick Pearse chose death for the sake of Ireland so you could live free from British rule!”
Then Mr. Kerry moved on to the horrors of Bloody Sunday and the sad death of Michael Collins, a rebel leader betrayed by an Irish Judas.
This day’s speech had similar themes but went in a new direction.
“The English are the most evil people who’ve ever lived. They ruined our fishing industry, starving us in the Great Famine. They’ve murdered and abused us over centuries.”
Mr. Kerry raised his voice. “Some of you have had your fathers, brothers, or uncles carried off to prison for their activity with the IRA, real or imagined. Irish arresting Irish to help the British! Shameful!”
My clenched fists dug into my legs. Mr. Kerry’s eyes locked on mine. He nodded to me. I nodded back. He knew what had happened to Dad the night before. As dreadful as he was, he understood that sort of injustice. But how did he know about Dad?
Mr. Kerry continued, “Germany sold us weapons during our war for independence, and now we’re free of the British here in the southern part of our island. The Irish government claims it’s neutral in the war, but it’s not. Dublin imprisons downed German pilots and sends RAF pilots to the North so they can fight again.”
At this point, Mr. Kerry lowered his voice to almost a whisper. “Someday, maybe very soon, German boats will land on our shores. The government will tell you to stay in your homes if that happens.”
Then he raised his voice to a shout. “No! Join them! We should be fighting beside brave Germans. We can rise up to become a united Ireland again. The whole island, one Ireland! Remember this, lads. England’s difficulty is Ireland’s opportunity.”
At recess, Mr. Kerry tended to the flock of pigeons he kept while we boys played at war. Patrick and I had joined the club of lads whose dads the Gardai had carted off.
Craig put his hand on my shoulder. “We’ll grow up and show them what for, won’t we?”
“We will, indeed,” I replied. Fighting sounded right. Building seemed useless. Every day at recess, we practiced our fighting skills.
We drew lots to see who would pretend to be IRA men or Germans. Those who drew the shortest straws had to be British, and all of them ended up dead or captured by superior forces. When I had my turn at being a Brit, I died as quickly as was honorably possible so I could end the ordeal of having to play the oppressor.
No matter which side he was on, Donnie was always the first to die. His apparent disdain for conflict overwhelmed his desire to belong. Craig died valiantly as a Brit or a German but always stood to the end as an Irishman.
Not all of us signed up for the war effort. Patrick sat under a tree and drew a picture of the mysterious flower and the bird we saw when we fixed the door the night before.
After lunch, Mr. Kerry read to us from Dubliners by Mr. Joyce and some of the works of Mr. Swift. At last, our teacher set us free.
Along the path home, Patrick and I dug up, broke, and hauled rocks as if our father would return home as usual after a day of building a wall or archway. Our digging skills nearly matched, but Patrick worked faster than I did with a hammer and chisel.
Then, one stone rebelled.
“This is a tough one, eh?” Patrick pushed his pick around the edge of the partially uncovered rock. “Maybe it has a tree root or something growing across it.”
“Maybe it’s not a flat stone but a boulder.” I continued to dig. “We’ll have no song or beef tonight, so we’ll break rock instead.”
“That we will.” Patrick smiled.
Our work seemed more like fighting than building, and I liked the way the rock split into pieces under my hammer.
I pretended the stubborn rock was a prison wall and I could free my Dad by prying up the stone and turning it into bricks. When the sun slid onto the horizon, we pulled the loaded cart toward home, not realizing that a new challenge waited along the way.
