David Mitchell - The Bone Clocks

Sparingly, I dab Max’s cut with antiseptic cream and he winces.

“Drogheda was yelling at a militiaman. He had an Audi symbol round his head, saying he was head of operations, and if yer man din’t like it, then he could … Well, it was to do with his mother’s … Doesn’t matter. The wind had dropped, the shouting echoed round the square, and I watched another o’ the scruffier militiamen stroll up behind Drogheda and, uh …” Max frowns, swallows, tries to stop himself crying, can’t, and the wheels come off his voice. “Shot his brains out. Point blank. Right feckin’ … there.”

“Oh, God, no,” whispers Izzy.

“Oh, my poor boy,” says Branna. “You saw that?”

Max hides his face in his hands and steadies himself for a few seconds, breathing deeply. “Oh, that was just for starters, Mam. The Stability men and the militias went at each other like dogs, dogs with guns. It was a hailstorm but with bullets, like, not hail.” He’s angry with himself for blubbing. “Like an old war film, with stuntmen falling off roofs, men crawling on the pavement …” Max looks away and shuts his eyes hard to keep out the picture but he can’t. “Us villagers scrambled clear, as best we could, but … Mam … Seamus Coogan got a bullet.”

I can’t help it: “Seamus Coogan’s hurt?”

Max starts shaking and he shakes his head.

Tom asks, wide-eyed, “Seamus Coogan’s dead ?”

Max just nods. Izzy, Branna, Lorelei, Tom, and me look at one another and feel the cold wind of the near future. I was talking to Seamus Coogan only yesterday. Max drinks up the rest of the homebrew and carries on as if his sanity depends on telling us what saw, and maybe it does. “I–I tried to … but … it was all instant, like.” Max shuts his eyes, shakes his head, and sort of wipes the air with his hand. “Da pulled me off, shouting there was nothing we could do for him. We legged it round the back o’ the Fitzgeralds’ and hid in their garage. Just in time. The tanker in the square got hit and — you heard that, right?”

“They must’ve heard it up in Tipperary,” says Branna.

“Time went by,” says Max, “I dunno how long. We heard guns, saw a guy get shot on the Fitzgeralds’ drive … An hour? Dunno. Can’t’ve been, but suddenly the jeeps were driving off, up the mountain road to Finn MacCool’s seat, and … And then it was all quiet again. Birds singing, like. We all appeared from our hiding places … stunned, like, like … had that really happened? Here? In Kilcrannog?” Max’s eyes well up again. “Yes. There were the bodies and the wounded to prove it. Bernie Aitken tried to defend his panels with his rifle, and he got shot. He’s in a bad way. I think he’s going to die, Mam. The village square’s a — a—it’s — it’s … Don’t go and see it,” he tells Tom, Izzy, and Lorelei, “just don’t. Not till it’s been cleaned up and rained on. I–I—I wish to feck I’d not seen it. There’s twenty, thirty graves to dig, like. Several injured militiamen, too, who can’t walk, like. Some o’ the lads said we should just dump them in the sea, that’s what they’d do to us”—anger ignites in Max’s face, driving away his shock for a few seconds—“but Dr. Kumar’s doing what she can for them. They’ll probably die anyway. There’s a crater where the depot was and all the windows blasted out around the square. Josey Malone’s house has had the front ripped off it. Oh, and the pub’s a right feckin’ mess now.”

Dimly, I worry about Brendan; these pitched battles for dwindling reserves must be happening all over Europe, with only small variations in uniforms and scenery. I wonder where Hood and the bearded giant are now: dead, running, dying in Dr. Kumar’s clinic. Swallowing a huckleberry.

Branna asks softly, “What’s Da doing now, Max?”

“Helping Mary de Búrka direct the cleanup. Martin Walsh and a couple of others have cycled up to Ahakista to discuss roadblocks. It’s more urgent now, not less. Make a short Cordon of our own, maybe; from Durrus cross-country to Coomkeen, then down the road to Boolteenagh on the Bantry side. Sure until we can get it fenced and dug it’d just be a few of the lads with guns in tents, but there’s automatic weapons going begging, and Martin’s cousin’s at the Derrycahoon garrison. Was, anyway. Stability men’ll need a safe place for their families, too. Anyway, I ought to get back, with a couple o’ shovels.”

“ No , Max,” says Branna. “You’re in shock. Lie down. There’ll be plenty of work tomorrow.”

“Mam,” says Max, “if we don’t get some sort of roadblocks in place there mightn’t be a tomorrow. There’s work to do.”

“Then I’m coming with you,” states Tom.

“No,” say Branna and Max together.

“I am so. I’m sixteen. Ma, you can handle the milking?”

Branna rubs her face. All the rules are changing.

• • •

LORELEI HELPS WITH the milking while I feed the Knockroe chickens. Then we walk home along the shore, gathering a bag of sea spinach. Sandhoppers ping off my exposed shin, and oystercatchers pick their way between stones and bladderwrack, stabbing the mud for lugworms. A gray heron fishes off a rock twenty feet out and the sun emerges. The wind’s swinging around to the south, brushing up stragglier clouds, like sheep’s wool caught on barbed wire. We find a big bough of bleached driftwood that should keep the stove fed for a couple of days in winter. Below the cottage we find Rafiq fishing off the pier, a favorite sedative of his. We give him the edited gist of Max O’Daly’s story — he’ll hear it sooner or later anyway — as he helps us lug the driftwood up to the cottage. Mo is snoozing in Eilísh’s old chair, with Zimbra lying on her feet and a biography of Wittgenstein on her lap. Perhaps she’ll move into our granny flat now her own bungalow has no electricity at all. I had it built when I learned Aoife was pregnant so that she, Örvar, and the baby could have a bit of privacy when they visited, but over the years it’s become a storeroom.

Zimbra gets up when we walk in, Mo wakes, and Lorelei makes us a pot of green tea with leaves she fetches from Mo’s polytunnel. I begin by telling her about Seamus Coogan’s death, then the rest of Max’s report on the massacre. Mo listens without interruption. Then she sighs and rubs her eyes. “Martin Walsh is right, unfortunately. If we want a quality of life higher than that of the Middle Ages ten years from now, we need to act like soldiers. The barbarians won’t turn on each other twice.”

My clock says five. Rafiq stands up. “I’d like to catch another couple of fish before it gets dark. Is Mo staying for tea, Holly?”

“I hope so. We ate her out of house and home at lunch.”

Mo thinks of her unlit stove and the useless lightbulbs in her bungalow. “I’d be honored. Thank you. All three of you.”

When Rafiq’s left, I say, “I’ll go into town tomorrow.”

“I’m not sure how wise that’d be now,” says Mo.

“I need to speak with Dr. Kumar about insulin.”

Mo sips her tea. “How much do you have?”

“Six weeks’ worth.” Lorelei keeps her voice down. “One more insulin pump, and three packets of catheter nozzles.”

Mo asks, “How much does Dr. Kumar have?”

“That’s what I want to ask.” I scratch an insect bite on my hand. “Yesterday’s convoy brought nothing, and after today … I don’t think there’ll be anymore. We have water, maybe we’ll be okay for food and security if we can act like a socialist Utopia, but you can’t synthesize insulin without a well-equipped laboratory.”

Mo asks, “Has Rafiq raised the subject?”