When Father Donleavy came to the house, Tony made a confession,. He told the priest he hated his father. Father Donleavy suggested a round of Our Fathers and Hail Marys and told him time would ease the pain. He went to live with Marty, and it was another two years before Tony realized Father Donleavy was full of shit. Time and Hail Marys did not get rid of the anger. Instead, it grew inside him, like a snake coiled in his stomach.
Jerry always came at night. He was always armed. And the only time he spoke with bitterness about anything was when he talked about the British. Marty ‘was different. He was apolitical. He had good friends among the British in Ulster. There was no fight in him and he and .Jerry never discussed the Troubles. Nobody ever told Tony his Uncle Jerry was an IRA gunman, after a while he just knew it.
Once, when Tony was twelve, a military payroll was robbed and there was a great deal of shooting and several men on both sides were killed. That night, Jerry came to the house and they sat at the table in the kitchen with the curtains drawn and Jerry took out a package wrapped in yellow oilskin.
‘Hide this fer me, will ye now,’ Jerry said. And Tony climbed out the window of his second-floor room and hid the package in a vent in the roof. Two weeks later Jerry took Tony out to the fields twenty miles from Newtonabbey and he opened up the package. It was a brand-new Webley .38-caliber pistol.
‘A grand weapon,’ Jerry said. ‘And ‘tis toime ye learn to use it. Do it like yer pointin’ yer finger. Keep both eyes open. Imagine yer shootin’ at the bloody Black and Tans.’
Tony took the gun and held it and put his finger on the trigger and it felt good in his hand and he could feel the energy from it charging through his body. He held the gun out at arm’s length and sighted down along the barrel and the gun seemed to be an extension of his arm and his anger flooded down into his finger and he squeezed the trigger.
Boom!
The gun kicked up high and the power of the weapon made him dizzy with excitement and after that he practised whenever he could, watching the bottles and rocks explode as he squeezed off the shots. Only it wasn’t Black and Tans he imagined shooting, it was his father.
“Tis one thing to know how to use a weapon,’ Jerry said. ‘Just remember, plannin’ is most important. Plannin’ is everything. Always know how to get into and how to get out of a fix. And don’t trust nobody. When ye can, work on yer own. Dead heroes ain’t no good to nobody.’
When they were finished, he would hide the gun back in the rooftop vent. Occasionally Jerry would come in the night and get the yellow oilskin wrapper. And then he would return it a day or two later. Then one day they came to the house and told Marty that Jerry was dead, informed on by one of his own, and tracked down and killed by a new British colonel in Newtonabbey.
Nobody came to get the gun. A month or two went by, and Tony realized it was his now.
Tony played soccer in the street near the school which also happened to be across the way from the British patrol station. The colonel, whose name was Floodwell, was a stiff and proper man with waxed moustaches and suspicious eyes. Planning, that was important. And doing it alone. Twice a week at exactly six o’clock the colonel left the patrol station and walked three blocks to a narrow little street without a name that sat on The Bluffs. The street was a dead end and beyond the barrier, the land dropped away fifty or sixty feet to the street below. There were houses built into the side of The Bluffs whose basements were on the lower level. The colonel walked down the dead-end street and, using his own key, entered a house near the dead end and there he had a drink of Scotch and dinner and made love to the young woman who had rooms in the house.
Tony planned his first execution all winter long, following the colonel, watching him from the darkness across the Street. He found an abandoned house and used it as a short cut home from school each night. He memorized the house, knew every step, sat for long periods of time, listening to the rats cavorting in the darkness, making his plans.
Between the vacant house and his own house, there was a small sentry house squatted on the corner and when there was trouble, the troopers stationed there pulled the barbed-wire barriers across the road. Tony had youth on his side. At fourteen, he was still small for his age. When he went home, he went down through the vacant house and out the basement door and crossed the street and walked close to the houses on the other side, staying in the shadows until he was almost to the sentry box. At first he would startle the two troopers at the check point, but they soon got to know him.
On a Monday in early spring, he loaded the Webley, and folded it back in its oilskin wrapper. he got a potato from the pantry and bored a hole about three—quarters of an inch in diameter through the centre of it and put the gun and the potato in the bottom of his canvas knapsack, covering them with books and his lunch. After school, he played soccer in the street near the patrol station. The knapsack lay on the sidewalk in full view of everybody for two hours. By five-thirty it was too dark to play any longer. He said goodbye to his friends and went straight to the deserted house on the nameless street. He got out the oilskin wrapper and unfolded it and held the Webley in his hand and felt its energy, like electricity, sizzling up his arm. He took out the potato. It was a trick Jerry had taught him.
‘It’s good for one shot,’ Jerry had said. Makes a .38 sound like a popgun. Whoever ya hit’ll die with potato all over his mug.’ And he had laughed. Tony twisted it on the end of the barrel. He waited in the dark with the rats. He felt no fear, only exhilaration.
The colonel entered the nameless street whistling a tune, his swagger stick under his arm. He walked with a marching step, jaunty and arrogant, his chin held up high. Tony stepped out of the doorway and stayed close to the house. He started to walk toward the colonel.
He was ten feet away when the colonel saw him. ‘Hey!’ he said. ‘You gave me a start there, boy. Step out here, let me have a look at you.’
Tony looked up at the colonel, but suddenly he wasn’t looking at the colonel’s thin lips or his long, arrogant nose or his glittering, cold eyes. He was looking, instead, at the face of his father. He stepped out of the dark, held the gun at arm’s length and squeezed the trigger.
The potato muffled the shot.
It went pumf.
And the potato disintegrated and the bullet ripped into the colonel’s head just above his left eye and tore the side of his skull away. Bits of potato splattered against his shocked face. The force of the shot twisted him half around and he staggered sideways, his feet skittering under him, but he did not fall. He kept his balance and turned back toward Tony. The side of his face was a soggy mess. His eye was blown from its socket. Geysers of blood flooded down his jacket. His one good eye stared with disbelief at Tony. He took an unsteady step and fell to his knees.
