Chp 2 Fin's Journey

For go on I must. To tell of that most inconsolable, heart rendering of all days, the one begun with my startled awakening, the brisk ra-cha-cha on the hammered-upon door, whispered earnest prayers, and my rhythmic fast-revolving toes pinched-hot into bicycle stirrups. Beneath me, two worn thin tyres travelling familiar short rises and gasconaded greens, darting down past the white hawthorn of Christ's Crown, under the ash boughs of our Saviour's True Cross, while my spun and whirling mind inwardly spoke its own familiar tone of memories, all so fruitlessly alive with past endless sallies and futile reasoning because … Oh God! I did warn him, didn't I? Could he not see himself how sin skulks all around us? Sluicing the wet, darkly yellowing fields, feeling the rough scratch of barley anns on the heel of my outstretched hand, because … what need was there he pledge his heart to this! Did I not plead with him to resist ... to think of his duties as a son...as a brother! ... To think awhile on all God had graced him with ... had blessed all our lives with!”
Such entreaties I made fell light on unreceptive ears, and how easy now it seems resistance and the gun won! Little knowing then not him but me who’d abandon their life’s calling, discover how lonely faith can feel and how thickly blood lies upon a uniform of black and white, the collar turned crimson with revolution? Then I supposed, it would fall to me to nourish the great many spiritually hungry souls. For without weakness who would there be to save? Who else might determine between the saved and the damned?

Indeed, it was he, Terry, no less, who that evening in the church saw fit to speak of the gun, who that night roused his apostolate and gathered the faithful (Jed chief among them), to him.

"We knew..." (Jeb's voice speaks to me again), "... no lesser than he could have done so ... he who roused and readied us for the coming storm!"

         With such devilish thoughts, I raced that early morning. My mind's eye itself a revolving cog, spinning to memories wheels', before reaching a particular time and moment I thought forever lost to long ago distant youth. One begun with two brotherly souls enjoying the lazy sunshine of a day, unaware as they chased their half-chased thoughts they’d wandered into the wrong place at the wrong time. Surprised, they’d looked over to see from whom and wherefrom the shouted, ordered halt had come. Excited, they did not look upon the two smart drab uniformed men rapidly closing the ground between them as armed with harmful intentions. Halting only a short distance away, our two young hero’s stood close enough so to get a good fix on both their mugs. It must be great, thought the younger and shorter (who happened to be me) these-here Joe-blows were still going strong even at their grand-old ages. How, on studying a moment the other 'shorter' one, I’d filled with pity, having borne witness to what Old Mother Nature had burthened this poor fellow, no less than an unfortunate outrage of huge-buckled-amber-tinted front teeth. Merciless Old 'Mother Nature ( the ‘Old Hoary Goat' as our Da' would call her),well she’d only meddled with the poor fellow further, for, as revealed under his removed hat, lay two horned gramophone ears, running near full length the pink ham-sandwiched head between. (Sure, he was never a married man sporting them was he? "Think of the poor children!” (as our Ma’ would a' said).
Now, just as I was thinking how it must be some special business these two here chancer's are on, and having decided to name the taller one with his large grey-blued eyed face and decidedly more human-like per portion of teethy-pegs and lugs simply 'Stretched Dublin', it was he who kicked off the whole bloody mess.