Fiction: Beyond Use

“They tell you how this’ll work, sham?” the man he couldn’t see said to Frank.

“The good Father here filled me in on the whole thing,” Frank said, stretching his right hand into the gloom and finding the bony abutment of Father Nolan’s shoulder. Frank felt the priest subside beneath his clutch and conceived a practical concern for the old man’s ability to fulfil his part of the task.

Everyone who knew Frank O’Hara knew him to be calm and pragmatic. If he was consulted on a matter, as he often was, he didn’t lead with his thoughts. His opinion sat calmly in his boyish face while his stout body assembled a temple for further contemplation of the matter; a broad forearm lent upon an available surface, huge hands dipped into the battle of curls in his prematurely greying hair and the broad shoulders furled about the problem like palms cradling a teetering flame.

“Is that blindfold secure, Father?” the man he’d not seen said, but before the priest could answer the man thought of another question: “Where are the keys to the truck?”

“The keys are in the ignition,” Frank said, louder than maybe he needed to, “and, I can assure you, there isn’t a pin of light showing under this thing.”

“That’s good, sham,” the man said. “You just make sure it stays that way.”

Frank had a keen ear for an accent and this man’s meandering lilt was one he knew well. The intricate steps and cornices of certain words and the rapid plunge into the chasm of each vowel was as good as a fingerprint to Frank. He knew the county. The town. Even the townland. If he concentrated hard enough, he could put the man in his house, seated in his favourite armchair.

You don’t want to know where he’s from, he told himself. Better for everyone that this fella fades into the nameless ranks.

“Let’s be off,” the man said with an impatient clap of his hands.

The old priest wrapped his thin, hard fingers around the arm on his shoulder and with surprising strength half-pulled, half-guided Frank towards the exit and across the yard to the truck. When he got to the passenger side, Frank lightly brushed the priest’s hand away.

“You better leave me to it, Father,” he advised. “You don’t want to be lifting the likes of me into this cab without a set of hydraulics.”

“God keep you,” the priest said as Frank pulled himself up and into the seat.

“Let’s hope so,” Frank said and he pulled the door shut.

The other door closed with a loud thud and Frank could almost feel the other man surveying the truck’s controls.

“Have you much experience driving this sort of vehicle?” Frank asked but the answer came in the jingle of keys and the seismic shudder of the cab as the engine rumbled into life. The man pedaled the accelerator a few times as if to make a point.

“If it has wheels, sham, I’ve driv’ it,” the man said with quiet glee and Frank heard him put it into first before he let up the clutch faster than he’d have liked.

“Fifth can stick sometimes,” Frank said as they pulled out, the accelerator growling, “and you might have’ta reach a bit with reverse.”

The man gave a snort of a laugh.

“We won’t be needing reverse,” he said.

“She’s fully loaded,” Frank said, trying a different tack. “You’d want to be careful she doesn’t go over.”

“Oh, I’ll be extra careful,” the man said with a smile in his voice and he threw them around the turn into the main road and stamped the accelerator on the way out so Frank knew then to shut up with the driving lessons.

After a few minutes the man turned on the radio and tuned into a news channel but he put the volume down until it was only a feather of words light enough to lift the attention but not enough to carry it anywhere.

The man was late on the brakes and it was hard not to take account of the turns as he barreled into them, though Frank told himself he was better to ignore everything and let the route fall away.

“By God,” the man said with a creaking chuckle, “we had some sport trying to figure out how to get you along to this without giving away too much. T’was like that riddle where a farmer has to get a hen, a fox and a bag of grain across a river but can only take two in his boat at a time for fear of them aytin’ one another. We were wondering do we keep the masks on ‘til the last minute and blindfold you when we get there or have you and the priest blindfold yourselves beforehand or a whole rake of bleddy alternatives. In the end, we put our faith in the confessional seal.”

Frank imagined this faceless man hunched over the wheel, slipping a hand out to bless himself quickly.

“I suppose we’ll all have to have faith for this to work,” Frank mused.

“That we will, sham,” the man said with a satisfied grunt and he threw them into a high gear.

They drove the rest of the way with minimal talk. Frank wasn’t sure how much time had passed but it must have been near an hour. His ears had tuned into the light flow of the radio and he listened to a back-and-forth discussion about a group of people in the West who had been jailed for protesting against a gas pipeline running through their land. The chit-chat suddenly exploded into a heated argument between those who felt the law was the law and those who thought there was a natural law which held greater authority.

The man beside him gave an angry grunt.

“The big man fucking over the little one again,” he said.

“Isn’t that always the way,” Frank said.

“It is, if we let it,” the man said with a disgusted tone and he gave a loud gathering hock and rolled down his window and spat out.

The man left his window down and intermittently Frank heard the narrowing echo as they passed roadside buildings. They turned again and he felt the road shrinking beneath them. A few times they tilted into a verge as they gave way to an oncoming vehicle and Frank measured the creaking wheels and the distance to the edge in his mind as though he were behind the wheel himself. After another sharp turn there were no more oncoming vehicles and no more houses and Frank imagined them racing down a deserted potholed track with reeds and drains flying past on either side and a lunar landscape of brown spread banks running to the horizon.

After about five minutes they slowed to a rattling throb and Frank heard the voices of other men and the sharp bang and long even swing of a silver gate being opened.

“Lads,” the man called as they throttled slowly through the gate and the men answered, though Frank noted that nobody used any names.

I suppose they’d be well used to that, Frank thought.

Frank heard the gate close behind them and expected the man to hit the accelerator again but for the rest of the journey he drove with uncharacteristic care and Frank put away thoughts of jackknifing into a ditch and replaced them with the tentative curiosity of imminent arrival.

“Here we are,” the man said a few minutes later and the truck came to a sudden stop.

Frank waited for the man to tell him to take the blindfold off but when that didn’t happen he said, “I’ll need my eyes to do this, you know?”

“Don’t worry, sham,” the man said, “I’ll take that blindfold off you but it’ll be where everyone can see it coming off.”

“Right,” Frank said and he waited as the other man stepped down from the cab and made his way around to the passenger side.

When he’d been helped down, Frank was led a few paces on what felt like a grass track.

“Here’s our expert,” the man announced and another man’s voice from a little further off told him he could take off the blindfold now.

He felt the man’s hands rooting in his hair and pulling at the blindfold. When it was lifted off, it took a long moment for his eyes to adjust and he squinted into an astonishing amber light.

They were in an open grassy space beside a large tin shed in faded and flaking oxblood red paint. A light grass track ran behind the truck to the gate they’d come in and next to that a long green rectangle of tarpaulin had been spread over a large area of grass about four-feet-wide and sixty feet in length.  All around them were fields, fenced off with barbed wire, looking well-grazed but bereft of livestock except for three cows in the nearest meadow; a pair of black and white Friesians feeding disinterestedly and a red heifer chewing cautiously as she stared at him, the fur on her face woolen in the soft yellow light. Peeking out of the shed behind her was the remnants of an old square hay baler and Frank suddenly realised he’d been here once before, ten years earlier, with his late father. They’d come to evaluate the baler as a potential restoration project but, when they saw it, both knew it was beyond their enthusiasm.

He remembered the farmer who showed it to them, a taciturn old chaw, taking affront at their lack of enthusiasm.

“I thought ye were looking for a restoration job,” the old man had challenged. “Sure, won’t ye have years of craic with this lot?”

Frank’s father had lifted the mangled PTO shaft and let it drop like a doctor relinquishing the pulseless arm of a patient.

“Well, now,” he’d mused, “I wasn’t planning on performing miracles, if I could help it.”

Frank was relieved to have forgotten the old farmer’s name but he knew the place well enough to find it again if he ever wanted to, which was the very last thing he would have wanted at that moment because behind and around him were figures in green uniforms and balaclavas, including the man who’d driven him there, who now also held an automatic rifle in both hands with the muzzle pointed skyward.

“You all right, sham?” the man asked Frank, amusement coming out in this voice.

Frank nodded at the gun.

“I’m a bit nervous around that thing.”

“Just a bit of insurance,” the man said, “in case we have any unwanted visitors.”

“Are you worried about,” Frank tried to think of the best way of putting it, “the other side trying something?”

The man gave a humourless laugh.

“I’m more worried about our side, if you could call them that. This new lot are med up of old warmongers and young hotheads. A dangerous combination, sham.”

Frank had noticed a scar on the visible part of the man’s upper lip which he’d taken for a harelip suture but he now realised must be a fragment of a larger war wound and he knew he was talking to an old soldier.

Someone’s mobile phone buzzed and a minute later one of the men said, “They’re on their way in. Get ready.”

The old soldier gestured with his head for Frank to follow him and led him over to the tarpaulin. Two of the uniformed figures pulled back the covering and, even though Frank knew what he was going to see, he was taken aback when he saw it.

The long trench was filled with weapons.

“Holy God!” Frank said and the old soldier gave him an approving nod.

“AK-47s, AKM assault rifles, Webleys, MAGs, Armalites and even a few RPGs. Sure, if you had a good dig in there, you’d probably find the rifle that did for Collins back in twenty-two.”

One of the other men — a young man wearing sunglasses and a beret above a green scarf — guffawed loudly.

“I suppose you served with the lad who pulled the trigger.”

“Shut your hole, eejit,” the old soldier said. “You dunno what you’re talking about.”

Just then a small fleet of long black Mercedes cars drove through the gate. They parked further along the laneway and several groups disembarked and approached them.

Frank recognised a number of republican politicians and, beside them, two members of the clergy, a Catholic priest and a Methodist minister. In the following group was a Canadian general who Frank had seen on television and who he knew to be an outside representative overseeing this process. The general was flanked by a man and a woman in conservative suits and all three of them made a beeline for the weapons and spoke with another masked man who Frank assumed to be the commander of that group.

The new arrivals formed a tight circle by the trench and the general stepped forward and smiled with the calm of a man who had spent his fair share of time in front of an audience.

“My friends,” he said, “I am very proud to see you again. This is the last of these sessions and the culmination of many years of negotiation and cooperation. After today, I will be able to report that these weapons have been put beyond use and that, by conscious agreement, the gun has finally been taken out of Irish politics. I cannot tell you how happy that makes me and how proud I am of my team and all of you for your dedication to that aim.”

There was a respectful applause before the general introduced the two clerics who also stepped forward.

The Catholic priest’s face carried an imprint of loss but when he spoke a glint of resistance shone from his blue eyes

“I suppose you all know well the story of Abraham from the Old Testament. It’s a story few of us preach from the pulpit these days and I daresay even fewer would discuss in private anymore. I understand why. The idea of God ordering a good man to kill his own son to prove his faith isn’t — what they call now — a good look for a modern church but, I tell you as a man of peace, when I read that story, I think of something entirely different. To me, it is God saying, ‘This is how far I’m willing to go. Are you able to meet me along the road?’ And that story finds an echo two-thousand years later when God sacrifices his own son — and make no mistake, Jesus is every bit his son — to save mankind. With both these episodes, the point isn’t the sacrifice of life, the point is that the sacrifice is not easy, that no sacrifice should be convenient.”

Frank looked around at the masked figures beside him.

“We may not all agree on the need,” the priest continued, “but no-one here doubts the sacrifices you have all made for this war. Today we’re asking you to enter into another round of sacrifices, this time in the name of peace. And I expect these sacrifices will, in their own way, be just as difficult, or even more difficult. They will require another type of strength. A slower strength. A quieter strength. A strength that goes unseen and unrecognised among the wider community.”

He gestured to the long trench full of weapons.

“We know from the bible that faith is not perpetual. It requires replenishment and words alone are not enough to achieve that replenishment. It requires actions. We talk about articles of faith but there is an implication there that faith demands more than the words of men, it requires sacrifice. In this case, the sacrifice is the security these weapons offer in a divided and distrustful reality. It is a very real thing you are giving up today but the only way to walk the path of peace is for everyone to leave the crutches of war behind.”

There followed another round of applause and the priest laid a supportive hand on the shoulder of the Methodist minister beside him and the other man stepped forward, clasping his hands tentatively before him.

He was a stout man with a thoughtful, analytic look which beamed from his thick glasses and he smiled as he spoke as though enjoying a revelation from his own words which he delivered in a gentle Northern Irish accent.

“I won’t try and bamboozle you with any of my own scripture,” he said. “I was told the chance of landing a convert here is fairly low.”

A tension-relieving ripple of laughter ran through the group and the minister adjusted his glasses with a satisfied smile.

“I suppose,” he continued, “some of you might have heard of the Trojan War.”

“Oh, we know all about it, Father,” the young soldier said, elbowing the old soldier beside him. “Sure, this man here fought in it and he told us all about it.”

Another, less-certain, ripple of laughter ran through the group and the minister gave his fingers a little wring as he released a soft chuckle himself.

“There are,” he continued, “two noteworthy examples of faith in that story. We have the bad faith of the wooden horse left by the Greeks as a lure to enable their soldiers to enter the walls of Troy. And we have an example of good faith when the old king of Troy, Priam, visited the enemy camp to plead with Achilles, the man who murdered his son, for the return of his slain son’s body.”

He shook his head sadly.

“Through the years, the exact location of Troy was lost from us and many scholars and archeologists bemoaned that loss and tried and failed to place Troy within the world we know. It is considered one of the worst examples of forgetting in human history but I think maybe that forgetting was a good thing because I can only imagine the innumerable artifacts of bloodshed that would be unearthed around that site and the modern tourist trade which would be hurriedly fabricated around that ancient war. Bronze statues of Achilles and Hector trading blows on the arid sands. Life size replicas of that vast fleet of antagonists, all of them eager to sate the ambitions of an egotistical King. And,” he said, shrugging his shoulders, “I suppose, there’d have to be a giant horse somewhere that tourists could pay to crawl into, so they could experience for themselves that famous and bloody, final raid.”

There were a few smiles among the onlookers.

“But,” he continued, “mostly I’m glad it was lost because I cannot see anyone raising a single monument to Priam’s noble act of fidelity. There are, I’m afraid, few good monuments to peace, but with this act today, I feel, we have all become the architects of a different kind of monument. I can think of no better monument to peace than this remote field, where the implements of war have been forever put away by the very soldiers who wielded them, a field unknown to anyone but this small group.”

He looked about and the smile he gave them was bittersweet.

“Our monument will have no wreaths or visitors; no parades or festivals. Its celebration will be the generations who need not suffer fear and grief. Children who know only peace and partnership.”

He reached blindly to put a hand on the arm of the priest beside him.

“I’m very grateful to you all for doing this and I’m grateful to be here to witness it.”

There was a cautious but heartfelt applause.

When the applause finished the old soldier turned to Frank.

“Do your stuff, sham,” he said and suddenly Frank felt the eyes of the group on him and he began to evaluate the practical elements.

“How wide is the trench?” he asked, gesturing to the cement lorry they’d driven there in. “How long is it and how deep? I’m worried I won’t have enough concrete.”

“If you don’t, we’ll get more,” the old soldier said.

Frank reached a hand into his own hair.

“Really, we shouldn’t have different mixes,” he said. “It might affect the curing process.”

“We’re not building the bleddy Suez Canal,” the old soldier said.

Frank prepared the chute and, when he was happy, he got into the lorry and positioned it. As he poured the cement over the trench the others crowded around, watching the weapons slowly disappear into the grey mass.

“By God, you know your trade, sham,” the old soldier said. “It’s like molasses.”

Frank moved the truck carefully each time and each time he carefully filled the trench until only one final patch remained.

He was about to make the final move when the Catholic priest pointed to the old soldier.

“I’m afraid we’ll need your weapon too,” he said and behind him the soldier’s commander nodded.

The priest seemed to realise something.

“You know,” he said, “officially, this will be the last weapon we put beyond use.”

The old soldier inspected the weapon in his hands as if in disbelief that he held it, that it was real and, when he handed it over to the priest, he had tears in his eyes.

The priest passed the weapon to the general and his staff and they brought it to an area where they worked over it before taking various pieces of it over to the trench and placing it into the mass of weapons there.

Frank poured the last of the concrete on the final patch and when he got down from the cab everyone was staring at that thin island of grey; a pavement with neither entrance or exit.

A loud cheer rose from the group and there was a frenzy of congratulations in which Frank found himself engulfed by masked strangers, politicians and priests.

When they were done, the old soldier smiled at him and held out the blindfold and Frank laughed cheerfully.

They didn’t speak on the way back. The man left the radio off and they listened to the soft groans of the truck as it moved from the narrow lanes into the wider lanes and, from them, into the main road.

When they got back, the old soldier led him down from the cab and back into his office and Father Nolan greeted them softly.

“How did it go?” he asked.

“Well, it’s done,” the old soldier said and Frank heard his footsteps fading on the tiled floor.

“That was a powerful thing we did today,” Frank called after him.

“With the grace of God,” the old soldier answered, “it’ll all be forgotten.”

Frank never told anyone about that day. At the time, he’d told his wife he had an urgent job he had to go to and no more than that and it never came up again. Later on, when he had children, he never told them about that day either. He lived out his days not breathing a word about it to anyone.

But sometimes he’d find himself out in that part of the world, close to that old field and he’d have a terrible urge to drive down that lonely little lane to have another look at that perfect monument to peace they’d built that day but he knew he couldn’t, that it was also a thing that was beyond use.

Feature Image: Maurice Harron, Hands Across the Divide.