Days Without End: AN IRISH TIMES BEST IRISH BOOK OF THE 21ST CENTURY

by Sebastian Barry

nearly all through this exceeding surprising Yankee sort of life which

Said Indians were to be cleared off the face of the earth,

John Cole, being an understanding man.

New England where the strength died out of his father’s

earth. John Cole was only twelve when he lit out a-wandering. First moment I saw him I thought, there’s a pal. That’s what it was. Thought he was a dandy-looking sort of boy. Pinched though he was in the face by hunger.

Strange and fateful encounter you could say. Lucky.

He was a very kept-back-looking thirteen years old I

blast of friendship

Were they shameful? I don’t see eye to eye with that.

seemed natural and easy to join together in the enterprise of continuing survival. That

tumultuous saloons

Children may feel epic and large to theyselves and yet be only scraps to view.

We were two wood-shavings of humanity in a rough

highly pleasant quotient of good dark wood, dark panelling floor to ceiling, a long bar as sleek and black as an oil-seep. Then we felt like bugs in a girl’s bonnet. Alien.

There’s a rack of clothes like a gaggle of hanged women.

just the nicest, the most genteel dancing. You won’t

cleanest I had been in three years,

We musta looked like the flag of some country from the neck up, sitting there. Mr Noone had thoughtfully

Funny how as soon as we hove into those dresses everything changed. I never felt so contented in my life. All miseries and worries fled away. I was a new man now, a new girl. I was freed, like those slaves were freed in the

coming war. I was ready for anything. I felt dainty, strong,

You had to love John Cole for what he chos...

we were the darlings of their souls. And anyhow, Mr Noone was

send us a letter every feast day of St

Thomas and St John and give us all the news. And we was to do likewise. And we lit out with our bit of dollars saved for our hoped-for cavalry days.

Lots of dilapidated Indians in Missouri as we rode through, they

Watchorn had a fine face, a beautiful face, he looked like a president on a coin, but he was awful damn small, maybe five foot and one measly inch, on a horse it made no odds, he just rode on a short stirrup, that worked well. He was an exceptionally agreeable man, yes, indeed.

We knew in our hearts our work was to be Indians. People in California wanted rid of them. Wanted them routed out. Troopers couldn’t take the bounty legal-wise

The major said he liked Indians well enough,

herd of maybe two or three thousand buffalo. They musta taken a vow of silence that morning. Shawnees now were putting their ponies into a polite trotting, and ourselves

they were again, the flood of buffalo, like a big boil of black molasses in a skillet, surging up. Goddamn blackberries they were as black as.

My cow won’t act out of character, but I got to get myself in close, get a shot into her head as best I can, it’s no easy task to keep your rifle raised and ready, when your horse was seeming to be an aficionado of every goddamn rabbit hole out there. He better keep his footing. Maybe we are moving at thirty, forty miles an hour now, maybe we are sheeting along like the wind, maybe the herd is making a noise like a great storm coming down from the mountains, but my heart was up and I couldn’t care what happened unless I could get my bullet into her. Blooms in my head the picture of the troopers roasting her and cutting great steaks out of her. The blood running down the meat.

He may be an angel in the clothes of a devil or a devil in the clothes of an angel but either way you’re talking to two when you talk to one Irishman. He can’t help you enough and he can’t

But I was thirteen or so and I knew in my heart and soul I had to flee. I crept onto one of those ships in the darkness. I am telling this best I can. It’s long ago, before America. I was among the destitute, the ruined and the starving for six weeks. Many went overboard, that’s how it was.

Canada was a-feared of us. We were a plague. We were only rats of people. Hunger takes away what you are. Everything we were was just nothing then. Talk, music, Sligo, stories,

When I met John Cole that’s who I was, a human louse, even evil people shunned me and the good had no use for me. That’s where I started. Gives an idea of the

How we were able to see slaughter without flinching. Because we were nothing ourselves, to begin

John Cole was my love, all my love.

name. The mind is a wild liar and I don’t trust much in it that I find there.

steered our own way back to ours. He’s a good man, that major, said John Cole, with all the definiteness of the drunken man. And

All that riding grinds down your backbone till I believe you gain for yourself a little store of bone dust in your buttocks. That’s what it felt like. Every

there. They were about their own business certainly. We made a racket of harness, spurs, equipment, things knocking

and shrugging from movement, and hooves skittering and clacking on the earth, but the troopers barely spoke a word and for the most part we rode in silence

Suddenly a huge nervousness invaded us, and you could almost hear the bones in our bodies tightening, closing, and our hearts seemed captive in our chests and desirous to escape. Men

Then my heart shrank in its nest of ribs. It was just women and children all around us. Not a brave among them. We had torn into the little hiding place of the squaws, where they had tried to take refuge from the burning and the killing. I was affrighted and strangely affronted, but mostly at myself, because I knew I had taken strange pleasure from the attack.

Watchorn and Pearl were dragging a woman from the ground and into the trees. I knew they were going

and fire and resins sparking and spitting like some old painting of hell. The troopers massed together, not

We

those moments know our names. We w...

then, we were other people. We w...

like no other killers that had ever been. Then with a huge queer sighing,...