Free The Whereabouts of Eneas McNulty by Sebastian Barry Page A

man, as if having been bidden to do so, he is honour-bound to do it, to fulfil every article of talk and action. For the freedom of Ireland and the Republic so earnestly wished for.
    ‘Oh, let’s feckin run for it,’ says the assassin, weary as a donkey.
    Then off indeed, truthful and exact, they run like they are kids hooering out of an orchard and the apples bubbling from their ganseys and banging on the metalled roads. And
    Eneas is left there standing indeed like a gom, like a remnant, like an oddment. Couldn’t they have shot him too, for the look of things? For courtesy even? He thinks that and in another corner of his head he knows it is a daft thought. He feels a tremendous love as long as an English mile for the poor corpse in the lane. He knew him but slightly, yet all the purposes of that ordinary life, the tobacco, the papers, the idle talk, the dreams of promotion that never came true, afflict Eneas in the darkness. He wants to kneel down and embrace the dead man, soothe him, do something to send him up safe and sound to his Maker. But he stirs not a muscle. He finds he is frozen by terror. And Doyle is at his feet, simple as a song, all ruined and wrecked like Humpty Dumpty. Doyle is at his stupid feet, his bloody feet familiar and square, cased brightly in their police-issue boots.
     
    Not even Eneas’s superiors believe he knows nothing about it when the Reprisal Man duly removes the killers of Doyle from the hastening world of Athlone. Mere days after, yes, they’re found, out by the distillery, perfunctorily destroyed. It’s assumed Eneas has given, given gladly, to the Reprisal Man descriptions and the like, and when he denies it simply, they know he is exercising a clever caution and concealment. But he is not. The Reprisal Man has been able to ferret out his rabbits without him, ferret them out with the drear force of his broken mind. And no great task perhaps.
    At any rate he is honourably discharged from his duties. It is not considered wise in the worsening days to leave him to the see-saw of reprisals. His turn would come round as surely as the sun. It is, he is told, the opinion of District Inspector O’Callaghan up in barracks that though the RIC is short of men, desperately, they are not short of corpses, and Constable McNulty is shortly to be such if he lingers. But it’s also whispered around the barracks Chinese-fashion that the Republicans have issued a death-threat against Eneas McNulty on account of the foul words of betrayal he has spoken to the Tans, and he languishes now on the blacklist that they all know exists. A black-list growing as long as the Shannon. And when the whisper reaches Eneas it is mightily embellished and includes possible modes of execution if he remains in the force. His balls tied about his head like two roots of garlic and his tongue torn out and fed to pigs. And so whether it is horse-trading or honest concern for his safety that has prompted the District Inspector he cannot say. Another recruit who has never been his pal tells him that even if all the fools of Ireland are in the peelers, as the saying goes, some fools are more fool than other fools. Some fools are beyond the pale.
    At any rate the handsome uniform is perforce handed back, and he returns, raw as a scrape, to Sligo.
     
    He sits fast in his Pappy’s house, not daring to go out in the daylight, expecting even so the sky to fall on his head through the dark blue slates. In his dreams all manner of talk flows swiftly, swiftly, like the intent waters of the Garravogue, mutters and threats, clear as the bells of death. He senses the fright of his brilliant brother Jack, just preparing himself for his own assault on the world and in need of no scandalous brother, and he knows his Mam understands only too well the ticket of terror flying in the wind, but they don’t speak about it. They’ve taken silence to themselves like an adopted dog. Because it’s all manner of talk, any manner of talk,