Free The Bombs That Brought Us Together by Brian Conaghan Page B

word.
    ‘What was that?’ Voice One said.
    ‘What the hell did you say?’ Voice Three said.
    ‘You don’t ever ask why we want you, got it?’ Voice Two said.
    Silence.
    ‘Got it, Duda?’ Voice Three said.
    ‘Got it, yes,’ Jan Duda said.
    ‘See, you Old Country people, you’re all the same,’ Voice One said. ‘Think you’re better than everyone else, think you’ve got a right to everything here. Well, I’ve got news for you, Duda.’
    ‘You lot come to Little Town and think you own the place,’ Voice Two said.
    ‘What your mob have to remember, Duda, is that Little Town is ours,’ Voice Three said.
    ‘A few bombs isn’t going to change that,’ Voice One said.
    ‘So, we’ll be keeping an eye on you,’ Voice Two said.
    ‘See, we know where you work, Duda. We know where you live. We know everything in Little Town,’ Voice One said.
    ‘You wouldn’t want that information to be passed into the wrong hands now, would you?’ Voice Three said.
    ‘People who might come and take that pretty little wife of yours away while you’re out scrubbing floors,’ Voice Two said.
    ‘Old Country psychos perhaps,’ Voice One said.
    ‘Oh, I can imagine what they’d do to a cute thing like her, can’t you, Duda?’ Voice Three said. ‘Everything has a price. Information is costly.’
    ‘Especially information with benefits,’ Voice Two said.
    ‘Consider yourselves watched,’ Voice Three said. ‘Any shit against our Regime and we’ll come for you.’
    ‘Unless Old Country beat us to it,’ Voice One said.
    ‘And you might not see that lovely wife of yours again,’ Voice Two said.
    ‘Or that skinny kid,’ Voice Three said.
    ‘Got it?’ Voice One said.
    ‘Got it, yes,’ Jan Duda said. ‘Can we go sleeping now?’
    The voices did more hyena sniggering.
    Then a long pause.
    ‘Go,’ Voice One said. ‘Get out of our sight.’
    We could hear the sound of Pav and his parents shuffling back into their house.
    ‘Remember,’ Voice Two said. ‘Be good.’
    These were definitely the Regime’s Rascals. Thugs with legitimacy. You’d never see any of the actual Regime en-forcing their brand of law and order like this. When all that stuff about Pav’s mum was going on, Dad squeezed my mum tight into his chest.
    When the Duda door slammed shut Mum’s shoulders drooped; once again Dad drew an imaginary zip across his mouth, just in case the voices were still hovering about. I didn’t sleep too well that night. I certainly didn’t do any more dreaming. All thoughts of Erin F had to be put on the back burner for the time being.
    I couldn’t even read; the words weren’t going in the way they should have. I lay awake thinking about poor Pav and his folks. They were well and truly on the Rascals’ radar now.

    When I thought about the raid on Pav and his family I was embarrassed to be a Little Town person, knowing that my people could do shocking things to those people. These weremy initial feelings, but when logic hit the brain I thought: Come on, Charlie, cop yourself on, son. Who else is going to look after us here? Who else is going to make sure Little Towners don’t have bombs lobbed at them again and again? Who else is going to keep buses, cafes, markets and parks panic-free and safe? Get a grip. That didn’t mean what happened to Pav’s family benefited any of us.
    The morning after the raid on Pav’s, Mum and Dad slurped their tea, crunched at their jammy toast, nosed a local paper – the first since the bombs – and listened to some guy on the radio prattle on about how everything in Little Town would be back to normal in no time. Regime propaganda, no doubt. Not a ditty about any late-night raids by their Rascal thugs, not even from Mum or Dad. Nothing.
    It was as if nothing had happened.
    Say nothing, do nothing, pretend it didn’t happen. Was this how things were going to roll in the Law household?
    ‘Do you have a pen, Mum?’ I asked.
    They both looked up from their reading