“Rebels”
By Laurence Lumsden
Rebels
Sprawled on the worn carpet in front of the telly, Bobby and I are best friends. We’re Starsky and Hutch, accents twanging, or we’re Bodie and Doyle, cockney slanging. But oh, outside on a damp Dublin night, our breaths fuming with Grandad’s cigarettes, our role models aren’t American or English, no, we have our own. We’re the booby-trap. We’re the ambush. We’re the I-R-A. That old Mr Burke who looks like a Protestant has it coming, and Arbutus Avenue is our bandit country.
How do you know he’s a Protestant, says Bobby, but come on it’s obvious. Look at the way he walks in jaunty steps, swinging a little brown satchel, poking at the gaps in the path with a rolled-up umbrella. Catholics always step over the cracks for it’s bad luck to walk on them, though that’s no easy challenge for Bobby and me as there are lots more cracks on our road than on Arbutus Avenue. Besides, everyone knows that it’s only Protestants that live behind those gloomy red bricks.
We knock on Mr Burke’s door and scramble behind his hedge for cover. When he comes out we let him have it, one-two-three rounds of the pistols that we got with our cowboy suits at Christmas. ‘Who cares!’ we shout, just like in the warning on Ulster Television about calling the terrorism hotline with any information. Jesus, it’s brilliant. Bobby and I know what the future will bring, and we embrace it as we embrace each other. We’ll die for Ireland.
Mr Burke staggers.
He looks like he might fall, and for a moment we’re in big trouble, if not with the police, then with our mothers. But it’s a dirty Protestant trap that he’s set for us. He sees us peeking from the hedge and returns fire with the gun that his right hand has cleverly morphed into. He fires the rounds rapidly, using the palm of his left hand to flick back the pistol hammer made from his bony thumb. He’s so quick we barely escape with our lives.
The night closes in and hides our retreat, and we creep along the canal bank, safe in silent leaf fall under the dark oaks. Our breaths echo for hours in the clammy darkness under the bridge, while we wonder when it will be safe to go home. I hold Bobby tight, tremble to his fingertips, inhale the peppery smell of his lank hair. Oh Bobby.
Lying in bed that night, I pray to God to look after Mammy and Daddy and Grandad. I ask forgiveness for borrowing Grandad’s cigarettes and I offer three Hail Marys in thanks that Mr. Burke didn’t die of a heart attack from the shock of being ambushed at his front door. Even though he’s a Protestant. Then I say three Our Fathers so that Bobby and I won’t be found out, and that we won’t have to die for Ireland.
In front of the telly next day, things have changed between Bobby and me. I tell him I suspect he’s a double-agent, and he says I’m queer. I’ve no idea what the word means but I swing my skinny fist at the blocky bastard. He’s far too strong for me and grips me in a headlock. Take it back, take it back, I say through tears. It’s the truth he says, and well you know it is.
He grips me tighter but his mother will be in shortly with the damp washing that’s refusing to dry, and there’ll be no more telly for us if she finds us fighting on her good carpet. My nose starts to bleed, and Bobby lets me go.
Our rebel days are ended.
Originally from Dublin, Laurence Lumsden has lived in Montreal since 2007. He used the cover of the global pandemic to escape from a career in tech, just to tell stories. His work has been published in The Galway Review and Sky Island Journal.
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