Scanlon sat in his cell. Same question in his head as Burke's: How would Father Pearse find him here?
Because if he did find Jimmy here, the game was over.
Jimmy shifted. The cell wasn't comfortable. He was nothing more than meat now. Stored meat. His Lord Almighty's instructions were simple: thou shalt not! Which — since the IRA's murderous, mucked-up hijacking — reduced Jimmy to nothing more than sin in a tin.
Jimmy's soul: failed forever. Gone for good. Hell, for eternity. Without end, amen. Now what? You want me to pound my head against these filthy bars? Beat the brains of a still-breathing creature named Jimmy Scanlon breathless maybe? As if I could: as if I could take the coward's way out.
Jimmy thought a lot about the coward's way out.
Sin in a tin; so give me a can opener. Blessed relief. Maybe sleep since I can't at all. No. Sleep wouldn't happen. Jimmy hadn't earned anything like sleep. Not even close: one more time: one more time every few seconds, every minute, endless. Once more Jimmy shoved himself down his custom-made thorn-lined torture-chamber unforgiving hole: he'd killed his own.
The argument that didn't quit....
New troops trusted him: he was Sergeant Jimmy Scanlon. Troops trusted sergeants more than officers. Way of things. Officers were puffed-up, know-little, know-it-all, rushed-to-the-front, obey-orders-and-quickly-die college boys.
Smart new troops trusted sergeants instead.
They'd heard: good sergeants looked out for their troops.
Meaning: most troops trusted Sergeant Scanlon without a second thought, because he wore the right stripes.
Now, though, some who'd trusted Jimmy Scanlon had died. Murdered by him. Murdered by politicians he'd never met, didn't know, didn't care about. Figments.
Murdered by me, in other words.
Jimmy slid deeper down his thorn-lined hole: his cell. Dug it himself. Furnished it himself.
His hole; he owned it. His because he'd murdered his own trusting troops: no other words forgave that. Jimmy had failed trusting men. Failed a willing-to-forgive-but-not-quite-forgive-everything God. Failed his Christian, Roman Catholic faith, too; those hard-, early-planted values: teachings, expectations.
Jimmy saw/knew he'd failed anyone he could think of. Known/saw in this comfortless cell how many there were: the dozens of troopers, he'd counted originally; then the hundreds. Not one among them, he accepted, willing to accept Jimmy's remorse.
Worst: he'd failed himself. Forever.
Forever. New feeling.
Forever was a very long time. Jimmy saw that now.
He was young; he'd nested in his youth until now. He was capable; he'd nested in that, too; until now. Then he'd betrayed his own. Willingly. Because he was seduced. By a priest; by more than one; by serpents' tongues that were convincing. By a cause that seemed so plainly righteous.
Only if you saw an occasional murder as righteous.
Forever. Forever. Forever.
Jimmy's unforgiving alarm would not stop ringing.
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He needed his soul back. It didn't have to be his full soul, either. Not a soul with wings, singing Latin. Really, any small replica soul would do; anything that would let him sleep again, just a few hours.
So Scanlon sat in his cell, sticking to his tune: "the legendary Explosive 808, the green stuff that smelled of almonds," he whispered to himself. "Got me a trunkful. Being shipped to another base on a certain Sunday, at a certain time."
That was his core story.
That was his tune: the one tune left to sing; if ever he saw those IRA pricks again. Best he could do to their faces. If he ever got the chance: he practiced, he practiced, he practiced,
This explosive material was far, far more powerful than the shite you've been using. Turn you into gods. [Small problem: Scanlon kept seeing leprechauns, not real gods. Move on please, Jimmy. Move on NOW.] A stable explosive, too. Like modeling clay. Safe enough for children. I know you IRA fellas have good imaginations.
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Traitor and murderer Jimmy Scanlon would/could try to sell one more easy hijacking.
Just one more. Due to his ancient orphan's lingering last-gasp loyalty to the man who raised him right, Father Mike, who thinks you IRA shits walk on water. 'Course he's never seen your real work like I have. After that, fuck-ups? Jimmy imagined saying Then I head off to fight the Huns. Do something worth doing. a real enemy. Good riddance to you all: your little island and your little fights. Father Mike was wrong about you. But I owe him one more college try.
Those IRA fellas Jimmy spoke to in his head for sleepless hours did, as it turned out, possess sufficient imagination.
He'd heard from Father Pearse finally: they were interested.
Due credit to the lot of them, Jimmy supposed. Burke, too. Burke had passed it along: they were interested.
They held up their end of the Irish penchant for spinning wild and tall tales: by robbing banks, trading arms, agitating North and South, digging in. Ireland had revolted more than once. And every dismal, cruelly-dealt-with failure had hardened the next bunch to come along.
Now they're finally hard enough, in this hen-scratched backyard of every English monarch since 1171. Jimmy. Burke. Talking a bit. A slave yard, too, for almost 800 years. Farmland owned by someone else. Those poor souls born here didn't matter. They did the husbandry and the growing and died unremarked, for some English aristocrat they'd never caught sight of.
The IRA was interested.
They wanted to blow things up.
No wonder. Burke easily understood the basic matter: mind, heart, an unambiguous military map, enemies, injustice.
Until.
Until you crossed my boundary.
Until you killed my G.I.s, the ones under my personal protection, far from their families and friends, gone cold in this wet and foreign soil, on the wrong end of someone else's politics.
Killing G.I.s? Those deaths, dear IRA, are now my chief business. Full time. From this point on. Until one of us dies. It won't be me.