Born & Bred Read Free Page B

gloves. “Hold this while I get it.”
    Danny fingered the cold metal, still reeking of death, and thought about it. He could pop them and get the fuck away without anybody knowing. He’d always wanted to be a hero—just like his grandfather who had fought off the Black and Tans.
    **
    “He would have been so proud of you, Danny boy,” his granny had reminded him the day he was Confirmed. “I’m sure he’s boasting about you right now with all of his old friends and comrades.”
    She had brought him to the Garden of Remembrance because that’s where his spirit lingered. It was where she came to talk with him when the spinning of the world got too fast. He never spoke to her, she wasn’t crazy—like some people—but she always said that she found peace and calm in his silence.
    She wanted to share that with Danny but he was too young still.
    And too full of wonder, as he stared into the pool, at the mosaic on the bottom, ancient Celtic weapons, forever beyond use.
    He watched his granny’s reflection walk to the other side of the cruciform, and, with the sunlight reflecting on the water and the brilliant white fluffy clouds just beyond her shoulders, she looked like a guardian angel. But he could tell that she was tiring. The long bus ride from Rathfarnham and the short one across the river and up to the “Square” had taken their toll.
    When he looked up she rearranged herself and beckoned: “Come on now and sit down with your granny and enjoy a little bit of the peace and quiet they all died for.”
    The sun was flittering through the fresh green trees and Dublin rumbled by outside without deference as Danny nestled in beside her and stretched his legs in front of him. He admired the sharp crease on his long pants. His shoes were a bit dusty and his socks had rolled down to his ankles. His ribbons fluttered under his nose, tickling as they passed. He was almost a young man now, almost ready to make his own way in the world, still clutching the envelope that Granny had given him on the bus.
    “Go on,” she smiled. “You may as well open it now. Only give it back to me afterwards so I can keep it safe until we get home. It’s not much now, but it’s the least you deserve.”
    Danny nearly piddled when he saw the two five-pound notes tucked in the folds of a handwritten letter that said how proud she was of him; how he was the reason that she was happy to get up every morning even though everything else she had loved had been taken from her. Her handwriting never varied and flowed until it carried him along to where she reminded him to stay close to God—that the Devil was never far away.
    Danny read it slowly and deliberately before putting it back in the envelope which Granny tucked into the folds of her bag and looked at all the memories that swirled around them.
    “When I was a girl the English opened their jails and sent their murderers over here to plunder and pillage, and, some say, defile any young girls who might be out at night.”
    She fanned herself with her glove before continuing. “They were the Devil’s spawn, all right, but some of the boys weren’t going to let them get away with any more of that. Your grandfather was one of those that stood up to them. Even killed a few of them, too, but he got absolution for that. The priest told him to pray for their souls, every day; for the rest of his life, as his penance.
    “Not that he ever talked about it, mind you, but then those that did the most say the least and that’s the way the holy mother of God wants it. Maybe it was Her plan all along—that Bart would kill them and then pray for their souls. That way they could still get to Heaven. Don’t you see?”
    Danny nodded in total agreement. His grandfather was his idol. He was going to grow up just like him, too, and become the man that won the North back. Granny often told him that he had it in him—not like the Gombeens down in Leinster House. “Free-Staters,” she called them and