Carn Read Free

perhaps it was his uncles who occasionally visited at a late hour but, as he stood on the landing deciphering, he realised that they were voices he had never heard before. And when he
saw the policeman holding his father by the arm and leading him towards the door, his first instinct was to cry out but he could not. When the door had closed behind them, he ran downstairs to his
mother and asked her, ma why did they do it? But she just held him and kept repeating, “He didn’t do it son, he didn’t do it. They want him for everything that’s done son,
they can’t leave him alone.”
    In the newspaper the following day there was a photograph of the blackened shell of the custom-post. Above it in large black type IRA ATTACK BORDER POST .
    When Benny’s father came home three days later, the uncles arrived late in the night. They stayed until the small hours conversing in taut whispers. Benny’s father related his
experiences in the police station in slow, deliberate tones. They had been watching him, they said. That he had met men from across the border. Northmen. They had information, they said. Why
couldn’t he sign the confession? It would go easier on him in the long run. The knuckles of his uncles whitened as they drank in every syllable. The fire flickered on their faces as they drew
in closer to share it with him. It was light when he had finished his tale. The uncles stood in the doorway and gripped his hand warmly. “You’re one of the best,” they said to
him. Then they set off down the road to catch the morning train to Derry. Benny Dolan didn’t sleep a wink after that, his dreams filled with burning custom-posts and running men, sudden cries
at the back of his mind.
    After that, he became a hero in his class. He led schoolboy expeditions to the border where the northern police patrolled with tracker dogs. In the games after that, the blowing of bridges and
the storming of custom-huts were incorporated with enthusiasm. They scanned daily papers for photographs and varied their make-believe exploits with each new development.
    When two IRA volunteers were riddled with bullets outside the town in September 1958, the boys worked themselves into a frenzy. They swore that they would invade Northern Ireland and kill all
the protestants. They would murder all the policemen. No military personnel would be spared. They listened feverishly as the details of the barracks raid were related over and over again in the
houses. The lorry had driven past the barracks by mistake and then reversed. A grenade had been flung and bounced back off the door, rolling in underneath the lorry. It had exploded and written off
the vehicle, the barracks remaining unscathed. Two of the volunteers, one a popular man who sold vegetables from door to door, had fled for their lives and made it to within feet of the southern
side of the border where they had been cornered by police and B-Specials. They had pinned them up against the wall of a barn and sprayed them with machine-gun fire. They had left them lying in
their own blood. None of the boys could sleep much that night, thinking of the young man, not much older than themselves, staring out of dead eyes in a deserted barn in South Fermanagh, his head
limp on his shoulders like a rag doll’s. Benny Dolan twisted and turned the whole night long.
    The funeral cortege passed through the silent streets of the town. The Dead March played from an open window as the coffin was eased into the grave. The Last Post was sounded by a lone bugler
from the brass band. Benny felt his stomach turning over. The funeral was reported on the evening news and Benny’s father listened to it with his fist clenched. The town felt as if it was
about to come apart with anger.
    For weeks afterwards, the teacher spoke about the two gallant young men who had been done to death by the authorities in the north. He took out some old copybooks which he had preserved for
posterity because of their