Pray for Us Sinners Read Free

snap shut, completing the circuit. Simple but effective. At least it would be when Jimmy Ferguson arrived.
    Davy tied the final knot and glanced through the window. Rain fell, splashing off the pane and making grubby streaks in the patina of industrial soot that clung to the glass. He looked at his watch. Jimmy was nearly an hour late. Had something happened to him? Christ, Davy had enough to worry about without having to be concerned about Jim Ferguson.
    Sometimes Davy worried whether he still believed in the Cause. Killing soldiers was all right, but too many civilians had died for Davy’s liking. They didn’t attack civilians back in the fifties. Davy still wondered why his commanders called that campaign off in 1962. That was when he’d quit the IRA, what was now called the Official IRA. And he’d kept out until 1970.
    When the riots started in Belfast in 1969, the remnants of the old IRA had been useless. Made no attempt to protect the Catholic ghettoes from the Protestant mobs. The folks who lived on the Falls said IRA stood for “I Ran Away.” Davy hadn’t even bothered to reenlist, not until a splinter group formed in 1970—a group that promised to go after the Brits, a group that called itself the Provisional IRA. They were the hardest of the hard men and they were not going to let anything stand in the way of their goal: Brits out and a united Ireland. And that was what Davy was after, had always been after.
    Freedom, he thought, was a long time coming, and was union with the Republic any closer? He nodded, reassuring himself. Aye, it was, and he believed all right, had to believe, that Ireland would be free. He owed it to Da and he owed it to himself to struggle on, until one day—one day soon—the British would be gone.
    Davy heard the knock, rose, and limped to the front door.
    â€œWhere the fuck have you been?” Davy spat his words.
    â€œI’m sorry, Davy.” Jimmy Ferguson’s thin weasel’s head twitched sharply to one side.
    â€œCome in.” Davy stumped back to the kitchen, leaving Jimmy to close the door and follow.
    Davy sat, watching Ferguson shrug out of his wet raincoat and drape it over the back of a chair.
    â€œLook, Davy”—Jimmy’s chin twitched forward and to one side—“I’m sorry. The fucking Falls is crawling with Brits. I’d to take the long way round.”
    Davy grunted. He hated the way his friend shot his jaw.
    â€œDon’t be mad, Davy.”
    â€œSit down.”
    Jimmy sat. He reached into an inside pocket of his raincoat. “I got them. Here.” He handed over a wooden box.
    â€œJesus, Jimmy, don’t tell me you let a few Brits scare you.”
    Jimmy’s jaw twitched again. “Come on, Davy. You know bloody well three of the First Battalion lads was lifted in that van two days ago.” He pushed the box closer to Davy. “I couldn’t have brought these if the peelers got me.”
    â€œYou think someone touted?”
    Jimmy kept his gaze on the tabletop.
    â€œJimmy, who the hell’s going to grass on us? Only Second Battalion command knows about us.”
    Davy could hear the scuffling of Jimmy’s feet on the kitchen floor. He’d no time for Jimmy’s worries. “Christ Almighty, the CO’s closer than fleas on a dog. What did he promise us when we joined up?”
    Jimmy shot his jaw.
    â€œJimmy, what did Sean Conlon say?”
    â€œThat he’d keep me and you out of the regular units. We’d just have to make bombs and deliver them to safe houses.”
    â€œRight. Sure you know we never get to meet the other men in the battalion. Who the hell could grass on us, Jim?”
    Jimmy looked up. “Nobody, I suppose.”
    â€œYou suppose? Jimmy, you and me’s a cell. Like your man Che Guevara’s lot.” Davy saw Jimmy’s lower lip trembling. Davy leaned forward and, like a lover in a candlelit restaurant,