On those days a barrel of stout was set in the corner of the room and all the men in the neighborhood dropped in to dance and sing and tell tales, since Joe’s father was the undisputed king of the island, not only because he had the gift but also because he had thirty-three sons.
For young Joe there was magic in those special nights, the doings of the pookas and banshees and especially the little people, the trooping sly fairies who were seldom seen but often experienced, knee-high and dressed in bright green jackets and flat red hats and buckled shoes, mischievously passing the ages feasting and singing and holding their hurling matches brazenly on the strand. And then the doings of his brothers around the world with his father’s prophecies interspersed, supernatural events to a young boy growing up on a bleak and rainy slip of land in the Atlantic where the rest of the year was spent at sea in a canoe made of cowhide, fighting the cold waves to lay miles of nets before daybreak.
Wondrous and special evenings for young Joe until the most fateful of all prophecies arrived on that June night in 1914.
That evening his father had neither sung nor danced, in fact he hadn’t even spoken. Instead he sat by the hearth drinking and brooding until well after midnight.
Some of his friends made an effort at singing and dancing but nothing much came of it. The whole room was waiting for the king’s customary accounts of miracles past and future, and without them they didn’t know what to do. Yet still the king sat staring at the turf fire, downing his pints of stout and not saying a word.
It was ominous. This wasn’t the king’s way on a party night. Finally signs were made around the room in desperation and the oldest man among them broke the silence with a question.
Joe, would something be bothering you then?
For a long moment there was silence and then at last the king stirred. He muttered a word no one could hear.
What’s that, Joe?
Trouble. I see trouble ahead.
What kind of trouble, Joe?
War.
But wars are always leaving or coming, Joe. What’s that to us poor folk?
The king’s face darkened. He prodded the fire.
Leaving or coming they are like the sea, but not like this one for me. In two weeks’ time, you see, a duke is going to be shot in a place called Bosnia and they’re going to use that as an excuse to make a great war. How great? Ten million dead and twenty million maimed, but that’s not for me. What’s for me is that seventeen of my sons are going to fight and die in that war, one in every bloody army that makes up that bloody war.
The silence deepened. The king took a long drink of stout and everyone took the opportunity to do the same. The king gazed into his mug and all the men in the room followed his example.
Terrible, whispered a voice.
Terrible? said the king. No they’re men now and they can do what they want. What eats at this old heart is that not one of those seventeen sons of mine will die fighting for Ireland. Fight they will and bravely, die they will too for seventeen countries and not one of them my own. I sent them out and that’s fair, it’s their life to lead. But that’s also our people for you, everyone’s cause but our own. Fill the mugs now. We need a drink because I have something to say about this.
The men in the room quickly did so. Somberly they filed up to the barrel and filled their mugs and went back to their seats. The king’s mug was refilled and returned to his gnarled hand.
He sat by the turf fire staring at the floor. When he sipped they sipped, when he cleared his throat they cleared their throats. Prophecy was a gift and couldn’t be hurried. A man who was about to lose seventeen sons fighting in seventeen foreign armies had a right to weigh his thoughts. Still the question escaped once again from someone.
What’s to be done, Joe?
A sip. Sips across the room. The king cleared his throat, they did the same. Now was the moment.
What’s to be done? I’ll tell you what’s to be done. In two years time there’ll be an Easter rebellion, a rising of the nation, and I’ll have a son in that rebellion, one son fighting for Ireland, a mere lad it’s true but he’ll be there. So that’s the full truth on this June 14th in 1914. I’ve had thirty-three sons in my time and I saved my name for the last of them, and what will happen will be and that lad will do as he has to and I know what it is, and after that he’s going to go on and become the King of Jerusalem for some reason.
The last words startled everyone in the room. Even the king’s head jerked back in surprise.
Don’t blaspheme, cautioned a voice.
And none intended. I have no idea why I said that. And now what’s your name? he shouted suddenly to hide his embarrassment, staring between the shoulders of his friends who crowded the room.
Everyone turned. They hadn’t noticed the small dark boy huddled in a corner at the back, struck dumb as always by his father’s oracular sessions. With all eyes upon him he was afraid to speak, but with his father’s eyes upon him he was even more afraid not to speak.
Joseph, he whispered.
Joseph what?
Joseph Enda Columbkille Kieran Kevin Brendan O’Sullivan Beare.
Saints of this island, answered his father, and that’s my name too, saved for you so you can fight for Ireland as I once did, two years hence in the rising. Now there’s no need to swear by those saints, lad, but we’re going to raise a mug to you for what’s to come, that much we can do. And the evil eye be off you and the little people be with you, and as your mother has taught you to say, If you haven’t a shilling a ha’penny will do, and if you haven’t a ha-penny God bless you.
Solemnly the men in the room raised their mugs and emptied them. In the corner young Joe, fourteen years old, stood perfectly straight and terrified.
On Easter Monday in 1916 the rising came as predicted and the Irish revolutionaries managed to hold the Dublin post office for several days. One of the few to escape from the post office was young Joe, who then walked two hundred miles south to the mountains of County Cork, thereby reversing the route of his famous ancestor.
What’s to be done? he wondered as he walked. A man fighting alone needed distance from the enemy, so he decided to teach himself to use his rifle at long range.
The rifle itself was a curious antique, a modified 1851 U.S. cavalry musketoon that had last seen service with czarist dragoons in the Crimean War. But Joe soon discovered that with its short thick barrel, its heavy stock and enormous bullets, the musketoon could be used with extraordinary accuracy when fired in the manner of a howitzer, aimed in the air rather than at the target so the bullets traversed a high arc and struck from above.
For the next three years Joe practiced with his musketoon in the mountains mastering the trajectories of a howitzer, careful to let himself be seen only from far away. He moved at night and never slept in the same place twice, a phantom figure in a bright green jacket and buckled shoes and a flat red hat whom the farmers of Cork, with their sure knowledge of pookas and banshees and trooping sly fairies, quite naturally came to refer to among themselves as the biggest of the little people.
Then too he had to scavenge for food at night and that added to the legend. In the morning a farmer would find a chair in an outbuilding out of place and four or five potatoes missing.