Then the same man did something unexpected, he burst into violent tears, and threw himself across the body of his fallen comrade, and let out a thin roar of grief that had never been heard before nor since, though it was a little temple of grief.
'Go on easy, John,' said one of the others. 'We're in the town though the bone-yard here is dark and quiet.'
But the first man continued to wail, and lay across the chest of the dead man like – I was going to say, like a girl, but hardly that.
At any rate I was up to the neck of my school blouse in horror, of course I was. My father had lost his calmness and was walking up and down quickly between the fireplace and his chair, with its few flattened old cushions of once-red cloth.
'Mister, Mister,' said the third man, a long thin boy I had never seen, who looked straight off of a mountainy holding, with trousers in no manner reaching his ankles. 'You've got to be burying him now.'
'I can't bury a man without a priest, not to mention the fact that I expect you have no plot bought here?'
'How would we be buying plots when we're fighting for the Irish Republic?' said the first man, wrenching himself from his tears. 'The whole of Ireland is our plot. You can set us down in it anywhere. Because we are Irishmen. Maybe that's something you don't know anything about?'
'I hope I am an Irishman too,' said my father, and I knew he was offended by the remark. Truth was, Presbyterians were not much loved in Sligo, I hardly know the reason for it. Unless it was that in the old days there was a lot of that proselytising going on, with a Presbyterian mission to the west and the like, which though it had not been a raging success, had yet gathered a number of Catholics to the fold in a time of terrible hunger and need, and thereby increased the level of fear and mistrust among the people.
'You have to be burying him,' said the third man. 'Isn't that John's little brother there on the table?'
'This is your brother?' said my father.
Suddenly the man was absolutely quiet, still.
'It is,' he said.
'That is very sad,' said my father. 'That is very sad.'
'And he has had no priest to absolve him. Would it be possible to have a priest fetched for him?'
'It is Fr Gaunt is the priest here,' said my father. 'He is a good man, and I can send Roseanne to get him, if you wished.'
'But she's not to say anything to him, just for him to come here, and she's not to speak to anyone on her way, and by no means to speak to any Free State soldier, for if she does, we will be killed here. They will kill us as easily as they killed Willie on the mountain, that's for sure. I would say to you, we will kill you if she speaks, but I am not sure if we would.'
My father looked at him surprised. And it seemed so honest and polite a thing to say, I resolved to do as he asked, and speak to no one.
'And anyhow, we have no bullets, which is why we stayed in the heather, like hares, and didn't stir. I would we had stirred, lads,' said the brother of the dead man, 'and risen up, and thrun ourselves at them, because this is no way to stand in the world, with Willie dead, and us living.'
And the young fella broke down again, pitifully weeping.
'Look it, have no heed to that,' said my father. 'I'll have Roseanne fetch Fr Gaunt. Go on you out, Roseanne, like I say, and run to the Parish House, and get Fr Gaunt, good girl.'
So I ran out into the windy, winter yard, and through the avenues of the dead, and out onto the top of the hilly road that sails down into Sligo, and hurried down there, and finally reached the house of the priest, and in his little iron gate, and up the gravel, and throwing myself against his stout door, painted as green as the leaf of an aspidistra. Now I was loosed from my father I wasn't thinking of curling irons and hair, but of his very life, because I knew those three living men had seen horrors, and those who see horrors may do horrors just as bad, that is the law of life and war.
Soon thank God Fr Gaunt showed his thin face at the door, and I gabbled at him, and begged him to come to my father, that there was a great need for him there, and would he come, would he come.
'I will come,' said Fr Gaunt, for he was not one of those people that shy away from you when you need them, like many of his brethren, too proud to taste the rain in their mouths. And indeed going back up the hill we had the rain against our faces, and soon his long black coat was glistening wet the whole front of it, and myself also, and for my part I had put on no coat, but showed only wet legs now to the world.
'What person needs me?' said the priest sceptically, when I led him in the gates of the graveyard.
'The person that needs you is dead,' I said.
'If he is dead, is all this great hurry necessary, Roseanne?'
'The other person that needs you is living. It is his brother, Father.'
'I see.'
Inside the graveyard the stones were glistening also in the wetness, and the wind was dancing about among the avenues, so you didn't know where the rain would catch you.
When we reached the little temple, and walked in, the scene had hardly changed, as if the four living persons and certainly the dead had frozen in their spots when I went out and never moved. The irregular soldiers turned their young faces on Fr Gaunt as he stepped in.
'Fr Gaunt,' said my father. 'I am sorry to call you out. These youngsters asked that you be got.'
'Are they holding you prisoner?' said the priest, affronted by the sight of guns.
'No, no, they are not.'
'I hope you will not shoot me?' said Fr Gaunt.
'There was never a priest shot yet in this war,' said the man I called the third man. 'Bad as it is. There is only this poor man shot, John's brother, Willie. He is quite dead.'
'Is he long dead?' said Fr Gaunt. 'Did anyone take his last
breath?'
'I took it,' said the brother.
'Then give it back into his mouth,' said Fr Gaunt, 'and I will bless him. And let his poor soul go up to heaven.'
So the brother kissed his brother's dead mouth, returning I think the last breath that he had taken at the moment of his brother's death. And Fr Gaunt blessed him and leaned into him, and gave the sign of the cross over him.
'Can you absolve him, Father, so he will be clear to go to heaven?'
'And has he done murder, has he killed another man in this war?'
'It is not murder in a war to kill a man. It is war itself only.'
'My friend, you know very well the bishops have forbidden us to absolve you, for they have decided that your war is wrong. But I will absolve him if you tell me he has not done murder, as far as you know. I will do that.'
The three then looked at each other. There was a strange dark fear in those faces. They were young Catholic boys, and they feared this priest, and they feared to tell a lie about this matter, and they feared that they would fail in their responsibility to help their comrade to heaven, and I am sure each of them was racking his brains for an answer that would be truthful, for only the truth would get the dead man to paradise.
'Only the truth will serve you,' said the priest, making me jump that he had echoed my own thoughts. They were the simple thoughts of a simple girl, but maybe that Catholic religion is simple enough always in its intents.