Disclaimer: I own the background characters, thus far. The canons belong to Rowling. The scenes and setting belong to Ireland/Northern Ireland and her rich past. The lyrics to the song Sunday Bloody Sunday belong to the band U2 (big shocker).
Author's Note: I think this chapter deserves a bit of a disclaimer for the content. The opinions expressed in this chapter are not the author's per se. They are meant to reflect the background, history, characters and setting of the time. But I will say that I believe the evidence speaks for itself. Most of the racial and cultural slurs in this chapter were actually taken from history and first hand accounts themselves. Some names have been changed for convenience's sake.
Chapter Two
The Troubles
Broken bottles under children's feet
Bodies strewn across the dead end street
But I won't heed the battle call
It puts my back up
Puts my back up against the wall
Sunday Bloody Sunday…
"The Bogside was once a street, now it is a condition."
-Seamus Deane
"Mae, set another place for dinner," Gerald Lupin said to his wife as she loitered hesitatingly at the door they had just come in from. She passed a picture on the wall: the Bleeding Heart of Christ. I looked from her back to Remus and his father. But the father was staring at the son, the son was staring at me, his expression a wash of hidden reactions. "I think your friend needs an explanation," he said somberly. Remus nodded.
I stood where I was. I remember The Bleeding Heart of Christ and the sounds of Mae busy in the kitchen, but I can't recall Remus' exact wording, so stunned I was by the truth he had no choice but to share with me.
Maybe I was sitting. I remember blinking. I registered Remus' lips moving and their must have been sound coming from them, but everything was mute, but not mute…deafened by the noise from the kitchen which seemed to grow to drown all other sound. Numb and deaf. That's what I remember.
I knew there was another explanation for the bruises, other injuries and hospital visits. His parents were lovely and patient, his mother doted on him particularly. The explanation that he had for me was not something that I wanted to hear.
"Would you like to telephone your mother?" Remus asked.
I blinked again and this time I seemed to hear what he has asked. "Why?" was the first thing out of my mouth, I guess it sounded suspicious. Remus winced slightly and stood.
"Because," he answered. "I figured once you knew what I really was you would want to get out of here. You can stay for dinner. I don't care. I'm going to bed now anyway," the haggard boy said with a look to his father and a frown pulling his features down. He gave me one last fleeting glance before retreating down a crowded hall. I don't think I answered his invitation. I stared down the hall after him and I can understand why he had taken my reaction as fear.
A minute or two…or five later I looked back to see Gerald staring at me in turn. "Is he…?" I tried. "Does he…Is it this bad every time?" I asked in a weak voice.
His sad eyes went to the ground. "It's worse when he's under stress. School's been tough for him, being out so often."
I shook my head fervently. I had seen his digression, noting it with worry. My worry was not lightened, but added to with this additional knowledge. I found my voice and asked other things that were on my mind. "Is that why he has to go to Hogwarts? Because he wouldn't fit in at any other school?"
Gerald nodded once and said, "You see, Jack-In-The-Box," he smiled when he said this and I was visited with an earlier memory of my father, before the funeral day. Gerald was unlike my father in frankness. He spoke in measured tones and used economy with his words. He was not a bank president with a wealth of good humor and vocabulary at his disposal. He was a docks worker with a family that depended on him, respected him and obeyed him. He probably had a tolerable education and an earthly way with words, but he was always sincere and genuine when he spoke. Every word had weight. "He has opportunities that were never opened up to anyone else in this family. He has a great love for his country and its people…and his faith, but he does not understand that God has set aside something special for him." He nodded again and looked to the ground, "O'course, he is also made to suffer a great deal more than the rest of us. That's just God's way of preparing him for rough work, is what he told me. I love my son, you see. And I'm thankful plenty for the friend he's found in you. He won't fit in at that school anymore than he would in a school for educating the regular children, so his headmaster has seen to it that he can attend and keep his secret burden. But I had my doubts that he could keep it for long." He heaved a sigh and looked at me.
My eyes were wide and I was thinking. My mental processes were being unforgivably slow and I must have stared for a while before I noticed that I was. When I spoke my voice was hoarse and slow as well. "Has he…he hasn't hurt anyone before, has he?" I regretted the question immediately. But Gerald answered with a slow nod and leaned forward on his elbows. His hair was graying at the temples but I only noticed that just now, he had circles under his eyes. The sight of him bent and worrying over his child reminded me of my mother and Cassandra. But she was dead already and my mother's worry was in vain. The thought was distracting and I pushed it to the side. I blinked to clear my mind's slate and stared with renewed zeal at Remus' father in front of me.
"Just once. It wasn't bad. But he won't forgive himself either." Gerald stood when the door opened admitting two girls, one looked to be about my age or maybe a bit younger. She had enchanting curls the same color as Remus' hair and she regarded me immediately with suspicion. I stood next to Remus' father as she was pushed through the door by another girl much older. She also had blond hair but it was tied back away from her face in barrettes and she looked very much like bookish Remus in a plaid sweater vest. She smiled unlike the younger girl and said to Remus' father, "Who've you got there, dad?"
Setting down a few bags on the counter in the kitchen she came back into the room for her answer and laughed when Gerald had told her the truth. Leveling cold blue eyes on me her face was wiped suddenly of the laugh and she glared at me. "Well, now that he knows about our little Remus, we'll have to kill him." She looked up suddenly to the man who was evidently her father and added, "How many people know he's here? Can we dispose of the body quietly?"
"Catherine." Her dad's firm but humored rebuke that stopped her play-acting untied the knot that was forming in my stomach. I was unaware that this was a joke and felt sheepish when she began to laugh and ruffle my hair. The little girl with the curls still stared at me with unflinching earnestness. "He's terrified enough as it is."
"What's your name?" Catherine asked in another laugh.
"Sirius," I said faintly.
"That's a name?" the little girl said folding her arms over her chest. I only nodded.
"Well, Sirius, it's good Remus has a friend that cares as much about him as you do. It's a first," Catherine said and moved into the kitchen to unload the bags.
"It's not exactly as if I have a lot of friends either," I admitted to another smile Catherine gave me, leaning through the kitchen door.
The smaller girl, still staring, now incredulously asked as she shifted her weight from her right foot to her left, menacing in a Catholic school uniform, "What's your excuse, do you transform into monsters on the full moon as well?"
I blinked and was taken aback by her firm and commanding tone. I tried to think if Remus had mentioned a little sister with a sharp tongue. He hadn't, I was sure I would remember her if he had.
"Margaret, dear," Mae's voice came from the kitchen. "Come wash your hands for dinner and leave the poor boy alone."
She left with one evil glance backward and I was angry that this girl appeared frightening to me.
Remus didn't show up at the table for dinner and I can recall feeling very strange eating dinner with four complete strangers. Catherine was nice enough. She was a student of political science and women's studies at the University of Belfast. I nodded, affecting an air as if I knew exactly what women's studies entailed, though if I was asked I feel I might not have persuaded my audience of my thorough knowledge. In my mind, I arrived at the conclusions that it may have been some sort of advanced cooking classes. It made complete sense to me that she would seek to supplement that rather base study with something more challenging and stimulating to her mind which was already beginning to impress me as brilliant. Catherine explained to me that she was home for the March.
She said March, as if it should naturally begin with a capital M and that I should very well know what it was, like I knew what women's studies was. After all, I lived in Belfast, didn't I?
Sitting at this table with Gerald silent and eating slowly with his head down in a manner completely solitary and pensive, Margaret next to me waiting for the chance that I might slip up and show my ignorance so that she may point it out to me, Catherine, all good nature and encouragement, and Mae who seemed content to pile food on my plate and nod pointing with her fork and telling me that I was far too skinny.
For all of the interest this scene provided, I would have liked nothing more than to sit beside Remus in his room, whether he was awake or not. I was desperate for him to know that I wanted to help him. He needed only to show me how I could. Mae had written to my mother and assured her that my spending the weekend in Derry would not be a problem. I wanted to stay at least until Remus was awake so that I could apologize. It was hard to eat when I thought about him and my rash decision to save him from his abusive family and how it all ended up with him forced to tell me a truth that he had no intention of sharing with me. I would have respected the gesture of that confidence had it come voluntarily. But from then on, though we would trust each other, I would always test the bonds that were built out of that forced confidence and regret that I hadn't trusted Remus enough to tell me in his own time.
Remus had another sibling, a brother named Aidan, younger than Catherine but also old enough to be of college age. He had come through the door as Mae finished clearing the table. I watched as he leaned over and dutifully kissed her cheek and sat down next to Margaret at the table. Mae piled food in front of him as she had done with me and I studied him as he remained unaware of my presence in the adjoining room. There was really only one word to describe him: cool. His hair was nearly down to his chin, darker than that of his sisters' hair and he wore glasses like Remus, managing at the same time to make them fashionable with his hair and the denim jacket he wore. I remember seeing him for the first time. I was sitting quietly on the sofa beside Catherine listening to the agonizing tail of my mistake, jumping out of Remus' trunk and attaching myself to Gerald, threatening him with all the force that a twelve-year-old could muster. Aidan must have swept into the kitchen thinking that I was his younger brother and that it would be perfectly logical for Remus to be home from school in the middle of the term.
I suppose that it would be a little frivolous to imagine that you were someone else. It never gives one satisfaction and it can only transport one efficiently into an alternate life if one's means of imagination were sufficient enough to carry the fantasy. I was very adept at fantasy, however. And I was immediately carried away by the persona that Aidan exuded. I imagined what sorts of things he got up to during the day, consorting with his super street friends, looking keen in his denim jacket and generally drawing fantastic attention to himself with his wild hair that hung in his eyes in strands of dark golden. What more could one hope to accomplish in this fantasy? I couldn't think of one thing more. I did decide that there was something that super Aidan could never and would never do: play the violin. Maybe he played the guitar for a rock group. Maybe he was a pub keeper who could twirl liquor bottles like they do in the American films.
Margaret stared over the spine of a book she was reading, glaring at me as I stared off in wonder at what Aidan did all day in his denim jacket. I didn't notice that she was staring until she shut her book and leaned over, telling her brother that Remus had brought a friend home, and that my name really was Sirius and that I thought that was okay. On a side note she added that I looked more like a Thomas, she would have named me Thomas. I was indifferent to the fact that Margaret wanted to rename me. But Aidan looked over his shoulder while shoveling some potatoes into his mouth and smiled. "That's a pretty spiffy name you got there. You go to school with Remus, do you?"
I nodded. An intelligent answer would have escaped anyone faced with the image of the person that they most wanted to become, and realizing for the first time that your ideals are personified in a complete stranger.
"Tell me then," Aidan said, clearing his own plate and moving into the room, leaning against the door frame of the small kitchen. "What kind of magic have you learned? You're a second year, right."
Another nod and I felt that if words didn't come soon he would think I was a mute.
"Have you learned any sort of healing yet?" Aidan persisted.
"Maybe in a year or two. We're restricted," I choked out.
Aidan smiled. "I want Remus to join the Knights of Malta with me when he's old enough. He could be dead useful if he knows magic for healing."
And his persona grew larger.
"What's the Knights of Malta?" I asked.
Catherine snorted and pushed herself up from the sofa beside me. "You asked for it, Sirius," she said as she disappeared down the hall. A door shut and Aidan took her spot on the sofa beside me. "We're paramedics. You'll see us in action on Sunday."
"Oh no he won't," Mae interjected. "He will not be on the March. What would his mother have to say about that?"
I gave a small smile. The March. Now it sounded more glamorous than when Catherine had said the word. I wanted to see what would be going on Sunday now more than ever.
Aidan continued with enthusiasm, "We train with the Red Cross." He said the words with respect. This was a passion for him. "We usually only take care of minor things like gas and rubber bullet wounds." He shrugged and smiled. "But I heard at the pub that the soldiers have ideas of cracking heads. We'll be ready, but it won't be us whose heads get cracked."
"Oh, nice talk," Catherine said peeking around the bend in the crowded hall. "Margaret, bed time." She turned back to Aidan and said, "I would think that you, being a paramedic, would encourage peace, Aidan."
"I do," he said with a disarming smile and hands raised in surrender. "But there's only so much that peaceful demonstrations will get you. I'm not saying things will turn violent. But if they do, we'll be ready. That's all I'm saying."
Catherine looked at him sideways and retreated behind Margaret.
Aidan gave me his bed at the other side of the window from Remus'.
Remus was asleep and hidden under a quilt, resembling nothing more than a lump.
I watched Aidan take some clean linens from the closet. He winked and closed the door. I hoped that the sofa was not too bad. I didn't think I would be displacing someone from their bed when I decided to rescue Remus. Now I was feeling foolish again. But the feeling was soon forgotten when I heard the door to the front room open with a slow creak and the lock slide discreetly home again. Rolling over minutes later I saw Aidan move across the street to meet a slim figure under lamp light, half-hidden. I wondered if there was a curfew imposed in Derry like the one in Belfast and I opened the window to lean out of the dark room to watch him.
"You might as well come out. There's a better view here," a snide voice whispered quietly down to me. I saw feet first, bare and dangling from the roof, Margaret's golden curls framing a face that was scrutinizing me from a perch on the parapet of the gently sloping roof of the flats.
She offered a hand unceremoniously as I crawled out to the edge. It really was an easy climb, as if the sill and the roof were made at a distance to accommodate such acts as spying on the streets below. Sitting next to her I immediately asked her what it was she was doing up here. Shrugging, Margaret answered me, "I am always up here. I sleep, but not too much. I like watching them. They're nice together."
"Are they out here every night?" I asked. The figure under the light was clearly a girl.
"Just about," Margaret answered. "There's a curfew and it's dangerous, but it's also romantic."
There was a bite to the wind that left a lot of convincing that it was in anyway romantic. "Why do they have to meet outside? It's cold."
Margaret took a moment to think, never taking her eyes from the pair. "She's Protestant."
"So," I said immediately.
Margaret shook her head slowly. "So. It's everything. Her family wouldn't allow it and ours is just as proud. The Meehans own the docks."
"Is that supposed to mean something," I said, prickling either from the cold or the chill of her cool indifference to me.
"Yes. Both Aidan and father work at the docks. Aidan is saving up for medical school at Dublin's Royal College of Surgeons. He pays for Remus' schooling. I can tell from how your dressed that you have no idea what that means, so just trust me. We would be ruined if they were found out."
"I'm not dumb, you know," I said quickly. I felt I would have to point that out right away or she would continue talking down to me.
She turned her indigo eyes on me and I felt a lump forming in my throat. "I don't think you're dumb, Sirius," she admitted finally.
A wind whipped her hair up briefly and its scent was caught on the air. There was nothing else to remember but the feeling of the wind, the scent of her hair, the fact that neither of us knew what it was that we were doing, more of a childish re-enactment of a more complicated scene taking place on the streets below us. And with no more force or movement than two moths bumping together under lamplight, her lips brushed mine as she leaned into me. There was no learned grace about that kiss. If there was any grace to it, it was in the childlike clumsiness. I remember the trembling of her fingertips on the cold skin of my forearm, a light and unsure touch. But it excited me perhaps more than the kiss itself. I pulled back and she opened her eyes again.
The first words I could grasp on to were, "Why did you do that?"
She shrugged in that indifferent way that I was coming to enjoy. "I thought it would be exciting." She brushed a windblown strand from her face and looked to the street where the couple was splitting, the Meehan girl walking up the street and Aidan back to the flats. "Better go," Margaret urged.
Caught at surprise, I had nothing to say. I did want to believe that she kissed me because she liked me. But maybe it had been for excitement, maybe for both of us.
A crisp and clear Sunday broke over the Lough Foyle and found me standing with Remus on its banks. The clouds were high and the wind cold, but there was just enough sun to make glitter dance along the surface. I was listening with my shoulders hunched against the slight stinging wind as Remus spoke. He was saying that on clear days you could see straight to Scotland from here. His grandmother had told him that.
I remained quiet and snatched glances at Remus when he looked down at his shoes in the sandy beach, or when he had raised his head to find the mainland across the water. He was as tired looking as when I saw him yesterday evening when he finally woke up and he still had a livid bruise on his brow.
"You can ask me. I won't lie," he said without looking at me.
"Ask you what?" I said feigning innocence.
He leveled his intense gray eyes at me, lit from the morning sun. Narrowing them was answer enough.
"Does it hurt?" I asked, biting my lip and wishing I had phrased my question better. Mother said that it was always a sign of good breeding to choose your words with the least offense to others. I guess my later obsession with speech was fostered in comments like that from my mother, and looks like the one Remus was giving me now.
His expression melted into resignation and I indulged the idea that had it been James or Peter who had asked, Remus would not have answered.
"Yes," he said looking again across the river. "Sometimes I'm at hospital or in bed for much longer than two days. It's worse when I get upset for some reason."
"What were you upset about?" I asked.
The bells of morning Mass were ringing in the distance. The sound was punctuated by hammering. The hammering was deadened by the sound of heavy trucks moving over the bridge. They were military vehicles and Remus seemed more interested in watching them pass than answering me. But I waited patiently for him to remember what I had asked.
"I was worried that you were becoming more suspicious of me," Remus said matter-of-factly, shoving his hands in his pockets before turning his head from the bridge and saying, "Come on. Mum will be looking for us. We have midday Mass. Have you ever been to Mass?"
I shook my head and followed him from the river bank. The trucks were roaring over the bridge and past us.
The events of that day changed my life. The people who shared those events stuck with me like a Proverb. I did not understand what was happening at the time, my life afterward had been this and other Civil Rights protests, mostly in my own hometown of Belfast, also in other places…but never again in Derry. I found I could not come back here.
The climate at the time I had been there was charged and ready for disaster. I walked through the streets of a powder keg with Remus ignorant that the whole thing would blow in hours, that my innocence and naïveté would be pulled away from me, many others—Remus', too.
In an area four miles inside the statelet of Northern Ireland, divided off from Ireland proper in the 1921 partition, Derry had since remained a hotbed of Unionist-Nationalist conflict. Broken down into easier terms you could simplify it as being a Catholic-Protestant war.
I was ignorant of what went on in my own town. In Belfast the commons were divided 67 per cent Protestant/Unionist to 33 per cent Catholic/Nationalist. In Derry it was more divided than that in local elections: twelve seats to eight. Around me was an enchanting backdrop that the Irish have always been exposed to but have never taken for granted. The Inishowen Mountains lay a gray backdrop on the port and the town while on the streets lined with derelict buildings, some bombed out shops and crowded flats like those at Rossville where Remus' family lives, swept now with a cold wind and a housing shortage. Unemployment was the order of the day here, four miles shy of the Republic of Ireland. Rent strikes were a common occurrence.
The Civil Rights platform sought the reunification of Ireland but through the consent of the majority, rather than the gun. But by the 1970's the instruments of repression and discrimination, namely the armed police of the Royal Ulster Constabulary and the Northern Ireland parliament at Stormont and its unassailable Unionist majority were an immovable road block to this progress. The Catholics and the Protestants of Northern Ireland were as entrenched as they ever were.
In response to the ineffectiveness of the Civil Rights movement, the Irish Republican Army was an active and dangerous force that demanded attention and got it this Sunday. But even among the IRA there was a divide. The Provisional IRA under Sean Keenan was an extension if the Civil Rights movement and was often criticized for being too non-violence. The Officials were the Collinsists and were comprised of militants, ex-soldiers, and young radicals.
It was these young radicals and the threat to private property (Protestant, that is) that brought out the most notable figures of the day: the British Paratroopers.
There was a feeling here that resonated at Stormont in Belfast that the peaceful march would escalate with the presence of the Officials and their young hooligan force. There was a concern that violence would arise from the IRA in response to some arrests and beatings in the week prior. Stormont Prime Minister Brian Falkner approached the possibility of conflict with more than force, he was sending combat trained Paras into a civilian march with SLR's and high velocity bullets, more than riot gear, and far more than the IRA's ancient Thompson Submachine Guns could match.
I looked to my left and to my right. Midday Mass was frightening. There was some sort of secret code that I wasn't let in on. I was in awe of the learned staging of the service. Everyone spoke at the same time, crossed themselves at the same time, sat at the same time.
Remus must have sensed my apprehension. Either that or he noticed that I was making a fool of myself.
"Just sit, stand and Amen when everyone else does. Amen," he added when the priest finished his speech in Latin.
"How will I know? Everything's in another language." I crossed myself with the opposite hand as everyone else and elicited some looks.
Leaning close to my ear Remus whispered, "And use your right hand to cross yourself. People will think we have an Orthodox in our midst."
My head spun with the bureaucracy of it all.
Father O'Neil who I had just met outside before the service started came through the large doors of St. Eugene's, ominous and urgent. He approached the podium and whispered to the priest who spoke in Latin, Father Daly, and everyone watched and whispered themselves.
Speaking into the microphone on the podium, Father Daly said, "Those of you who are planning to attend the march I urge extreme caution." A din buzzed around the lofty room and the priest had to hold up his hands for silence. "It is extremely important that we proceed directly to the Bishop's Field. Those not attending the march, return to your homes. I speak specifically to the young in the congregation today when I say, please do not provoke violence. This is to be a peaceful demonstration. When we close Mass do not be alarmed to see the cathedral surrounded. The soldiers are here for our protection, do not forget."
"Right," Aidan whispered to Catherine. "See you out there."
"Be careful," Mae warned in her worried motherly tone.
Aidan smiled reassuringly and flung his paramedics bag with its fantastic red cross on a white background over his neck and one shoulder and pushed past her and Margaret to the aisle. His friend Charlie Glenn, who I had also met outside, stood two rows behind us and left.
After a prayer for the marchers and generally for all of the citizens of Derry, Gerald turned to Remus and said, "Go straight home. Take William Street with the crowd and don't dawdle in alleyways. Hold Margaret's hand and look after Jack-In-The-Box." He winked at me as Remus nodded his understanding. I wanted to feel indignant. I didn't need looking after. I was just as old as Remus was.
We left Catherine and Mae and Gerald at the Bishop's Field where they were congregating for the march. There was a lot of excited talk about the Paratroopers coming to crack heads and Bernadette Devlin all the way in from Belfast.
I wanted to see where the Knights of Malta were gathering but I was pulled away from my search when Margaret, holding her brother's hand, said, "You better take care you don't get lost." She took my hand as well and Remus pulled both of us off the field and down the sidewalk on William Street.
The sound of hammering had stopped a long time ago. But now I knew for the first time what the hammering was all about. As we passed Francis Street and then Lower Road I saw large wooden barricades up in the middle of the streets blocking the way. There were catches in the tops of the barricades to hold guns and men in riot gear manned them with disinterested looks.
I placed my free hand in my pocket and Margaret held tight to the other. I was pulled from the corner at Lower Road and the barricade onward. As we went further up William Street the marchers were growing fainter, the sound of Bernadette Devlin's voice weaker, the singing "We Shall Overcome" drowned out by the riotous noise of shouting and crashing. A group of young men were congregating around a bigger barricade at the end of William Street just past a complex of flats. Rocks and cans and other debris one would find on a street, or at a construction site were being hurled into the air at the soldiers at this barricade. Some of them clutched at large automatic weapons.
There were police and soldiers in Belfast on march days. But I had never seen such severe and steely expressions before. I remembered thinking that these weren't normal soldiers. They wore red berets and painted their faces with black. I thought that it was silly to do so because they would run the risk of ruining those bright and spiffy hats. They were in combat dress and generally more stern-looking than the soldiers at the other barricades.
As I was watching them Margaret pulled away from me and we were divided by a group of running teenagers. A canister flew past me. Ducking, I was thrown back against the wall of a derelict building of brick. Stunned, I looked around for Remus and Margaret and found only a swirling crowd, shouting, running, throwing anything they could find. The canister was hefted by a screaming boy a little older than me. I watched, pressed against the wall of the building, as he threw the canister back at the soldiers behind the barricade. The crowd was emptying out onto a nearby waste ground. The angry boy in front of me was a mirror of twenty or more just like him. At odd intervals, he and his comrades would stoop to pick up paving rocks broken into pieces, building materials and other projectiles and hurled them forward at the soldiers.
Another gun was leveled at the crowd from the barricade and a canister fired. This time it hit the boy in front of me with the force of a missile, between the eyes. His nose was set at an odd angle. I remember him falling to the ground. Another youth yelled, "You've killed him."
I saw that he was not dead, but writhing on the ground, bleeding from the nose.
The canister was not a faulty one this time. It exploded next to the boy it had injured and in a puff of white smoke engulfed the crowd. Near the explosion, I was driven to the ground—not by the force of it, but by the effects of it.
Coughing and hacking, the back of my throat felt as if it were raw and bloody, while my eyes stung with the peppery gas. I blinked tears and tried to see through the gas. There was nothing immediately in front of me but the injured boy still on the ground, the white cloud of gas and the sounds of choking and gasping.
An arm grabbed out around me and I was almost driven again to my knees with his weight. It was an older man with graying hair. His eyes were red and he kept coughing the words "I can't see. Those bastards have blinded me. I can't see." Many people in the crowd were clinging to each other in an effort to remain standing and to escape the ever widening area covered by the thick white and peppery smoke.
Stumbling to support the old man, the one arm not around my shoulders was thrashing about in front of him, I went the way that they crowd was headed, out into the open area of the waste land with its gray rubble landscape.
I would learn in my later research that CS gas, ortho-chlorobenzal-malonutrile, had not been tested in human cases when it was employed on the Sunday march in 1972, or in the marches previously. Through collaboration and an investigation that I was involved in during my career in civil rights law, Dr. McClean (the leader of the Knights of Malta and present on Bloody Sunday) and I had uncovered the dangers of this drug and many other ineptitudes and acts of exceeded violence on behalf of the British Military. 1105 cartridges of this gas were fired into the crowd on that one January day alone. The Dupont Labs later found that chlorobenzene, a well known industrial poison with known harmful effects on the brain, liver and kidneys, and malonic acid, used in American industrial plants, had caused a number of worker fatalities: the two should not be mixed. Unknown and potentially harmful side effects.
The air was thick with the cloud of peppery white. The crowd, now swelling in ranks to more than one hundred, was coughing and sputtering, no choice but to inhale the harmful toxins. I among them felt the effects immediately and sought refuge, burdened with the weight of an elderly man who had all but collapsed on me. I moved with the crowd down Rossville Street.
The civil rights protestors and the large coal lorry that had brought Eammon McCann and Bernadette Devlin through to the spot where they had planned to make their speeches were congregated at the other end of the Rossville Flats near Free Derry Corner. The bullhorn in Devlin's hands employed in warning the crowd of inflamed youths not to push the soldiers into action, she shouted her non-violence ideals. The stewards with their white armbands were ineffectual in calming the tempers of the more militant marchers who rushed forward toward the number fourteen barricade on William Street shouting, "What about the Guildhall? We were to meet at the Guildhall."
The plans had changed evidently. The March had not been sanctioned by the Stormont parliament and the soldiers had been sent in. The meeting place had been improvised at Free Derry Corner, and most were not keen on being corralled around like cattle in their own city.
"On to the Guildhall, men!" one youth said as he hurled another rock into the line of soldiers along the barricade.
I did not follow them.
I was only keen on getting away from the smoke and peppery sting of the gas. Down Rossville Street and to the protestors on the lorry seemed to be my best shot. Remus' parents would be there and they could take me back to Remus and the others.
Rubbing my hand against my watering eyes the fingers came away bloody. My tear ducts were bleeding. It was increasingly harder to see.
The old man hanging onto me fell.
I let him lie where he was. It was easier for me to move away from the crowd that was angering the soldiers and join up with the civil rights protestors.
But as I approached the bend at the junction of William Street and Rossville Street, I was bitingly aware that I was no safer here than under the cloud of gas and shouting threats of the youth mob and the Green Jackets.
Here the student protestors and the "hooligan element" had build a barricade out of rubble and building debris, dividing them from the soldiers about fifty feet away. I could see the civil rights protestors beyond that. They had turned to watch with horror as the young mob and the soldiers, the fierce elite Paratroopers with their self-loading rifles, CS gas, rubber bullets, and extremely destructive high velocity bullets. Under all of that gear—far more than riot gear—there was a façade of formality, under the surface brimmed a palpable hatred for the Nationalist, Catholic Irish.
The face off is as old as time among the Irish Nationalist and her captors.
Here the ages old conflict arose anew.
My eyes experienced it all as it unfolded.
Here it was the same as on William Street, throwing taunts and rocks. The hardened Paras were staring down a growing opposition. There was tension in the air that would soon be shattered by bullets.
A man next to me pushed me flat against the gabled wall of the flats and said, "Watch out when the stoning stops. That's when the snipers open up."
But the snipers weren't the issue at the moment. I only half registered the man's comment as he left me to join the throng again.
"English bastards, come out and fight!" Someone in the crowd shouted. "Come out and behave like men. Come out and fight!"
I prayed that the soldiers would not come out and fight.
Heart pounding, I pressed myself against the wall of the flats, unable to move.
In front of the rubble barricade, in the midst of the roar of hatred and defiance that a crowd of fifteen thousand could muster, sat a boy of about nineteen. I watched him through stinging eyes.
In a brown corduroy jacket and a black woolen cap, a handkerchief tied around his nose and mouth so he could breathe through the gas, the teenager sat staring defiantly at the Paras.
I looked between him and the Paratrooper who held his glare.
The Para went to one knee and leveled his gun at the crowd. The corduroy jacket and woolen cap that I watched through the crowed did not take his eyes from the Para.
The crowd surged back from the barricade for a moment as the soldier fired and in a wave moved forward again to the barricade with stones and taunts.
More rubber bullets were fired and a few men were hit, a couple of boys raced after stray rubber bullets to save as souvenirs. Throughout the volley of about seven rounds, the young man sat defiantly at the barricade.
A water canon moved around behind the rubble barricade and began spraying the rioters on the other side with a purple dye and a forceful spout as from a fireman's hose. Above the sound of the spray were the shouts, "Irish Pigs!" and "English Bastards!"
The men in the camouflaged jumpsuits, red berets and blackened faces shifted, looking to me as if rubber bullets were too good for this lot.
Staring at the boy on the ground, sitting with his legs folded under him, the soldier holding his SLR nearest the barricade, close enough for me to hear him, shook his head. "All I want is a reason. Give me a reason, boy."
He shifted again and dropped to one knee, leveling his rifle.
A crack and then a cry from behind me. I pushed myself away from the wall to see a boy lying on the ground. Two men rushed over to him. "Where were you hit? You're alright, son. Just a rubber bullet," they said and began to pick him up.
Twisting around, looking around, I saw the soldier that shot him. He stood again and shouldered the rifle.
The men helping the boy to his feet dropped him in shock. There was blood.
Meshing with the purple dye that dripped down the face of the men and the boy was a deep red stream of blood. It flowed from his nose and chin, seemed to be dribbling from his mouth.
"Real bullets!" a women cried from a window some immeasurable distance above me, apparently watching the riot transpire from her balcony. "They're using real bullets!"
"Jackie," one of the men near the boy was saying. He crouched low, holding the boys head. "Can you hear me, Jackie? We'll get you some help."
I saw the wound now. It was in his neck. As he sputtered and coughed it gushed more and more.
The other man that had dropped him when they'd seen the blood was running in frantic circles.
"Ma'am, a telephone? We need an ambulance," the one holding dying Jackie shouted up to the woman on the balcony above me.
I pushed away from the wall when she didn't answer. I was in no way involved in the scene, but witnessing it, I felt I had a stake in whether Jackie lived or died. Did she have a phone? Why wasn't she answering?
Stepping out into the street I looked up to see her wringing her hands. The sounds of reigning blows behind me made me spin around. An old man, the one that was clinging to me on William Street, was being beaten by the butt of an army issue rifle. I stepped across the street slowly. Not knowing what I could do for him, not knowing why I was even approaching, I moved forward anyway.
"Sirius?" I spun around.
Charlie Glenn with his hair like Aidan's and glasses and the Red Cross bag too saw me in the street and said, "Get down! They're shooting live rounds. You'll get hit."
He was talking to me while tending to Jackie.
Coughing and choking on his own blood, the boy shook, his face turning blue, or was that the dye from the water canon?
Father Daly from St. Eugene's was also bent next to Charlie, saying the last rites as the boy, Jackie twitched and paled, face smeared with blood, the look of a frightened child on the face of a boy older than me.
"Where's Aidan?" I asked. Moving away from the old man being beaten by a soldier and toward the only bit of familiarity in whirling chaos, Charlie that I met at St. Eugene's this morning, I heard the woman call down to the soldier saying, "You've just killed that boy. Are you going to kill that old man, too?"
I stopped.
The soldier stopped.
Looking at Jackie, rigid, eyes open, Charlie, head bent, bloody hands on the boy's forehead and Father Daly, eyes closed in prayer. He was dead.
Another shout rang through the noisy crowd.
Charlie shouted to me to get down.
A large chunk was blown from the wrought iron of the balcony the woman had been standing at. I turned to see the Para bringing his rifle back to his shoulder. The old man was no longer under blows.
"Take care you're not next!" the Para shouted to the woman on the balcony stiff with fear.
A hand was on my shoulder and I jumped.
Charlie, heaving his bag over his head and one shoulder, pushed me back up against the wall with several other people, masks of terror, his bloody finger in my face saying, "Stay here. I'll find Aidan. But don't move. Understand?"
I shook my head fervently.
Another shot rang out as Charlie crossed the street to Father Daly. He ducked and glared at the soldiers behind the barricade. Some of them laughed.
Crouching alongside a woman in faux leather boots and a skirt too short for the weather, and the bloody old man who'd been the victim of the soldier's brutality, I watched Jackie's body as it was lifted from the street and into the doorway of a nearby flat where more people where crowded away from the gunfire.
I wish I could say that was the end of it, or that I don't remember anymore.
I looked desperately to the building across the street, where Jackie's body was taken by Charlie. I looked at the building I crouched beside. I couldn't even remember if this was the street Remus lived on. I ducked beside the woman's leather boots and began to be angry with Remus and Margaret for leaving me. They must have known where they left me.
On the barricade three more people where hit.
I knew that they hadn't been hit with rubber bullets. There was more blood.
I was beginning to hate the color. Purple from the dye and blood.
They lay behind the barricade in a pile. One was moving his arm and yelling for help. A man beside me, for a moment I thought he looked like Gerald, moved away from the building and toward the barricade. Another shot rang through the crowd and he was driven back against the wall almost atop of me.
Getting up, he moved again at once. There was a fusillade of shots to accompany his movement and I pressed myself harder against the building.
Desperately, I looked to the boys out at the barricade. One was lying with his face up to the sky. He was young, not much older than me. Clutching at his stomach, he yelled, "Help me! I don't want to die alone."
On the ground another boy about the same age inched toward him. The rubble piled up offered him a modicum of security. He reached the boys, held his hand out to the one shouting and clutching his stomach. The other two were not moving.
A shot from the building above, maybe the roof. The boy that had moved out to hold the hand of the other one as he died, so he wouldn't be alone had been shot. The back of his head was gone.
I saw no more of it. My face was buried in the jacket of the woman with the leather boots.
"Oh, Jaysus!" she said as she grabbed hold of me instinctively as I had grabbed her. The feeling of her nervous hand stroking my hair as I hid from the gruesome scene in the folds of her coat was comforting.
I only looked up again when I heard the shouts of the man who was trying to move from the building where we were to the barricade.
"Shoot me, bastards!" he shouted.
Peeking around the woman's coat, her tight grip reassuring me, I saw him walk slowly out and hold his hands up, fingers spread to show he was not carrying a weapon. He was shot anyway.
"Shoot me, bastards!" he continued without missing a step. The bullet had torn through his right shoulder. Blood seeped through his jacket sleeve. He looked half crazed.
I hoped the soldiers behind the barricade thought so.
"You've killed my son!" he shouted, moving slowly, hands still raised at the barricades. Kneeling by the bodies of the four, now none of them moving at the barricade, he placed one hand on the forehead of the boy who had been clutching at his stomach.
"Oh, Jaysus!" the woman holding me whispered. She grabbed me tighter around the neck. I was watching the group of paramedics being held at bay on the other side of the street by volleys of gunfire.
That was when the order was given and the Paratroopers began to move, climbing over the rubble barricade. A rifle was leveled at the wounded father of the dead youth at the barricade. He was made to stand and then arrested.
"Come on, love," the woman urged me. "We have to move. You don't want to get picked up by that lot."
She took my hand and I was grateful to have someone looking after me. But I was reluctant to leave the spot where Charlie told me to wait.
The approaching trucks and soldiers spurned me into action and I was pulled along by the woman following the crowd through a car park that was empty and into an alley behind some flats. Between a garbage can and a fence I was crouched beside her and Father Bradley.
With the distance of shouting and the roar of the army vehicles over the barricade, I could also hear Bernadette Devlin in her bullhorn: "Sit down! If you sit down, they won't shoot you."
I dismissed it. Did she know what they would and would not do?
One young man coming to take refuge behind the garbage pales with me and the woman and Father Bradley fell face first, his knees didn't even buckle as a shot rang out somewhere from the upper part of the alley.
The look exchanged between Father Bradley and the woman assured me of nothing. We all knew that it would be minutes before the two Paras at the end of the alley were on us.
There were more footsteps from behind the fence and the sound of scaling on chain-links. Hopping lightly down behind me, hefting his medical bag with the Red Cross, Aidan appeared and placed a hand on my shoulder.
"Sirius," he said breathless.
I spun around with a wash of relief but could not speak.
"Charlie told me you were out here."
More shouts from the other end of the alley and more scaling on the chain-links. We were joined by a girl in white robes, slightly bloody, blond pigtails, a medical bag as well.
"He's been shot," I said finding my voice, pointing to the youth bleeding just beyond the curb.
"Stay put. I'll be back," Aidan said. "You can stay with Father Bradley. He'll take care of you."
I looked to the father who nodded earnestly and then twisted around in his crouched position to search for an escape.
"Come on Ebhilin," Aidan said. The girl followed, both crawling.
The soldiers were taking their time, obviously worried that they would fall under IRA snipers if they were careless.
Funny, though, there had not been many sniper shots from anonymous gunmen—and there wouldn't be in subsequent reports—all accounted fire came from the soldiers. No non-issue weapons had been fired.
Another ringing shot had come so close to me that my hearing became cotton in my ears and I was dazed.
Aidan fell forward on the youth they had been trying to save.
*My source for the Bloody Sunday events is Those Are Real Bullets: Bloody Sunday, Derry, 1972 by Peter Pringle and Philip Jackson. (Grove Press, New York: 2000). For more information I also suggest the movie Bloody Sunday (2002, Paramount).
A/N: This story is by no means finished. The next chapter will wrap up Bloody Sunday and continue with the story of Sirius' school days and later life. I hope you do take the chance to read up on the outrageous events of January 20, 1972 in Derry. Its really is quite a story—a story that I by no means give justice to.