Short Story — Hunting Soldiers

Sean French
Aug 22, 2017 · 19 min read
A Mural of Three IRA soldiers

Reeds whistled light and a group of three young men bristled on the cusp of the wild rolling hillside. The sun threatened to peek over the hills and this twilight cast the air in a misty darkness. But the light would only begin to touch the tips of the long yellow stalks of barley in at least an hour. For the time being, the men lay flat and stretched as black shadows pressed in and around where the stalks grow from the soil. They weren’t the only group of young men who had lain around on these isolated hills recently. In fact there had been more and more groups of red knuckled watery-coughed flat-capped young fellas gathering in little outcrops around the area. They stood in the twilight and sometimes lit small fires from dried turf and talked in hushed tones and whispers hands in pockets and keeping the safe distance of casual men in groups outside the pub having a smoke. But, to be fair, there had been young men gathering around these hills for as long as human time existed in the bog. But the others before had been there for different reasons of their own; whether it be after drainsome days in the village to gather breath during miniature walkabouts in this land of spiritual cleansing — as some saw it, or to take time to feel the barley under hand as in romantic poems and feel pure and physical alone in the grass rather than raw and emotional, and many others before had taken refuge out in the fields while fathershouts or mothershouts from firey-lit windows echoed away in their minds in the cold dark whistling land.

But there had been a sudden rise in the numbers of whispering shadowy figures cropping up around the area, especially over the last year. See, despite this being yet another example of young men in the long line of young men gathering in secrecy to have some time away from their peers and mothers and fathers and youngers and elders, this time there was a different reason the young lads had planted their roots at the top of this hill. All over the region electric had been buzzing and more and more young men had taken to the hills, a spark set off in Capitol that shot from person to person and town to town — transmitted in the childlike excitement in the eyes of the ecstatic discussers and legitimised by the hard facts: there was to be war against the oppressor state.

For precisely this reason had Michael taken him and his two friends, well, acquaintances more than anything, out into the hilltops to lay in wake for a patrol.

Michael was the first to awake and unfurl himself from the soil. He was a stocky man of hair and flesh and muscle all packed together to what would be seen as a wellformed solidbodied virile creature. Wiping off the soil that had rubbed into his grey overcoat overnight, he thought of himself as a man born from nature. He liked the idea of being born from soil — a man of the land. With glorious self-satisfaction, thoughts of his underdog heritage whirled around his mind — ‘A turfman bogman glorious coarsing power of ancestralheritagecultureglorynationstate, unfurled from the bosom of the earth and grown from roots and soil’.

Michael looked down at the pale wiry body curled up in multiple coats and blanket below him, a couple of metres separate sat the third member of the trio. This fragile boy at his feet looked like a collection of pale-drained flower innards enclosed within folds of dark cloth petals — but this peaceful sight didn’t calm Michael, in fact he felt such a pang of anger at the delicate sight in front of him that he proceeded to plant his boot into sleeping Eoin’s backside, a dripping wet mud mark left imprinted on the tail of his coat.

“Eoin, ya prick, get up, we’ve things to do”

Michael glanced out across the dark landscape and then went about searching the area: they would need to be sure they were alone if everything was to go to plan. Eoin rolled over sleepily and unfurled himself from the large jacket he had shrouded his small body in to keep warm overnight. His eyes adjusted to the light and he made out the purple-black spectre of Michael looming over him.

“Did you really have to kick me, Michael?” He said wearily.

“Eoin if you can’t handle a bit of muck on your jacket I don’t know how you’re gonna handle later on when we…” He stopped mid-sentence in case there were maliciously listening ears floating in the long reeds around them. “I don’t want any gaylords in my squadron. If you’re upset go take your bony rat skull back to the village and suck your dog’s dick for comfort” Michael spat through the darkness at Eoin and waited for the impending reaction.

“Shut up, Michael”: a timid reply. Michael had already lost interest and was now squinting out into the twilight valley with his hands thrust deep into his coat pockets. Suddenly, Eoin piped up: “You know what is a bit gay though Michael — finding excuses to touch other men’s arses exempli gratia you wiping your mucky feet on my arse.”

“We don’t have time to debate your sexual persuasion big lad — let’s go.” Eoin stayed where he was. “Let’s fucking go, you rat!” Michael smacked Eoin over the back of the head and felt the light skull bounce satisfyingly off the palm of his hand. Then, Michael turned to the third of the shadowy figures. “Pearse, lad, are you ready to rumble?”

Pearse had slept the entire night seated upright at the base of a small bushel. At his name-call, his head silently rolled forward and his eyes opened calmly. Without a word, he rose and walked unhurriedly over to stand with Michael.

“Morning” he said in barely more than a whisper. Neither a timid or a purposeful whisper; more like the kind of noise that just falls out of the gullet due to lack of force or interest.

“Morning, Pearse” Michael nodded his head solemnly towards the tall figure.

“Good morning Pearse, how are you this morning?” Eoin smiled up at Pearse from where he lay wrapped in the too-large overcoat. Pearse didn’t reciprocate the warm greeting but still acknowledged Eoin with a subdued nod.

“Ready to do what we were made for Pearse, huh?” asked Michael. There was a nervous light in his eyes that couldn’t be found in Pearse’s eyes no matter how hard you looked — no matter how hard Michael looked.

“Aye lad, all in a day’s work sure” Pearse said. Michael paused for a second to search over Pearse’s face and then broke away with a grunt of approval “good lad, Pearse”. Pearse’s blank milky eyes stared on ahead. Pearse never said much but still attracted many a goodladpearsegoodmanyourself from people about town.

“C’mon Pearse let’s get going, this cunt’ll follow” Michael said.

“I’m coming Michael” Eoin said.

The two larger men had already begun to stroll towards the brim of the hill, their heavy frames crushing the reeds under foot. Eoin gathered his oversized cloth around him and scurried after their vague shapes in the murk. He gently parted the long slim stalks as his little feet danced through the yellow grass.

Eoin’s petite shoe soles lay resting in the larger mud prints left by Pearse. The two men stood silently looking up into a rustling sycamore tree. Michael’s clambering limbs stuck out from the tree as he scrambled around in the branches.

Michael’s voice came down from the branches. “Christ alive, you can see all our land from here! Sweeping meadows! There’s lambs about! Straight out of the womb! Whole bundles of the fluffy creatures ha-ha!”

Pearse’s milky cow eyes stared blankly back up at him. Michael coughed and looked away. There was a nervous flash of silver in his eyes again and he suddenly began to talk in a forceful low voice. He jumped down from the tree and clicked his neck from side to side.

“There’s nothing more beautiful than the sight of the land you’ve worked with your own hands. That land is ours lads. It may be resting in a different palm right now. But that hand will grow weaker and weaker with the weight of its unnatural ownership. A thieving hand can only hold creatures as wild and free as those lambs for so long. Creatures as wild and free as us. Those lambs will always wriggle out. And we — brothers — today; will wriggle out.”

His face had relaxed throughout the course of his speech and a calm self-satisfaction had returned to his half smile and licking lips. The tongue sloshed in and around the grooves and gyri of his inner mouth — minute pools of saliva beach-broke in between his gums and lips. Eoin had watched timidly throughout and now his eyes lay open slightly wider as he looked at how Michael’s white teeth stood out hard and sharp against his red gums. Michael flicked his intense gaze back and forth between his two spectators like a buzzing insect. He had seen what he was looking for in the two men and, with a curt turn-around on his heel, he marched back into the reeds.

“I’m off to take a shit. Resist the urge to follow me Eoin, I know how you feel about a man’s bare arse.” His voice resonated back without him turning around to face them, his head held nobly as he flattened nature beneath him. Eoin didn’t even register the insult, him and Pearse’s attention had stuck fast to the object dangling in Michael’s left hand: a metal, dangerous, eversoshiny gun.

Eoin lay in the reeds watching a crow circling in the dark grey sky. Its silhouette swept in front of the murky clouds with its edges blurred against the sky. Below, the whites of Eoin’s eyes moved gently in their sockets as they followed the swoops of the crow above. He exhaled quietly. His ribs rested on the reeds he had lain out under him to stop the soil below from rubbing into his coat.

Then — suddenly — out of the silence.

“Hello mister — who are you?”

The voice came from a little boy stood staring at him from a couple of metres away.

Eoin startled and turned to the voice. He stared back.

The boy continued.

“What are you doing here?”

“Just looking at the view”

“Oh”

The boy spat and frowned at him.

“Why you doing that?”

Eoin lay still.

“Nice view”

“You don’t have better things to be doing than looking at the view?”

“No. Just looking at the view.”

“You should be doing something.”
“Maybe I should.”

“You should be working.”

“Who told you that?”

The boy paused and frowned more at Eoin.

“You look like a lazy bastard” The boy said.

“How old are you?”
“Seven”

The two stared at each other again.

“You should be working. My daddy says lazy bastards don’t have any business in our town.”

“Who says I live in your town?”

“Do you live out here?”

“No.”

“Then you live in my town”

“Your daddy doesn’t know everything”

“Does too”

Eoin had relaxed somewhat now but still — nobody should know that he was up on the hill.

The boy piped up again.

“My daddy says men who don’t do work aren’t men at all”. He stood triumphant despite the fact his knobbly pink knees had started to shake a little with the cold.

“Well why aren’t you working then if you’re such a big man?”

“I don’t need to work. I’m out hunting”

“Hunting what?”

“Soldiers”

“Is that right?”

The boy produced a little slingshot from his pocket.

“That’s right”

“Who told you soldiers were to be hunted?”

“My Daddy”

“Your Daddy doesn’t know everything”

“Does too”

“Don’t believe everything your Daddy tells you”

The boy looked at his shoes for a second. Then, with new energy, perked up.

“You’re a soldier aren’t you?!”
“I am not”
“You are!”

“I am not”
“Then why are you so sneaky seeming?!”

“Why would I be out here if I was a soldier?!”

The boy had loaded up his slingshot ready to fire.

“Lad, if I was a soldier I’d be hanging about with other soldiers, why would I be up in the hills for god’s sake?!”

“Shut up, army bastard!”

“Would you fuck off you little shit gimme tha-”

The boy launched the rock at Eoin’s head and cracked him onto the ground. Before Eoin could recover himself the boy was stood over him — rock in hand ready to kill.

Jesus Christ seven years old and already brainwashed Eoin thought to himself and immediately felt uncomfortable.

“Right get off me now lad”

But the boy was already loading up another rock for point blank range.

“Here lad, I’ll let you in on a secret”

The boy paused and looked at Eoin.

“I’m out here hunting soldiers too”

The boy stopped entirely — exited attack mode. However, his little boot was still wedged firmly in Eoin’s neck.

“Well where’s your gun, then?” he asked, a softness in his voice.

Suddenly, Michael burst through the reeds.

“Eoin, you cunt what the fuck are you at?” He saw the boy. “What are you at?! This little shit will get us all killed”

The boy was transfixed by the gun in Michael’s hand. Michael hit him over the back of the head with the butt. A thick red gloop stained the barrel of the gun.

“Nobody is to know we’re here, that’s what I told you”

The boy had climbed to his feet again and was limping off. A trail of little whimpers drip dropped in the air. It wasn’t a game anymore.

“Michael mate he’s only a wee kid”

“Doesn’t fucking matter, he’ll rat us out”

“Michael, leave him!”

Michael held the glinting pistol in his hand at arm’s length. Its nozzle focused on the boy.

Eoin leapt to his feet and tackled Michael.

“Get off me”

“Michael, you’ve gone too far”

Michael hit Eoin with the gun until he fell back and then hit him some more on the ground. The boy had run out of sight by now. Michael stood over Eoin with his boot to his neck, gun in hand triumphantly — posed like a revolutionary mural in front of Eoin.

“If you ever do that again, lad, I’ll cut your fucking throat”.

Despite the threat, Eoin had lost interest now. He knew Michael needed him to see him there with his shining gun daubed in blood showing him who was boss but Eoin felt weary. The boot pressure waned from his neck and he quietly rolled over while Michael walked away in the other direction back to look-out duty. He hoped the boy had ran off somewhere away from Michael — two little boys running around in the fields.

The sun was starting to rise now and the day was getting hot. Animals retracted into the shade as the earth heated and the horizon started to shrink as mirages formed in the distance. Main patrol started around midday so the soldiers would be coming out soon. Eoin sat and looked at the space before the horizon heat-haze: his line of vision grew shorter as the heat increased. Two of the lambs he had seen earlier were playing together in the fields, they chased eachother around and around in the increasingly red light — they carried on for ten minutes and then another ten minutes and then another ten minutes on top of that and Eoin wondered how they weren’t suffering in the heat. The little one bleated at the bigger one before being nudged over by the bigger one’s superior weight; the competition repeated itself again and again with occasionally differing tactics (the little one bit into the bigger one’s wool before being kicked by the bigger one’s hind legs). He watched them chase eachother back and forth, both refusing to give up despite the sweltering heat. Eoin only noticed then after near an hour of watching that behind them in the shade cast by a bushel of reeds lay an even smaller lamb quietly watching the two. You could barely see any of him apart from the dark grey of his shaded wool and the glint of his little beady eyes in the shade. Too small to join in, he sat calmly watching the other two — panting slightly in the heat.

Eoin noticed then that the rapid movements of the other two had ceased and when he looked closer he saw the smaller one nudging at the wool of the horizontal body of the bigger. The lamb’s body must have given out from all the strain. The clump of wool spread out the grass underneath and its little chest lay still. Eoin imagined the wool would be burning hot to the touch at this point. The smaller one lay panting on its belly, using its remaining energy to nudge the still body of the bigger but it didn’t have enough energy to move itself out of the heat at this point. But the shaded lamb’s little body remained in the shade, too weak to help the other move out of the heat and too weak to enter the heat in the first place. Eoin sat staring at the little shaded lamb for long time.

“Come here!” Michael whispered to Pearse and Eoin. Michael lay stretched out at the viewpoint on his belly. He pointed down to a black wagon in the distance slowly shimmering in the heat. Its outline became gradually clearer as it drew nearer out of the mirage horizon. Its steel painted-black body grew more clearly cut against the hot red air and shifting yellow reeds on either side of the dirt road it slowly floated along.

“We’ll just be going along with the plan we talked about earlier then I suppose, Michael?” Pearse asked.

“Aye, Pearse, aye” Michael answered, eyes fixed on the shimmering black wagon.

The wagon finally reached a fork in the road way down at the bottom of the hill. The men silently watched to see if it would take the path leading up the hill towards their nest. The vehicle paused for a few seconds and sluggishly turned to its right up the hill towards the men. The group bristled. The shiny body of this large invasive black insect glinted in the hot light. Its thick body crept up the hill — the soldiers intentionally went at a slow pace to try and spot anyone lurking in the reed-fields.

“Alright lads” Michael whispered. “So — as we agreed — we’ll each take two shots with the gun and then pass it to the next man. We’ve only 6 bullets so that means two shots each and we’ll have finished the chamber. My Da said to try and aim for the windows of the wagon whoever takes the first shots. They’ll most likely jump out at that point so they’ll be fair game at that point for the other two men. We’ll try and aim for the head or torso with our shots as that’s most likely to take their life. Those cars look like they could hold only about two men. The most likely scenario is we’ll have them wiped out before we’ve done shooting — which means we’ll be sweet with no witnesses. At that point we scatter in three directions — if there’s any left we’ll run wherever those remaining bastards don’t run. We don’t mention any names if caught, we don’t talk to anybody about this for at least a month but we’ll meet up back here in a week to regroup and discuss the success of it all amongst ourselves and decide how we’ll tell the story to everybody else.”

The black beetle slowly wound up the road. Eoin saw it would be in the men’s range in a matter of minutes.

“Whoever has the gun will — when we scatter — will dig a hole for it in some memorable special place — some place we all recognise. Then we can come find it again when anybody needs it again in the future.” Michael took out a cigarette and lighter. He took two goes to light the cigarette and kept his eyes focused on the winding black beetle the whole time. His jaw stuck out now as he held the feg in his mouth — Eoin saw the muscles in his jaw clench and unclench as he clenched his teeth between draws.

“Are yous ready lads?” He asked.

Eoin felt the weary feeling from earlier creep back into him.

“Aye” said Pearse.

Eoin lay silently. Now wasn’t the time for thought.

“So who’s taking the first shot?” Michael asked.

“I’ll go for it like” Pearse murmured quietly.

Eoin looked at Michael for a second and he caught his eye.

“Awful quiet there Eoin”

“Why don’t you take the first shot Michael?”

Michael stared at him for a second. The silver glint in his eye was back and the heat had caused rims of sweat to form in the bags under his eyes. His mouth moved slightly as if he was searching for words but he quickly found them.

“Because I want to see the man I shoot hit the dirt”. His mouth was still again now with a slight smirk.

“You take it” Michael pushed the heavy silver gun into Eoin’s hand. Eoin felt the weariness even greater now. It wasn’t fear — not at all — it was the floating numb feeling he imagined an animal might feel. He felt his body move as if in response to some clear environmental pressure that necessitated him to receive the weight of the weapon in his hand. Like a crow adjusting its wings in flight to stay aloft. Or a deer gnawing at berries it found for the nutrition necessary for survival. He felt his actions were predetermined by every single input surrounding him and what he had long thought to be internal self-will and self-conscious thought had really been a timid voice narrating a different story inside his head that was entirely incongruent with that which had been happening to him all along. His body had moved in a predetermined dance that began with his first experiences; the groundwork was laid for him to do his particular dance from house to school to friend to friend to school where he met Michael and from Michael to the pub where they met Pearse and from Pearse to this hill to this patch to this day at this hour at this exact second he lay there and felt that his body had moved in a way completely out of synchronisation with his self his entire life. But what else was he to do but talk to those he meets and make the decisions he makes? For god’s sake, the entire time he had just been keeping himself aloft and eating nutrition where he could get it. His subjective world lay in disconnect with the objective one which actually determines his path through life. He stood up and his mind was silent.

The wagon wound around the final corner and lay within firing range. Eoin fired two shots in rapid succession. The first hit the front right tire of the shining black wagon, a hiss came out from the tire as the car rocked and ground to a slow halt. The second shot had smashed the back passenger’s window.

“Give us a go Eoin, Give us a go!” Michael screamed.

He threw the gun to Michael who lay on the ground. Eoin stood still and watched as five soldiers piled out of the wagon. They pulled out their weapons and pointed at the three men. They had angry focused eyes. Michael fumbled with the gun. Eoin thought Michael’s cigarette made him look like more of a teenager than he already was. None of the soldiers had been touched by Eoin’s bullets. Michael cocked the gun awkwardly and fired once. It missed and smashed another window of the wagon. The soldiers unleashed a flurry of fire and dirt flew up around the men. Earth and air mixed. Soil floated by Eoin’s eyes while space appeared where he had been standing. He felt numb. Eoin let his body fall back behind a tree for cover. Michael’s eyes stayed focused dead ahead now he had the gun. He screamed and stood up, his face was as red as the hot air. The whiplash of the gun pushed his arm back and the bullet ricocheted of the dirt and took off a soldier’s hat. His eyes widened at the closeness of the murder. He cocked the gun for another further shot. The soldiers were running closer now. Michael aimed for the moustachioed head of the nearest soldier. He fired again and missed wildly. His bullet embedded itself in a tree. A soldier’s bullet hit him in the knee and he collapsed on his behind as his kneecap shattered. Eoin stood behind the tree watching him scream out. Michael threw the gun to Pearse. The nearest soldier had reached their nest. Pearse calmly walked out from cover and shot him through the head. The blood sprayed over Michael like warpaint. He looked at Pearse with amazement and horror. But within a second, another soldier arrived and shot Pearse through the head; his body thumped awkwardly into the tree Eoin stood behind. It lay crumpled at the bottom — limbs like a broken insect. The empty gun had fallen from Pearse’s hand and Michael grabbed it with greedy eyes.

Both Eoin and Michael dove in different directions into the thick reeds. The soldier deliberated between the two rustling piles and shot three times in Eoin’s direction. The rustling stopped there.

Michael lay still. He heard the soldier start to move towards him. Then suddenly he heard the trudges veer to the left for a second. He leaped at the chance and hopped through the reeds to the cover of the trees behind. The soldier spun round and fired at Michael but missed. He hopped into the dark trees and kept going into the oily darkness.

“Hello?”

Michael’s voice quavered through the trees. He had reached a small clearing and the shouts of soldiers behind him was only in the far distance by this point. Light shone down in a beam through a gap in the foliage above the centre of the clearing, it made a pool of light in the centre which in concentric circles shimmered into green and eventually into the black shadow of the thick circle of trees surrounding the clearing. A thick trunk had fallen — it seemingly was what had produced this clearing — and Michael sat down on a long twisting branch of it. He was bathed in dark green light at the edge of the clearing.

Sweat ran down his dirty face so he plucked some leaves from the fallen tree and rubbed his face with them. A sharp sting from his knee clenched at his body — he grasped the wet leg in his hands and bit his teeth together.

Suddenly, he heard a rustling in the leaves on the other side of the glowing clearing. Some small creature. Probably a deer. He continued to nurse his dripping knee.

The leaves rustled again but closer now to Michael.

“Who’s there?” he asked. He sat staring at the aftermath of the rustle. He was quiet now.

Suddenly a rock flew out of the darkness and clocked Michael across the head. His vision blurred and he tipped over.

“It’s me, ya army bastard”

The little boy with the slingshot stood over him.

“Yous told me ya weren’t army bastards but ya are an army bastard and I knew it all along.”

“What are you on about lad?”

“I heard all those gunshots coming from the roads the army patrol on and now you’re running off down here — you’re an army bastard if ever I saw one”

“Sure didn’t I hear Eoin say to you earlier that we were the ones fighting the soldiers?”
“Aye well I asked my Da if there were any other soldier hunters around here and he said no there weren’t I was the only one.”

“Your Da doesn’t know everything.”
“Well I know that real rebel army hunting heroes act like heroes. They don’t go round hitting fellow rebels like me and they definitely don’t get shot”. The little boy looked at Michael’s bleeding knee. His eyes were wide with his slingshot stretched for a fatal blow to Michael’s head. Michael stared bewilderedly at him.

“There’s more to it than that…” Michael was starting to feel faint. His head bobbed as he tried to focus on the little boy’s face.

“There is not, my Da says that its just army liers who say the rebels aren’t heroes”

“Lad, you need to get me some help…”
But the boy had already trotted away off toward the edge of the clearing again.

“You’re lucky I let you off this time!” The boy shouted in a sing-song voice. He laughed and fired his slingshot into the air. Michael’s head lulled and his eyes closed but the boy had already skipped off into the forest looking for another soldier to fight.

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