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Ballina.”
    â€œWhat brought you down here?”
    â€œTo be closer to the heart of the campaign. These days the Belfast IRA consists of little more than one man with a rifle—and that an old Martini Henry. There’s the Felons’ Club, of course, but …”
    â€œWhat’s that?”
    McCoy smiled. “The Irish Republican Felons’ Association, comprised of what you might call retired Volunteers. They have a clubhouse on the Falls Road. A friend of mine, Gerry Adams, Senior—he has a young son by the same name—was one of the founders. He was shot and wounded by the RUC in forty-two. When the last major release of republican prisoners took place in the north, Gerry and some others decided to organise a place where they could meet and socialise. Talk about old times, tell each other war stories. To thumb their noses at the Brits they named it the Felons’ Association, turning an insult into something to be proud of.”
    Barry grinned. I’m part of this! he silently congratulated himself. This spirit. These men.
    Conversation circled and spiralled while McCoy smoked cigarette after cigarette, listening to his little group talk about old times, tell each other war stories. Watching his charges coalesce
into the band of brothers they must become. Occasionally he threw in a few words of encouragement. “We’re going to have the Irish Republic yet, lads, don’t ever doubt it.”
    â€œI thought we’d been a republic since 1949,” one of the recruits said.
    McCoy gave a snort. “Don’t you believe it. The Twenty-Six Counties are just the Free State under another name, they don’t begin to measure up to the republican ideal. The government down here’s still run along British lines, aping the British Parliament, with British-style bureaucrats determined to preserve the status quo.”
    â€œThat’s what my mother says,” Barry whispered to the man sitting next to him.
    McCoy cleared his throat. “How much do any of you actually know about republicanism?”
    The men glanced self-consciously at one another. The moment lengthened, became uncomfortable. At last Barry spoke up. “My grandfather went to Saint Enda’s College and studied with Pádraic Pearse, so he knew all about Irish republicanism. He told me it began way back in—”
    â€œDon’t be making a show of yourself, Halloran,” one of the veterans interrupted.
    Barry was forcibly reminded of one of Ned Halloran’s favourite sayings: “A man never learns anything with his mouth open.”
    He said nothing else that evening. But he listened—avidly. One of the older veterans made a comment he committed to memory: “Wars are like women. They’re all the same yet every one’s different.”
    When I know enough women I ’ ll test that theory , Barry promised himself.
    A few days later he overheard McCoy remark, “That Seventeen’s a deep one. Doesn’t talk much, but you can tell he’s thinking underneath.” Although it was flattering, the comment made Barry vaguely uncomfortable. It placed him under an obligation to be more serious than he felt.
    Because the Army was fun.
    The Boys often sang to pass the time. While they were trudging across a ploughed field in County Roscommon, painfully negotiating the cart over the broken earth, a tenor from Cork
led a rendition of “Four Green Fields” that brought a lump to Barry’s throat. My fourth green field will bloom once again, said she.
    Séamus McCoy broke the mood by demanding, “Don’t you lads know anything livelier?”
    With a receding hairline and permanently bloodshot eyes, McCoy seemed old to Barry. He was all of thirty-eight. But a common saying was, “It’s the old dog for the hard road.” The campaign in the north promised to be a hard road indeed. Séamus McCoy was determined to have his men well