A Long Long Way by Sebastian Barry Page A

bloody bucket. Who put that bucket there? Isn’t there hooks for those buckets?’
    He had a hollow face of uneven eyes and a twisted nose like a damaged bolt, and two queer little yellowshot eyes like the eyes of an ill-intentioned snake.
    ‘Listen,’ said Willie, deeply embarrassed, ‘I’ll fetch it out for you.’
    It was in a very sorry state. The paper of the Bible was that thin sort they put in Bibles, to fit in all the stories and suchlike.
    ‘Look it, I’ll give you my own,’ said Willie Dunne, though his own had been a present from Maud, with the same thin paper, and stuck in everywhere the letters sent to him, and a sacred photograph of all of them, made in a shop in Grafton Street before his mother had died.
    ‘Ah, don’t mind it,’ said the soldier.
    ‘What?’ said Willie. ‘You can’t still be wanting this one?’
    Now Willie Dunne held up the other ruined little Bible pragmatically in his right hand, the urine dripping off it. He could see that every page had been claimed by the wetness. Now the soldier also was gazing at it, as if reconsidering his reaction. The first instinct of a comrade was to be agreeable, because the life of a soldier was chancy, and this fellow after all was probably a new man. Nevertheless, the plain vision of his Bible seemed to overcome him suddenly, and he sat up roughly in the bed and swung out his stubby legs.
    ‘You fucking midget, you,’ he said.
    ‘What?’ said Willie Dunne.
    ‘Ah, you manky midget, you,’ said the man, now ferociously, and because his mouth of teeth was bad, he spluttered. What a change round. He had a Cork accent like an illness. And who indeed was he calling a midget? He wasn’t much taller than Willie.
    The little man launched himself from the bed and put his two hands around Willie Dunne’s neck and squeezed. It was so sudden Willie might have laughed if he hadn’t been choking.
    Now most of the other poor men were awake and a few were ignoring the first event of the day and were dutifully setting up their shaving gear, and the doors were being unlocked and shortly the barracks orderlies would be bringing in the tepid water and the like. Willie Dunne was not fighting back one ounce and his face was going red now, and the other little man working away to strangle the living life out of him.
    Suddenly the Corkman stopped and looked at Willie Dunne, as if they were sitting at a bar and sharing a drink.
    ‘What?’ said Willie again, half dead.
    ‘They won’t let me go to France if I kill you,’ he said, smiling now.
    ‘Definitely not, no, they won’t.’
    ‘And you’ll give me your own Bible then?’
    ‘I will, if you want.’
    ‘Get it for me, so.’
    So Willie stooped to his pack and reluctantly ferreted out his fine Bible and looked at it and offered it to the man.
    ‘Ah, you’re all right,‘ said the man, laughing. ’I’m not taking your Bible, even if you did make a hames of my own.’
    The man smoothed his hollow cheeks with a hand and looked about for to see if the hot water was coming. And Willie put the Bible back in his pack.
    ‘Do you have a bet on?’ said the man, at ease now, in his shirt, the sleeves rolled up. ‘I have a little be on ’All Sorts“.‘
    ‘How’s that?’ said Willie.
    ‘The Grand National,’ said the man, surprised.
    ‘Oh, yeh, no, I don’t.’
    ‘The Grand National is the poor man’s friend,’ said the man, ‘and I’m the poor man.’
    Willie Dunne laughed. It was a fair joke.
    ‘Kirwan’s the name, Jesse Kirwan, Cork City.’
    ‘William Dunne, Dublin,’ said Willie Dunne, and they shook hands, despite the general presence of urine on Willie’s greeting hand. ‘Who are you with?’
    ‘The Dublins, like yourself. All the lads I came up with are mostly. We might have joined the Munster Fusiliers, but we decided to be awkward.’
    ‘Come on, the Dublins,’ said Willie lightly.
    ‘Come on, the Irish,’ said the little man. Then he turned on a sixpence and said, ‘What