All Our Yesterdays by Robert B. Parker Read Free Book Online Page A

back and forth across the small space in a half circle. No talking was allowed, but some took place anyway. The older prisoners had learned to speak without moving their lips.
    “Where you from?”
    “What have they got you for?”
    Conn didn’t answer. They often put informers among the prisoners. Silence came easily to him anyway, for he was still deep inside himself.
    There was no organization in the prison population. The British kept them as separate from one another as possible. Occasionally they were put in an identity lineup, brought to the yard, and paraded before anonymous witnesses inside a closed zinc box with a viewing slit in it. A cardboard sign with a number on it was hung by a string around each prisoner’s neck.
    They would try Conn and hang him. He knew that. But first they would attempt to pry the names of others from him. They had not as yet. They were letting him soak in the despair of the jail.
    A priest brought him an egg and showed him how to beat it first and pour his tea over it. It made the tea taste as if there were cream in it.
    To protect themselves from bombs, the British took hostages from the jail. A prisoner rode in each truck with his hands tied to a steel bar above him. In one truck a sign that said, BOMB NOW, was hung around a prisoner’s neck.
    Down the corridor from Conn a prisoner namedKenneally sang loud songs of Irish heroism. Someone next to Conn would chime in with alternate verses. The guards screamed at him, “Shut your fucking hole.”
    When the singing continued, the guards charged down the corridor to Kenneally’s cell. When they got there it was silent. But behind them in another cell the song picked up. And a voice from still another cell called, “I’m here, Mary Ann, I’m here.”
    He was given some books, but he didn’t read them. A newspaper was slipped under his door one day but he let it lie, and when the guards saw it they took it away.
    Each morning they washed in groups of four from rusty enamel basins. The men around Conn talked with each other as they splashed water on themselves in the numbing cold. The guards’ warning to stop talking was continuous and useless. Only Conn was silent.
    Sometimes it would rain and Conn would hear it pelting against the vast walls. It seemed a sound of unimaginable distance, an outside sound in an inside world. The sound of rain would make some of the prisoners weep.
    The men scrubbed the flagged floors of their cells, dipping dirty rags in cold water until their hands and wrists were blue.
    Most of the prisoners around Conn had killed someone or were thought to have killed someone. The wing was called Murderer’s Wing and the guards were cautious. Just before lights-out an orderly came around and tumbled a slop bucket into Conn’s cell. He wouldn’t be allowed out until morning.
    There was neither time nor distance in the jail.Sometimes the walls seemed to shrink in on Conn, and sometimes they expanded airily, as if there were no limit and one could walk forever. He didn’t know how long he’d been there.
    A British officer came to his cell, with a narrow-faced Cockney guard. The officer was round faced and pop eyed with high color.
    “You’ve one chance, Sheridan,” he said. “You’ll tell us the names of the others, or you’ll hang.”
    Conn was sitting against the wall with his knees up and his forearms resting on them. He paid no heed.
    “Stand at attention for the officer,” the guard said.
    Conn didn’t move. The guard kicked him. Slowly Conn turned his head and stared at the guard.
    “You want to die, boy?” the officer said. “Is that it?”
    Conn felt a small jag of excitement trill along the ganglia. It was the first thing he’d felt since the blue door closed. He felt himself smile suddenly. He looked up at the officer.
    “Captain, dear,” he said, “I don’t give a shit.”
    The guard started to kick him again, and the officer put out his hand. He stood staring down at Conn for a moment