Days Without End

Sebastian BARRY, Penguin Books, 2016

Time was not something then we thought of as an item that possessed an ending, but something that would go on forever, all rested and stopped in that moment. Hard to say what I mean by that. You look back at all the endless years when you never had that thought. I am doing that now as I write these words in Tennessee. I am thinking of the days without end of my life.

No one can best imagine the motley crowd that go to make a American town. First you got the have-nothing know-everything goddamn Irish God damn them who will live under leaky steps and count themselves in palaces. Then you got the half-breed Indians mixed with God knows what. Then you got the blacks, maybe they come from Carolina or them places. Then you got.the Chinese and the Spanish families. Where we are is where all these folks come home at night to roost when they’ve done working, mostly at the gypsum mines or doing for the Dutch the other side of town.

You know a Irishman because he has it writ all over him. He speaks some other way and he is not a great man for hair cutting generally and there’s something about a Irish when he is drinking that just ain’t like any other human being. Don’t tell me a Irish is an example of civilised humanity.

Same would be if soldiers fell on my family in Sligo and cut out our parts. When that old ancient Cromwell came to Ireland he said he would leave nothing alive. Said the Irish were vermin and devils. Clean out the country for good people to step into. Make a paradise. Now we make this American paradise I guess. Guess it be strange so many Irish boys doing this work. Ain’t that the way of the world. No such item as a virtuous people.