DESERTED STREETS

 

Deserted streets

Are burning under our feet

The delighted sky’s dark

Raindrops are falling down

All is gone all is left

Behind on a dying ground

One cloudy night and we are

Traveling out of paradise

One misty right and we are

Up for another sunrise

 

by Christian Bass

 

 

Chapter 1

DURING the great famine in 1848 an Irish blacksmith named Duncan O'Brady lived with his wife and seven children in Derry; although he worked as hard as possible they never had enough to live.

On one day, it was a glorious summer evening with clear blue sky and a hot blazing sun; he met Rob O'Doherty, an old friend who invited him to a pub at the edge of the town where the stench of the innumerable corpse burning didn't float over everything. While they enjoyed their pints, they forged plans to get out of the poverty.

Duncan told him that his boss, the owner of Old Smithy, took the money to the bank on every Friday afternoon and he always made it personal and without any guard. Drunk as they were, they decided to rob him.

Thinking of all the money they would have in a few days they went home to their families.

Then Friday noon came, Duncan asked his boss whether he may go earlier because his youngest son had the flu and his wife was afraid of losing him, especially the infant mortality was high in those days. After he made sure that there was not urgent work to carry out his boss permitted it, so that Duncan could meet O'Doherty in a lane nearby the bank. From their position they overlooked the main road.

And yes, at the end of the street, they thought to see him coming up the sidewalk as slow as an old Englishman walked. When he reached the two men who kept themselves hidden in the shade of an empty house they jumped out and dragged him in the lane. Unfortunately, all the things that could go wrong went wrong. What they hadn't expected was that he yelled for help as same as he recognized them despite their hoods drawn deeply on their face and the scarf they had drawn over their nose.

During O'Doherty fought with the old man, Duncan glanced an eye over his shoulder and saw two English soldiers running up the street what he told his friend so that they escaped immediately, just before they got the money but they didn't care about it yet.

For hours Duncan O'Brady hid himself in an empty house at the outskirt of Derry. There he tried to find a solution for this disaster. He didn't know where Rob O'Doherty had escaped, either, because at the end of the lane they ran in two different directions but he was sure to see him again, just as he knew that he had to go home to tell his wife that he made a big mistake.

But when he came home in the late evening he was

Impressum

Verlag: BookRix GmbH & Co. KG

Tag der Veröffentlichung: 07.01.2021
ISBN: 978-3-7487-7073-2

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