Exit Unicorns (Exit Unicorns Series) by Cindy Brandner

perhaps even both, one thing leading quite naturally to the other. Instead, he worked his weeks at a brewery and nights he built weaponry for a revolution whose coming he feared. His weekends and evenings belonged to his boys.
    They were good boys, Casey a little wild at times though not getting up to any mischief that a normal boy wouldn’t. With Pat there were no complaints, he was too quiet at times and too hard on himself, but all in all they gave Brian no sleepless nights. It was other things that did that. Casey, by ten, started doing odd jobs after school and on weekends, delivering groceries and then when he was a little older he did cleanup at the brewery after hours, which led to driving forklift in the warehouse and then driving van when he was of an age to get his license, delivering crates of Connemara Mist to the four corners of the country. School didn’t hold his interest but Brian was determined he would see it through. Pat was of a more academic bent and excelled particularly in literature and history. He too took on odd jobs and among the three of them, they managed to avoid the poverty and unemployment that plagued their corner of the world. They weren’t rich and never would be but as long as they ‘had the sky and a bit of something to eat,’ as Brian was wont to say, it was enough.
    Enough until Pat came home from delivering papers one day, black with bruises, blood running from cuts. A gang of Protestant boys had cornered him in a blind alleyway just off a road he’d unwisely taken as a shortcut. Brian, cleaning wounds and checking him over for broken bones had been grateful he’d only been beaten up and nothing more. Casey took a dimmer view of things. Always protective of his little brother he was enraged at what he saw as Brian’s lack of concern. Brian had to physically restrain him from leaving the house, afraid of what might happen to him if he let him out the door.
    “Goddamnit Da’,” Casey had sworn at his father for the first time, “how can ye sit here an’ do nothin’ after what’s been done to him? How can ye?”
    “Casey,” his father had said sternly, “sit down an’ behave as if ye’ve the grain of sense God gave ye. Now look,” he’d continued as Casey unwillingly sat, “what earthly good can it do to rampage up an’ down the streets lookin’ for a bunch of boys we’ve not the slightest notion of? We don’t know what they look like or who they are an’ runnin’ about knockin’ all their heads in isn’t goin’ to help yer brother.”
    “So we sit an’ do nothin’?” Casey, never still at the best of times, had leapt up from his chair. “Why do we live this way Daddy? It’s like we’re hidin’ from somethin’, it’s like we’re supposed to pretend that we don’t know where ye go after we’re in bed. It’s like ye expect us to deny our own birthright.”
    Brian had gone very still and white. “An’ just what might that be Casey?” he’d asked, voice deceptively calm.
    “To live as free men an’ if not that then to fight for freedom every day. Like yer father did,” Casey said, flushed with anger.
    “An’ to die like my Daddy did?” Brian asked, voice still light but the syllables flattened out in a way that, had Casey known his father’s anger, would have warned him to cease and desist.
    “Aye, if one must. It’s better than to live afraid.”
    “Better to die like a dog in the street, with only the one son left to mourn ye? That’s better, is it? I didn’t think our life here together was so terrible but apparently,” Brian gave his son a look that made Casey’s knees wobble ever-so-slightly, “I was mistaken.”
    “Daddy, ye know I mean no disrespect,” Casey began in a conciliatory tone but was cut off by Brian’s black look.
    “No I’m afraid boy that I don’t know that. Ye hint that I’m hidin’ in a corner like some cowerin’ child but ye think I’m so daft that I won’t notice the