Summary

Cushla arrives at school to teach and notes that Davy McGeown is absent. During her lunch break, she learns from Gerry that Davy’s father has been beaten close to death in Belfast by a group of Loyalists. Father Slattery calls an assembly during which he begins to violently impugn Protestantism, a speech that Gerry interrupts by getting on stage and playing guitar. Cushla admires this in spite of herself. That afternoon, she and Gina go to the McGeown house with a bowl of soup and are greeted by Davy, Tommy, and Mandy, the three McGeown children, who explain that their neighbors are in the habit of taunting them and defacing their lawn. When Gina exits the house, she scolds a group of neighborhood children who are gathered outside the McGeown house flicking matches on the lawn. When Cushla and Gina get home...