I spoke too soon.

Yesterday, while writing some background into Carli's Kills and thinking I'd probably finish it before I got back onto A Place of Safety, I found the way into Brendan's horror at seeing people killed during Bloody Sunday. It happens three days before his sixteenth birthday, and he starts the day out excited about that. He's quit school and has a job and is feeling very much like a man.

When the march begins, he's with his friends, a couple of whom are veteran rock-throwers at Aggro Corner. That spot, where Waterloo and William connect, had become the location of an almost daily back and forth between Catholic teenagers and the British Army. The boys would throw stones that just bounced off the soldier's shields, and the soldiers would fire rubber bullets at them, which weren't normally lethal but could hurt. It was almost like a play date.

So when Brendan hears the first gunfire from the Paratroopers, he thinks they're crackers left over from Christmas and he thinks he'll have some for his birthday party. Then people start running and hiding and rushing about, and he sees a couple boys close to his age shot in the back and fall and bleed. He is almost shot but his best mate, Colm, yanks him out of the way, and the bullet whips past his ear...and he still can't believe what's happening.

When he finally gets home, he and his mother have a moment of agreement at the stupidity of what just happened that is quickly shattered when he says he's thinking of leaving Derry. Each has chosen a path -- her, pushing to fight violence with violence; him, seeing the British are using an old playbook that has never worked and will only bring death and destruction. The only thing that keeps him from leaving, right then, is his love for Joanna.

But even that is being tested by this.