Chapter 2 Summary

This chapter opens in 1949, with the narrator telling of the significance of bonfires in the traditional celebrations of both Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland and of his excitement at seeing them. He goes on to describe the ruins of the distillery where his uncle Eddie had fought in the shoot-out against the police and what he has heard about it. He mentions how the crowd in the streets was shouting rebel songs and the police fired to scatter it, while the IRA gunmen fired single shots from the distillery rooftop and windows in a final protest against the founding of the new state of Northern Ireland. The distillery then exploded and burst into flames and the buildings had been left as ruins ever since.

In the next section the boy listens to his uncles chatting over their card game about how fire...