The Color of the Sun

by David Almond

  “Jimmy Killen?”

  “Aye. He’s been knifed, Mrs. Myers.”

  “Hell’s teeth. Who by?”

  He can’t tell her that. He bites into the pork pie. It’s delicious, the way the meat and the jelly around it mix with the pastry, the way it clags together in his mouth.

  “I dunno,” he says.

  He takes another bite. He checks his change and tries to buy another pie, but Molly says he can have it for nowt. She holds it out to Davie and bows her head like it’s an offering.

  “That’s for the info,” she says. “Jimmy Killen, eh?”

  “Aye.”

  “I know how crazy that lot get. But this?”

  She shakes her head.

  “What’s the world coming to?” she says.

  Davie shakes his head.

  “Dunno,” he says. “It’s all a mystery, Mrs. Myers.”

  She smiles.

  “It is that,” she answers.

  As Davie turns away she asks him.

  “Where you going?”

  “I’m not sure, Mrs. Myers.”

  “Is it safe?”

  “Safe?”

  “Is it safe to be wandering off when there’s a murderer in town?”

  “But he could be anywhere, Mrs. Myers.” He looks to the back of the shop, where the massive meat fridge is. “He could be hiding in your meat fridge, Mrs. Myers.”

  She gasps and her eyes widen in shock.

  “In me meat fridge?”

  He can see she’s trembling.

  “Shall I have a look?” he says.

  “Aye. Take this knife, though, eh?”

  She puts a long butcher’s knife into his hand. He goes to the fridge door. He knows the murderer probably won’t be in there, but he feels his heart thudding. Mrs. Myers is gasping. His hand trembles as he reaches for the handle. He doesn’t know whether to ease it open dead slowly so that the murderer suspects nothing or to yank it open suddenly in order to terrify him. And he doesn’t know what he’ll do if he does find the killer in there. Will he go wild and attack Zorro with the knife? Will he turn around and run out of the shop howling? Will he just stand there and scream in terror? In the end he slowly inches the door open. He raises the knife in preparation but then he lowers it again. Nothing. The fridge is big enough for one or two murderers to be hiding in it. But all that’s inside is a single dead skinned pig hanging from a hook.

  “Nothing,” he says to Mrs. Myers.

  “Nothing,” she sighs. “Oh, thank you, son.”

  She puts her hand out for the knife. For a moment he wonders if he should borrow it, and keep it in his sack, in case he needs it during the day. But she takes it from him.

  “You be careful as you go on,” she says.

  “I will be, Mrs. Myers.”

  He goes out again with the two pies in his hand. He finds himself thinking about the dead pig in the fridge and the dead pig in the pies. Once, in the church hall, he was with a group of kids talking with a visiting priest about animals and souls. Patricia Knott asked if animals had souls the way that people do. She said she was sure her cat had a soul. The cat was called George. She said she could see the soul shining through George’s eyes. She said it looked almost human. The priest glared. He said that Patricia was wrong. He told her she must not think in that way. It was heresy. Beasts are not spiritual beings. They are lesser than humans. Only human beings have souls, with all the blessings and the perils that this brings. Only human beings are made in the image of God.

  When they left the church hall, Patricia groaned.

  “What a load of bollix,” she said.

  Davie looks at the inside of the pie. The meat’s dull gray and pink with bits of white in it. Fat, he supposes. The jelly’s like glue. He takes another bite. If the pig did have a soul, where would the soul be now? Is there a heaven for pigs? he wonders. And if there is, do they run free and wild in it like ancient boars did in ancient forests? Or do they just lie about and sing to God like dead humans are supposed to do? He stops himself. Why’s he thinking like this? He stopped believing in Heaven when he was eight. It sounded like a truly boring place.

  Then he finds himself wondering about the pig’s blood. What happens to that when a pig’s made into pies? He sees the piles of black pudding in Mrs. Myers’s window. Aye, of course, that’s what blood turns into. Makes him feel sick. He hasn’t liked black pudding ever since he discovered what it came from. Not like his granddad. He eats platefuls of the horrible stuff. And white pudding too, which is even more disgusting, ’specially when it’s splattered with Hoe’s Chutney.

  Then he gets to wondering about pigs’ bones, but he stops that as well. That’s quite enough of that, he tells himself. Stop thinking. Stop wondering about everything. Just walk.

  He finishes the first pie as he walks. He puts the other one into his haversack. He heads uphill across the square and on to Felling Bank past the Co-op and Dragone’s coffee shop. Dragone’s is empty now but pretty soon it’ll be full of excited, scared, astonished, gasping people, talking about Jimmy and about murder and death over pots of tea, cups of coffee, ham sandwiches and Dragone’s knickerbocker specials. Davie licks his lips. Knickerbocker specials. Ice cream and cold custard and bright-colored jelly. So delicious.

  Eddie Mace is opening the doors of the Bay Horse.

  “There’ll be many a pint sunk today,” he tells Davie as he passes by.

  “Will there?” says Davie.

  “Aye, there always is when there’s a big event or a special occasion.”

  He laughs.

  “And you don’t get a much bigger occasion than a murder.”

  “Don’t you?”

  “No. Remember the Windy Nook poisoner? Sorry, ’course you don’t. Before your time. You’re far too young. She killed three husbands with rat poison. There was serious drinking for weeks when the news of that got out.”

  He laughs again.

  “Aye, those were the days, son.”

  Davie walks on. He does know about the poisoner. She lived in a bungalow just down the street from his grandma. Yes, it was before his time, but his granddad told him about it one night after he’d been to the Black House. She seemed a canny little woman, his granddad said. Neat and tidy. Won the Women’s Institute jam-making competition three years in a row. Had a cheerful hello for everybody. Handed sweets out to children passing her front gate. She buried husband number three in the back garden and planted leeks on top of him. “Who’d have thought it?” he said. “Who knows what’s going on in someone’s heart?”

  Davie walks on. No, there’s no way of knowing what really goes on in somebody’s heart. And there’s no way of knowing where a murderer might hide, or which way he went. So you may as well go anywhere. And, anyway, if the killer is Zorro Craig, why would he want to kill anybody else except for a Killen? And Davie isn’t Davie Killen.

  Suddenly, there’s Wilf Pew from Wellington Street again, limping downhill. How the hell did he get here? How come he’s always on the move?

  “I telt ye, didn’t I?” says Wilf. “There’s many a body worse off than you.”

  “Is there?” says Davie.

  “Yes, there is. You’re not blimmin’ dead, are you?” He leans toward Davie like he’s having a proper look. He pokes him in the chest as if to check he’s real. “At least, I don’t think you are!” He laughs. “Or mebbe you’re alive and dead all at the same time.”

  Davie rolls his eyes. What’s he supposed to say to something like that?

  “Mebbe we all are, come to think of it,” says Wilf.

  Davie decides not to ask Wilf what he means. He wants to move on.

  Wilf holds his fruit gummies out. The top one is bright green. Davie doesn’t take it.

  Wilf lifts it up toward the sky.

  “Look at it, man!” he says. “Look at the sun shining through it and you could take it and put that blazing color deep inside yourself and you blimmin’ hesitate?”

  He takes out
another, a purple one, and lifts that up too.

  “What’s wrong with you, lad?” he says. “Don’t you see the blimmin’ beauty of it?”

  Davie does. He sees how the fruit gummy glows at the tips of Wilf’s fingers beneath the sun against the vivid blue. Wilf holds it out to him like a priest holding out a communion wafer. Davie shrugs and puts out his hand, and Wilf places it on his palm. Davie raises it to his mouth. He feels the fluff on his tongue as he starts to chew, feels the smoothness of the sweet, the lovely gumminess of it.

  “Is it good?” says Wilf.

  “Aye.”

  “Aye. And now it’s all inside you, all that purple, all that weird light.”

  He pushes the green gummy into Davie’s hand.

  “That one’s even lovelier,” he says.

  “Thank you.”

  “Good lad. Crack on.”

  And as quickly as he’d appeared, he’s gone.

  Davie chews the green gummy and mixes it in his mouth with the remnant of the purple gummy. It’s so sweet, so delicious. He thinks of the multicolored light inside himself and the thought pleases him. He cracks on. He continues uphill. He already knows he’ll write a story about this day. It’ll be called “The Death of Jimmy Killen” or “The Body in the Rubble” or “Blood on a Green Checked Shirt” or “The Soul Within the Pie.” Or maybe he’ll call it after something else that’ll happen, something he can’t possibly know about yet, as the day drifts by.

  On he slowly goes, and as he goes he starts to think that maybe he himself is living in a story. If that was true, he thinks, then there’d be no way of knowing it, would there? All he can do is walk and think that he’s the one that decides to do the walking.

  He loves wandering uphill like this, away from the busyness and clutter at the center. As the gummies dissolve to nothing but an aftertaste in his mouth, he thinks of what folk would see if they watched him from below. They’d see the haversack with the things he carries bobbing at his back. They’d see somebody leaving everything behind. They’d see him getting smaller and smaller, and after a while they’d see nothing at all. He’d just be a memory, an afterimage.

  He thinks of becoming lost, of becoming invisible, of disappearing from the world and becoming nothing at all. He thinks of the world becoming a world without a Davie in it. The world will be as it was before he was born, or as it will be after he’s dead. As he’s pondering, a voice calls out.

  “Now then, Davie!”

  He’s startled from his thoughts. It’s the young priest, Father Kelly. He’s on a bench by the pathway, with his ankle-length black cassock draped upon his body and the white collar round his neck, with the bright sun pouring down upon him.

  “Hello, Father,” Davie says.

  He’s a man with a quick laugh and quick feet and a light voice as he traipses through this little town. The people of the parish are fond of him. They look forward to the day he’ll take over the parish from daft old Father Noone.

  “Come and sit with me a moment, son,” he says. “And don’t call me Father. How can a man like me be any father at all?”

  “OK, Father,” says Davie.

  They both laugh.

  “The name is Paddy,” says the priest. “Paddy Kelly, from the hills of blessed Kerry.”

  Davie goes to sit with him.

  “’Tis a grand bright day in the Kingdom of the Lord,” says Paddy Kelly.

  “It is,” says Davie.

  The priest raises an eyebrow.

  “Is it?” he says. “The Kingdom of the Lord? What bollix, eh?”

  Davie laughs.

  “That’s a grand word, Davie, don’t you think so? Bollix?”

  “It is,” says Davie.

  Davie rolls the word around his mouth. Bollix. He likes the feel of it on his tongue and lips and breath, and the sound of it in his mind. It’s weird how the words that some folk say you aren’t supposed to say can sound like the loveliest words of all. Nowt. Canny. Howay. Bollix.

  “I’m glad that you agree,” says the priest. “Bollix. Better than all that Latin drivel that pours forth from me gob.”

  The priest tugs at the white collar around his throat.

  “This damn thing,” he mutters.

  He leans back on the bench and lets the light of the sun pour down upon him. Davie thinks of moving on, but he sits there and lets the light pour down on him as well.

  The priest’s a handsome man. Davie’s mother has told him that. It was he who said the Mass at the funeral. He said that the life of Davie’s dad had been a good life. He talked of the deep love between husband and wife. He said that love makes our lives worthwhile. At the graveside real tears flowed from his eyes.

  “Sometimes,” he said afterward in the Columba Club, as the Doonans began their singing and playing, “we have to wonder what kind of god could take our loved ones from us when they are so young. Sometimes . . .”

  Mam waited for the priest to go further, to bring some more explanation or comfort, but the priest just sighed and stopped his words. He turned away and was quickly dancing before the Doonans with his head thrown back and his vestments swirling. He danced all the way until the Doonans’ set was done, even when the song was sweet and slow.

  “It’s the Irish in him,” Davie’s mam said. “They like to lose themselves in it.”

  She danced herself, to one of those slow sweet tunes, and Davie knew that she lost herself in the dance too, that she imagined her husband dancing at her side, that she saw him there beside her, brought back to her for a few short moments by the music that he knew and loved so well.

  “You’re having a walk?” says Father Kelly, opening his eyes.

  “Yes, Father. I mean, Yes, Paddy.”

  “Good lad. Where you headed?”

  Davie shrugs, points uphill.

  “Dunno, really.”

  “Like the wandering pilgrims, eh?”

  Davie shrugs again.

  “It’s what I loved to do meself, back when I was a lad in County Kerry. Ah, the mountains, Davie, and the sun and the rain, the greenness of the grass beneath me feet, the yellow in the hedges, the blueness of the sky above me head, those distant jagged islands in the blue, blue sea . . . What about the dead lad, by the way?”

  “The dead lad?”

  “The one that’s down below.”

  “Jimmy Killen?”

  “Aye, that’s the one. Still dead, is he?”

  “Aye. I think so, anyway.”

  “That’s the way of things, I suppose. Despite all the hopes we might have, eh? They say he was murdered, don’t they?”

  “Yes.”

  “Ha. We’ve been killing each other since the start of time, and where does that get us to?”

  “Nowhere.”

  “Exactly. Nowhere. Anyway, Kerry. The priests told us lads that God loved Kerry before any other place within the world. Maybe they say that about this place. Have you ever heard it said that God loves Tyneside before any other place within the world?”

  “No. I don’t think I’ve ever heard anybody saying that.”

  “Nevertheless, it is a grand place, don’t you think so? It is a kind of heaven, don’t you think so?”

  “Yes, Paddy.”

  “Good. And they said that in a bonny place like Kerry, God might look down and speak to good and bonny lads like me. So I grew up thinking that I might hear the voice of the Lord in my little tender lugs. Did you ever think that, Davie?”

  “Think what?”

  “Did you ever think you might hear God speaking to you, in this bonny place of yours?”

  Davie ponders. No, he has never thought so, though he has often thought that there is a presence or a spirit all around him here, that even the stones and the trees and the grass and the air are alive and that they speak to him in some weird way. There’s something in the light, the birdsong, the many beauties that are natural to this place, in ordinary little things that sometimes seem miraculous.

  “No,” he says. �
��I did not.”

  “I’m pleased to hear it. Anyway, I must have been about eleven when they asked me, ‘Has the Lord been speaking to you, little Paddy Kelly, as you wander over this green and past this yellow and below this blue?’”

  “And had he?”

  “Now that’s the thing. I thought he had, Davie! When we’re young, every bliddy thing is speaking to us. Don’t you find that, Davie? I see you do! And this of course was back in blasted Ireland when God and his priests were everybliddywhere. Bliddy. That’s another good one. Don’t you find that?”

  “Yes. Bliddy is very fine.”

  “So I said, ‘Yes, I think he has,’ and they said, ‘Now this is a grand thing, Paddy Kelly.’ And they asked me, ‘What did God say to you?’ And you know, Davie, I suddenly realized I didn’t have the faintest clue what God had said.”

  “So what did you tell them?”

  “Ha! I told them that God had asked me to walk with him. I told them that God had said he wished me to be always at his side.”

  He’s shaking his head and laughing softly, but there is torment in his eyes. He tugs again at the white collar around his throat above the black.

  “I knew what they wanted, you see,” he says. “I knew the kind of things God was supposed to say. And it delighted them. They said I had been chosen! And they said, ‘Now we will take you away from the green and the yellow and the blue, and we will show you how to dress in black and turn into the priest that you have been called to be by God himself.’”

  Davie enjoys the sounds and rhythms of Paddy Kelly’s voice. He tries to imagine a joyful lad called Paddy before he was spoken to by God, before he had the vestments on him. It’s not too difficult. The young boy still shines through the young man’s eyes.

  And he imagines taking the black vestments to himself. He imagines them hanging heavy on his body. He feels how they would weigh him down, suffocate him, deaden him.

  “I’m in the wrong tale, Davie,” says Paddy.

  “The wrong tale?”

  “Just look at me. I should be buried in a tale of Darkness, Death and Hell. Should be trudging through some black and gloomy underworld.”

  He grunts like a desperate beast. He moans like a ghost.

  “It’s like I’m as dead as the dead lad down below, Davie,” he says.