We Own the Sky

by Luke Allnutt

  I click through every folder, every photo. Jack’s first Christmas dinner, little slices of things he didn’t eat on his Mickey Mouse plate, his paper hat pulled down over his face. Jack making a happy lion’s face in a ball pit; Jack pretending he was in prison, smiling at me through the bars of his cot.

  There is a video of Jack’s Zoo, and I cannot stop myself grinning. I watch as we lined up the animals on his bed and made a hollow mound out of the duvet—a cage, Jack said, for the monkeys. And then Jack kissed my neck, a kiss so tender and so full of love, it makes me gasp.

  There are two videos remaining that I don’t think I have ever seen. They are from the house in Hampstead, taken in the summer, the year before Jack’s diagnosis. We were buoyed with wine and good friends, and kids were running madly and perilously around the garden. Jack was being boisterous, and Anna wanted me to have a word with him. So I did, but with perhaps a little too much wine, I started tickling Jack and soon he was laughing hysterically, and we were both rolling around on the grass.

  A tear falls, then two, three, and they do not stop, but I don’t care who can see me crying on the train, because I am watching us all, sun-kissed with happiness, nothing tainted in our little world. This was our before. Our wondrous before.

  I click on the second video and the time stamp shows it is from the same night, after the guests were gone, as the sun was going down. It was a holiday and our neighbors were doing the same and having a barbecue. They were louder, younger, without children, and it sounded from the noise like they were a little drunk.

  Jack was shouting at the moon, charging around the backyard with Little Teddy and a toy plane. There was suddenly a huge burst of laughter from next door and Jack looked at me, wagged his finger and said, “naughty, naughty” and narrowed his eyes, just like he did when he saw a dinosaur with bared teeth or a knobbly scary tree in a book.

  Jack ran back to the patio and pressed his head onto my knees and then looked up at me and asked who was making the noise.

  “They’re our neighbors,” I said, “they live next door.” Then a pause, Anna saying something inaudible off camera.

  Jack looked up at me with his big wide eyes and asked what neighbors were and I said, “Well, we own this house, and they own the one next door.”

  And then he asked, “But what about the yard, who owns that,” and I said, “Well, we own our yard and we own the house and the patio and everything you can see around us.”

  “Everything,” he said, opening his hands wide as if he had caught the biggest fish.

  “Yes, everything,” I said. “The trees, the walls, your bedroom window, the roof with the birds.”

  The camera shakes slightly, as Anna, out of sight, attempts to stifle a laugh.

  Jack looked up at the sky and then at me. “Dad,” he said, pointing at the red sunset and the moon and the streaks of airplane dust, “do we own the sky, as well?”

  Epilogue

  The sky is tenuous, as if it is going to break, and I know that I will have to leave soon. For now, though, the garden at The Rockpool is too inviting. The sunlight is blazing, and it is the first time in a long time that it has felt this hot.

  The benches and tables are full of people, scattered haphazardly under the trees. Children run in through the wide-open doors, dodging, running rings around the bar staff. Bags of potato chips are fanned open on tables for families to share.

  I am taking advantage of the Wi-Fi to work on my new project. One day, I was reading an article in the Guardian. It was about a little boy with a terminal disease who was using a camera to document his last few months. I remember looking at this boy’s photos and thinking just how much they reminded me of Jack’s. It was their sense of wonder about ordinary things, the shapes and colors we had become so accustomed and indifferent to: the vivid, bright blue of a pen lid; the ribbed texture of a teddy bear’s nose; the digital red glare on the display of an infusion pump.

  So I started Sunflowers—the name had been Anna’s idea—and I asked tech companies to donate high-end cameras to children who were terminally ill. We offered free photography lessons to the children, at their homes, on the wards, so they could learn the fundamentals of form and technique.

  I started small but was soon overwhelmed. Parents, relatives—sometimes dying teenagers themselves—emailed, asking if we could send them a camera. When they wrote, they always said the same thing: they wanted to document and capture their worlds, the worlds they knew they were leaving behind.

  They knew how people saw them: bald-headed, sickly, dependent on others. And that wasn’t how they wanted to be remembered. Because even though their worlds had shrunk, to the confines of their bedrooms, a hospital ward, there was still so much life they wanted to capture, to breathe in: a flock of seagulls zooming past their window; a board game lovingly laid out on their hospital bed; the day they sat with their family and watched the crimson sunset set the sky alight. These were the things they wanted to leave behind. And these were the things they wanted us to never forget.

  I finish my coffee, zip up my coat and leave the café. The wind is getting stronger and people are starting to move inside, and I know it is time to go. I put my backpack over my shoulder and head up the path toward the cliffs. The air is almost intolerably muggy now, the storm threatening on the horizon. In the distance, there are flashes of lightning over the ocean and, as the wind picks up, I can hear gentle rumbles of thunder.

  At the top of the hill, I leave the path and walk toward the cliff edge. In the distance, I can hear an engine stutter, failing to start, and somewhere, on one of the farms, the frenzied, infectious barking of dogs.

  At first it seems like it might be a light shower, that the storm will just graze us, but then there are two giant claps of thunder and the downpour begins. The rain beats down on my head, slaps my skin raw, my raincoat sticking to me in the heat.

  I stand still, looking out to sea, its swirls and whitecaps like impressionist brushstrokes. I am shivering now, but not with the cold.

  The wind has picked up, and I know the time is right. I take off my backpack and dig deep for the party balloons and the can of helium. I choose a blue one, blow it up, and then write on the balloon with a black marker.

  Dear Jack,

  We own the sky.

  Lots of love, Mom and Dad

  I move as close as I can get to the edge of the cliff and wonder if I should say some kind of prayer, but I just think of how Jack would have loved it up here: the blustering rain, the wind whipping through the overgrown grass like a scythe.

  He was always excited by bad weather. I smile, thinking of him charging around on a rainy Brighton beach, and then let go of the balloon. It doesn’t go far and starts heading down the incline toward the edge of the cliff and the rocks beneath.

  And then it stops—perhaps some turbulence or an opposing gust of wind—and hangs in the air, and for a moment I think it is going to plummet down into the sea. What is amazing is how still it is, an inertia I don’t understand, as if it is being held in place by invisible hands.

  I walk toward the balloon and, just as I am starting to clamber down the steeper section of grass, it is picked up by the wind, darting and diving, zigzagging up into the air.

  I watch the balloon fly out across the gray sea until it is just a speck on the horizon. I watch it until I am sure that finally it is gone.

  * * * * *

  Acknowledgments

  I couldn’t have written or published this book without my agent, Juliet Mushens. It was her advice and unrelenting editorial input that turned my unstructured manuscript into a novel. Since our first conversation on the phone, she has always been my biggest champion and I couldn’t wish for a kinder, more understanding, kick-ass agent. Thanks also to Nathalie Hallam at Caskie Mushens for all of her help and support on some of the less thrilling aspects of publishing.

&nb
sp; I also couldn’t have wished for better editors—Sam Eades at Trapeze and Liz Stein at Park Row Books. Since they first read the manuscript, their advice and reshaping have been invaluable. They have helped me trim and expand and shape and it has been more than a pleasure to work with them. Also, a big thanks to the copy editors, Joanne Gledhill and Cathy Joyce, for ironing out all the inconsistences, fixing my terrible punctuation and changing some of the more oblique Britishisms.

  The book would never have gotten off the ground without the wonderful comments and suggestions on the first draft. So huge thanks to Kathryn Baecht, Andrew Gardner, Ruth Greenaway, Rob McClean and Nicole Rosenleaf Ritter. Thanks also to Jessica Ruston for her wonderful, extensive critique, which really helped me hone the manuscript. And thank you to Andrew Rosenheim, who gave me a chance on an earlier project, which convinced me I wanted to write long-form.

  To all my friends and family in the UK and the Czech Republic, my colleagues at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, thank you for all the laughs and support over the years. Cancer is generally pretty awful but you all helped me get through it. Special thanks to “the lads,” as my mum would say. To all of you—in particular, Daniel Easton, Michael Howard, Ben Mellick, Neil Okninski and Glenn Woodhams—who, week in, week out, came to meet me for a beer before each round of chemotherapy. You turned something frightening and horrible into something lovely. I will never forget it.

  Speaking of cancer, thanks to my amazing doctors who saved my life, Professor Paris Tekkis and Dr. Andrew Gaya, who have been what every doctor should be: compassionate, patient and always willing to listen to my panicky questions. The same heartfelt thanks go to all the amazing nurses and support staff at the London Clinic and Leaders of Oncology.

  I must also thank everyone in COLONTOWN, an online community for those affected by colorectal cancers. It has always been a wonderfully supportive place and has helped me a great deal.

  To my parents-in-law, Miroslav Jirák and Iva Jiráková, who, especially when times were tough, helped out more than they ever could know and have been just the best grandparents to our boys. Without their support (and endless help looking after the children), I could never have written the book.

  To my sister, Ruth, thanks for all the love and support, not in the least for help answering all my nervous medical questions!

  To Mum, thanks for all the love and for always believing in me, as a son and as a writer. You always had a quiet confidence in me and that is the best gift you can give someone. You are the best mum in the world and I am so lucky to have you.

  To Dad, thanks for being a wonderful father and for teaching me, without ever saying a word, to never give up. I just wish you could be here now.

  Most of all, to my wife, Markéta, who has given me so much: all the love, support, tolerance of my “jokes,” but also, practically, the time to write. You always said to me, you have to get better, I know you’ll get better—and that was enough. I couldn’t have done any of it without you.

  And to my two boys, Tommy and Danny. You are my world, my everything, but please stop hitting me in the balls.

  About the Author

  Born in the UK, Luke Allnutt is a writer and journalist based in the Czech Republic. He is married and has two young boys. We Own the Sky is his first novel.

  ISBN-13: 9781488078712

  We Own the Sky

  Copyright © 2018 by Luke Allnutt

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