Red Sky in Morning

by Paul Lynch

  The woman shrugged.

  You don’t know, Faller said. He drew on his pipe and blew smoke in their faces. The other woman spoke. They’re railway boys. They said they were digging the railways. One of them said they were digging for an Irishman and they were going back this evening.

  Faller smiled and then he stood up. That was easy wasn’t it? he said. The women smiled and made to get up with their belongings.

  Not yet.

  Outside a man’s voice was echoing excitedly in the street. Faller belted his gun and leaned slowly towards the two women and put his huge hands softly to their necks. Daisy smiled coquettish and June shifted on her seat and he looked at her a moment, stared deep into the plunging sea of her eyes. A malevolence then she saw in the way he looked at her and she flinched and scratched him. He shifted back and then he tightened his grip, watched her pupils dilate and the women began to kick their legs, recoiling uselessly from the size of the man. Macken coughed and he said in a low voice there’s no need and Faller ignored him, just stared, the women’s mouths gaping and their skin turning ashen, and Macken said again louder this time will you stop and the women began to cease kicking and their bodies went limp and Faller released them onto the bed. Macken stood and stared open-mouthed at the bodies and began mumbling and Faller turned and walked serene from the room ducking his head under the door. They descended the stairs towards the waiting men who formed a block in the foyer by the door and then the men parted when Faller opened his coat to show he was armed and he passed through them smiling.

  THEY RAN NAKED through the city. Darkness was closing in on them and their clothes and boots were bundled in their arms and soon they were blind to their bearings. In horror they were witnessed by a pair of bonneted women who had stepped out of a house and who returned indoors at the sight of them. Coyle stubbed a toe and began to hobble. He cursed and came to a stop and began to walk with a limp and they found a dark alley. The men were panting and their flesh was a plucked-hide pimpling and the alley stank of rotting fish and ammonia and they got down quietly on their haunches. They felt through their clothes and figured them out in the dark and began to put them on. Coyle stuck out his feet and booted them and winced when he stood on his toe. He poked his head out around the corner watching. Nothing save the nosing of a pair of scruff dogs. He slipped back down again and whispered. I figure we lost him.

  The Cutter whispered angry. Who in the hell did we lose?

  His name’s Faller.

  Is that who you were running from back home?

  Aye.

  Thought as much. What’s he doing here then?

  Come for me so he has.

  Ye must have annoyed him.

  Coyle said nothing and kept watch around the corner. The Cutter tapped him on the shoulder.

  What was he doing then shooting a gun in the other room?

  Fuck do I know. Coyle rubbed his face and sat thinking a moment. Maybe he thought it was me.

  We’d better get back to Doyle and the others or we’ll be left behind.

  We’ve already missed em.

  The Cutter spat onto the ground. Fuck it.

  They stood up and walked out onto the street and they ran down another and then they began to walk.

  This toe of mine is busted.

  What’d you do that this fella wants you so bad?

  I didn’t give him the satisfaction of getting caught.

  The streets began to square off neatly and they found themselves in the city’s better parts. No lamplight to be seen and not a soul on the streets, the busy thoroughfares of the day swallowed by darkness. Their guide was the moonlight and it beamed down full on top of them and there was occasional light from the windows of hotels. Under the shop awnings a darkness more compact and they walked with the aid of it, not a word between them and their eyes watched over their backs all the while. Not a murmur of the wind nor a turning of a wheel and the only sounds were their footsteps.

  They came to a marble building grand and silent and they recognized it as a place they had been earlier that day and they worked out where they were from it. The night sky was clear and their minds were alert and they had figured how to get out of the city. They heard the approaching clatter of a horse and buggy of some kind and it came from the shadows and passed before them a darkly specter with no persons visible. They stopped at a trough and cupped horse water into their mouths and Coyle took off his boot and rubbed his toe and dipped it in the water.

  Along the margins of the road they walked or they rimmed the edges of ripening fields, crops tipping blue in the moonlight, and they kept steady watch behind them. The air was warm and meshed with the chorus of cicadas that made the air dense and unnerving. Each man eaten up by fear and The Cutter felt better for talk.

  We must be safe now, he said.

  I think I have to go, said Coyle.

  What do you mean?

  I have to leave.

  Leave where?

  Away from here. The cut. He’ll find me and I donny want no harm coming to you. I’ve caused enough of it.

  I donny think he’ll find you out there.

  I think before another day is done I’ll be found surely and he’ll be done with me. He’s wise in the way of killing in ways that we are not and I’ve had more luck than any man. The strange thing is I can deal with that. You know, I want to stop running. I’m tired of it. My bones are telling me they’re done. And part of me even wants to go back. How strange is that? It’s not that I’m afraid of what’s coming to me because I donny think I can stop it. I believed I had done good in escaping him and now it seems I have not. And yet the one reason I have to go on is I’m afraid for my children. I reckon the other one’s born now and there’s a strange power in me that makes me want to go on for them despite myself. I feel I owe it to them though I donny know how or what.

  The Cutter looked at him and said nothing.

  A SUN ROLLED RED over the low black hills clotting the sky with light. The shadows shied away to reveal fields of wheat and they walked in that dawn light sensing they had drawn near to Duffy’s cut. They saw a farmstead flash golden in the lee of a hill and they approached it, climbed over a fence and waded through a field of corn, The Cutter snatching at a sheaf and they heard a dog barking. It came towards them and stopped at the perimeter of the yard snouting the air with a barrage of sharp barks and then it lowered its head to look at them. The collie furred in mustard and coal and about the ears some cream and The Cutter whistled and bent down to it. The dog eyed him suspiciously then wagged its tail and came towards him and he took the dog and rolled it sideways rumpling its ears.

  A cart asleep in the yard and they went around the back to the door and they knocked. Lamplight leaked underneath and it softened the ground under the window and they heard the scrawk of a chair and then footsteps coming towards them. A woman. Her head in a shawl and her hands floured and she held open the door with her foot. The men nodded politely and they asked please for a drink of water and a bite of something to eat, said they had been traveling all night, and they saw the eyes of the woman as she took them in head to toe and then she stared at the dog and went inside. They stood waiting and The Cutter rubbed his hands and hung out his tongue in expectation and he bent to the dog and ruffed it. The door pulled open and they saw a balding man with red cheeks pointing a rifle out the door towards them. He shook the gun upwards into the air. This here’s private property now git off it.

  The men put their hands in the air and said they meant no harm but were hungry that’s all and they saw the peering eyes of children through a triangle of legs. They backpedaled slowly till there was distance enough to turn and they ran down a dirt track away from the house. They joined up with the road and they were sullen and silent and they passed other farmhouses brightening in the morning light but they stayed away, their feet sore as hell and west they continued to walk.

  THEY ROSE AT DAWN and left the hotel without eating, the streets dewed silver as the thoroughfar
es quivered to life. They turned where the shadows lingered plum on the side streets and came to an alley that led to a black door and Faller knocked three times. The door gave a short squeal and before them hunched a man with yellow whiskers. He had two eyes each different from the other, one ash and the other steel, and he looked up inquisitive at Faller.

  You Hardy? Faller said.

  You here for horses? the man said.

  Faller nodded. The man motioned them through the door. Cmon then.

  They walked through the house, the place dim and damp and buzzing with flies, and there was somebody else sitting quietly in shadow. They came to another door that opened upon a yard. The light in the stable was low and the man lit a lamp and passed it looking upwards at Faller and he watched the tall man begin to examine the animals.

  The lot of them are neutered cept for that mare of course there, he said pointing.

  Macken turned to him. We’ll be needing gear as well, oilskins too if you have them.

  The man nodded. I git everything you need.

  He looked sideways at the men and figured they were carrying guns but pretended to pay no attention. Faller pointed to the chestnut mare and a black gelding and the man rubbed his hands and nodded approval.

  How much? Faller said.

  The man scratched his face. Let’s see all you need first.

  They loaded the horses and took them to a rusted trough to drink, the water filmed with a faint rainbow of oil, and they guided them out onto the street. They rode free of the city, past houses pillared proud and white, and gradually they entered wide country. Red-roofed farms blazed the countryside among great wheat fields and pasture sloped with inky cattle that watched the riders blankly. The sun was hot and they took off their jackets and they slugged water from their flasks. Macken coughed into his fist and he cleared his throat and he looked at Faller and he looked away again.

  There was no need for that, he said.

  Faller looked at him. No need for what?

  That. Last night. Them two girls. They done nothin.

  Everybody’s done something, Faller said. It’s just a case of who decides.

  That don’t make it right.

  Faller screwed tight his flask and put it back in its holding.

  Weight. That I believe is the problem.

  Huh?

  I said the problem is that of weight. Think about it. He looked at Macken, who looked back at him, his face scrunched in confusion.

  A child in the womb lives in warmth without weight. And then it is born and it becomes this mewling thing, like an animal. Did you ever wonder about that Macken? Why this is so? It is because it feels itself for the first time, discovers its own weight in the world. And it comes as a shock to it. Never really gets over it. With weight comes sensation and pain and hunger and the need for sleep and all these wants and needs and all of that ad infinitum.

  What’s that got to do with anything?

  You see, the child never recovers from the pain of its own weight. It grows and as it does so it needs and wants more. Always more, never less. All that insatiable hunger for things. Give a hungry man soup and he asks for meat. And when he’s given meat one finds he’s sitting at your table. Next thing he’s asking for the silverware. You really do have to think about that. Every desire a man has that is satisfied leads to a new one. It’s an unstoppable thing, the boundlessness of it, desire always hovering beyond man’s grasp.

  Faller kicked his horse forward and Macken rode alongside him, his face puzzling and then it straightened. People are still people though, most of the time, he said.

  Let me tell you something Macken. People aren’t people. They are animals, brutes, blind and stupid following endless needs they know not of what origin. And all the rest that we place on top to make us feel better is a delusion. The price of life is the burden of your own weight and some people are better off without it.

  MID-MORNING AND A MEADOW full of fruit. They climbed over a fence and entered wary watching like dogs. He picked a peach and slathered over it, teeth like fangs, and he punctured its flesh and it gave up its moisture to him, trickled off his lips, was sweet to the tongue. The Cutter bent to the ground and raised two fallen peaches, rubbed their bruised flesh with his thumb, and they sucked on the husks till they were dry as stones, both of them silent, and they walked to a cluster of trees that blushed with glossy apples and they filled their pockets with them.

  Deep ache in their legs. They took rest under the abundance of an oak and Coyle rubbed his toe and they reckoned they were close to the dig. They leaned back onto the blue-shadowed grass, gurgle of brook and the breathy whisper of leaves and one after the other they fell asleep. A warbler wasp-colored took to a branch above them and shook it with its weight and it whistled while the sun fought a finger of cloud and rolled free. Wind shook the grass. Coyle awoke softly riding on the momentum of sleep. The face of his daughter and the peach smell of her flesh and when clarity seized his mind he stood up with a strange feeling and put his hand in his pocket and realized the ribbon was gone.

  THE CUTTER LOOKED at him, his face gurning with disdain, his yellow teeth bared, and then he scratched the gray of his jaw. Like fuck we’re going back.

  Coyle did not answer him, just stared him long in the eye. The Cutter stared him right back, saw the man was not going to be stared down. Ye must be mental.

  Coyle turned and went to the fence and scaled it quickly for the road. An apple in The Cutter’s hand and his knuckles tightened white around it and he hurled it at the oak tree, the fruit shattering, and then he began to follow. Arrah fuck.

  Coyle walking with his eyes on the road and The Cutter came alongside him muttering. A bloody ribbon what in the hell.

  Coyle answered without lifting his head. I had it in my hand only a wee while ago. It’ll have to be about.

  They took the narrow road between them, a hill rising languorous before them and the road indented with the dry markings of cartwheels baked by the sun. Coyle nudged the fringe grass with his foot while a red-tailed hawk wheeled the air above them, found shapes of air invisible to glide on.

  He could feel his heart seize tight. He walked holding his breath, balling his fists and cracking his knuckles, and he began to feel a sadness he could not control as if more weight had been dropped on top of him. A knot began to stone in his stomach until it was big enough to burst him. Nothing but a fool so I am. One wee thing I had left and now I’ve gone and lost her.

  They came to the top of the hill, two pillar forms under vast sky, and they saw the expanse of land spread out around them, serried green corn wagging in the breeze and in the distance the blood roof of a barn. He saw The Cutter bend to his shoelace and he was watching idly the road’s distant tapering when he saw them. A trembling at the far length of the road. The fleet shadows of horses. He reached for words in his throat but could not get a hold of them and The Cutter without turning seemed to smell the trouble off him and when he stood and saw the horses he too was ashen for he knew then that they were visible.

  They turned and began to run down the hill, swift past the orchard, and The Cutter ahead of him and he heard the man roar out at him to leap into the corn. The Cutter then was gone, into the grasp of the field over the leaning beams of a fence, and he followed the man’s heels, was upon the fence and the wood decrepit and it collapsed under him. He fell on his back staring up at the road, the cottoned blue sky, the silence of the place but for the thumping of his heart, and he picked himself up winded and pushed in.

  He could hear it behind him. The commotion of horse hoofs pounding the road. The silence of them coming to a stop and then the shouting of men. The swish and snap of corn and The Cutter just in sight and then there was a voice shouting behind him. One step further into that field and I’ll blow your heads clean off ya.

  THE MEN TOOK THEM out onto the road and circled them.

  Sit down there on the ground.

  The nose of a shotgun looking down at him and a man leani
ng behind it.

  Three men in black beaver hats, two of them with guns and their horses behind them, and he saw in one of them the red-cheeked face of the farmer from earlier that morning. The man held the gun with fat pink fingers and he looked at them nervously. The Cutter looked up at them incredulous and then he found his voice. Who are yous?

  Shut up.

  The man standing in front had a jutting brown beard and was the elder of the three and he nodded to the man who spoke. We’re the local horse company and it’s our business to keep out any trouble. Right now you’uns is trespassing.

  He directed them with his gun to get up. Coyle and The Cutter stood uneasily to their feet and put their hands into the air over their heads.

  Are yous railway Irish?

  Trying to get back so we are.

  We don’t want your lot around here. Which mile were yous working?

  Mile fifty-nine.

  What’s that ye say?

  I said fifty-nine. Duffy’s cut.

  One of the men whispered to another and they looked at the men.

  What’s that in yer pockets? The man nodded towards their trousers.

  Just fruit is all.

  Them’s not your fruit. Give em here.

  The men emptied their pockets and handed the fruit over and the men took the fruit and realized they did not know what to do with them. The bearded man motioned with his gun again.

  Git walking. Up thataways. He pointed to the road. Coyle took a step forward and The Cutter was slow to move and one of them prodded him in the shoulder with the gun. The Cutter turned and stared hard at the man. Be my pleasure, the man said and the third man cocked his rifle. The Cutter walked on. The men mounted their horses and followed closequarters.

  Not a word as they walked and the horsemen behind them kept their counsel but for the bearded one who spoke to give the walkers directions. The land turned pale and it began to drizzle and the horsemen sheathed themselves in skins and the two men walked feeling glad for the cooling rain. A farmstead broke the rise of a low hill and they saw two blond boys being circled in a field by a dog. The children stopped as the men on the road neared and they went to the fence to watch the gunpoint procession. The Cutter winked at them as the dog stood wagging its tail and they looked towards the horsemen uncertainly and ran away.