Red Sky in Morning (10 page)

Yer some fella for running off, said The Cutter.

I need yer help.

I can’t give you no money.

I need you to get me a ticket for a boat. I’m paying so I am.

Which one?

Any one. The first one that’s leaving. Here.

Coyle took out a wad of notes and put a five-pound note into The Cutter’s hand. He stood looking at the money. The difference is for yourself. Coyle closed the man’s hand around the money. Just go over to one of the agencies and get me a ticket for the first boat that’s sailing. I donny care where for.

Where’ll I find ye?

By that wooden hut over there.

The Cutter looked at Coyle and tipped his cap. Just for you, he said. Seeing as I know that you’re not from Ballymagan. Hoor of a place. Wouldna do nothin there for nobody.

H
E SAT ON A BOX,
hiding by the wall of a redbrick warehouse among barrels and boxes, and bunkered down into coughing. His coat was hitched over his head against the slanted rain. The Foyle now divested of fog and the water leaning north like an invitation. He watched a cargo steamer being loaded and launched and then guided by tug upriver. Slug trail of white water and then the boat shrank from sight.

The screeching around him of rats and he saw one brazen before him. It hunched downwards vertical on a barrel to nose at his feet, stretched and straightened with its pelt the color of moss. Black-beaded eyes and earthworm tail and he watched it nosing the dirt and loose grains, the scuffling scratch of claws on boot leather. Are you looking at me queer fella? Man and creature eyed each other for a moment and then the rat was gone.

He watched the Murmod come to life. Saw officials board and the crowd began to swarm around the boat, swallow whole a horse and cart to coalesce into a single knot that hived towards the gangway, cases and casks hitched up over their heads and small children being carried. Everywhere the din of hawkers selling their wares, food and drink and other such comforts, shysters and moneylenders working the crowd and pickpockets quick on their feet.

He guessed an hour go by. Near everyone from the quays on the boat, relatives and friends and who knows what else to clutter the deck and go below to the holds to say their goodbyes and none of them by the looks of it wanting to leave. The bladed rain stopped and he looked up to see a cloud bank burl from near-black to white, the Foyle spangled in new sun. He watched the gulls swoop and plummet the ship’s three masts and glide down to rummage the quays. A horse and trap turned around to leave and when it pulled away he saw Faller in its wake. Jesus. He picked him out from the far side of the crowd standing with Gillen, watched him pace up and down and then the crowd moved and his view was blocked. He strained his neck to see. Goddamn ye.

A parting among the bodies and then Coyle saw the back of Faller walking towards a cargo steamer that was being loaded further down the quays. He looked down at his nails, picked the black dirt from under them and he ran his hand down the length of the dull blade in his pocket and sat a while thinking.

G
ILLEN WATCHED THE
disappearing back of Faller, turned and saw to his right the black silhouette of a sailor spidered on a web of halyards. He watched a group of young children disembark from the boat and scatter like leaves in front of a red-eyed woman who turned and stood waving. And then a man protesting was dragged scudding on his heels by two officials off the boat. The man stood on the quays and waved his fist and stood shouting. Crew tarried near the gangway and the Murmod was near ready to depart. And then Gillen saw Coyle coming towards him, the man with his hands in his pockets and his hat and head down low but he knew the cut of him, watched him push through the crowd, the man not lifting his head and making towards the gangway where he was stopped by an official and Gillen looked quickly over his shoulder to see if Faller was watching.

F
ALLER STOOD AT THE OTHER
end of the quays watching stevedores loading a cargo ship. He could see Macken at the other boat. He lit his pipe and sucked on the smoke and looked towards the clotted sky, the clouds an uncertain wash of white, and he sniffed the air, inhaled the smell of hops and heard the squeaking of axle. A cart trundled behind him, a stonemason whistling tunelessly, and as it passed he saw a boy and a girl sitting atop slabs on the back. The boy held the girl’s hand on his lap and when he saw Faller he let go of the hand and Faller stared back.

Faller walked over to a sailor and tipped his hat to him, asked him where the ship was going. Glasgow, the man said.

Are you taking any passengers with you?

Not today, the sailor said. Full load of freight.

Faller turned and saw a tramp hunching on a limp towards the pair of them. The sailor saw him too and walked off.

Master. Go on give us some tobacco.

Faller looked at the man, saw gums housing a handful of teeth, eyes wide in supplication and cloth wrapped around damaged-looking feet, and he sucked on his pipe and blew smoke in the man’s face. Dance for it, he said.

The man grimaced and blinked.

I said dance.

The tramp’s face dropped and the man stood still as if summoning some reserve from tired bones and he turned his head and looked around to the quays behind and looked towards the stevedores and saw that no one was watching. With intake of breath he began to dance, a stiffening stumble that lurched awkward from heel to heel with his arms hooked to his sides, danced with his head locked straight and his eyes on the man who was asking and Faller smiled back down at him and then sucked on his pipe and said put some back into it will you. The tramp took a breath and danced wilder still, danced wincing on a limp, spit on beard, knees unfurling legs that were spindled and spent and the cloth bundles unfolding from his blackened feet, the man hobbling and hurling backwards across the quays with his head thrown to the sky, turning and turning.

Faller turned and walked back to Gillen and found him as he had left him. The ship was fully boarded and a scattered crowd stood waiting for it to depart. He watched sailors reel the Murmod’s mooring onto deck and saw them begin to lift the anchor.

He paced back and forth and stopped and turned to Gillen.

No sign of him?

Naw.

Walk back up to the gate and lend that blind bastard your eyes, he said. Gillen turned and began to walk and stole a glance over his shoulder. Faller was putting his pipe in his pocket and stood facing the boat.

Faller walked around taking in the scene in front of him and then he stopped with his hands on his hips. He watched people waving from the quay and he looked at the wooden bridge spanning the Foyle and then he walked towards the crowd. Out in the water, seabirds flurried hungry around a fishing boat. He looked up at the Murmod, watched the paddle-tug take the strain of the ship on its tow rope as the ship slid forward into the waters. He looked again at the faces lined up on the boat, men and women and children, some sodden in emotion and others not sodden or waving at all but standing stone-faced, and then out of the crowd he picked a face, the profile of Coyle walking quickly to get across the deck, and Faller smiled.

T
HE MEN ASSEMBLED
their belongings and left the city on horseback. The sky the color of gunmetal and the rain pressed down upon their sitting trot, beading their oilskins and Faller oblivious to it on his black steed. He rode out north in front of Macken with Gillen lagging behind, the man wearing a purple bruise on his face, and they followed the road for a number of miles. They turned off the road at Glendoagh upon a bridle path and Macken nudged his horse alongside Faller’s and asked where they were going.

I have a man to see.

Macken nodded and slipped behind and the group rode on. They sidled a forest that swallowed the light and passed a forge where the beating of anvil pealed like a muted bell. The clanging stopped and a bearded man leaned out on the jambs to watch the backs of the riders.

Lowering sky and the rain fell relentless and then Faller began to slow. He turned to a tapering path beat down by foot and the men rode on behind. Sedge scrunched under horse weight and the land opened to the bog, the encroached horizon of slumping dun hills and then they were riding upon the moss. The peatlands were sheeted in brown and yellow and dotted with the lone whites of sheep. A turf barrow nosed a pool in rotting and they passed patches of heather scalped, opened turf banks slaned like cliffs cut in miniature to a sea of wind-waving moss. To the west a tarn, a brooch of silver around the low neck of a hill. To the north a house isolate and they rode towards it. They met a black-faced ewe that stood stubborn and then skittered out of their way and the house rose into sight and then they were upon it, the place empty and bearded with growth, and then they rode on past it.

To hills beyond they went, Gillen watching sullen the backs of the men. He saw Faller come to a stop and watched him take out his pipe and he caught up with Macken and the pair stopped alongside Faller.

They sat in silence under the banks of sky, in their ears the hiss of rain and the empty whisperings of wind.

Faller lit his pipe, sucked on it and spoke with the pipe hanging in his mouth.

You saw him didn’t you? he said.

Gillen looked at Faller whose eyes were fixed ahead upon the wilderness and he looked at Macken whose back was turned towards them. He swallowed and then hitched up his voice.

You asking me?

The youngster’s words scattered on the breeze.

Faller spoke. Yes you did. You saw him and you let him board.

The words seized the air around Gillen, tightened the breath in his lungs, and he looked around him.

No man went past me that I didn’t see.

The words fell from his mouth, tumbled without the fixative of certainty to fall upon the moss and strew away, a waver in the man’s voice belying the truth of what told. The conversation now appeared to be over and Gillen fumbled with the reins on his horse and he began to whistle, an aimless tune of hollow indifference, and Faller sucked on his pipe and sent smoke in long drafts to reach out and encircle entire hills. He looked at Macken and nodded to him and Macken fixed his hat and took hold of the reins and nudged his horse forward to ride on. Gillen sat behind and waited for Faller and saw that he was not yet for moving and Faller turned to him and nodded for him to ride on behind Macken and Gillen kicked his horse forward.

P
ITTED THE BOG WAS
with silver pools of rain that spread like the markings of some beast that prowled its prehistory, the wetlands older than the footfall of man and indifferent to such wanderings. Gillen rode alone midway between the men and took to watching the sky, was watching the great gray swirling banks of it and a chink of light that broke through the heavens to pillar in gold the top of a hill when the bullet from Faller’s gun entered the left side of his head, the trajectory of the ball uncoupling half of his face with it to spread upon the bog, the sound of the shot traveling slowly behind to reach ears already dead.

The clatter of shot sent Gillen’s animal onto its hind legs, the dead weight of the man slumping harness-caught above the ground. The animal danced nervously then settled and Macken turned around to see the body of his colleague hanging from the horse and he rode over to it and leaned over and spat. Slowly Faller reloaded his gun and reholstered. He looked at Macken.

The fucker took the boat, he said. He nodded to the body.

Feed him to the sheep.

L
AST SIGHT OF LAND
, a voice said. Coyle followed the others to the deck to see but the ship was enclosed by fog. He had thrown the knife into the sea and watched from on deck the boat push up the Foyle, the sea a slate of gray animated in the rain. He sleeved away his tears. The wee child without me. This is not what I wanted at all.

The air on the deck hung quiet in the snarling murk but for the chatter of sailors at work while the passengers stood in small groups silent. They strained their eyes expectant towards the land just left, this land known lifelong to feet, loam for curling toes, a mass of ground fixed solid to the earth and immutable to mind but for the wearing of memory as relentless as the sea, but there was no shoulder of land to lean on, no buttress of rock, no green-fringed cliff nor sight of fields, just the wash indeterminate of gray, the land, the sea, all sky.