Red Sky in Morning (13 page)

They heard a report from Snodgrass that a man had the fever. And then talk of a woman. Word traveled on worried faces and then there were two more among their own in the hold. At night Coyle listened, the wind wrapping a sough around the keening timbers of the ship and the grim sound of the stricken. The sawtoothed groan of a man for want of water throughout the night and the mumbles of another incomprehensible. Their voices like wraiths in the darkness, circling unseen but felt above the rest of them dozing fitful or wide-eyed in their beds and in the morning his mind would race to breathe in the calm report of the sea.

H
E STOOD ON DECK
in the mesh of his thoughts, his eyes fixed numbly on the sea, the impossibility of what it presented. The image of Hamilton falling against stone. The child by the door crying. And what he saw of his brother Jim. I shouldn’t have listened to Ranty. Should have gone back home. Should have lived my life quietly. Shoulda just gone and left. But maybe Ranty was right. I am still alive and I can send for them. And maybe she will forgive me for what I have done though I did not plan any of it. And deep in his being he fought against a deeper drift of thought, something phantom and unseen that traveled through him darkly, the surety that Faller would come after him.

And he thought of his father sinking into the water, the calm indifference of the river surrounding, the face of his father plunging into the smooth gray flanks, the eyes he remembers rigid with terror as they came back to the surface momentarily, his hands reaching for something, the liquid that would not give hold, the horse calmly swimming. The boy who just stood there watching, aware of the other man who had come at a sprint down the bank, who stood there shouting that he didn’t know how to swim, and the boy grappling with the enormity of the moment, his impotency in the face of it, cannot remember if he was able even to shout, and the realization that his father would not be coming back up. And him just standing there not doing anything.

The Cutter poked him in the ribs. Yer away off someplace.

Just thinking.

T
HE CUTTER CUT CARDS
and shuffled and dealt to the two others three cards at a time followed by two. The cards in the pack he stacked face down on the valise and he turned the top card face up. Two of spades. Spades are trumps boys. The men leaned over to pick up their cards. Snodgrass sat down beside them on the bed and leaned in and whispered. Sounds like the older Tea brother has got the fever, he said. He rubbed his jaw with the back of his hand and looked at the other men. Smudged cards pressed together between forefinger and thumb, eyes watching intently. Coyle played the two of diamonds and in the same breath the diamond queen. He looked up. For sure?

Aye.

Noble sat quiet chewing on tobacco and kept his cards close to his face. He fingered the queen of spades and played it and then worked his mouth and spat tobacco onto the floor. He whispered loudly. The Mute spent the night sitting at Sam’s bed. I saw meself when I got up for a piss.

The Cutter placed a three of spades and smiled. Could be just visiting. For a chat, like.

He’s a great talker alright, said Coyle. The men giggled. The Cutter put down a two of clubs. An awful one for the idle chatter, he said. Snodgrass looked back over his shoulder. There was a lot of moaning coming from Sam during the night, he said. It wasna nightmares.

Got it bad do you think?

Bad enough by the sounds of it.

When they were finished playing Coyle walked over to the cot to see. The Mute just sitting there backturned and Coyle stole behind him all quiet. He saw Sam Tea, his feet and ankles swollen out of all natural proportion and his face and hands peppered with dark spots purplish in the faint light. His lips were parched and his mouth worked feverish whispers for water and Coyle walked on and when he returned he threw a glance casual and found The Mute staring.

T
HE FIRST MATE WENT
among them with water and the men cursed him under their breaths for the filthy piss it was but they drank it anyway. He returned in the afternoon, master’s grog he said, and he went around collecting money from their outstretched dirty hands. They held their cups out and slugged thirstily on the watered-down brew and the men watched the mate with mean eyes but they said nothing. Coyle stood up and told him there was another man sick and he pointed to the cot and the first mate nodded. What’s his name? he said. The first mate put down the pitcher and took out a black notebook from his shirt pocket and penciled a note.

T
HE SEA MORE RESTLESS
than before and they sensed the weather turning. The men huddled to make merry, the hold draped in candlelight and the smoke ghosting above their heads and they scratched at the lice in their hair and dug their nails into the bedbugs that sucked on them through their clothes. They slurped messily on their cups, the contents pitching and splashing contrary to the leanings of the ship, their beards wet with grog, and they clamored voluminously over each other’s voices, each one wanting to be heard, the hearing of one’s voice a kind of fortitude to drown out all other noises—the groans of the sick, the intimations of invisible violence in the wind, their own silence that whispered of their powerlessness.

He watched two friends begin to wrestle on the floor and when it turned to blows the men were pulled off one another. The others told stories. A group of them huddled in a loose circle by the cots and he sat down among them and listened. Two brothers identical and one of them called Joe and the other John and both of them with the kind of glint in the eye that relished confusion. Joe was telling a story from home and John kept interrupting.

It went on for months so it did, said Joe. You’d be dying to tell her but you couldna. It was part of the fun of it. You’d go across that moss at Whitetown and you’d find her house in a parting of trees. The old boy long dead.

She had no idea, said John. A year it went maybe. You’d be hoping for a moon. Otherwise you’d hardly know where you’d be going.

Knock three times on the door.

Aye that was it. That was the code.

The men laughed. The Cutter sat down and took out his pipe.
Sno
dgrass passed him a box of matches.

She was wild stupid so she was. She’d do anything you’d tell her, said Joe.

John shook his head at the memory of her. Silly bitch, he said. Just a wee whimper of complaint out of her and that was all.

Bring an animal into the room and she woulda.

You did not did you?

Naw. I’m just sayin.

She must have been mad for it, said Snodgrass.

Let’s just say she was wild compliant, said Joe. Do you remember the way she smelt? Her hair smelt like new grass. Skin smelling like the way it does after it stops raining.

We used to swap nights so we did, said John.

We did it first as a wee notion, just for the joke of it because John was seeing her first and told me about her. To see would she notice, the silly bitch. But then we kept it up. Always in the dark though. For fear she’d figure us out. She’d moan out oh John, oh John, and of course I was Joe.

What are ye on about? There was only ever a wee whimper out of her.

She’d say oh John you’re much bigger tonight. And I’d be tempted to tell her I was Joe.

The men shook with laughter and John drove a big fist into the leg of his brother. Behind them they heard Sam Tea groan for water.

And then there was the time we were both away, said Joe. I was up working a farm in Dunfanaghy. And John was working away for the day in Miltown. I had the horn wild bad. It was a bright night all lit up by the moon.

Naw, there wasn’t. It was dark so it was.

So what. I remember weighing it up but in the end I walked the extra few miles. Me feet aching under me. I got to the door and knocked three times. She was slow to open and I was beginning to wonder if she had gone away. And then the door pulled back slowly and the reaction out of her. I stood there with a wee grin on me face and told her I’m bursting for ya and she put a hand to her mouth and next thing she was off, not a sound out of her, mind, just off out into the night, running and nothing but a shawl on her past me out into the darkness.

John spoke. I was lying on the bed with her and next thing you know there are three knocks on the door.

The men laughed, wheezing like a pack of dogs.

We never went back to her after that. She probably died in the cold of fright.

Behind them Sam Tea groaned. Coyle turned around and saw The Mute glowering at the men. He stood up and walked over stepping roughly on the men’s belongings and he slapped Snodgrass’s cup out of his hand. The contents splashed onto the heads of the men and the cup crashed off the floor and the men roared indignantly. Snodgrass stood to his feet as if to fight. Coyle stood up and put a hand on the man’s shoulder, his voice firm but quiet. Leave it.

Snodgrass shook his shoulder. I will not.

Sit down, he said. And you, he said pointing to The Mute. Sit yourself back down there and quit causing trouble. You make a lot of noise for a man who canny talk.

The Mute just stared at him and then he walked closer. Coyle felt the man’s breath on his face and he spoke to him again. Go and sit yourself down and quit this nonsense.

Some of the men giggled and Noble stood up and pulled The Mute by the arm until he was led away.

Joe shook his head. Och to be back in that bed with that silly bitch. John smiled but his eyes began to glaze and inwardly he traveled the thousands of miles home and as he did his smile fell silently from his face.

T
HE WORLD THAT WAS ALL SKY
was leaded and sinking fast and the sun was nowhere to be seen. Around noon came the sound that many dreaded, the snapping shut of the hatches and the ventilators to keep watertight the boat, the scuffle of tarpaulin on the deck and the dull thud of pitched weights. Nothing to suck on now but the air tombed beneath.

The master watched the sky swirl and he bellowed commands in a broad voice that was torn up and scattered by the wind. The ship scudded headlong into the squall. Mountains rose out of the sea, reached up towards the sky as if it wanted to take the smudged remnants of the heavens into its quickening mouth, a sea of jagged teeth.

The waters became then what was the world, invisible hands tormenting it, a dark-slated churning that sucked the ship down deep and spat it out again. The Murmod heeled and its beams bent groaning with the exertion and almost every man but the master feared that it would break apart. The sailors fought with a strength supernatural as if they had become incubi feeding on the strength of all those below who could do nothing but remain in their bunks, nausea and mind sickness pitching each single one of them in that darkness with dead weight down into his own inert void. They lay with fear drowning their spirits, some of them bent double, vomiting into what buckets there were or upon themselves and their bedding. Some tried to light candles but the oakum wicks would not stay lit, were tossed about in their saucers of fat, and children cried and women wept and men shushed them but they too were afraid and in the men’s quarters they wanted to reach out to each other for comfort but did nothing.

A woman found her way to the door of the hold, held on to it, a flickering candle in her hand and her voice shy. She called to the man nearest her and he took the name and passed it on till a man got up from a bunk and went towards her.

I know that man, Snodgrass said. That’s his sister he’s going to.

Day became a night of pounding darkness. The wind burled around the boat, a coven of riled witches said one woman, the rain venomous and cat-spitting upon the deck. The men in their thirst and hunger produced what alcohol they had left and they shared their cups with one another and tried to drink away their anxiety. The sound of their voices rose in unison as their blood was sluiced with drink, a solidarity of shouting to quell the noise of the storm, but their spirits foundered as the night wore on, their voices lowering till there was just the occasional talk as the men lay wide-eyed for lack of sleep, lay listening to the howling sky.

I don’t want to die, said Snodgrass.

You’re not going to die, said Coyle.

How’d you know it?

I just know it so I do.

The ship pitched and shuddered and the men were silent and then Snodgrass’s voice in the smothering darkness. Kilt in the middle of the sea where nobody will know that I’m gone and I won’t get no burial.

No sleep at all and then night became day, no reprieve and the trapped air around them thinning to be filled by the thickening fetor of their own dirt, a reeking butyric stench all sweat and stale urine while excrement slopped in brimmed buckets. Little food to be had and what they had left could not be kept down and they clung to their cots, some of the men grim and silent and others wailing an animal-like sound weak against the fury outside, and Coyle lay there curling into his own body as if he could protect himself from the elements, began to think of the firs. The size of them as he walked that time on his own after seeing his father drown, carrying with him the last look of his father’s eyes, and how he slept in the hollow of a fallen oak tree, pulled the leaves into a damp blanket around his body and fought against his memory. And that day Coyle remained sleepless though the world a dream until he noticed that despite his nausea the roaring wind was only a whisper and the rain had softened into a hiss that became silent and he thought of that morning when he awoke no longer a boy and he climbed out of that ragged carcass of a tree.

They emerged red-eyed and silent into the rinsed evening air, their clothes ragged and their bodies bent and their faces creased with dirt. They stared with disbelief at the great waters silent, smoothed with a benevolent repose, and they looked with distrust towards the sun that glittered warmly in the pale blue sky, moved awkward through its gift of pure air. Women huddled and began to find their voices and some of the men took off their shirts and they sat bare-chested on the deck goose-fleshed by the breeze while another lay down with his arms outstretched like he was a man awaiting crucifixion. The cabooses were lit and a rough queue formed of quarrelsome people, the clang and scrape of pot and pan and the hacking sounds of coughing.