Red Sky in Morning (24 page)

We canny go nowhere till we bury him.

For sure.

Some of the men left the sick men in the carts and they carried the dead man dangling four-square till they reached the fill. It leaned up from them some ten feet and the earth was scarred where the blacksmith had dug graves. He loped over to them sad-faced with a shovel in his hand and began to pitch in. When the hole was dug he leaned back on his tool and began to rub his horseshoe moustache.

No more wood. Just put him straight in.

The body laughed at them with its rictus grin and they spaded the earth on top of it, the clay clumping about the corpse and crumbs falling into the dead man’s mouth. Dust rose hotly from the pit and it glittered as it stirred skywards and the men covered their eyes against it. When they were done the blacksmith sleeved sweat from his brow and he nodded down to the shanty.

How many of ye are standing? he said.

Less than half, said Coyle.

Yez are gathering about to leave then?

Most of us.

You be careful now with that. And then he looked over his shoulder. I got the dinner waitin on me.

U
P TOWARDS THE NECK
of the ravine they traveled like a procession of ragged penitents stumbling under the weight of their sins. Dust danced and spilled off the shaking carts that became to them an ensemble of limbs while a man blood-wild with whiskey danced knees high and demented. The land leaned up towards the sun while the heat came down upon them and smothered the air on their breath.

The carts complained to the dull music of the animals’ hitching and the men kept their silence till one looked upwards the valley where out of the gleam of sun he saw someone move. There’s men awaiting up there, he said. Before them loomed the shapes of others, men on strong horses with guns lap leaning and the minds of the workers puzzled over what kind of trouble this was. They continued up the slope till they came near the top and a horse was stepped forward, the rider gray-haired with pitted cheeks, and he put his hand flat into the air and hollered at them.

You boys ain’t going nowheres.

Hesitance in their heels but the procession nudged on till the man called out to them again. You hear me you sons of bitches? You ain’t moving another step.

The men at the front brought the animals to a halt and they studied the assembly before them. The countenance of clean men with neckties about their faces and Coyle saw that one of them was the farmer from before.

Not another step I tell you, the leader said. Take yer sickness back down with you where you belong and not a damn sight near the good folk from round here families and all. You lot are staying put in the valley and if you think you aren’t hell will come paying. You hear me? I tell you. A pack of diseased dogs.

Two riders beside him edged forward. One of them hawked phlegm and lowered his neck scarf and spat down towards them. The animals strained on the hill to contain the weight of their load and some of the men figured the man for bluffing. They looked at each other for answers till one man started forward, the others unsure but for the man leading the mule who watched and began to follow. The two horsemen brought their guns into the air and one of them fired a shot over the workers’ heads and the animals startled at the sound. The men ducked low but for the walker who eyed the men straight and he kept walking till a horseman in plaid on top of a chestnut gelding raised his gun from his lap and fired. He had taken aim at the man’s head and the shot took the man’s ear clean off. A single drop of blood blotched the man’s shirt and he stared at it incredulous. He put his hand to his ear and pulled it back sodden and puce and he fell to the ground with shock and in the space after the shot as it ringed the air the pack animals took to revolting. Coyle pulled tight the reins of the horse, whispered to it, nursed it steady, but the mule nearby startled so badly it turned as if to leave, the cartload locked deadly to its body, and it tipped itself over and the cart with its cargo of men. The man who was shot climbed crimson from the ground, a ragged slab for where his ear once was, and he crabbed down the valley, others around him scuttling backbent while those that were left surrendered their hands to the air.

The gunmen above said nothing, just watched as they allowed the men to recover the sprawl of bodies from under the wreckage of the neckbroken mule, each man lifted up and put on the remaining cart though some of them saw they were dead.

T
HEY TOOK BODIES
of those that were living and those that were dead and they laid them on the ground, who was alive now it was difficult to tell. Afterwards they did not know what to do but sit so they sat together and watched the sky, the great blue permanence winged high with white, and they looked upon the silent banks of the valley wondering upon the nature of their horror. They wanted nothing to do with the others who had chosen to stay and who sat mute nearby, stunned at the earlier spectacle and too ashamed to talk. When they grew hungry some of the men stood and went to the fire, the outcasts sitting about, and no sooner were they there than they began throwing their fists.

The man with the ribboned ear sat on his own supping whiskey with sackcloth folded to his head and they watched him get up and worry about and sit back down again and they were not sure if he was laughing or crying for the air was taut with madness.

Coyle went looking for The Cutter and he found him laid out between two others and he saw that he was dead. He bent down to him and felt the skin of his cheek cooling despite the heat of the ground and he closed the man’s eyelids.

He heaved the body up till it was bent over his shoulder and he carried it through the valley. He placed it down by a poplar tree and he walked towards the work sheds. He found a sledgehammer and swung it at a building till the wood blistered then burst and when it was taken apart he took a hammer and punched the wood clean of its nails. He cut and hammered the timber into the shape of a box and when it was built he stood it and hugged his arms around it. He walked it towards the valley fill and placed it down on the rubbled land and he went back and lifted the body and heaved it over his shoulder.

Over the west wall of the valley the day was fading and he took a shovel and began to dig. The land heedless, dense with loam and stone, teeth of rock snarling out of the dust, and he dug a hollow three foot deep. He put the body of The Cutter in the box and worked it down into the hole and then he stood above it. The earth corrupt before him and filled with violence.

T
HEY SAT SEALED
in the darkness, huddled as before in their separate groups and the air hot as hell. Their faces lit by trembling fires and the hollows of their eyes were pooled in shadow as if in their eyes it was the darkness of death that lay. Discord in their relations and turmoil in their hearts and they listened to the land silent and the crackle and spit of the fire and they heard the calls of those that had since begun to sicken. Men went crawling in the gloom for a place to void while the others around them heard their moans and tried not to listen. They drained the last jugs of whiskey into their cups and then drank the water and nobody was hungry.

Atop the valley he watched torch fires glimmer and move about slowly like fat fireflies. The sky vivid with stars and he could see the shapes of sickening men coiled about the place and to the east a bank of dark cloud slowly lidding.

He went to the tent and he lay down with the others to sleep. Closes his eyes. Lies in the lulling of memory and falls into the black hole of it and she turns and smiles and he is with her now and there is nothing to the night. He walks ageless up the stony path underneath the bending blackthorn blossom. Light now, an afternoon. The light golden and he smoothes her hair. Light on the nape of her neck and he holds her hand and warm is her flesh. Dog rose and elder and the bees dip drunk on the air scented sweet. The tinkling mirth of a small stream and they step over it, step past a house pale and unwatching, walk up the hill till halfway they sit. Glashedy island risen rocky out of the water, old man’s head of the sea watching whitely the winging birds. The earth, the air and the sea and she whispers into his ear breathily.

And he thinks. That this was it.

And he noticed he was awake and he sensed others were too. The air stagnant with heat and he saw some of the men sitting up and listening. He trained his ears to the low rumble coming from behind them and then someone stood up and shouted. Horses. And then it was upon them and it awoke to him what it was. The first report rolled off the valley in clattering shocks and another followed as the men surged out of the tent. All around them the stomping of hoofs and the blurring of torch fires wielded by horsemen encircling them, the maneuvers of some crazy war dance. He saw a man come down off a horse with a rifle in his hand and he sighted it walking into a tent that pulsed a moment later with a shock of white light, a momentary illusion as if it had been flared by sheet lightning before it was sucked into the darkness again. He heard the clatter of gunshot that followed and the tent illumined again and went dark and the air around him began to pulse with bitter light, thunder from firing guns and men began to scream. Everywhere he saw men with death grins wielding rifles from the neck and some of them by the side while others held torches so the shooters could see, the ground glowing red like coals beneath them. He ducked low and ran across the swale, guns snorting acrid fumes that curled invisible towards the sky and he heard them calling to each other, working the shanty in a circle, and he heard his own kind, men calling for mercy unheeded and then he snagged and stumbled over a body. He picked himself up and pitched atop another and the figure moaned under his weight. The wetness of the man’s blood warm against his hands and he crawled desperate and her face appears before him, more vivid than he has imagined and he is struck by the intensity of it, and he continues to crawl but he does not know where he is, everywhere it seems lie more bodies and the ground is biting at his hands and gnawing at his knees and he hears her voice softly, and he crawls harder, the night air a clamor of pounding anvil around him and he comes smack up against the standing legs of another. He turns and scrambles backwards and then he puts his arms over his head as if to shield him from what the man standing over him intends to do, sees the gun rising and he hears her voice over the sound of the shot and it is clear to him now what has become of him, a wallop like the kick of a horse to his side and his hands fall back useless. A fierce ringing in his ears and still he hears her voice softly, lie here my love, lie here against the warmth of my skin, and he lies into her then, the warmth wet at his side, lies back to sleep against the turning of the earth.

A
LONE THE BLACKSMITH WORKS
, slowly and with care. Just a shovel and his two bare hands and he digs the earth deep till it lies open and receiving. The morning spent and the rubble around him red and he looks at the pit and thinks it has to do. He passes the day struggling under their weight, each one trouble enough for one man, and when he has enough for a cartload he nurses the horse forward up towards the valley fill, the animal slow upon its dusted hoofs. It stands patient with low-bowed head while the man unloads the cart, each one first he puts onto his back and then he lays them gently upon the ground. When he is finished he turns the horse around and begins the trip again. All day he works as the sun crests the sky and then begins to fall and though he is hungry he does not stop to eat and he stops only to give the horse some water. The horse struggles to cart forward the last load and then the blacksmith makes it stop and he empties the cart and he stands there alone before slowly with his shovel he begins to close over the earth.