Red Sky in Morning (25 page)

He bends to the firepit and lights a wooden torch and puts it to the shanty. The canvas smokes and catches fast as he lights each tent and then the whole place is burning, chutes of black smoke sent bitter into the air, and he turns through the blackened pools that mirror the blaze and begins walking. And then he sees. Lying gray in the mud—a ribbon. And he bends to pick it up, wipes the smear of wet dirt off it, holds it for a moment in wondering and then he lets it go, taken off his hand by the breeze.

The day then is done under a soundless sky and he looks up and sees red sky of evening. The west festooned with coming night and rain clouds thick and waiting. The breeze sighs long, shakes the leaves that lie strong on the bough awaiting the return of autumn. The land steps into shadow and the birds tuck their heads. All then is still till the clouds burst open, rain that begins to fall great and unheeded. The land is old and tremulous and turns slowly away from the falling sun.

I
T WAS A MORNING BURSTING BRIGHT SO IT WAS AND
he was in the forest, the axe in his hand and the wood all coined thickly about him. He sent the axe into the sky and sank it quarter into the stump and in the dream he began to walk for home. Dew on the fields and he glossed his boots, the day just hung, a white saturate that told nothing of what was to come, no rain nor wind just a great stillness about and the silence broken by the faint reach of a dog’s barking. And he followed the path, bright upon the lane, bright upon the beech tree, came to a bend and stood listening, the morning near hushed, scent of earth and sap, and onwards he went, upwards the hill, a pebble glanced and sent rolling, and when he got to the door he shook off his boots and placed his feet on the slate step, his hand on the latch, and he heard the sound of their voices warmly and went in.

Gerard Stembridge and Hugo Hamilton for being generous and wise early readers. Shaun McLaughlin and Sean Toland for subjecting the book to local scrutiny.

Peter Lahiff, Richard Oakley, Ian Devlin, Donal O’Sullivan, Gavin Corbett, Declan Burke, Birch Hamilton and Jim Kelly for their help and support.

All the staff of the late
Sunday Tribune
for giving me a starting point. Mary Rose Doorly for pointing me in the right way. Sinéad Gleeson and Charlotte Greig for lighting the path. Ivan Mulcahy for taking the leap, and for being the kind of agent authors dream about—d
ynamo
and sage.

My editor at Quercus, Jon Riley, his assistant Richard Arcus, and at Little, Brown, William Boggess and Asya Muchnick, for their passion and insight.

My mother and father Mary and Pat, my brother Derek and sister Louise, for their love and encouragement.

Anna for her unstinting love and support.

Thank you.

Paul Lynch is an Irish novelist and critic. He has written for Ireland’s
Sunday Tribune,
the London
Sunday Times,
the
Irish Times,
the
Sunday Business Post,
the
Irish
Daily Mail,
and
Film Ireland.
He lives in Dublin.

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Title Page
Welcome
Dedication
Epigraph
Part I
Chapter I
Part II
Chapter II
Part III
Chapter III
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Newsletters
Table of Contents
Copyright