Red Sky in Morning (3 page)

The dog barked and ran in circles about the men who stood by the ashen tree. The air thrumming with the electricity of unspoken glances, an awareness now that it must be a killing they were dealing with and not an accident and caps came off out of respect for Hamilton the fallen employer, every man but for Faller who kept his hat on his head and sat on his haunches away from the men with a pipe in his hand and a tin in the other. He pinched some tobacco and rolled it loose between finger and thumb then tamped it down and sucked the pipe patiently to life. And only when the cadaver lay stiffened on the ground did he go to it and put a hand to its face, wiping gently the sludge from its features, silt hanging about the eyelashes and teeth grimed and the mouth filled with black oozing mud and he rubbed a thumb over the dead man’s lips.

A
HUSH ABOUT THE HAMILTON HOUSE
. There was the lighting of oil lamps and the sound of whispers that fell short on the breath with the approaching march of Faller as he strode through the hallway towards the east wing of the house. A gallery of deer heads watched impassively as the foreman entered the sitting room, shadows of antlers grasping dully at the ceiling.

Hamilton stood in front of the fire and he turned around and looked at Faller. He was white and naked but for his leather slippers and a gown that swung untied and in his arms he petted a stuffed fox. Faller reached to light an oil lamp and watched the man whispering into the animal’s ear.

It was one of the Coyles, Faller said.

Hamilton stopped his whispering and looked up at the foreman.

What was that? he said. The old man’s voice a stumbling whisper.

Your son sir.

Oh that. I see. Did you talk to Desmond about it?

It is Desmond that is dead.

The old man looked at him with rheumy fish eyes unblinking.

I see. Pity that.

He lifted the fox up to his face.

I don’t think we’ll miss him will we Foxy? We didn’t like Desmond anymore did we?

Faller went to the sideboard and took a tumbler and poured himself a glass of scotch. A leather chair creaked as Hamilton sat down, gray belly flesh spilling loose over his groin, and Faller watched him patting the animal’s head.

I have not involved the constabulary, Faller said. I don’t intend to. And you have my word I’ll bring that miscreant to you.

Hamilton put his ear down to the fox and Faller turned to leave but the old man raised his head again and Faller could see in the dull light the eyes of the man become animate.

Foxy says he wants his cup of hot milk.

S
HE REACHED OUT TO HIM
, put the child in his lap—baby skin warm and the bundled child with big saucer eyes and her looking up at him and enfolding his finger with a hand—the smallest most wondrous living thing he ever saw—and he sang softly in the child’s ear a melody strange from his lips that he’d not sung before but it came to him easy as if he’d known it all his life and he stood in front of the fire with the child in his arm and he saw too the horse and rubbed its muzzle with the flat of his hand and she came over and rubbed it as well and she said words he couldn’t make out and then there was blood from its ears, the softly plink of rain on the floor, and he told her to mind the blood but it began to course now, falling to the clay, and her face was wild, her eyes shrieking silent and he shouted to her and he put his hands to one of the horse’s ears but the flow he could not stop, and she began shouting to him, and he could hear her now, where is the wean Coll, where did you leave the wean, and he did not know where he left the child and he stood there unknowing, dread rooting him to the spot and he felt the power of his legs leave him and the horse looking at him sorrowfully and he was stiff from the cold.

His waking breath smothered by mute darkness. The rush of forest must to his nostrils and he peeled his eyes to the starless night. His body was damp and needled and he lay in a hollow and then he sat himself up, stiff-limbed and shoulders planked and tense with cold. His boots were wet beside him and his feet were tucked under his knees and he rubbed his body for warmth cursing the loss of his jacket.

His cheekbone was tender and he remembered his brother coming towards him outside the house that afternoon. The man in a rage. Sarah watching and Jim putting him to the ground with his fist.

They’ll string you up, he said.

Divil they will. Nobody knows nothing so they don’t.

Ye must be stupid. They seen yer coat. You have to leave.

I’ll not be leaving.

You’ll be dead before dawn if you don’t. Go now and get away into hiding. Go up to Ranty’s at least for the night. I’ll make sure Sarah’s looked after.

The night was still and he figured it long past midnight and in the silence he listened to the rumblings of his stomach. He felt for his boots and put them on and set off through the forest. He continued along a path away from Carnarvan, his arms folded about him and the ground dark beneath his feet and everything that was going to be enclosed in its own darkness.

He heard movement in the forest. The crackle of twigs and he stopped dead. A rustling nearby and he could not tell from where and his breath ceased. He bent slowly to his haunches and sat with his breath in his mouth. He listened to the wind whisper about the tips of the trees and heard the dull beating of his heart in his ears. He reached a hand to the ground, padded the forest floor semicircular for some piece of wood to wield but there was nothing to take hold of and the rustling came closer and he closed his eyes, squeezed them tight, and when he opened them again and listened there was nothing to the night. He waited and sat still. In his mind he saw his wife and his child and the child waiting to be and he thought of the trouble that would come upon them and he stood. He looked towards the crest of Banowen, neutered in black and the hills unnamed darkly beyond, and he turned back around towards home the way he came.

A
GIBBOUS MOON WINKING AT HIM
through the trees and the forest began to thin. The rain fell beaded and he curled himself against it and hoped it would give way but it displayed no such intention and soon he seized with coughing. He hit upon a path and followed it near-sightless and he guessed an hour passing till he came near the grasp of Carnarvan, the growing unfamiliarity of it, and he stood under larch trees he climbed as a child and stared at a field he thought he knew, a difference to it he held not in the spread of night on top of it but a way now of looking, and he came upon the lane familiar and followed. Dark upon the lane, dark under the beech tree, came to a bend and stood listening, the night that was still, scent of earth and sap, and onwards he went, upwards the hill, around the bend that elbowed the old falling wall, the sound eternal of stones turning in the stream, stones he handled as a child, and then he smelt it, the weight of it upon the air, and then he came upon it, and saw what was his family’s house as it lay before him cindered.

A
WAY TO GO YET BEFORE
the hours of dawn and Faller’s man was sore on his feet. He was tired of getting wet and worn too of the evening’s excitement and he waited long till after they were gone though he still looked about to make sure no one was watching and then he climbed up onto the cart. He lifted the tarpaulin and made sure it was dry and he laid the rifle lengthways beside him, shuffled some straw and lay down to sleep. In his dreams that came deep and manifold he did not register the figure of Coyle who approached the house in brazen form, nor did he hear Coyle kick through the charred remains of what had been his home for the remnants of bones of which there were none and when he reached satisfaction that this was so he turned to leave and saw then the child’s ribbon, folded neat upon itself past the lie of the door, a ribbon once white now smoked gray, and he picked it up and held it like it was a living part of his daughter and he put it in his pocket and he was gone then into the night.

T
HERE CAME A POUNDING
at the door and then the juddered sound of kicking and like a great suck of wind the door came off its hinges. The men darkened the house and the women were shrieking, the children burying their heads into the custody of their mothers, but Jim said not a word. The men grabbed him and dragged him threshing out of the house. Outside he was stood in front of the dark figure of Faller, whose face flared to light when Macken stepped with spitting torch towards him, holding in the other hand a shearing hook, denticles shining like razored teeth. Faller took the torch and shone it in Jim’s face.

Show me the cunt, he said.

Jim squirmed but the grasp about him tightened and he glowered at Faller who flashed a smile in return. He leaned in towards the man.

No? We have here a man who doesn’t want to talk.

He put a hand to Jim’s collar and dragged him to the side of the house and threw him face down to the ground and he came behind him and drove a knee into his back.

Rope.

From the house two men began to drag outside the women. Faller roared out to them. Put them back and shut the door.

He grabbed hold of Jim’s arms till they were awkward behind him, forced each fighting hand open till the fingers were splayed. Fluidly he knotted with one hand the rope about each of the man’s thumbs and then he wrenched his handiwork together. He stood up and yanked Jim to standing by his shirt. He walked him towards a tree and then he rubbed the dust off his shirt. Macken stood by his side and watched Faller throw the rope. It slithered and fell over the bough of a tree and he made it taut and he handed it to Macken who summoned another of his men. They took hold of the rope and he told them to pull. Jim’s arms swung up behind him unnatural, a howl from his lips and the ligature tearing till the ground no longer met his toes.

Faller stood in front of him, then leaned in and spoke.

Where is the cunt?

His voice low and familiar and they waited in silence for the man to talk and when he didn’t Macken stepped past Faller and threw a fist at the hanging man’s face. Jim howled as his body contorted and Faller turned and gave Macken a look that made the other men step away. Faller stood still then reached into his jacket and produced his pipe. He looked at the man suspended before him, his rictus face flickering in the light, and he took the tin from his jacket and began to pinch tobacco. He tamped it down into the pipe’s chamber and put the bit to his lip and he lit it and sucked on it slowly, the smoke curling into the nothing light.

Now, he said. Let me tell you a story.

H
E RAN HEART-JAGGED
and bone-cold kicking wildly through the fields, brush and briar pricking at his clothes and deeper into his flesh and he did not notice the rain hissing on the leaves. The cold gnawed toothless but slowly wearing and he thought of warm things, a fire to lean on, the pure gleam of hot food.

He was upon the place of his brother’s house when he heard the breathing of tethered horses and he advanced further till he heard low voices. Rough moonlight and he watched. Amidst the fanning of torches a gathering of men and the height of Faller among them and he crept closer till he saw a figure under the bough of a tree, two feet off the ground and suspended on a rope. The arms twisted backwards towards the shoulders, the joints wrenched seemingly from their sockets and the head hung low and then he saw the man was hanging by his thumbs. Two men were leaning into him talking and he saw in Faller’s hand the shape of a shearing hook and only when one of the others stepped back did he see the face of the hanging man and realize it was his brother.

M
INDSCREAM AND THE NIGHT
pitched on top of him, his hurtling body a clamber of limbs trying to beat off the mauling darkness. From out of the abyss skeletal fingers of trees made snatches for his face as he ran from the horrors of what he had seen, briars like witches’ claws tearing at his flesh and he fought them with blind fury. His breath jagged at his chest for each breath was a shard of glass and onwards he tore, through scrub and sheugh and down a sharp decline till something took hold of his boot and held it firm and the ground reached up for him and his mouth bit hard upon the earth. Pain like a searing flash of lightning white hot and thunder crashed in his ears and he rolled down the ground weak and useless until stunned he lay, his breathing fevered, the earth wet against his face and he was arrested with the image of his brother hanging from the tree like some kind of Christ, broken and illumined among shadows and he saw the image of Faller, the man stepping forward with shearing hook in hand, the implement rolling easily between fingers and thumb, stepping forward towards the broken man, and nausea defeated him and he shook deep with coughing. It held him for a time till he could shake no more and he lay there sodden in the moist arms of grief, the moon watching through gray veil, and then he was upwards again, climbing into the mouth of darkness.

R
ANTY’S HOUSE STOOD GOLDEN
in the dawn, a lone beacon on the pass near the top of the hill. Drumtahalla this place is. No place at all and if it is a place tis not fit for a goat. The Meeshivin forest spread wide below, steeped still in night where Coyle had returned walking stiff till he had reached the old man’s door. He banged on it with a fist and heard the scuffle of bare feet and then the door opened a crack. An eyeball glaring and then the door opened wide and Ranty stood before him, small and square with a face cut from stone like he did it blind to himself and he rubbed his eyes with sleep to take in the sight of the man.

Get in will ye.

Ranty stabbed the rakings and forced upon them some kindling and Coyle went kneeling towards the reluctant flame with his hands. Ranty watched him shivering and told him to slough off the wet clothes and when he did so he threw him a blanket.