Red Sky in Morning (19 page)

T
HE CUTTER LOOKED
at him, his face gurning with disdain, his yellow teeth bared, and then he scratched the gray of his jaw. Like fuck we’re going back.

Coyle did not answer him, just stared him long in the eye. The Cutter stared him right back, saw the man was not going to be stared down. Ye must be mental.

Coyle turned and went to the fence and scaled it quickly for the road. An apple in The Cutter’s hand and his knuckles tightened white around it and he hurled it at the oak tree, the fruit shattering, and then he began to follow. Arrah fuck.

Coyle walking with his eyes on the road and The Cutter came alongside him muttering. A bloody ribbon what in the hell.

Coyle answered without lifting his head. I had it in my hand only a wee while ago. It’ll have to be about.

They took the narrow road between them, a hill rising languorous before them and the road indented with the dry markings of cartwheels baked by the sun. Coyle nudged the fringe grass with his foot while a red-tailed hawk wheeled the air above them, found shapes of air invisible to glide on.

He could feel his heart seize tight. He walked holding his breath, balling his fists and cracking his knuckles, and he began to feel a sadness he could not control as if more weight had been dropped on top of him. A knot began to stone in his stomach until it was big enough to burst him. Nothing but a fool so I am. One wee thing I had left and now I’ve gone and lost her.

They came to the top of the hill, two pillar forms under vast sky, and they saw the expanse of land spread out around them, serried green corn wagging in the breeze and in the distance the blood roof of a barn. He saw The Cutter bend to his shoelace and he was watching idly the road’s distant tapering when he saw them. A trembling at the far length of the road. The fleet shadows of horses. He reached for words in his throat but could not get a hold of them and The Cutter without turning seemed to smell the trouble off him and when he stood and saw the horses he too was ashen for he knew then that they were visible.

They turned and began to run down the hill, swift past the orchard, and The Cutter ahead of him and he heard the man roar out at him to leap into the corn. The Cutter then was gone, into the grasp of the field over the leaning beams of a fence, and he followed the man’s heels, was upon the fence and the wood decrepit and it collapsed under him. He fell on his back staring up at the road, the cottoned blue sky, the silence of the place but for the thumping of his heart, and he picked himself up winded and pushed in.

He could hear it behind him. The commotion of horse hoofs pounding the road. The silence of them coming to a stop and then the shouting of men. The swish and snap of corn and The Cutter just in sight and then there was a voice shouting behind him. One step further into that field and I’ll blow your heads clean off ya.

T
HE MEN TOOK THEM
out onto the road and circled them.

Sit down there on the ground.

The nose of a shotgun looking down at him and a man leaning behind it.

Three men in black beaver hats, two of them with guns and their horses behind them, and he saw in one of them the red-cheeked face of the farmer from earlier that morning. The man held the gun with fat pink fingers and he looked at them nervously. The Cutter looked up at them incredulous and then he found his voice. Who are yous?

Shut up.

The man standing in front had a jutting brown beard and was the elder of the three and he nodded to the man who spoke. We’re the local horse company and it’s our business to keep out any trouble. Right now you’uns is trespassing.

He directed them with his gun to get up. Coyle and The Cutter stood uneasily to their feet and put their hands into the air over their heads.

Are yous railway Irish?

Trying to get back so we are.

We don’t want your lot around here. Which mile were yous working?

Mile fifty-nine.

What’s that ye say?

I said fifty-nine. Duffy’s cut.

One of the men whispered to another and they looked at the men.

What’s that in yer pockets? The man nodded towards their trousers.

Just fruit is all.

Them’s not your fruit. Give em here.

The men emptied their pockets and handed the fruit over and the men took the fruit and realized they did not know what to do with them. The bearded man motioned with his gun again.

Git walking. Up thataways. He pointed to the road. Coyle took a step forward and The Cutter was slow to move and one of them prodded him in the shoulder with the gun. The Cutter turned and stared hard at the man. Be my pleasure, the man said and the third man cocked his rifle. The Cutter walked on. The men mounted their horses and followed closequarters.

Not a word as they walked and the horsemen behind them kept their counsel but for the bearded one who spoke to give the walkers directions. The land turned pale and it began to drizzle and the horsemen sheathed themselves in skins and the two men walked feeling glad for the cooling rain. A farmstead broke the rise of a low hill and they saw two blond boys being circled in a field by a dog. The children stopped as the men on the road neared and they went to the fence to watch the gunpoint procession. The Cutter winked at them as the dog stood wagging its tail and they looked towards the horsemen uncertainly and ran away.

They passed workers bent in fields who stood to watch them passing, some of them shielding the sun from their eyes and some of them waving at the gunmen. Two of them came to a fence and a member of the gun party went down to talk to them.

A different road around noon and they recognized the looming shape of the valley. They followed the track towards the site where the cut was teeming and the men went to the shanty with the horsemen behind them and they stopped at the water station to get a drink. The bearded man left the group and nosed about on his horse looking for the foreman and he stopped and watched as two men carried the body of a choleric man from the mouth of a tent, the dead man’s head bloated and loose off his shoulder, and the horseman blessed himself and he reversed his animal with dread, turned with a sharp pull of the reins and went back to the others pointing. He told the men what he saw and their minds went wild with the thought of disease and they put their sleeves to their mouths to protect them from the air and they turned their horses one-handed and fled.

T
HE TRACK BOBBED UP
and then the land leaned down to reveal clusters of green. Thick trees knotting the horizon in darker myrtle and nearby ran a small brook. Faller rode ahead in rigid right-angle with a survey map in hand while Macken was silent and slanting. They went to the stream and dismounted, the water bubbling into their bottles and they drank it rusty red. They led the horses back onto the track and Faller stopped and stood still. Wait, he said. He looked at the sky and studied the land from where they had traveled and then he lit his pipe. Blue smoke coiled as he sucked on the stem and then he turned and remounted. The horses trotted on towards a hillock and they came to a cleft of rock bucked like two front teeth and they rode slowly downwards. Clear blue sky ahead of them and from the east a roiling of gray and Faller began to slow down till he was alongside Macken.

We’re being followed, he said.

He spoke without turning but Macken stirred as if he had just been kicked and he leaned around to look, squinted single-eyed at the haze of green and turned around again.

I don’t see nobody.

Faller sucked on his pipe and rubbed slowly his moustache. They’re keeping distance. That alone makes it more interesting.

How’d you figure?

I wonder now who they are.

Faller nudged the chestnut mare ahead of Macken in an easy four-beat gait and Macken followed with his head craning over his shoulder.

It’d be better if you would not let them know we know, Faller said.

What do you reckon they’re going to do?

Faller did not bother to answer. Macken held the reins in his left hand and he checked the gun in his belt with the right and he looked to the butt of the rifle diagonal on the horse in its scabbard.

The land rolled in patches of umber and it lay uneven around them, fields of leaning wheat and tobacco greening, and Faller took out the map again and examined it and pointed. Town this way. The mouth of a valley loomed and widened and they ambled up a hill gently, trees a medley of green under a cobalt sky smeared white. They rode through woodland, the trees thickening in conspiracy and bird call rattling and Faller slowed the horse till it seemed he wanted to travel at no speed at all and Macken grew agitated behind him. The forest cleared and a farmhouse sat among an apron of fields. They met an old man along the edge of a field, his clothes a patchwork of seasoned mendings, and he watched them with gimlet eyes as they approached. He nodded and they nodded in return and Macken stopped just as he was past him and asked if he knew where the railway digs were to be found. Take yer pick, the man said. A belt of gray stubble on his face and he wagged a scrawny finger wide. There’s digs all about these townships over there.

Faller motioned for Macken to go on and when he reached him he stared at him. Why are you telling others our business?

I was just wondering.

Keep our business to ourselves till I figure out who is following.

They rode slow again till Macken complained they’d be quicker walking on foot and Faller said nothing and then he said their followers didn’t want to be drawn out. They took a horse-beaten track and it led them to the shape of a village and on the outskirts they found a lumber tavern. They stopped at the lean-to and dismounted and tied their horses and they went inside where they were met by a gray-haired woman in gingham. She stood to them sideways and took them to a room at Faller’s instruction that watched out onto the street and when the woman turned to leave he saw a goiter in her throat like a fist.

Faller took his gun and put it on his lap and he sat on a chair at the open window. Macken went downstairs and he asked for food and had it sent up. They sat slurping their beef stew in bowls with their eyes watching. The lace curtain danced ghostly in the breeze. After some time two young men on horses ambled through and Macken stiffened straight. That them do you reckon?

Faller shook his head. You’ll know.

T
HE MEN RETURNED
to the dig and the others gave a round of applause and they bent smiling to receive it. I’m docking yous boys a morning’s pay, Duffy said and they were expecting more but that was all of it. They took to work like before and a brief shower of rain fell and it cooled their working bodies. It moistened the open ground and he smelt the raw earth. He watched a raven swoop down low over them, a yelp like a sob from its beak, and the way it glided on the warm air. And then it swooped down into the valley where ten men had taken ill. Their bodies were spent from the violence of voiding, lying as they did in their own excrement and vomit, and they were dehydrated from their efforts and calling for water. Doyle had brought back with him four Sisters of Charity, feetless scuttling apparitions shrouded in black with cornets white-winged who took to minding the men, worked without word between them as they went to the water station and began to wash some of the sick men and they were watched by the others who fought feelings of both horror and comfort.

Coyle rammed the pick into the earth and turned to The Cutter.

I’m going off so I am.

Whereabouts?

He looked across the valley where the horizon met distant green. Dunno yet. Far. Gonna try going back. You know how it is.

When are you going?

Soon as I can get paid next.

Would you not go as it is?

I can’t. I left the last of it in that hotel room.

The Cutter looked at him.

No point going nowhere with no money, said Coyle. I won’t get nowhere.

I’d give you mine only I ain’t nothing left neither.

Donny worry about it.

Need a hand?

Naw. Just to keep an eye out just in case. What I need to do I need to do on me own.

T
HEY WATCHED THE ROAD
till nightfall but the men they figured on following never came. Gray dawn and they rose quick-eyed from their beds. They washed their faces and belted their guns and they took coffee from the gray-haired woman who padded barefoot about with sleepy eyes and stood awkward and sideways when she served them. Macken went to the lean-to and fed the horses and Faller stood from the table and walked out onto the street. The flaxen glow of lamplight from three windows and the moon malingered in the slate morning sky pressing a fingernail upon it. From across the street he watched a yellow dog shuffle towards him. The mongrel looked up at him and sniffed at the stranger’s boots and when Macken came around with the horse the dog nosed over to them beating the air with its tail.

They rode silent down the single street that led out of the village. The air was cool and they tightened their coats about their necks and the yellow dog began to follow and then turned its attention to the smell of something else and followed the trail curious. The village fell behind them. Large white pines that filtered the light rose to meet the riders and Faller consulted his map and they took a left turn and followed a horse trail away from the sun.

They passed a wooden cabin where a snub-nosed boy sat on a step eating an apple and he stared at the two strangers and the men did not stare back and they rode on towards a yellow hillock hunching out of the earth. They took the lean of it with the sun lighting their backs and they came to a valley and rode through it. A redstart warbled and winged overhead and settled on a tree. It fanned its tail and flashed its amber plumage and then it shook its wings away. They reached the far side of the valley where trees stood thin and it was there that Macken heard not the sound of the gun being fired or if he did he heard it only as something indistinct, an approaching murmur as the bullet that came from behind him traveled through the neck cord of his spine and came to rest in the other horse’s cheek.