The Color of the Sun

by David Almond

  He hardly knows what he is doing. He doesn’t know why he is doing it. He opens the haversack and takes out the fox mask. He pulls it over his head. It’s too small, too tight, it’s made for little children, but he pulls it hard until his face is a fox face and he stares out through fox eyes. He bares his teeth, he snarls, he yelps a fox yelp. He pads through the yellow shrubs. He begins to lose himself. He breathes fox breath. He feels fox blood running through his veins.

  He is fox, he is wild. He prowls through the yellow gorse.

  He staggers, totters. He rips the fox mask off. Now he takes the antlers and sets them on his head. They’re frail plastic things that slip as he tries to get them to stay put. He holds them in place as he moves deer-like through the gorse, until they begin to be part of him, until they begin to be antlers growing from his own skull, until he loses himself and is no longer Davie. He feels the deer heart beating in his chest. He feels dense, coarse deer hair growing on his skin.

  He is deer, he is wild.

  Amid the gorse and the bees and the exploding seedpods, below the blue sky and the yellow sun and upon the blazing earth, he loses himself, finds the fox and the deer inside himself, and he is wild.

  He staggers, totters, falls.

  He pulls the antlers off, throws them down.

  At the heart of the gorse patch, a strip of black rock grained with silvery threads is exposed. He crawls to it, lies down upon it. It is hot. There is a shallow depression in the rock, shaped as if to accept him. All around, it is as if the yellowness is pouring out from the earth into the sky. It is as if the earth has opened, as if the golden light contained within the earth is offered up to the golden sun.

  Davie is at the summit of the town. He is balanced on the surface of the earth. He rests upon the hot black rock and the yellow light. He stares toward the buzzards of the eggshell sky. There is nothing but the buzzards between himself and the sun. He drifts. He swoons. He shuts his eyes. He feels that the earth is pressing him upward, that it is offering him to the sky, that he has lost all weight and that he could rise into the yellow air and disappear.

  And then here are the claws at his shoulders. Here’s the turmoil of the air caused by the beating wings above. Here is the buzzard’s single short, high-pitched cry. He does not dare to look. He is lifted up. He dangles from the buzzard’s claws, is carried upward by the buzzard’s beating wings. He flies upward through the skylarks.

  And at last he opens his eyes and dares to look.

  He is in the air, dangling from the buzzard’s claws. The song of skylarks is all around him. And below him, that’s where he comes from. The yellow gorse and then the hill and then the zigzag path and then the playing fields and then his little town. And the river running through the towns toward the distant sea. And the city and the suburbs and factories and churches. The shipyards with half-built ships. Factories belching fumes and din. And the curved earth stretching away from this heart. Northumberland and Durham and distant Cumberland. Everything exposed by the gift of this summer day’s intense and lovely light. Everything seen by a boy dangling from a buzzard’s claws. And Davie stretches out his arms and spreads his fingers and gives a short, sharp, high-pitched cry, a buzzard’s cry of liberty and joy.

  And then is dropped back down onto the black rock in the yellow gorse.

  And he lies there.

  Sun falls toward the west.

  And the light turns.

  Eggshell blue is touched with drifts of red.

  And Davie sleeps a kind of sleep.

  And doesn’t see the boy who walks into the gorse. Doesn’t see the tall and slender one dressed in blue and black — blue jeans and black denim shirt with pearlized buttons on it. Black pointed elastic-sided boots. There’s dried blood on his cheek. Blood has trickled down from beneath his cuffs and dried on the smooth skin of his hand. He’s a bonny boy. Smooth cheeks, shining eyes.

  The first Davie knows of it is when the slender boy crouches at his side and gently touches Davie’s shoulder.

  “Kid,” he says softly. “Kid. Are you all right, kid?”

  Davie imagines that he is at home, in his bed, the only place where he ever sleeps. But he’s confused to hear a voice close by him that is not the voice of his mother, nor that of his father. Confused to feel the touch that is not of his mother or father.

  “Kid,” says the slender boy again. “Kid. Wake up, kid.”

  Davie comes out of his dreamless sleep. Opens his eyes. Sees the black elastic-sided boots, the blue jeans, the pearlized buttons on the black shirt. Sees the blood. Sees the face. Wonders if he’s dreaming, as if sleep is boring emptiness and waking is the vivid dream.

  “Zorro Craig,” he says.

  “The same,” says the boy. “And who are you? And what the hell you doing here?”

  Davie closes his eyes again a moment, remembers the buzzard, its wings, its claws. He doesn’t know how to answer. He wonders if he is the same boy who was lifted into the sky or if he is some other boy, some other Davie, carried here from a different place.

  “I thought you were dead,” says Zorro. “You looked just like you were dead.”

  Davie squirms on the rock. He tries to sit up. Zorro helps him, holding his arm.

  “You got anything to drink?” says Davie.

  “Aye,” says Zorro. “I’ve got a little bit. Was keeping it for later but I guess you’re the one in need.”

  He takes a glass bottle of Coca-Cola from his pocket and passes it to Davie. It’s a third full. Davie unscrews the cap and swigs. The liquid’s warm — the heat of the day, the heat of Zorro’s body. Its fizz has gone but it’s wet and sweet. It’s delicious.

  “Drink up,” says Zorro. “Gan on. I see you need it more than me.”

  Davie sits up on the rock and swigs. He feels his body relaxing as the liquid enters it. He tastes the Coca-Cola and knows that he is tasting Zorro Craig too. He feels himself coming properly awake.

  “Thank you,” he says.

  He looks to the pathways. No sign of Foulmouth, no sign of Wilf Pew. The sun has moved further, fallen further.

  “What you doing up here?” says Zorro.

  “I came from down below. I was just wandering.”

  “Bliddy wandering?”

  “Aye.”

  “I’ve seen ye before,” says Zorro. “What’s yer name?”

  “Davie,” says Davie.

  He sees the fox mask and the antlers on the dusty earth. Discarded children’s toys. He starts to wonder if he should be scared, if he should jump up and run, but he feels like he could hardly move.

  “Why did you kill Jimmy Killen?” he finds himself saying.

  “What?” says Zorro.

  “Why did you kill Jimmy?”

  “Who telt you I killed Jimmy?”

  “I saw him,” says Davie. “I saw him lying dead in the rubble where the church hall used to be.”

  “How could that be?” says Zorro. “He can’t be dead.”

  “I saw the knife,” says Davie. “I saw the blood.”

  Zorro takes a cigarette from a packet and lights it with a match struck on the rock.

  He breathes in smoke and exhales smoke.

  “The police were there,” says Davie. “And the doctor. And the priest.”

  “The bliddy priest?”

  “Aye.”

  “Making sure he gets took straight up to Heaven, aye?”

  “I suppose so.”

  Zorro groans and smokes his cigarette.

  In the distance, a siren wails.

  “I heard that earlier,” says Zorro. “I never thought it’d be for me.”

  “It is,” says Davie, and he finds himself saying, “You’ll never get away. Maybe you should let me take you in.”

  Zorro snorts.

  “Where do you think we are? Texas? You got a shotgun in yer sack?”

  Davie imagines crossing the square with Zorro at his side. He imagines handcuffs joining their wrists together. He imagines that he does
have a shotgun and walks behind Zorro and points it at the back of his head. He imagines the townsfolk in the streets and in the square applauding as he brings the killer in.

  He laughs at the image.

  Maybe Zorro imagines the same. He laughs out loud. And the laughter echoes around the gorse patch, and suddenly Davie realizes how scared he should be. He thinks of his mother. She’ll be terrified. Her son is off wandering all alone and there’s a killer on the loose. He jumps to his feet.

  “What’s up with ye?” says Zorro.

  “I got to get back,” says Davie. “Me mam’ll be frantic.”

  “Frantic?”

  “’Cos there’s a killer on the loose.”

  “Aye, there is,” Zorro says. “And the killer says hold your horses. It’s not five minutes since you looked to be at the point of death yourself. You’ll do yourself a mischief.”

  Davie tries to tug away but Zorro holds him back.

  “You going to kill me too?” Davie says.

  Zorro leans close. He stares straight into Davie’s eyes.

  “Aye!” he says. “That’s what killers do. They start with one and get a taste for it and end up killing multitudes.”

  He pulls Davie close.

  “Do you think that’s true?” he says. “Do you think I’ve set out on a path with no return?”

  Davie looks back into the killer’s eyes.

  He has no answers.

  Zorro pushes him away.

  “This is mad,” he says.

  He tugs his black shirt and his buttons pop like seedpods as they open.

  “You can run if you want to, Davie,” he says. “But, look, I’m the one that should be dead.”

  Zorro strips off his shirt. There’s dark down on his chest. His skin is pale. There’s a wound on his upper left arm with a track of dried blood below it.

  “This is where the knife struck,” says Zorro.

  “Jimmy stabbed you?”

  “Aye.”

  “Then you stabbed him.”

  “No. There was just one knife. There was just one wound. The blood on Jimmy must have come from me.”

  “So how did he die?”

  “He can’t have died. All I did was clout him.”

  “How hard?”

  “How hard would you clout somebody that tried to kill you? Bliddy hard. Bliddy wallop. Down he goes and off I run. Poor Jimmy.”

  He inspects the wound again.

  “It looked worse but it isn’t deep. A little flesh wound. I washed it at Cooper’s Hole on the way up.”

  “Cooper’s Hole? Did you see anybody there?”

  “What’s that got to do with it? I saw frogs and minnows and the deep black hole, the same as always. The blood had dried and I washed it away, but it made the bleeding start again. See?”

  He shows how the trail of blood is slick and shining. Davie peers at the opening in the skin, the dark dried clot that has sealed it. He thinks of old Dr. Drummond leaning over Jimmy, inspecting him for wounds, finding nothing.

  “It’s not too deep,” says Zorro. “But a couple of inches to the side and it could have been me heart.”

  He holds his hand across his heart as if to check that it’s still beating. He stands dead still and grimaces as if he’s in deep pain and stares into the sky. He laughs again.

  “I’m like one of them pictures in the church,” he says. “One of them saints with arrows in them or their skin all peeled away. Or like Jesus on that massive cross beside the altar.”

  Davie recalls the saints. He recalls the cross. Recalls all the images of wounds and sickness they were made to look at in church and at school. He remembers the priest’s black prayer book. He digs it out of the sack and opens it and laughs at the black cover, at the black words, at what he sees, and he reads aloud.

  “O Lord Jesus.”

  “Eh?” says Zorro.

  “O Lord Jesus, I adore thee hanging on the cross, wearing a crown of thorns upon thy head.”

  “Do you?”

  “Aye. And I beg thee that thy cross may free me from the deceiving angel.”

  “Aye. All right.” He peers at Davie. “You’re bonkers, aren’t you?”

  “Aye,” says Davie. “Amen.”

  He flings the prayer book into the air as if to make it fly, and it flaps and spins and thuds down onto the earth again.

  “Begone!” he cries, just as Wilf Pew did to his false leg.

  He kicks it toward the fox mask and the antlers.

  “Church!” says Zorro. “Prayers! Gave up that crap years back.”

  “Me too,” says Davie. “Except for funerals.”

  Zorro nods. His eyes soften. He ponders the gorse patch.

  “I used to love him,” he says.

  “Love who?”

  “Jimmy Killen.”

  He shrugs, smiles, then pauses and frowns.

  “Why am I telling you this?” he says.

  “I don’t know,” says Davie.

  “Nor do I.”

  Zorro sits down, then lies on his back on the earth with his head resting on his hands.

  “It was back in Mr. Garner’s class,” he says. “And before that too. Nobody knew. We were supposed to hate each other’s guts, like proper Killens and proper Craigs. But we couldn’t do it.”

  “You were friends,” says Davie.

  “Aye. We used to meet each other in sunny early mornings before school. In the autumn and the winter when the days were dark we used to walk along the river together after school. I used to say if I’d been born a Killen we could be proper pals. He used to say if he’d been born a Craig we could be proper mates. You know, the kind of things you say to each other when you’re just lads. The way that you mebbe still do, Davie. Do you?”

  Davie thinks about Gosh. He thinks of other pals. He thinks of the wonder of wandering with a friend at dusk as the light changes and the world and your heart seem charged.

  “Do you?” says Zorro again.

  “Aye,” says Davie.

  “Aye. Sometimes it’s like you’re not supposed to say such things, not if you’re a lad, but you feel them, don’t you? And sometimes you have to say them, don’t you?”

  “Aye.”

  “You can’t be just a hard bugger, can you?”

  “No,” says Davie.

  Davie looks at the older boy. For years he’s thought that Zorro Craig is hard as nails. Everybody has thought that Zorro Craig is hard as nails and nothing else. But Davie knows that nobody can be just one thing, that each of us has to be many things as we wander through the world.

  Zorro is silent. Davie draws him in his mind: the blue jeans, black boots, black hair, white skin, red blood.

  “But then,” says Zorro, “we got older and we did get harder and it was like we couldn’t escape what we were supposed to be. And we were seen together and it wasn’t liked, and one day I got beaten up by my cousins and told I had to be a proper Craig, and Jimmy got beaten up by his and told to be a proper Killen. And that’s what we became. And we were stupid, and too stupid to know that we were stupid. And there came the day we had our first fight and I felt his knuckles thumping into my cheek and he felt my knee thumping into his nuts and we knew that things had changed and we’d be battling each other forevermore.”

  He pauses. There are tears in his eyes.

  “And now you tell me Jimmy’s dead,” he says. “And I can’t believe it but mebbe I must.”

  A tiny black beetle appears, crawling across Zorro’s body and up toward his chest. They both watch it.

  “Do you think he thinks I’m the whole world?” says Zorro. “Do you think he thinks I’m God?” He smiles. “Instead of being born a Craig or a Killen, I could’ve been born a beetle. D’you ever think that?”

  Davie has. It’s the kind of thought he often has. He says so, and he imagines it now, being tiny, black and shining, making his way across a great expanse of white skin toward the wound.

  “We met early this morning,” says Zorro.
“We knew we were probably going to fight. We knew we probably wanted to fight. We set it up the night before. We said it was all about a lass.”

  “Maria O’Flynn.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “I met her at the kissing gate. She’s looking for you.”

  “Ah. Yes, lovely Maria. We said we both loved her. We both said she loved us. But it was nowt to do with her, not really. It was to do with us. She was just the excuse for it.”

  “That’s what she says.”

  “She says the truth.”

  He pauses. He gently flicks the beetle away. The light is changing, the sun darkening to orange as it hangs lower in the western sky. Still the air is hot. Still the yellow rises from the gorse. Songbirds sing in the yellow shrubs and the bees buzz on. Davie is entranced by the words of the older boy. He needs to hear the story, to be told the brand-new ancient tale of love and death. He closes his eyes, preparing to listen as if the tale will come to him in a dream.

  “Stand up,” says Zorro.

  “What?”

  “Stand up. Be Jimmy Killen.”

  “What?”

  “I need you to be Jimmy Killen. I need you to know truly what occurred.”

  Davie doesn’t move. He sits there on the rock.

  “Do it,” says Zorro. “Or I’ll pull you up and pummel you without a fight.”

  And he reaches down and grabs Davie by the arm and pulls him up and glares into his eyes.

  “Do it!” he snarls. “Stop being good little Davie. Be Jimmy Killen now.”

  Zorro holds Davie by the collar. He continues to glare into his eyes. He indicates the gorse patch.

  “This is the demolition site,” he says. “This is the back of the hall. This is where we met in the early morning. Can you see it?”