The Innocents

by Michael Crummey

“It idn’t hurting any,” he said.

  She kept him under the cloth for an hour before they went back to bed. They slept late and Evered was able to blink his eyelids when they woke though even in the room’s permanent dusk the morning light was a torture to him. Ada insisted he wear a blindfold for the day, only removing it to bathe his eyes with steam near the hearth.

  After each treatment she replaced the blindfold and helped him back to the bunk where he lay in complete darkness and varying states of misery. He assumed the affliction he was suffering was a consequence of what he’d laid eyes on aboard the ship. He thought it possible he might never see again. And he wished there was a way to blind his mind’s eye as well. He slept fitfully, woken by bouts of stinging pain and he would call out to Ada to be sure she was still nearby. It was a surprise to him she hadn’t asked more questions about it all but he was grateful for her reticence.

  By evening the pain started to recede. Ada soaked and boiled hardtack and made a poultice of the bread mixed with lamp oil that she applied to his eyes for the night. In the morning he was able to look about the room with only mild discomfort and even managed to hobble to the door and stand in the light a few minutes at a time though Ada forced him to wear the blindfold most of the day. She collected a bucket of bergy bits off the landwash and she hammered the ice into shards, setting Evered’s foot into the cold, boot and all, to ease the ache and bring the swelling down. He looked a proper fool sitting blindfolded and one leg in a bucket of ice but she was too afraid for him to make a joke of it or laugh.

  * * *

  —

  Evered’s sight came back to him fully within a few days but the ice field held fast for weeks longer and the ship was a daily unmentioned presence in their lives. They’d never seen the ocean iced over so late in the year and Evered began to think it wasn’t the ice that was keeping the vessel afloat but the ship that was holding the ice on the shore. That it had brought some sort of curse to their time and they would starve to death in its grim shadow. When he was able to hobble about he went into the backwoods to cut longers and dragged them down to the landwash without knowing if he would live to build the stage.

  The breakup when it came was sudden. Ada went out to relieve herself on the landwash early one morning and she came back in for the telescope, then called Evered outside. She handed him the glass and pointed out at the horizon where the ice drifted in long ragged strips and the sea glittered darkly where the ship had been released and disappeared below the surface.

  Evered nodded at the absence though neither mentioned it directly. He returned the glass to its leather case and handed it back to Ada. He said, “I was thinking I might try to get that boot off today.”

  “It’s like to be grown on by now,” she said. “But we can have a go if you like.”

  As she predicted it was stubborn as a tooth. She gave Evered a strip of leather to bite down on as she reefed at the heel. The stink when his foot came free was sulphurous and feculent. Ada threw the boot out the door to air it and she left the door wide for the clearing breeze. Evered was sitting with his head thrown back, still catching his breath as she soaked the rotten stocking with water and then edged it down the calf. Below the ankle she had to use a knife to skin the material away and eventually Evered’s foot lay naked to the day for the first time in a month.

  He let out a long breath. “That wouldn’t so bad,” he said.

  Ada made a face as she examined the damage. There were signs of bruising like an old water stain around the ankle and the frangible skin had peeled away with the stocking in spots. “You’ll want to let that sit out a bit,” she said.

  Evered still walked with a limp but whatever had torn or broken in the foot seemed to have mended. And he had two unimpaired boots to his name.

  The Duke of Limbs. The Beadle, Once More.

  After the breakup the season skipped into the rhythm they’d known all their lives and they could hardly keep abreast of the pace. They managed to raise the stage on the landwash and they scraped and recaulked and tarred the boat to be ready when the cod struck in.

  They were always gut-foundered. They’d long ago finished the port wine and they took a shot of rum in their tea at night to numb the worst of the hunger and the myriad ailments the work inflicted on them. Their gums had gone grey and spongy with the deprivations of the spring and there was a steady taste of blood in their mouths, their teeth loose enough they could work them like hinges with their tongues. Evered lost an eye tooth by absently worrying it with his fingers one evening and Ada rinsed and polished the incisor and added the ivory to her shelf of treasures. At some point it occurred to her she hadn’t had her visitor since February month and she was surprised to feel that absence a loss.

  The caplin rolled in mid-June and the cod followed close behind. They were up hours before dawn to make the most of the day, both youngsters going about their duties with an exhausted deliberation. They gorged on the fish but they were still reduced with want and their privations made them childlike in their appetites. They were asleep almost before they lay down and they didn’t touch each other but for warmth, for comfort. To Ada the spells that had overcome them in the first months of the winter hardly seemed real, occupying the same space as the strange stories from the Bible their mother had offered up years ago. Part of another world that might have been wholly apocryphal.

  She still carried a niggling fear it was The Hope that had been wrecked and washed ashore on their bit of coast in the September storm and she had to tamp down the conviction they’d lost their only link to the celestial realm of dry goods and flour and salt meat and tea. She didn’t know enough of the world to guess what that could mean for them besides ruination.

  They had night frost all through June and Ada was weeks late setting the seed potatoes and turnips. It was hard to see the garden coming to much by the fall. And it was while that bleak thought was turning over in her head that she spotted the vessel. A speck on the horizon and hours off still but she knew it in her heart. The same as if Martha had whispered in her ear, “There now, there’s The Hope.”

  Evered was home with the morning run and they had split and salted the catch and finished their dinner before The Hope came to anchor. Ada on the stage as Evered climbed into the boat and she waved her tricorn to the crew beyond the skerries and they every one waved back to her.

  * * *

  —

  The crew were watching as Evered rowed out and they helloed him as he came around in the lee and reached to lift him up onto the deck. They shook his hand and clapped him on the back. They seemed as relieved to see the youngster as he was to see them.

  “Half expected to find you gone,” the talker said. “Hard old winter.”

  “We only just got clear of the ice,” Evered said. “Thought we might have to walk into Mockbeggar for a bit of flour.” And then he asked after Mary Oram as he did each time The Hope came through, she being the only soul he knew in common with the crew.

  “The old witch haven’t changed,” a second man said. “Still wild as a goat.”

  “And just as contrary,” the first man said and they laughed over the familiar joke.

  There was a stranger aboard the ship, a boy not Evered’s age to judge by his face though he was at least a head taller. He hung back from the greeting circle, eyeing Evered in a way that wasn’t quite wary, that suggested he had a message to pass on when the time was right. A queer look to him, jet-black hair in tight curls and his skin a colour unlike any colour Evered knew, a barky-tea complexion.

  “And what’s your news?” the first man asked. “Who’s the young lad?”

  “Lad?”

  “The one waving to us from the stagehead. Had a tricorn in he’s hand.”

  “That’s me sister. That’s Ada.”

  “Your sister,” the man said, incredulous. “In them trousers?”

  The crewmen turned toward the cove and the strange youngster jumped up on the rail and shaded his eyes to peer at the d
istant stage.

  “Now he’s keen to look,” the man said. “The Duke of Limbs here wants to have a gander of a sudden. Watch you don’t wind up overside, Jingle Brains.”

  “He got all the grace of a cow aboard of a dory,” another said. “The gangly old stilts on him. He’ll never shit a seaman’s turd, that one.”

  The boy smiled at their teasing without looking away from the cove. Every tooth still in his head.

  “We won’t miss yon mongrel when he’s gone,” the first man said. “Look of him, the miserable wretch. I pities the crowd haves to wake up to that gob every morning. He’d put a horse off he’s oats.”

  And there was a round of laughter so affectionate it made the Duke of Limbs blush, his dark face coming over darker still.

  “Your Ada got no interest in coming aboard for a visit with you is it?” the man said, turning back to Evered. “She’s like her mother God rest her,” he said, answering his own question. “I spose we counted a harder crowd than she knew and a year or two in Mockbeggar was enough for her.” He smiled at Evered. “You couldn’t blame her wanting to keep clear of we,” he said.

  Evered was barely listening to the man, still staring at the Duke of Limbs gazing into the cove.

  “How did that fit-out she’s wearing come to hand?” someone asked and he roused himself to tell the story of the wreckage that washed ashore after the September storm, claiming the clothes had been part of the salvage to avoid talking about the ship frozen in the ice with its pot of fatty flesh and bone on the stove.

  “That was some blow we had,” the first man said. “Three ships in Mockbeggar parted their chains and wound up wrecked ashore. We was worried you crowd out here might be blasted to hell and gone.”

  “We come through it all right,” Evered said.

  “God in His mercy,” the first man said. And then, “Himself is waiting on you. We’ll get your provisions up.”

  Evered took a last glance at the Duke of Limbs before limping off across the deck.

  “I see you got yourself good and gimped up,” the second man called after him.

  “It was a hard old winter,” Evered said.

  * * *

  —

  They renewed their acquaintances in the accustomed manner, the Beadle pointing Evered to his spot beside the desk and giving him the usual once-over.

  “You’ve survived another winter, Mr. Best.”

  “Still got all me teeth but one,” Evered said before he thought of the state of the mouth he was speaking to.

  Clinch watched the youngster steadily. Nearly a man to look at now but beaten down and spent, the filthy white hair looking less and less incongruous with each passing season. A grizzly bit of blond beard on the chin.

  “We’re out at the fish this weeks now,” Evered said to break the silence. “I expects we’ll have a decent summer at it if we don’t founder altogether.”

  “On that subject,” the Beadle said. “You met the boy on your way along?”

  Evered glanced over his shoulder at the doorway as if the youngster might be standing behind him. “The Duke of Limbs you means?”

  “Who?”

  “The dusky-faced one.”

  “He has a lick of the tar brush I grant you. But he’s a Christian soul.”

  “What of him?” Evered asked.

  “You requested Mr. Strapp find a hand to go shares with you and your sister out here,” Clinch said.

  “That was ages since.”

  “And Mr. Strapp has endeavoured every year to find a suitable servant.”

  “That’s an unlicked cub if ever I seen one.”

  “He is accustomed to work,” the Beadle said. “And a great favourite among the crew. I’m sure you and your sister,” he said and he paused to give extra weight to this point, “would be happy for the company.”

  “Mr. Long Shanks is too bockity to be any use in a boat. He nearly fell overboard just now.”

  Clinch looked Evered up and down a second time. “He is a quick study to judge by his time aboard The Hope.”

  Evered shook his head. He felt a pall blooming in his chest and he wanted done and off the ship. “I don’t see paying a share to a green hand who never fished a day in he’s life.”

  “Mr. Best,” the Beadle said. “You can never hope for more than meagre trade without you will take on help.”

  “Me and Ada have muddled through this long. We’ll get by all right.”

  “I will tell you that Mr. Strapp went out of his way to accommodate you in this matter.”

  Evered plowed ahead, goaded by some squalid thing worming in his gut. “If you could thank Mr. Strapp for the trouble he went to on our account,” he said.

  “It’s up to you of course,” the Beadle said and he paused, looking for a delicate way forward. “But I know how much you value your sister’s opinion. Do you think you should speak to her before we decide things?”

  Evered said, “I knows Ada’s mind well enough.”

  Clinch rubbed his hands along his thighs. “If you say so,” he said and he turned to the ledger, stroking items from the list, altering amounts to be off-loaded.

  “Mr. Clinch sir,” Evered said. He felt emboldened to have faced the man down and to still be standing. And beneath that little triumph a recklessness inspired by the fetid creature turning his insides over. “If you could front us a drop of rum with the rest, sir.”

  The Beadle stared at Evered. “Your mother did not approve of the stronger spirits as I recall.”

  “Mother is dead this years,” Evered said.

  Clinch offered a clipped nod and added a line at the bottom of the list. He held the quill toward Evered. “Your mark, Mr. Best,” he said.

  Ada was waiting on the stage as he rowed in and she helped unload the materials and carry them up the rise to the tilt. They had a celebratory meal of fresh baked bread and molasses and sugary tea and before they went to bed they each had two fingers of rum cut with a splash of water which was enough to make them briefly feel blessed in their circumstances. And in the full of that glow Ada said, “Who was the young one aboard The Hope?”

  “Which?”

  “How many young ones was aboard? The new hand. The one with the curly black hair.”

  Evered looked into his glass. The worm rolling inside him. “How’d you know there was a young one with curly hair?”

  She brandished the spyglass in its leather case. “I had a gander while you was out.”

  “You liked the look of the Duke of Limbs I imagine.”

  She smiled at the fire.

  “You wouldn’t mind adding him to the collection,” Evered said. “Sitting him up on your shelf with that book and me tooth and such.”

  Ada shrugged. She wasn’t sure what he was implying but she could tell he wasn’t intending a compliment. “I just never seen the like of him,” she said.

  “He’s a green hand,” Evered said. “And a bit of an eejit to judge by what they was saying.”

  She felt surprisingly defensive of the stranger, of the interest she’d made the mistake of showing in him. “He didn’t look like no eejit,” she said.

  “You can’t tell by looks now can you.”

  “I don’t spose you can,” she said. “A person wouldn’t know it to look at you.”

  Evered drank off the last of his rum and they sat with the unfamiliar heat of animosity awhile. Finally he said, “How come you never put that piece of Indian bone up on your shelf?” Ada shrugged again. “What bone?”

  He smiled at her. “You snuck one of them pieces of bone from the grave. Where is it you keeps it hid?”

  She was about to deny it all before she saw the obvious lie would give Evered a measure of satisfaction. “I got a place,” she said.

  Her brother stared across at her. She could see he was waiting for more but she left it there.

  * * *

  —

  It was still light and Evered went outside to cleave a bit of wood. Every junk he set on the block
he imagined was the jingle-brained head of the Duke of Limbs.

  Ada went to bed while he was outside and pretended she was asleep when he followed after. It was still cold enough they hadn’t shifted to separate bunks for the season but he settled across the room from his sister. Hours later he woke from a miserable dream of the Beadle, of his own naked flesh being worked over as the Duke of Limbs stood watching the cold molestation from a corner, smiling at Evered with his white, white teeth.

  It was the first time in months there’d been any sign of vigour down below and he turned to the wall to take advantage of the surprise. It had been an incessant activity the previous summer, laying in the cuddy after he ate his bit of lunch, working his trousers down around his arse. Or standing with his back to the cove to piss overside and the simple fact of having his tackle to hand making him swell up. Having a go at himself, thinking of the Beadle’s cold fingers upon him. Of Ada standing in his place beside the desk, the Beadle holding her wrists in one spidery hand and spreading some viscous concoction across her face with the other.

  He still remembered the shock of that first hot spill pumping across his hand and stomach. Almost a year since. Feeling on the verge of some imminent arrival with no clue who or what was coming, the sudden convulsion bringing his knees to his chest. Ada stirring in the opposite bed, asking was something wrong. And he honestly did not know. Snapping at her to go to sleep, muddling his confusion with belligerence.

  Every private moment that followed was an opportunity to indulge that obsessive release and he squirrelled away twice, sometimes three times a day to abuse himself.

  It was the loneliest affliction.

  He felt he’d fallen into a lurid dwall he couldn’t pull clear of, halfways out of the world altogether. He swore off the habit a hundred times but there was some corruption in him, some soiled thing, and he surrendered to it without fail. He took to nicking his forearms with a knife to lock the urge away in the narrow windowless cell of that burn. But it did little more than delay the activity and he gave up on it when Ada began asking about the scars.