Sweetland

by Michael Crummey

  What coat? Sweetland asked.

  The one you and Hollis wore.

  I don’t know if I remembers much about it.

  You had to go out and check the nets in the morning before school.

  You want to tell the story?

  No, Jesse said. You tell it.

  All right, Sweetland said.

  Up before light, the two of them. Putting a bit of fire in the stove, the house cold as stone. A cup of tea and fried capelin and they went along to the stagehead, climbed down into the punt and set the oars. They had to sell the skiff with the inboard after their father died and it was an hour’s rowing out to the nets, longer if the wind was southerly. Only the one decent coat between them, their father’s old jacket kept on a hook in the porch. Neither of them big enough to fill it out on their own, sitting side by side with one arm each in the sleeves, coming back on the oars. Uncle Clar telling them how they looked like a fat little two-headed man on his way to check his herring nets.

  Why did you have to share a coat? Jesse asked.

  It was hard times after Father died. Just me and Hollis to look after the fish. Hollis wouldn’t as old as you when all that was going on.

  Jesse was quiet a moment and then he said, You was with Hollis when he drowned.

  That’s enough of that now.

  But Hollis says—

  I heard enough of what your imaginary friend says about it all.

  He’s not imaginary, Jesse said in the same flat tone.

  Well I’m not talking to him either way. You want another story or not?

  Clara usually had to call an end to the interrogation, her silhouette at the bedroom door. Last one, she’d say and then stand there to make sure Jesse didn’t sneak in another. But occasionally Sweetland outlasted the boy and he lay a few minutes longer, letting the spell of sleep settle in before he moved. Jesse’s face blank but animate, a living thing. The last of Sweetland’s blood beside him. The smell of woodsmoke in his hair. The untainted sweetness of a child’s breath.

  Uncle Moses, Jesse whispered one evening. He had turned to face the wall, a sure sign he was about to go under, and Sweetland leaned in close to hear him. I have a secret to tell you, Jesse whispered. Sweetland raised his head, listening, and he waited there a good while before he realized the boy was sound asleep.

  He doubted Jesse even remembered the announcement of a secret about to be shared, but some childish part of Sweetland’s mind was still expectant in his presence. As if a riddle at the heart of things was about to be revealed. He was like the world itself, Sweetland thought, a well you would never see the bottom of, that might swallow you whole if you weren’t careful.

  He went to the fridge and leaned into the cool. “You want something else to eat,” he asked.

  “Can we go see the cow?”

  “I had enough of cows for one day.”

  “You don’t have any cows.”

  “I got to eat something,” he said. “And then I got some work to do in the shed.”

  “I’d rather go see the cow.”

  “Well go see the bloody cow then,” Sweetland said.

  He was at the table saw ripping a length of two-by-six to replace the sill in the shed’s side door when Glad Vatcher came to see him. He shut down the machine, ran his hand along the cut. Waited for the younger man to say something.

  “You had a night, I hear,” Gladstone said finally.

  “Tried to send Loveless over to get you,” Sweetland said. “Was your bull caused all the trouble to begin with.”

  Glad smiled down at his boots. A faint odour of animal coming off him where he stood in the open doorway. “I tried to talk him out of it,” he said. “Offered to buy the cow off him, to save him the trouble.”

  “You might as well talk to his little dog as talk sense to Loveless.”

  “He come to see me just now. Cow’s laid down and he can’t get her up out of it.”

  “You have a look at her?”

  “Poked my head in,” he said. “You had some job getting that calf clear from the looks of things.”

  “Like trying to pull a tooth.”

  “Loveless wants we should try to get the cow on her feet.”

  “I had enough of that animal for one day.”

  Glad let a smile prick at the corners of his mouth, but wouldn’t look at Sweetland direct. “There’s no one over there to help but youngsters and old men,” he said.

  Sweetland took a broom from the corner and swept up the spray of sawdust. It was their first conversation since Glad decided to take the package, against everything Sweetland had ever heard him say on the matter. Glad had a finger in every enterprise in Chance Cove, a position he inherited from his father. He and his wife ran the cove’s only store, shipped in fishing equipment and outboards and building materials, sold fresh lamb in the spring and beef in the fall. The resettlement talk never amounted to more than talk before Glad signed on. It was hard to blame the man, given the state of things on the island, but Sweetland blamed him regardless.

  “I spose it’s a waste of time trying to get her up,” he said.

  “Likely it is,” Glad said. “Still,” he said.

  “Loveless got any rope over there?”

  “I’d say Sara had just about anything a man could need, we minds to look for it.”

  Sweetland took his coat off a hook by the door and they walked over together without speaking, stood just inside the barn entrance to let their eyes adjust to the dim. A crowd gathered at the far end near the cow. Every youngster in school had come to the barn during the dinner break and not a one was going back while the animal was down. Most of the men in the cove were there as well, including some who hadn’t spoken a civil word to Sweetland in months. Loveless holding court, both his arms going as he talked.

  “He haven’t had this much attention since Sara died,” Glad Vatcher said.

  Loveless was pointing at Sweetland as they walked over. “Sawed up the calf,” he heard Loveless say, “like a bit of old driftwood.”

  Sweetland glanced around at the assembly, to see what they had to work with. Duke and Hayward, Reet Verge in her pink hoodie, Ned Priddle, a handful of others. Glad was the only adult under the age of fifty, the rest nursing one chronic infirmity or other. All the young folk off at jobs on the rigs or into St. John’s or somewhere on the mainland.

  The cow was down against the wall, panting shallowly and staring blind at the barnboards. “She won’t have any life in them legs,” Glad said. “She’s going to be dead weight to get up.”

  “You think we can lever her?”

  “Might be. Get under her front and back. Move her off the wall. Maybe pass a rope underneath.”

  They puttered around collecting two-by-fours and concrete blocks and rope and setting the materials in place. There was an old dory propped in the stall nearest the entrance, a plank-board pig of a boat that Loveless had built half a lifetime ago, and they dragged that behind the animal to use as a fulcrum. The cow lying there oblivious, like some biblical queen being attended by servants. They leashed a rope around her neck and put three men apiece at the levers shoved under her front and hindquarters. Counted to three and raised the cow a meagre foot off the ground before she canted off the two-by-fours and folded heavily back into place, the men scrabbling to keep their feet as she fell.

  They made a dozen other attempts, changing the size and number of levers, their angles and fulcrums and positions, Loveless pacing uselessly on the periphery and calling, “Don’t hurt her, b’ys, don’t hurt her.” They finally managed to sneak a rope under her girth before she dropped back to the ground. Nailed a block and tackle to the rafters and Glad Vatcher and Pilgrim and every youngster in the barn set to the line. Between the levers and the pulley they raised the creature’s frame high enough she could scrabble feebly with her front legs, her weight full on the rope. The big head lolling, her breathing so attenuated they had to set her back for fear she might suffocate.

  Two hours they
’d been at her by then and they were all beat to a snot, their boots and pants fouled with cow shit and the previous night’s gore. They stood around the cow, catching their breath, wiping sweat off their faces.

  “She don’t want to get up,” Loveless said.

  “We could jimmy up a sling maybe,” Glad offered. “Let that hold her, see if she finds her legs.”

  “A bit of sailcloth or canvas would do it,” Sweetland said.

  It was another hour of jiggery at that, raising the cow and working the improvised sling under her torso, hanging the works from three ropes slung over the rafters.

  “She looks like she’s wearing a goddamned diaper,” Duke said when they were done.

  Glad Vatcher made a helpless motion with his hand. “We’re going to have to leave her there awhile,” he said to Loveless. “You’ll want to massage those legs, see if you can get some life into them.”

  Loveless nodded uncertainly, terrified of the animal. They left him to the work, the rest of the crowd meandering toward the door.

  “I got some homebrew over to the house,” Sweetland said when they were out in the fresh air. He turned to Glad Vatcher. “You’re welcome for a glass,” he said, and Glad tipped his head to one side, considering.

  “All right,” he said.

  Duke followed them over, and Pilgrim with Jesse hanging onto his arm.

  Sweetland brought half a dozen bottles out of the pantry, poured them off one at a time into a plastic measuring cup, being careful to leave the gravelly sediment in the bottle. Passed around glasses of the brew. He handed Jesse half a glass and raised a finger to his lips, tipping his head toward Pilgrim. He opened the laptop and pushed it to where Jesse was sitting.

  “Haven’t had a down cow to deal with,” Glad said, “since I was a youngster.”

  Sweetland laughed. “Not hard to tell we was out of practice.”

  “We should have looked it up on the Google,” Duke said.

  “Not the Google,” Jesse said. “Just Google.”

  “Well whatever the hell it is. Bet you there’s something on there about lifting cows.”

  “Every Jesus thing is on there,” Sweetland admitted.

  “I don’t give her much of a chance,” Glad said. “She’s a hell of a mess.”

  They sat with that a moment before Duke said, “When do you start moving your animals off the island?”

  “We was planning to bring them over September month. Winter them in St. Alban’s, at the brother-in-law’s place.”

  “Taking them across on the ferry?”

  “Going to have to hire a boat somewhere I expect.”

  “What’ll that cost, a hundred grand?”

  “Ha,” Sweetland said darkly.

  Glad looked down at his shoes. “More than we can afford if the financial side haven’t been settled up by then. But we’re going regardless. The wife’s got her heart set on it.” He finished his beer in one draft and stood up. “She’ll have supper on,” he said.

  After Glad shut the door behind him, Pilgrim pointed in the general direction of Duke’s seat. “It’s too bad you can’t learn to cut hair with that fucken mouth of yours.”

  “I was only asking,” Duke said.

  Sweetland went off to the pantry after more beer.

  “I never thought Glad Vatcher would take the package,” Pilgrim said.

  “Glad Vatcher can kiss my arse,” Sweetland called from the next room.

  “It was his missus talked him into it,” Duke said. “Wanted to be handier to her crowd in St. Alban’s.”

  “His missus can kiss my arse too,” he shouted.

  He was half-cut by the time he’d finished his fifth beer and still hours of light left to the day. Everyone gone off to their suppers and he sat in the quiet, rolling the empty glass back and forth between the palms of his hands. Feeling sorry for himself, he supposed.

  He sat at the laptop, trolled around the handful of sites he knew. Typed in a Google search on cow lifting. Five and a half million results. The Upsi-Daisy Cow Lifter. Harnesses, slings, cranes, buckets, hoists. An infinite library of information and none of it any practical use to them. A window they could peer through to watch the modern world unfold in its myriad variations, while only the smallest, strangest fragments washed ashore on the island.

  He went through to the porch, took his coat and hat and walked down to Loveless’s, let himself into the barn. Loveless at the far end, sitting on one of the concrete blocks they’d used as a fulcrum, rubbing at a foreleg of the doomed cow with a towel. Sweetland crossed over to them, put a hand to the cow’s neck, rubbed between her ears awhile. Her breath intermittent and shallow.

  “She don’t want to be up,” Loveless said. He was chewing angrily at the unlit pipe as he sat there.

  “Don’t look like she do.”

  “Sara wouldn’t be happy to see it.”

  Sweetland straightened, put his hands in his pockets. Turned to see the little dog back in its place along the wall. “Hello, Smut,” he said.

  Loveless twisted around on his concrete seat. “I had that one barred in the porch.”

  “Well, that’s a regular Houdini you got there.” Sweetland bent at the waist and held a hand toward the dog, kissing the air to encourage it over, but it only stared.

  “He won’t come near, you don’t have a bit of something to give him,” Loveless said.

  “What do you use?”

  “Steak mostly.”

  “Is that why he’s so interested in your cow, I wonder?”

  Loveless raised himself awkwardly off his seat and Sweetland had to reach a hand to keep him upright. “I don’t know how Sara managed all of this,” he said.

  “She was a tough woman.”

  “I can’t do nothing here without her.”

  “Go lie down for a bit, I’ll take a spell.”

  Loveless started away, but turned back to Sweetland before he reached the far end of the barn. He took the pipe from his mouth and stared at it. He said, “I’m going to take the package, Mose.”

  Sweetland looked him up and down. “You’re tired,” he said. “Go lie down a while.”

  “I got my mind made up,” Loveless said. “I got nothing here without Sara.”

  “Go on,” Sweetland repeated quietly, and he watched the shabby figure push out the barn door. Then he dragged the concrete block to the cow’s hind leg and went at it with the towel, trying to massage blood back into the flesh. After fifteen minutes he moved to the opposite leg. He leaned his head against the cow’s flank a moment, a quiver still discernible in the muscle. “Well now, Sara,” he said aloud, missing the woman suddenly.

  Sara Loveless. As squat and solid as her cow, they used to say. And almost as simple, ha ha. It was a local sport, making fun of Sara. She had no letters and spoke in truncated phrases reduced to bare fundamentals. Every person and creature and thing was a she. She need oil change. She got bad head. She raining now. She lazy as a cut cat. Sara was fond of beer and brandy and went to bed half-drunk most nights. Cursed like a sailor. But laziness was the only form of stupidity Sweetland couldn’t abide and whatever else might be said about Sara, she was not a lazy woman. Kept the animals and the garden, cut and cured her winter’s hay up on the mash. Tramping around in her rubber boots and an old gansey sweater that swayed almost to her knees. She wrecked a shoulder clearing boulders from her bit of pasture, years ago. Sweetland had seen her punch at it savagely with the opposite fist when it acted up, which was the only bit of doctoring she allowed.

  She had never married and seemed completely unfit for it. But she was built for the island, unlike her brother, who sailed in the wake of Sara’s industry his entire adult life. How she’d suffered living in that house with Loveless all these years, Sweetland didn’t know.

  He finished a round of the cow’s legs and then stood at her head, rubbing between her ears again, before he started for the door. He thought of the dog, unsure if it was still sitting there against the wall and it was too
dark inside now to say. “You coming, Smut?” he said to the place he’d last seen the pup, but there was no sound or motion there and he carried on outside.

  He opened Loveless’s door on his way along. “Your shift,” he shouted into the house and he walked down through the cove, his head buzzing with the first jangly notes of a hangover. He went out as far as the incinerator, stood looking over the open ocean, letting the wind scour away at him.

  The ground fell steeply toward the water on the far side of the incinerator and the slope was thick with junk that couldn’t be burned, strollers and playpens, paint cans, barrels, a freezer, a bathtub, old hockey skates, a Star Choice satellite dish, four or five computer monitors that even Sweetland recognized as archaic. It was the world’s job, it seemed, to render every made thing obsolete.

  He turned to see the cove glimmer in the last light, houses and windows glowing faintly orange and red, the colours fading and winking out as he watched. There was no stopping it, he knew. Days when the weather was roaring outside his mother would say, Stall as long as you like, sooner or later a body’s got to make a run for the outhouse. The whole place was going under, and almost everyone it mattered to was already in the ground.

  Definitely. He was definitely feeling sorry for himself.

  He passed his stagehead on the way in the arm and barely gave it a glance in the growing dusk, walking on a few steps before the strange detail struck him. He turned back to look at the door, picked out the shadowy U of the horseshoe he’d put there for luck thirty years ago. And something moving below it, a smudge in the gloom, a little bag, he thought, hanging from a strap.

  He had to work up the nerve to step toward it. Stopped when he was near enough to make out the rabbit’s severed head. The creature’s eyes wide and staring, a four-inch nail driven through the silk of one ear to hold it in place. The head swaying soundlessly in the wind.

  HE STOOD OUTSIDE after the Reverend disappeared around the back of the church, deciding whether or not to go in after Ruthie. His head floundering, trying to piece together what he’d seen in some way other than how it seemed. There were a dozen scenarios that were completely innocuous and only one that he knew in his gut to be true. He started back up toward Pilgrim’s house, thinking he’d stop at Ned Priddle’s place to ask Effie to look in on the sick man. He came around the front of the church just as his sister scuttled out the main doors and they startled away from one another.