The Wreckage

by Michael Crummey

  She got up from her chair to stand beside him. She placed her hand at the back of his head, tipping it forward, then pulled the collar of his shirt gently away from his neck as if lifting a bandage away from a wound. She turned him in his chair to have more of the light. The mark was just below the hairline, smaller than the palm of a hand and scald red. He could smell her skin, that and a hint of vanilla that she must have dabbed behind her ears while she was upstairs. She was leaning against his arm, her breasts brushing his shoulder through the fabric of their clothes, and his cock was immediately, painfully erect. He shifted against the discomfort.

  “Hold still,” she said. “Can I touch it?”

  “All right.”

  She brushed her fingers lightly over the patch of skin. “Does it hurt?”

  “No. No, not a bit.”

  He could feel her tracing the outline of it with the tip of one finger. He raised a hand toward her but she backed away enough to make him think better of it. He was afraid she might sit back in her chair altogether. “What does it look like to you?” he asked her.

  “I don’t know. Not much.”

  “It doesn’t look like the head of a horse to you?”

  He felt her shrug against him.

  “Maybe,” she said. “It could be a horse.” She didn’t seem to like the idea at all.

  “My mother always said it looked like a horse. You never heard tell of the burning horse, have you? Down on the Southern Shore?”

  “No.”

  “When Mother was expecting me she shipped over to Renews to stay with her sister. Father had a berth on a sealing vessel and was away on the ice fields and they both thought it would be best if she wasn’t left alone. She was some size with me and I woke her up one night, kicking. She shifted around a while, trying to settle, and finally give it up. Hauled Lilly out of bed and the two of them went for a walk on a slide-hauling trail in over the mash.”

  The girl laid her hand flat against his neck as if there was heat rising off the mark that she wanted to hold there. And he carried on talking to keep her where she was.

  “It was nearly a full moon that night. And they felt the hoof-beats coming up through the ground, same as Mother could feel me kicking inside. They turned back to look and the horse was driving up from the shoreline, all aflame and going full gallop, burning along the length of her back. Half-mad by then trying to outrun the fire and she barrelled past them, trailing the stink of burnt hair and kerosene. Mother said it was like something out of the Bible, like a sign of the world coming to an end. She fell back as the mare went by, grabbed the nape of her neck going down. In the same spot where that mark is under your hand.”

  She trailed her fingers back and forth over the birthmark. “Why would anyone do that?”

  “Some sort of a grudge, is the way I hear it. Someone settling a score. I was born with that mark.”

  “Does she live in St. John’s? Your mother?” He looked down at his hands. “She’s dead this years.” She sat back in her chair. “What happened to her?” He hesitated, unsure how it would change things between them, how it would alter the arc of the conversation to tell her. “Diphtheria,” he said. “They quarantined us in the house. Used to pass food into us through the side window with a scarf tied over their faces. There was only the one woman would come by to look after Mother, Mrs. Roche. She was a widow, I spose she thought it made no odds if she got sick herself. She stayed with us until Mother died. Boiling up stuff all the time, dogwood and cherry bark, Indian tea, juniper. She used to give it to mother off a spoon. Made me drink it too.” He looked around himself a moment, then back at his hands. “They flew a doctor down from St. John’s near the end. This was the middle of winter, January. We still had the tree up from Christmas when she first got sick with it. I watched the plane land on the pond from my bedroom window, first time I’d ever seen a plane, that was. And this young fellow, he didn’t look old enough to be a doctor, that’s what I thought of him. He come up to the house and gave Mother some medicine, but she was all but gone by then. She’d got the croup and blood coming out her nose. She couldn’t swallow proper or catch her breath. And her skin was gone blue. Like a baby born dead is what Mrs. Roche said. The doctor wasn’t out of the house three hours when she died.”

  He lifted his hands and set them back on the table.

  After a moment, the girl got up and poured them both more tea. He was thinking it was the wrong thing to have told her, that it had ruined his chances altogether, when she put her hand back on the nape of his neck. He looked up to her and she kissed him again. When he reached for her she backed off, just as she’d done the first time. He watched her a moment. Reached into his pocket for the length of string Aubrey had passed to Hiram.

  “Your father give me this,” he said. “I’m meant to get you a dress in St. John’s.” He stood up beside her and spread his arms wide, the string looped loosely across his hands. “I thought I should check to see if these measurements are true.”

  He could see she knew the truth of what he was after but she spread her arms to mirror his own. He started at the double knot, running the string the length of one arm to her wrist. He set the second knot on her shoulder and let the string drop to the floor, his free hand moving lightly down to the third knot, pressing it a moment, feeling the jut of her hipbone through the fabric of the skirt. He looked her in the eye to be sure of her before he went any further. He could hear the sound of her breath through her nostrils and her arms wavered slightly but she didn’t look away from him.

  He reached around her back, bringing the rope forward from both sides, his loose fists brushing against her breasts as he brought the knots together. Their faces were nearly touching. “All right,” he said. She lifted her face to kiss him and he let the string drop, circled his arms around her waist, moved his hands along the length of her back. His fingers slid beneath the waist of her skirt, the band of her underpants, and she pushed her hips against him when he touched skin. He reached with one hand down to her bare thighs and then up into the startling heat and wet of her.

  Her head snapped back a moment and she sank her face into the crook of his neck. “Wish,” she said.

  It was a hesitation in her and he tried to kiss her again, to keep her from speaking anything more, but she pushed away suddenly and held him at arm’s length. She wouldn’t look at him and he leaned to one side, trying to catch her eye.

  “Sadie,” he said. “Mercedes.”

  She shook her head, then smiled up at him for a second. She said, “Don’t make a whore of me.”

  His mouth opening and closing. She took his hand still wet where he’d touched her, pressed it to her lips. She stepped toward him, her mind made up he could see, but he fell back into his chair. He felt unhinged, as if he had been drinking Portuguese wine all evening and the effects were just striking him.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean.”

  He tried to settle properly in the seat at the table. “It’s all right.”

  She turned her back to him and stood still a few moments. “I’m going to look in on Nan,” she said.

  He watched her go down the hallway and tried to collect himself. He picked the knotted string up off the floor and folded it away in his pocket. His head felt waterlogged, he couldn’t wring sense out of a single thought. Her parents were at the door before he registered them coming and he jumped up, surprised, taking his coat off the back of the chair and folding it across his arm.

  Helen was first through the door and she stopped when she saw him.

  “Evening,” Wish said and he bobbed his head.

  “Well,” Aubrey said, standing behind his wife. He smiled at the younger man. “You come by after all.”

  “Where’s Sadie?” Helen asked.

  “She’s looking in on her nan.”

  Helen called out, “Mercedes.” Her husband had to squeeze by her to get into the kitchen.

  Aubrey said, “You’ve had a bit of a lunch, have you?�
� He noticed the lamp beside the plate on the table then and said, “Who closed these curtains?” He looked at Wish and back at the lamp.

  “I’m just on my way,” Wish said.

  The girl came into the room with her hair tied back into an untidy ponytail. “How was church?” she said.

  “Don’t you ask us about church,” Helen whispered.

  “Hiram’s expecting me,” Wish said. “Over to the boarding house.” He glanced at Aubrey, but the man had turned his back to try and hold his temper. Helen still hadn’t moved and Wish couldn’t figure how to get by without coming into contact with her. He kept the hand he had touched Sadie with under the folded coat, as if the sight of it alone might give him away.

  “You got no right,” Helen said fiercely.

  He half expected the woman to slap him. She stepped to one side finally but held his eyes the while. He nodded awkwardly to the room. “Night all,” he said.

  He sat in the dark outside Mrs. Gillard’s house until he was sure everyone inside was asleep, crept up to his room with his shoes in his hand. He didn’t light the lamp and left the curtain up so he could watch the sky. Managed to doze off when first light sketched in the barest details of the bureau and washstand across the room.

  The wind woke him, gusts driving against the side of the house so the frame clenched and complained, the panes shaking in the windows. Out the window he could see that the coaster had come in sometime during the morning and anchored at the mouth of the shallow harbour. She wasn’t due to leave the Cove before noon and he skipped his breakfast, staying to his room until near eleven. When he came downstairs with his bag, Hiram was sitting in the parlour with a pipe.

  “How did things go with the Parsons girl?”

  “Shut up, Hiram.”

  “Well now, that doesn’t sound very promising. I figure if you’d managed to get your little dick wet, you’d have come knocking on my door first thing.”

  Wish left the room and walked off toward the kitchen. Hiram got up out of his chair to follow.

  “Where’s Mrs. Gillard to this morning?” Wish asked him. “I’m gut-foundered.”

  “Haven’t laid eyes on her since she stepped out around nine.” He looked out the window, where a bare washing line was being whipped about in the wind. “She’s caught out in the weather down the road somewhere and holed up with a cup of tea, I’d say.”

  Wish found a loaf in the breadbox and began cutting off slices on the counter.

  Hiram came up close to him. “You must have got caught,” he said. “Is that it? Someone walked in on you? Is that why you’re so contrary this morning?”

  Wish took the knife to the loaf to cut another slice of bread. He said, “I’m quitting you, Hiram. When we gets back to town. I’m quitting this racket.”

  “Now Wish, I’m only after having a bit of fun with you. You know now, all I got left to me is that. A drink and a bit of fun.”

  “Maybe I had enough fun to last me a while.” He was working to hold back the tears.

  “Are you in trouble here, Wish?”

  He shook his head. “I’m quitting you, is all.”

  “And what the hell are you going to do with yourself? Go back fishing?”

  “I don’t know. Join up, maybe. Go overseas.”

  “Overseas?” Hiram said. “You?”

  “I mean it.”

  “Jesus Christ, Wish. What’s got into you, at all?” He went to the cupboard and took down a tumbler, poured himself a shot of whisky from the flask he kept in the inside pocket of his coat. The wind whipping at the loose panes of the windows. He took a sip and held the edge of the glass against his chin. “Do I owe you any money?”

  Wish pointed at him with the knife. “Fuck off, Hiram,” he said.

  By the time they were loading their gear into a dory to be ferried to the coaster, most of the trap skiffs and small schooners that had gone out early that morning were coming in, two and three at a time, straggling into the Cove against a wind blowing hard northeasterly. The day had come up fine with no indication of this turning and the fishermen would have been taken by surprise on open water. Forced to haul up their gear or set the traps loose, starting their engines to try and outrun the storm. The local men on the wharf stood and watched the ocean, counting boats as they appeared, rhyming off the names of those aboard, checking them against the list in their heads. Clive Reid said, “You’ll not likely get away today.”

  “We’ll as well pass the time on board as onshore, I expect,” Hiram said. “They’ve got the saloon at least.”

  When they reached the coaster, they had trouble transferring themselves off the dory to the ladder fixed to the side. It rose and fell beside them like the piston of some enormous engine. They perched on the gunnel and reached for the rungs as the man at the oars rowed hard to keep them steady in the lun of the ship.

  “You’ll have a fine day of it out there, I imagine,” he shouted to them as they made their way up to the deck.

  Wish and Hiram shared a cabin with a single set of bunk beds. The boat hadn’t even weighed anchor and they were forced to hold on to the bunks to steady themselves. Finally Hiram said, “If I’m going to stagger like this, I may as well be drunk,” and he went out the door to make his way to the saloon.

  Wish turned in a circle several times, as if he’d been locked into the cabin and was taking the measure of the tiny room. He was furious with everything around him, with Hiram, with the featureless white walls, with his clothes, with the sound of the wind howling outside.

  He removed his shoes and stripped down to his undershirt and lay on the bunk, playing over the previous night, jumping from one sensation or fragment of conversation to another in time to the rocking motion of the ship. Sadie coming into the kitchen with her hair down and vanilla dabbed behind her ears. The smell of her still on his fingers. Her mother’s stare in the door. The burning horse and her fingers trailing back and forth across the nape of his neck. Sadie holding him at arm’s length after he had touched her. The smell of her still.

  He picked up one of his shoes, heaved the weight of it against the cabin door. “Useless fucking shoes,” he said.

  He picked up the other and heaved it after the first.

  The wind moderated enough by early afternoon for the coaster to weigh anchor, and she got under way just after two. The change in the motion of the ship woke him and he turned onto his side, blinking, trying to orient himself. He didn’t know how long he’d been asleep, couldn’t remember where Hiram had gone. A knot of anxiety in his stomach but he couldn’t identify the source of it. He sat up and looked out the porthole.

  Sadie. Mercedes.

  That peculiar name. Portuguese or Spanish, he was certain, French. Maybe Norwegian. He tried to recall some other country whose vessels he’d come across on the fishing banks but couldn’t think. The Cove was still in sight behind them, distant and about to disappear behind the headland. He pulled on his shirt and shoes and found his coat. He headed out on deck, pushing the weight of the door against the wind. A heavy sea running across the foredeck as the coaster crested each successive wave. Wish walked unsteadily toward the stern, going hand over hand along the length of rope fastened to the wheelhouse wall. The spray was bitter and he turned up his collar against it, stood watching Little Fogo Island recede.

  He was just about to give in to the cold when he felt a shudder running the length of the vessel as she went into full reverse. He ran back toward the bow where several men had already come down from the bridge and were at one of the ship’s boats, stripping off the tarp, lowering her to the level of the deck on her chains.

  “What’s going on?”

  “Men in the water,” one of them said. “Out to starboard.”

  Wish stood up on the railing to get a better look but couldn’t see anything in the shifting expanse of water. “Did they go aground?”

  “Trap skiff gone over. A couple of fellows hanging on.”

  Three men had stepped into the boat and
were setting the oars into their locks. Someone shouted, “Let her go,” and the boat dropped down the side.

  By the time the boat came back to the coaster all hands were at the rail. Two men went down the ladder to guide the survivors up to the deck. They were wrapped in woollen blankets and they moved like decrepit old men as they took the hands reaching to help them out of the boat. One of the two was Mercedes’ brother, Hardy. The other an older man Wish didn’t recognize.

  The captain was at the rail as they came aboard and he ordered them carried to the saloon and stripped out of their sodden clothing. He shouted down to the men in the boat. “How many more?”

  “They said there was two others, Skipper. Carried off hours ago now.”

  Mercedes’ father, Wish knew.

  The captain looked up at the horizon. “A few hours of light yet,” he said. “Let’s get those other boats in the water. We’ll carry on with the wind a ways before we turn back to the Cove.” He shouted to the men below. “Head in close to shore. Maybe God landed one of them on solid ground. We’ll pick you up on the swing around before dark.”

  Wish volunteered to go out with the boats and took his place at the oars, hauling against the wind to keep her from going abroad of the sling of each wave. They went by bits and pieces of gear floating free in the water and then passed the overturned skiff.

  “Not a soul could swim far in this,” the man on the opposite oar shouted.

  “They might of got hold of something to keep afloat,” Wish said.

  The man beside him looked across. “You knew them, did you?”

  Wish came back hard on the oar. He was soaked to the skin by the salt spray. “One of them,” he said.

  A third man stood in the bow as a spotter, staring out at the water ahead of them. He started in on a hymn that Wish didn’t know, singing it out over the wind.

  It was gone to dark before the coaster had finished her turn and come back to pick them from the water. They had to light a lamp and set it aloft on an oar so as not to be missed. The wind had gone down with the sun and they had no trouble bringing the boat aboard. Wish saw the Parsonses’ trap skiff gleaming white on the foredeck and leaning hard to one side, like she was in open water and about to go over again. He ran his hand along the gunnel, as smooth as glass and dry.