The Wreckage

by Michael Crummey

  They were brought to the saloon for rum and tea and a hot meal. The stoves had been kept humming and the room was stifling with heat. Hiram was sitting alone at a table beside one of the stoves. He raised his hand.

  “No luck?”

  Wish shook his head.

  “Got some dry stuff for you,” Hiram said, pointing to a pile of clothing on a chair.

  The barman went around the room with a tray of rum and he set a glass on their table. Wish tipped back a mouthful before he stripped off his soaked clothes.

  “It was a fellow Slade in the skiff with them,” Hiram said. “The father of the one Hardy’s been courting. Slade’s youngest was out with them. Eleven year old.”

  “Where are they?”

  “Put them to bed,” Hiram said. He waved to the bags and blankets stacked along the wall on the far side of the stove. “They were going to set them up here, but I volunteered our cabin.”

  “Your dream berth, Hiram. Bunking out in the saloon.”

  He smiled. “Died and gone to heaven.”

  The mention of death sobered them again and they sat quiet a few minutes. “We’re heading back to the Cove, are we?”

  “We’ll put in by nine or ten, I expect,” Hiram said. “You should stay aboard when we get in, Wish. That might be best for all concerned.”

  The barman came back to the table with a plate of fish cakes and fresh bread. Wish was so hungry he felt nauseous. He took another mouthful of the rum to calm his stomach.

  “You still got it in your head to quit me?”

  “I’m already gone, Hiram.”

  The older man nodded. He’d been hard at the liquor since boarding the ship at noon and he was drunk, though a stranger might not see it in him. He leaned onto the table and looked down into his glass. “I should’ve known better than to open my door to a goddamned mick,” he said.

  Wish gathered his few belongings together to head in to shore at first light the following morning. As he was going over the side to the dory waiting below, Hiram gave him five dollars, which was enough to keep him at the boarding house awhile and pay his way back to town besides. Wish tried to refuse the money, but Hiram insisted.

  “What’s your plan, Wish? Swim back to St. John’s, is it?” He was viciously hungover and belligerent. “I have a feeling I owe you the fiver anyway.”

  Wish decided it would be simpler to take the money and repay it later than to argue with him now. Mrs. Gillard set him up in the same room he’d been in two nights before and she served him breakfast, then Wish made his way down to the landwash. Most of the boats in the Cove were already out on the water. Only Clive Reid and his two sons still tied up, trying to start a contrary engine. Wish walked along to their stage and put one foot on the gunnel of the boat.

  “You’ve missed your trip home,” Clive said.

  “Thought I might stick around, see if I can’t help out. The more eyes out there the better.”

  “They’ve been all day and all night in the water,” Clive said. “I don’t expect we’ll find anything pretty.” His bottom lip was distended by a wad of chewing tobacco. He spat over the side of the boat. “Won’t do much looking anyway if we can’t get this bastard of a thing to turn over.”

  Wish stepped down into the skiff. “Mind if I have a look?”

  The inboard stuttered alive half an hour later, an explosion of black smoke rising out of the housing before the engine settled into a steady chug. Wish closed his eyes a moment, listening. He was grease up to his elbows.

  “That’ll do her,” he said. “She’ll get you out and home, anyway.” And then he said, “Would it be all right if I come out with you today?”

  “More eyes the better, like you said.”

  As they made their way to open water Wish sat aft, looking back at Mercedes’ house behind them. The blinds drawn over the windows.

  He said, “Do you know what happened out there yesterday, Clive?”

  “According to Hardy, they were already making for home when the weather turned. They’d had a good morning at the fish, nearly a full load aboard of her. Hit the heaviest wind when they came around the backside of the island, the seas coming over the rail and the engine swamped. They tried to get the sail up, but they made a fuck of that in the wind and couldn’t keep the skiff face on. They were trying to pitch the fish back over side but it was too late by then. Went broadside to the waves with all that weight in her. No way she could right herself.”

  “What time was that?”

  “Sometime after noon. They never saw the youngster after they went over. Just disappeared, they said. Hardy got ahold of his father and hung on to him a few minutes. But the seas tore him loose. Couldn’t swim a stroke.” Clive stared straight out over the water toward the headlands. “Faster going down, I guess,” he said.

  Wish glanced at the two boys in the boat with them. The youngest, David, not much older than eleven himself.

  Three days the Cove’s boats went along the coast beyond the headland to look for the missing. The searchers used fish finders and glass-bottomed buckets, leaning over the gunnels and holding them in the water to search the rocks and seabed in shallow areas. Wish and Clive’s two boys took turns at the glass while Clive drove the boat slow along the coast.

  The missing boy was found early on the third day, his clothes snagged on shoal rock fifteen feet below the surface. Clive noticed boats gathering near the shoals, like bluebottles hovering over a garden composted with capelin. He nudged Wish’s shoulder and pointed.

  As they came up close, Wish could see that two men had lines over the sides, using the metal hooks of a cod-jigger to grapple and haul the body free. One of the men straining at the lines was Willard Slade. The body was brought up to the side of the skiff, Willard and another man gripping the clothes to hoist it over the gunnel. All Wish saw of the boy was one of his hands at the end of its cuff, the skin as white as salt. Willard Slade bawling hard as he set his son’s body down in the skiff.

  They headed back to the Cove in a small convoy. Wish and Clive sat at the stern, talking in whispers. Clive said it was most likely Aubrey had drifted out into deeper water and been driven off to God knows where by the Labrador current.

  “I allow he’s gone and gone,” he said.

  “You think that’s it then? Will they give it up now?”

  Clive shifted against the tiller. “That’s three fine days of fishing lost,” he said. “I’m glad we got the youngster. That’ll be a comfort to his mother. But I wouldn’t want no one wasting their time out here after me as long as this.”

  Wish nodded.

  “What about you now?”

  “What about me?”

  “You going to set yourself up at that boarding house for good?”

  “Not hardly.”

  “It’s Sadie you’re hoping for, I spose. Staying on in the Cove. Out here all hours, fishing for strangers. Got to be a woman at the root of that.”

  Wish didn’t answer him and Clive settled back at the tiller, taking his silence as answer enough.

  Wish hadn’t gotten up the nerve to go by Mercedes’ house since coming back into the Cove. Hardy had been on the water every day and made note of Wish in Clive’s boat, though they hadn’t exchanged a word. He’d been hoping Mercedes might find a way to come to him at the boarding house or down to the wharf to see the boats off in the morning.

  “You’ll want to step careful,” Clive said.

  Wish looked at him.

  “I’m only saying. It’s a hard time. And you being from away. Don’t make a spectacle of yourself. Folks won’t stand for it.”

  Wish looked ahead to the skiff that carried the boy’s body, his father sitting over it in the bow. “What was his name?” he asked.

  “Willard,” Clive said. “Same as his father. Little bugger used to steal rhubarb out of the garden. Don’t know why. They always had plenty of rhubarb over at Slade’s.” He spat into the wake of the boat. “Always sweeter if it don’t belong to you, I gu
ess.” And he smiled across at Wish, his teeth the colour of dried peat.

  After his supper he went up to his room and stripped down to his undershirt. He filled the basin and scrubbed his face and neck and his arms up to the elbows. He wet his hair enough to comb it flat and buffed at his shoes with a rag. He put on his one clean shirt and buttoned it to the neck. Then he walked across to the Slade house where the boy was being waked.

  The back kitchen was busy with people, though strangely hushed. Willard Slade got up from his seat and came across to greet him. “Appreciate you coming along,” he said. He introduced Wish around to the few people he hadn’t already met—Willard waved into the pantry, “The wife and Ruthie,” he said, but neither woman looked at them—and then brought him in through to the parlour. Clive was standing near the window and he raised his glass to Wish.

  The plain wood coffin was against the far wall, set on two chairs at opposite ends. The casket was closed and the room smelled of camphor and lime. Wish ran his fingers across the top of the coffin briefly, as he’d run them across the gunnel of the trap skiff several nights before. Both made by the same hand more than likely. He crossed himself as he stepped back and became immediately aware of being watched by everyone in the room. Mrs. Slade came up behind him with a glass of syrup and a tray of fruitcake.

  “Thank you, missus,” he said. “I’m sorry for your troubles.”

  She seemed to look through him and made no response except to wave the fruitcake at him until he took a piece. Then she went back out to the kitchen.

  Wish took a mouthful of the syrup. It was thick and sickly sweet. Everyone in the house was stone sober. Clive came across the room and stood beside him.

  “This is it, is it?” Wish whispered.

  “Not what you’re used to, I imagine.” He had shaved off the grizzle of beard and his face looked misshapen without the plug of tobacco under his lip. “There’s a flask handed around outside now and then, if you need a drop to get you through.”

  Wish lifted his glass again and smelled the syrup but didn’t taste it. “I only wanted to pay my respects,” he said. “I think I should be on my way.”

  “She haven’t been along yet,” Clive told him. “If that’s what you’re wondering.”

  Wish nodded sheepishly. “Have you got the flask on you, Clive?”

  They set their glasses on a sideboard and went back out through the kitchen.

  “On your way already?” Willard said.

  “Taking the young fellow out for a smoke,” Clive told him. Before he closed the door he leaned back into the kitchen. “Bloody Catholics, hey?”

  They went out into the dark of the yard and Clive took the flask from an inside pocket. He passed it along and Wish swallowed a mouthful before he knew what he was getting himself into. Potato shine, gut-rot and raw. It cut his wind going down and the vapours sifted up through his head like some miracle cure for congested sinuses. He held the flask at arm’s length as if trying to fend it off. He shook his head violently and straightened up. He passed the flask back to Clive. “Fine stuff,” he said.

  They heard footsteps coming up the lane and fell silent as the new visitors came around the side of the house. It was a clear night and Wish could see their silhouettes against the horizon, but it wasn’t till the door opened that he saw her in the spill of light from inside. Hardy was with her, and Agnes.

  Clive tapped Wish’s arm with his forefinger. He called to the girl and she stopped on the doorsill, looking over her shoulder into the darkness. “Come over a second,” he said.

  “Who’s that?” she said. “Clive?”

  “Come here, I wants to talk to you.”

  Hardy appeared in the doorway again.

  “You go on,” she told him. “I’ll be right in.”

  She came across the uneven ground toward them, a hand over her brow like she was shading away sunlight. Clive squeezed Wish’s elbow. “You be a gentleman now,” he whispered. “For Aubrey’s sake.” He stepped away into the dark.

  “Clive?” she said as she came closer.

  “Hello, Mercedes.”

  She stopped, still ten feet from him.

  “I’m sorry for your troubles,” he said.

  “Where’s Clive?” She walked closer to him and he could just make out her features in the dark.

  “How is your mother holding up?”

  She said, “You were going to go off to St. John’s without saying goodbye, weren’t you.”

  “I didn’t,” he said. “In the end.”

  “Hardy said you were with them when they found young Will.”

  “I was along with Clive. The youngster was some mess when they—” He stopped himself. He could hear Mercedes draw a breath.

  “Has everyone given Father up, then?” she asked.

  He could see she’d started to cry though she didn’t make a sound. He felt his cock begin to harden, inexplicably, and he tipped his head back to stare up at the constellations. “Jesus, Mercedes,” he whispered.

  She moved into him and put her arms around his back and they held one another. And just as inexplicably the urge drained away from him.

  “I like how you say that,” she said when she’d recovered herself.

  “Say what?”

  “My name.”

  “Mercedes,” he said again. There was something illicit in using the mother’s name for the girl, making it their own. A private thing between them, a stolen intimacy.

  She said, “You smell nice.”

  He looked down at her, surprised. “It’s just soap, Mercedes.”

  “No. I can smell the soap. It’s something else altogether.”

  “What is it, then?”

  “It’s you. Cinnamon. Moss. I can’t say exactly.”

  He had no idea what she was going on about but his scalp prickled and a queer sensation of vertigo came over him. The world seemed to be moving too quickly for him to keep his feet.

  The door opened behind them and the dull rectangle of light fell across the ground. Agnes stepped over the doorsill. “Sadie,” she called quietly.

  She stepped away from Wish. “I’ll be right there.”

  Agnes came toward them, her head ducking against the darkness. “Mrs. Slade is asking after you.”

  “I’m coming.” She looked up at Wish and whispered, “Are you coming back in?”

  “I don’t think I better.” He saw Hardy step out behind his sister.

  “Sadie,” Hardy said sharply.

  “Oh for the love of God,” she said. “I’ll be there directly.”

  Agnes was beside them and she said, “What are you doing out here with him?”

  “Who is it you’re talking to?” Hardy said. He hadn’t moved beyond the patch of light from the door.

  “I’m coming,” she said. “Go on, Agnes,” she told her sister. “Go on.” She began walking backwards toward the house. “Can you meet me tomorrow?” she whispered to him.

  “Where?”

  “The Spell Rock. After the boats go out.”

  “Yes,” he said.

  He watched her shoo her brother and sister into the house. She looked back into the yard where she knew he was still standing in the dark and waved before closing the door behind her.

  Just after sunrise he left the boarding house and went across to the Spell Rock, where he watched the fishermen leave the harbour. A low fog rolled over the hills from Gooseberry Cove and settled thick on the land and the water, and he lost sight of the boats before they’d made open seas. He sat beside the pink granite stone and hauled his coat tight against the chill of the fog. Eventually he drifted asleep.

  He dreamt of the dead boy sitting up in his coffin at the wake. The youngster was eyeless and mouthless and held a glass of syrup, he lifted a salt-white hand to greet mourners as they entered the room. His entire body seemed to be constantly in motion, a slow undulation, as if he was still trapped underwater and stirred by ocean currents. Mercedes came into the parlour and leaned into the
coffin to kiss the corpse full on the dark hole where his mouth once was. She looked over her shoulder at Wish and said, “Don’t make a whore of me.”

  He didn’t know where he was when she woke him.

  “I’ve only got a few minutes,” she said.

  “I fell asleep.” Trying to clear his head of the clinging accusation in those words.

  She was kneeling beside him and he pushed himself up to a sitting position. She touched his shoulder. “Sorry I had to run off last night.”

  He wiped at his face with both hands.

  “Hardy was at me all evening to say who I was talking to.”

  “Did you tell him?”

  “Not a word. He can stew till his bones go to mush. And I told Agnes to mind her mouth around him too.”

  “You don’t mind much, do you, Mercedes?”

  “I minds what bears minding. The rest won’t ever hurt me to ignore.”

  “I like that in you.”

  “You like it now,” she said, smiling back. “It won’t wear so well once you’re stuck with me.”

  She leaned forward to kiss him but he tilted his head away.

  “It don’t seem right,” he said. “What with your father.”

  “You didn’t mind when he was up at the church saying his prayers.”

  “That was different.”

  She wrapped the woollen shawl around her shoulders and studied him a moment. She said, “It wasn’t just me you come back for, was it.”

  “It was you,” he said.

  “But that wasn’t the only thing.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  She looked down a second. “Aggie says there must be something,” she said.

  “Your sister?”

  “She says there must be something in all that’s going on to have brought you back. And keep you here.”

  He sat up straighter against the rock. There was a tinny buzz across his ears and the taste of Clive’s alcohol came back into his mouth, the burn of it right up through his head.