Galore

by Michael Crummey

  Newman held a hand in the air.—Mary Tryphena is married to the albino?

  —All the widow’s doing, that was, Azariah said.

  —Devine’s Widow?

  —The same.

  —So, Newman said, trying to slow the conversation.—Mary Tryphena is who to the widow?

  The Trims shifted on their haunches but there was no other sign of impatience.—Devine’s Widow, Obediah said, is mother to Callum Devine. Callum married King-me Sellers’ daughter, Lizzie. He paused to wait for a sign the doctor was following.—Callum and Lizzie had Mary Tryphena and Lazarus between them. And Mary Tryphena is married to Judah.

  —And that was the widow’s doing?

  —You been in Judah’s company, Doctor. No woman in her right mind would have him to wed of her own accord.

  —They’ve never shared the same house, mind, let alone a bed. And you can’t blame Mary Tryphena for that.

  —Still and all, Newman said.—There’s Patrick and Henley between them.

  —Well, Obediah said, there’s Patrick between them at least.

  —Now Brother, Azariah warned him.

  The dogs were whining and restless in their traces, anxious to get moving, and the brothers began collecting their gear aboard the sled. They insisted the doctor ride the rest of the way and after a token argument he settled under a fur, watching the country pass. He fell into a light sleep and dreamed again of Bride, of her upturned face as he wrenched molars from the back of her mouth, the dark eyes wide and watching him steadily. Of kneeling between her legs to suture the brutalized flesh, his fingers tatting the delicate folds into some semblance of womanhood while Bride whispered to him words he tried and tried and was unable to recall when he finally came to himself in the cold.

  It was the consensus on the shore that the Devine men were destined to live in the shadow of their women. And Bride Freke was too much woman for Henley Devine, even so he was twice her age.

  Henley was born with the air of someone mistreated by the world and he was pampered and protected and coddled all his young life. His grandmother devoted her every waking moment to sussing out and meeting the boy’s needs. It gave Henley the idea his safety and comfort were the sole purpose of a woman’s love and this notion ensured he remained a single man through his twenties.

  Bride was exactly the sort Henley wanted no part of in a wife, hard-edged and reckless and spoiling for a fight. He’d no more thought of love and marriage when he bedded her than Bride herself. He was drunk and she fucked him as a kind of revenge, to humiliate the helpless stutterer who held her down while his mother stole away her brin bag of dirt. She led him by his cock like a puppet on a string, left him on his back in the moss with his pants around his ankles. She had him twice more, to reef the knot tighter, before she turned her back. Ignored him or mocked his stutter and considered herself done with the man. Four months later she came to Mary Tryphena’s house with all her teeth gone and the pregnancy just beginning to show.

  —You know that child is Henley’s, Bride?

  —I do, Missus.

  —She don’t know that for a f-f-fact, Henley said quietly.

  Mary Tryphena turned to look at her son. He was rubbing his knuckles against the little chin he was blessed with, as was his habit during difficult conversations. It gave the impression he was hedging when he spoke, that his actual thoughts were different from the ones he expressed.—If you made your bed, Mary Tryphena said to him, you will bloody well lie in it.

  —He lay in his bed, Bride corrected her, and now he’ll fucken well make it.

  Mary Tryphena removed Bride’s stitches two weeks after the baby’s delivery. She made no effort to be gentle, jigging the thread clear to make the girl’s breath catch. She had no idea what circumstances conspired to bring a child into the world through the unlikely couple, but she had little sympathy for the girl or her own son.

  The night Henley was conceived, Mary Tryphena told herself it was surrender to fate, to the stars. That threadbare little lie. Absalom pushing the lamp to the back of the table, darkness settling on them like the shade of the inevitable. Never mind he was married and father to five children, the youngest only hours old and asleep beside his wife in an upstairs room. Absalom’s hands under her breasts as he kissed her and she’d never been kissed like that before, not once. She could feel his cock when he pulled her close and they shuffled awkwardly to Virtue’s bed in the servant’s quarters, struggling with clasps and buttons.

  —Go easy, Bride hissed but Mary Tryphena gripped and tugged the stitches clear, furious at the memory. She said, It’s time you and Henley got married, my maid.

  Bride moved into the house the day she announced the pregnancy, but Mary Tryphena wouldn’t allow the couple to share a room until they were wed. The girl was raised Catholic and refused to convert simply to satisfy the self-righteous Reverend Dodge, so they kept to their separate beds. They disliked one another but still managed to screw on the sly when they found themselves alone, taking the sex as consolation for their predicament. Bride straddling Henley’s lap while she slapped his chinless face or pushed her fist into his mouth.—You long sonofab-b-bitch, she taunted him and he roared through the gag of her hand, nearly bucking her onto the floor. Their only other interactions were arguments about conversion and marriage. Henley threatened to throw her and the baby out if she wouldn’t listen to reason. Bride threw shoes and junks of wood in return, forks and knives, a red-hot iron from the stove. Lazarus Devine was just home from a season on the Labrador coast. He could hear the racket from the house he’d built on the stone foundation of the widow’s old tilt next door.—She’ll as like kill him as marry him, he said to Judah. Through it all Mary Tryphena carried on without taking sides.—Wait until the child comes, she said, and things will settle out.

  She tweezed hold of another stitch and pulled.—You can’t have that youngster go unbaptized, she told Bride.

  —He’ll be baptized.

  —And which preacher is it you think will christen him before you and Henley are wed?

  Bride felt it was an unfair time to broach the subject, she on her back with her skirts around her waist and Mary Tryphena rooting at her down there. It seemed to give the woman an unfair advantage.—He’ll be baptized, never you mind, she insisted.

  The baby came down with thrush, his mouth cankered white, and the infection made breastfeeding a torture. It felt as if a hundred tiny blades were slicing at Bride’s nipples as the youngster nursed. The sweet head of black hair, the innocent appetite. There was no helping the pain and Bride never shed a tear.—You little fucker, she whispered as the baby fed, her hand cradling the soft spot at the back of his head. She knew as she’d known nothing in all her life that she was his, that she would do anything for him. Mary Tryphena came through the kitchen with a basket of laundry and Bride said, All right Missus, we’ll get married.

  —It’s the proper thing.

  But Bride wasn’t ready to surrender all say in the matter and she added, We’ll join the Methodist crowd.

  —Jesus Bride.

  —You tell Henley if he wants to marry the mother of his son.

  The wedding took place in the plain board Methodist chapel and after the marriage Harold Callum Devine was baptized into the Methodist faith. Bride nursed the child under a receiving blanket while the service went on with hymns and scripture readings, the latch of his mouth like razors at her flesh, the pain so intense it was blinding, all her thoughts wiped clean of thought. Reverend Violet delivered a forty-five-minute sermon, the hypnotic peak-and-vale rhythm of his voice lulling Henley and the baby to sleep. But Bride took it all in. The physical relief when the infant was done nursing was like a heightened state of awareness, her mind clarified and focused. Parishioners began witnessing from their seats after the sermon and old Ciar Bozan stood with his hands raised to the rafters. Bride had seen Ciar get the glory while he worked on the flakes or walked along the waterfront and she’d always thought him a fool, his head thrown
back, his clothes so untidy they looked to have been dropped on him from a height.—Praise the Lard, praise the Lard, he shouted.—Gonna meet me dear old mudder over there.

  She felt only compassion watching him now, a pity that felt biblical and maternal both. She knew as she hadn’t known anything in her life. She raised her free hand in the air and startled Henley awake when she wailed Amen over the noise of the congregation.

  Henley stared at his new wife, leaning away from her in the pew. On the night Harold Callum Devine was born he’d been forced to watch the girl cut from stem to stern by the doctor, blood and shit on the table, the baby hauled clear like a tree stump uprooted with axes and rope. Seeing her so helpless and fouled spoiled the girl in his mind and he felt only revulsion at the thought of lying with Bride as a husband was meant. And he was terrified now, watching her overcome by some foreign spirit.

  That night she placed the sleeping child between them as if she were drawing a line and Henley made no attempt to cross it. Bride intended the child as a temporary restraint, too raw still to allow anyone between her legs, her mind too full of the Lord’s light to think of more carnal pleasures. But Henley seemed to consider himself released for good. They spent years together in the same bed but the marriage between Bride and Henley Devine was never consummated.

  Bride’s sudden conversion was as complete as it was surprising. She swore off drinking and cursing, she went to prayer meetings and attended church twice on Sundays, she sang hymns as she nursed and changed the baby, as she worked on the flakes and around the house. She took evening instruction at the church so she could read the scriptures on her own. Laz allowed Bride might bore Henley to death dragging him to the interminable Methodist services, but a bloodier murder no longer seemed likely.

  Mary Tryphena knew the couple had been stealing time alone when Bride was pregnant and thought it a hopeful sign, but for all the couple was sharing in the marriage bed Henley might as well be sleeping next door with Laz and Jude. And the obvious distance between the newly-weds mirrored the lack at the heart of her own marriage. The house was quieter with Bride become such a gentle lamb of God and Mary Tryphena was thankful for that. But she couldn’t help feeling lonelier in their company.

  Lazarus and Patrick came to the house to see her on a Sunday in April. She was watching the baby while Bride and Henley were at the evening service. Patrick took the youngster up, walking back and forth the kitchen with the baby on his shoulder while Lazarus sat at the table and removed his wooden leg, setting it on a chair and rubbing absently at his stump. Laz took a cup of tea and asked how the infant was sleeping and he speculated on the summer’s weather and spoke for a time about their mother’s habit of setting Callum’s place at the table after he died. When he was almost finished his tea he said, Henley wants a spot on the Labrador crew this year. As if it were just one in a series of unconnected notions floating through his mind.

  Mary Tryphena glanced at Patrick who was humming into the baby’s ear to say the conversation was of no interest to him. They were like vessels tacking east and west in a contrary wind, travelling north in slow tangential increments. Both men born into the sly indirectness that made her childhood a torture.

  Laz shifted in his chair.—He come and asked me straight out to hold him a place.

  Judah and Lazarus were the first to give up on the local fishery, sailing for the coast of Labrador each May. They found fish galore there and for the last time Jude’s talismanic luck drew men from up and down the shore. Hundreds living the same migratory existence now, away from home all summer. Three decades they’d been making the trip, staying through September or October if the weather held, the Devine women left alone half the year to fend for themselves.

  Lazarus drank the last of his tea and picked up the wooden leg, set about reattaching the leather straps. He said, You think it’s a good idea, him coming down with us?

  —Why wouldn’t it be?

  —He got the itch for Labrador awful sudden. Never showed no interest before. That don’t seem like a particular good sign for a marriage, does it?

  It was a dodge meant to avoid stating his real concerns and Mary Tryphena snapped at him.—What would you know about what’s good for a marriage?

  Lazarus stood up and tapped the floor several times with the peg leg, like he was testing the strength of ice on a pond. There was talk he’d long ago taken an Eskimo bride in Labrador, that there were half-breed children down there christened Devine.—I expect I knows as much as you do, he said, managing it somehow without a hint of meanness.

  Mary Tryphena and Judah hadn’t touched one another in years by the time Henley came along. Jude arriving home from Labrador in the fall to find his wife pregnant. Henley’s birth in late February was a subject of much speculation on the shore, and even if the timing hadn’t aroused suspicion it was obvious there was nothing of Judah in the boy. His skin fair but not pale, his little tuft of hair black as sheep shit. There was an awkwardness to the welcome the new child received from family and neighbours, as if he’d been born with a deformity they were studiously ignoring. Jude was civil to the boy but there wasn’t a single moment’s ease or affection between them. Henley never ventured into the house next door and never found his footing with the men. Lizzie tended to the youngster hand and foot, as if to make amends for sending her husband to his death on the Labrador ice fields, and Henley settled among the women where he trusted he was welcome.

  Lazarus was at the door when Mary Tryphena said, What does Judah think of Henley going with you?

  He smiled at her, embarrassed to have the issue addressed so squarely.—Jude’s not saying one way or the other.

  —Patrick will watch out to Henley if he goes, she said. And she nodded at her son, as if he might need to be encouraged in the undertaking.

  —All right, Lazarus said.

  Patrick settled the child on the daybed when Lazarus left, a straw pillow as a guard to keep him from rolling off the edge. He asked for the tea he’d turned down earlier and sat in the chair Laz had just vacated. Mary Tryphena puttered with cups and sugar and then leaned over the youngster to see if he needed changing.—You’re upset, she said to Patrick.

  —I’m not upset, he said.

  But there was no disguising the whiff, that telltale mark of his father rising up in him.—Don’t lie to me, Patrick Devine.

  —Henley don’t know his arse from a hole in the wall, he said.

  —Well if you haven’t got it in you to look out for your own flesh.

  —Jesus Mother, he’s liable to get killed down there. Why are you taking his side in this?

  Mary Tryphena couldn’t say, other than Henley needed someone to take his side where the men were concerned. Patrick was fifteen when Henley was born, old enough to do the math. He’d married Druce Trock at eighteen to get out of the house, to put that distance between himself and the truth about his brother, building a house on the edge of the Little Garden.

  —You didn’t put the idea in his head to come? Patrick asked her.

  Mary Tryphena looked into her lap.—I’m not that spiteful, she said.

  Two hundred local men and boys loaded their gear and provisions aboard a Sellers vessel bound for the Labrador in mid-May. The clergy offered prayers to bless the summer’s enterprise before the men rowed out to the ship at anchor in a steady drizzle. Henley facing the ocean as he went, not so much as lifting a hand in farewell.

  The American doctor was there to witness the exodus, shaking hands and trading stories and offering medical advice among the crowd. Mary Tryphena was at the waterfront with Bride and the baby, and Newman made a point of stopping to see them. He held his namesake in the air a moment, as if guessing his weight, before settling him back in his mother’s arms.—He’s as fat as a calf, he said.

  Absalom and Levi Sellers were on the docks to oversee the loading of provisions and Mary Tryphena watched them discreetly. Levi stood with his hands on his hips, saying something to Absalom over his shoulder and ge
sturing out at the vessel where Henley clambered aboard with the rest of the Devines. Absalom staring off in that direction, his head weaving slightly. He turned to the crowd then, searching faces, and Mary Tryphena looked away to avoid him.

  The rest of the month and the whole of June was relentless drizzle and fog. The women spent their time clearing the Big Garden of stones turned up by the winter’s frost and hauling in capelin and seaweed to fertilize the soil. Bride badgered Patrick’s wife and daughter into attending the Methodist services and they took to the faith like ducks to water, Druce and Martha converted by the time the potatoes were set. The three of them singing the seeds into the ground together.

  It was gone the end of July before Absalom came to see her, though she’d been expecting him every day since the men left for Labrador. Mary Tryphena alone with Bride’s infant child while the other women were at Sunday evening service. He pushed the front door open just enough to peer inside.

  —Come in if you’re coming, she said impatiently.

  Absalom set his walking stick against a chair but refused to sit down, leaning to one side to favour the worst of his knees. He’d been a legendary walker in his prime, earned the nickname Mr. Gallery for the miles he covered on the roads through the country, for the sullenness he turned on anyone who crossed his path. But his legs had crippled up and he could barely walk the length of himself now without a cane.—What in God’s name is Henley doing down on the Labrador? he said.

  —He asked for a spot on the crew.

  —You know he’s not made for that kind of life.

  —Patrick promised to look out to him.

  —Hell’s flames, Absalom said, which was as close as he came to obscenity. He limped across the room to look at the baby on the daybed and shook his head.—How Henley got tangled up with the like of Bride Freke is beyond me.

  —Judge not, Mary Tryphena said and Absalom winced as if from a physical cramp. They were both embarrassed to be dealing still with their one act of indiscretion, so ancient now it almost seemed to have happened to other people.