The tubs stood only two foot high and Tryphie tipped backwards into the steaming water trying to avoid Eli’s tag. The men were spreading their nets on the rocks below and it was only Eli near enough to help. He grabbed Tryphie by the shirtfront and without thinking dipped a hand under his back to pull him out. Neither boy felt any pain, just a sudden breathless shock that was almost pleasurable. Eli led Tryphie up off the beach to avoid having the men see the state they were in and they were halfway home before the scald kicked to life.
Martha was alone when they came through the door. She stripped Tryphie out of his clothes, the sweater still hot and clinging to the flesh of his back. The bald outline of the burn from his shoulders all the way to the left hip and buttock. She sent Eli to get Mary Tryphena while she tried to quiet Tryphie’s bawling with a spoonful of honey.
A crowd gathered at the house as news spread, all staring at the naked boy kneeling over Martha’s lap, his back lobster red. Bride gathered blankets while the boy’s father went after a handbar. They lay Tryph on his stomach and covered him and started out for the Tolt Road, the youngster wailing and begging for a drink of water.
Newman heard them coming and followed his patients outside. Saw Bride half running toward him, one hand under the quilts piled on the handbar, the other holding her skirt clear to keep up with the stretcher. A man at his shoulder said, I’How you’ll earn your keep today, Doctor.
Tryphie was unconscious when they carried him in. Layers of ruined skin peeling away when the blankets were lifted. There were two dozen people in the room and Newman had trouble locating a pulse amid the babble. He ordered everyone out but Bride and Mary Tryphena.—One-forty, he said aloud. There was severe swelling and capillary dilatation in the damaged areas and the boy’s blood pressure was bottoming out.—He’s in shock, he said, still talking to himself.—We’re going to lose him.
—He’ll live, Doctor, Bride said and he glanced up at her.—We got him here to you, he’ll live.
There was something distressingly erotic in her surrender to the compass of his knowledge and skill.—You’ll have to help me, he told her.
—Tell me what to do.
Newman thought it possible there was a God after all.
There was an extension built onto the clinic with an examination room, a crude operating theatre, and six beds for in-patients. But after Tryphie stabilized, Newman had him moved upstairs in the main house, laying the boy on his stomach in a tent of sterile sheets. He jerried up a wooden frame to keep the sheets clear of the burn, a kerosene lamp under the bed for heat. The sheets and pillowcases were sterilized in gentian violet and at night the lamplight made the room glow like a Sacred Heart, the pale, unearthly purple visible through the window outside.
Tryphie was in a coma for seventeen days. Even after he regained consciousness Newman told Bride the risk of infection made his recovery unlikely.
—He’ll live, she said.
—It’ll be months yet before he’s out of danger.
Bride said, You know we got no way to pay for all this.
—Now Bride.
She raised her hand.—And you got no one here to help.
—Miss Sellers comes by three days a week when the school year is done.
—I knows all about Adelina Sellers, Bride said.
Adelina passed out at the sight of blood, the smell of urine and vomit made her nauseous, she was more nuisance than help. Newman occasionally lured medical students to Paradise Deep for internships and twice an American nurse spent a winter at the clinic, but the dark and cold and relentless work drove them off. Newman resorted to a regular cocktail of ethyl alcohol flavoured with blueberries or partridge-berries to survive the grind alone. Twice in the past year men came by to pay him for birthing children he had no memory of delivering. It was a matter of time, he knew, before he maimed or killed someone.
—Everything happens for a reason, Doctor, Bride said.
The Devine men left for the Labrador in mid-May and Bride moved into the room across from Tryphie, Newman sleeping in an outbuilding with a bunk and stove for propriety’s sake. She cooked and laundered and assisted during procedures as anaesthetist and scrub nurse. She had the stomach of a soldier and a nose for the rare shirker or hysteric, culling them from the doctor’s lineup with suggestions of an imminent amputation or enema. She saw patients when Newman was away on calls, triaging and performing simple dental procedures, admitting the truly desperate and keeping them alive until the doctor returned.
Tryphie wasn’t out of immediate danger until August when the threat of infection passed. Eli Devine started to make regular visits to see him as soon as he was allowed and Newman made a point of examining Eli’s scalded hand when they crossed paths in the hall.—That looks to be coming along fine, he said.
Eli helped Tryphie out of bed and they spent the visit kneeling at the window. Tryphie wore a johnnycoat that tied loosely across the back and Eli couldn’t avoid the sick sight of it. Ridges of black scab and pus and scarlet new skin. He could guess the torment Tryphie was suffering from his own injury and he did his best to divert his cousin’s attention, fabricating elaborate histories for the vessels at anchor on the waterfront. Even the most pedestrian flat-bottomed tub battled storms and pirates and giant squid that had to be fended off with axes and swords in order to make harbour in Paradise Deep.
At first he did his best to make Tryphie laugh as well, before he saw how excruciating laughter was. Eli staring out the window as his cousin bawled through the pain, a sick roil in his gut. It was an intimacy too adult for the boys, layered with guilt and frustration, with affection and pity and resentment.
At the end of that summer Bride asked the doctor when Tryphie might be well enough to go home. Newman had been gathering information from his father on advancements in skin grafting for burn victims which could ameliorate the disfigurement. It was experimental, he warned her, and promised to be torturous. But left alone, the scar tissue would make a severe hunchback of the boy. Bride surprised Newman by crying at the thought of what lay ahead for the child, it was as if she’d stepped out of her clothes in front of him, and he excused himself to offer some privacy. Though he would have cut off an arm for a few moments more in the presence of that nakedness.
He didn’t understand how living in close quarters with Bride could make the woman more exotic than she was at a distance. She was pious and demure and all spine, she was peregrine and aloof, a vulnerability about her that she could bury or wield like a stick. All summer he was sick with wanting her and dreading the return of the Labrador crews in the fall. Even if Bride stayed on as a nurse she would move back to the Gut with Henley Devine and that cloud followed him as September descended. He spent his free time in the backcountry with a muzzle-loader and a horn of powder and the thought of Bride in another man’s bed. He shot at anything that moved in the landscape, using his surgeon’s scalpel to skin fox and rabbit and grouse, beaver and lynx. He slept under the stars to prepare himself for the black void of losing her.
Newman was miles inland on the barrens when the Devines returned from Labrador with Henley’s corpse, the man dead since the first week of August. A seven-foot shark took his line as it was set, Henley hauled overboard by a boot tangled in the twine. He was dragged five fathoms under, half-drowned and unconscious when the crew managed to lift him above the gunwale. Henley never opened his eyes again, though he held on three days before he died. Judah Devine built a casket of spruce and they covered his body with the salt meant for curing fish to keep it long enough to be shipped home and buried.
Bride was on the wharf when Laz and Judah and Patrick angled the rough spruce box onto the stagehead. The men silent as they raised the coffin, a bashful look about them, as if they were sneaking home after a night of drinking.—Someone should go tell Mary Tryphena, she said.
The casket was set out in the parlour, doors and windows propped open against the smell. Mary Tryphena stayed with her son while Bride made arrangements for the bu
rial and she felt gutted, sitting with a hand on the coffin, the cover nailed shut weeks ago. She couldn’t avoid cataloguing Henley’s failings as she sat there, he was juvenile and spoiled, selfish, self-centred, intemperate, he was a lousy husband and father, he was myopic and feeble and solitary. Mary Tryphena had loved him as compensation for all he lacked, fiercely and without reservation, knowing she was alone in her devotion.
Tryphie wasn’t well enough to attend his father’s funeral and was relieved to be spared the event, not knowing how he was meant to react to the stranger’s death. There was more awkwardness than grief among mourners at the church, an embarrassment to feel the loss so little. Judah helped dig the grave and waited alone there during the service, staying to bury Henley after the prayers were said and Bride had tossed her handful of dirt on the coffin lid.
No one spoke of it openly, but the Devine men expected Henley’s death would mean the end of their persecution by Sellers & Co. It was a surprise to find themselves screwed over a second time when they settled up their accounts in September. Levi refused even to allow Judah through the office door.—That white bastard stays outside, he shouted down the room.
By Christmas the Devines had exhausted their dried peas and flour and salt pork. They had a root cellar of potatoes and turnip and their fall fish and a barrel of pickled salmon and the charity of neighbours to see them through to Lent. Bride took up permanent residence as nurse and housekeeper at the clinic which offered some relief to the household in the Gut. She prepared Newman’s meals and washed his clothes, she cleaned the operating theatre and disinfected the surgical tools and chopped firewood. She studied his medical books to learn as much as she could about adenoid removal, tonsillectomies, abscess drainage, amputation of the fingers and toes. She had the fire roaring before Newman rose in the morning and read three chapters of the Good Book by lamplight each evening before wishing him good night.
Newman lying awake hours in the darkness, wondering how long it was proper to wait before asking for a widow’s hand.
There was a general election set for the winter after Henley Devine was buried in the French Cemetery. The shore’s Irish population had long ago edged ahead of the English, but Protestant Tory Barnaby Shambler was the only member the district had ever sent to the House in St. John’s. The Irish vote was always split between the priest’s man and one or another mad-dog candidate, and Shambler rode that divide to victory like Moses crossing between the parted waters of the Red Sea.
But Shambler’s margin of victory was steadily narrowing as Father Reddigan took steps to unite the Catholic vote. Reddigan was the first Newfoundland-born clergyman to serve on the shore, with little invested in the politics of the old countries. His nation, he said, was Newfoundland and all Newfoundlanders were his countrymen, his kin. It was an attitude that threatened to make a Liberal candidate irresistible. During the most recent election Shambler felt compelled to surround the polling station with a mob, instructing them not to let Catholics pass unless they swore to vote Conservative. The mob was armed with staves and seal gaffs and Catholics carried the same to defend their right to suffrage. The brawling began in the morning and carried on until the polls closed, with Shambler holding his seat by the skin of his teeth.
Father Reddigan filed a suit with the returning officer demanding that the tainted results be voided, and a delegation from the Gut descended on the officer’s house to protest when the suit was dismissed. They cut the timbers and set hawsers to the eaves and pulled the building to the ground before they butchered his five head of cattle in their stalls. As they walked back to the Gut they threw the bread his wife had in rise into the ocean. Seven members of the mob were whipped at the public whipping post and marched in halters to the wreckage of the house where they received twenty lashes more. Reparations were paid. And the shore settled back into some semblance of calm. The genius of democracy at work, Shambler called it.
But the coming election was ruining his appetite. Father Reddigan lobbied for and was granted a separate polling station in the Gut, making Shambler’s mob redundant. There were rumblings of dissatisfaction among the Methodist teetotallers. Matthew Strapp was expected to run for the Liberals, a planter educated by Jesuits in St. John’s, owner of three flakes and a stage, two gardens and eight head of cattle, twenty sheep and twelve pigs. A staunch anti-confederate, a moderate drinker, father to seven children, he had no enemies, no obvious weakness. Shambler, who’d always been able to make any brawl serve his interests, attacked the Catholic Church itself to hold his support among the Methodists. Anonymous broadsides appeared on the shore decrying the Papist influence on Newfoundland politics, calling the Roman Church a bulwark of superstition, depravity and corruption with no place in the Legislature of the country.
His only other trump card was the considerable influence of the local merchant. Shambler had betrayed blind old Absalom Sellers on his deathbed to keep Levi from crossing to the Liberals. And he was tied to the man now, for better or worse. People often compared Levi to King-me Sellers, but the resemblance was superficial to Shambler’s eye. King-me would skin a louse to make a cent. He had no talent for or interest in human endeavour except where he could insinuate some consideration of money and profit. Levi’s motives were never quite as obvious. There was an Old Testament ruthlessness about him, Shambler thought, something inscrutably tribal at the root.
Matthew Strapp announced his candidacy in early December and his barn was burned to the ground a week later. The animals were let loose before the fire was set and only the building was lost, but Strapp took the warning at face value and withdrew. No one with Strapp’s property and credentials was willing to risk standing in his place and by Christmas it was clear the Tory seat in the Legislature would go unopposed.
The season was a week-long celebration at Shambler’s public house, the proprietor presiding till the wee hours with a lecherous generosity, with winks and nudges and knowing looks. Bands of drunken Tories wandered the streets and fell in with the mummers roving house to house. Levi Sellers was not a drinker or a social creature and he waited till Old Christmas Day to make his obligatory appearance, setting his public seal of approval to events as they’d unfolded. He took a seat in a corner, hugging a glass of brandy diluted with water while the room pitched and rolled around him. Shambler had just that fall imported a plate of Wellington teeth from England to replace his own, the set scavenged from corpses on some European battlefield or from the mouths of executed criminals. His cadaverous smile made Levi’s skin crawl and he refused to look Shambler in the face when the Honourable Member came to the table.
—I half expected not to see you, Mr. Sellers.
Levi raised his glass an inch.—I wouldn’t be so miserable.
—Well if you’re in such a fine mood, Shambler said, I’ve been wanting to talk to you about Selina’s House.
—You aren’t going to make me regret coming, Mr. Shambler.
—Dr. Newman thinks it would make a fine hospital.
—He does.
—The clinic is too small by half for what the shore requires. And Selina’s House is going to rot boarded up so.
—And how does the good doctor plan to buy Selina’s House?
—Well now, Shambler said.—Can I get you another? he said and Levi shook his head.—We were thinking it would be a gesture of good will to the people on the shore, he said.—If it’s only going to rot there as it is.
Levi stood from his chair and pulled on his overcoat.—I’ll give it due consideration, he said.
Shambler insisted he have one more drink before leaving but Levi ignored him. He stood outside a moment to let his eyes adjust to the black, sorry to have come. The indigo glow of the snow under stars all there was to light his way home. He started around the ring of the harbour, the noise of Shambler’s muffled by the frost. He turned up Sellers’ Drung toward Selina’s House which had been sitting empty since his mother left for Boston. He stood below the building in the dark, thinking what a s
cabrous bastard Shambler was to suggest giving it up for nothing. As if it was something Levi owed. Any debt between them was settled the night Strapp’s barn burned to the ground. And he’d see Selina’s House fall in on itself before Bride Devine and her son of a bastard moved in there with Newman.
He heard voices coming his way and carried on toward the lamps in the windows of his own house. He could make out a group approaching from the Gaze, mummers dressed in castoffs and rags, their faces hidden under veils.
—Master Sellers sir, the man in the lead said, using that grating ingressive voice. He was wearing a brin sack dress and a crown of spruce boughs and carried a sceptre improvised from a barrel stave.
—Gentlemen, Levi said.
—Have you any drink for a poor mummer, sir? the lead man asked with a hand on his arm. Levi shook free and carried on walking. There were three of them and the mummers crowded close at his back and to either side.—Perhaps a bit of salt pork, sir? the man in the brin dress asked.—A bit of flour? A bit of cocoa or tea?
It was useless to run, he knew, so he turned to face them. The night so silent he could hear the mummers breathing raggedly under their masks.
—I don’t believe Master Sellers heard you, a second mummer said.—Speak up for the good sir.
—A bit of salt pork, Master? the brin dress repeated, stepping in close. The others had circled around to hem him where he stood.
—I bid you a good night, gentlemen, Levi told them.
—He’s ears do not work proper, the brin dress announced.—Perhaps you needs a operation, Master Sellers. Perhaps we’ll have to fix’em up for you.
The mummers were on him before he turned, his arms pinned to the ground while the brin dress drew a fish knife from his costume of rags.—Give ear, he said, to the words of my mouth.
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