Galore

by Michael Crummey

  Levi screamed bloody murder before he blacked out, a foul whiff in his nostrils as he went under. Servants alerted by the racket brought him inside. Newman was sent for and he swabbed the wounds with alcohol, clearing away the blood. Flossie and Adelina hovered near with a lamp, their breath catching in their chests. The lobes and half the cartilage sliced off both ears. Adelina fainted dead away and had to be carried to her bed. Levi came to while Newman was suturing and he struggled to sit up, trying to fend off the doctor. Mummers, Levi shouted, he’d been set upon by a band of mummers.—Hold him still, Newman told the servants at his shoulders.

  Levi was up as soon as the bandaging was done, shouting orders. He took a pistol and four servants to Shambler’s public house where he swore in a dozen drunken constables. They collected torches and rope, and every drinker at Shambler’s followed them out the door, Levi leading the party over the Tolt Road. The stench that overwhelmed him still in his nostrils.

  It was the second time in her life Mary Tryphena woke from the dream of a mob descending the Tolt Road into the Gut. The distant light of torches just visible as she went across to Laz’s house to wake the men. She shouted at them to get up, the panic in her voice prodding them from their beds. She could hear Lazarus struggling with his wooden leg, fumbling with the straps, and she went into the room to help.—What is it, maid? he asked.

  —Someone’s coming for Jude.

  Judah’s face appeared at the door and Lazarus shouted at him to leave.—I’ll be right behind you, he said, go on now.

  By the time they’d gotten the leg attached the torches were moving in the yard outside. Mary Tryphena said, I’ll go talk to them. She stepped into the red light, not able to pick out a single face among the crowd.—What is it you wants? she shouted. A figure detached itself from the mob of shadows and approached her, Levi’s oddly accessorized head coming clear in the dim, white muffs at his ears.—You got no business here, Levi Sellers.

  Levi waved a handful of men forward and they forced past her. Lazarus was dragged out in his shirtsleeves, his hands tied behind his back. Patrick came running from his house across the garden with Amos and Eli behind him. Levi turned to the constables.—Arrest them all, he said and he held Mary Tryphena as the Devines were wrestled to the ground and bound.—Where’s the white bastard? Levi said.—The foul one, where is he?

  —You’ve done enough to this family, Levi Sellers.

  Levi put a hand behind one of the elaborate bandages taped to the side of his head.—Pardon me, Mrs. Devine, he said, I’m having a little trouble with my hearing.

  The houses on the property were turned out and the neighbouring houses and the rooms on the waterfront, but there was no sign of the Great White. The Devine men were marched out of the Gut with halters around their necks, young Eli at the front of the column. Druce and Martha stood weeping in the yard with Mary Tryphena, watching the torchlight ascend the road and disappear over the Tolt. The night was windless and cold, the first glim of morning in the sky, and Mary Tryphena took them into the house where she lit a fire and set it roaring against the chill.

  Before the day was fully gone to light Druce took Martha upstairs to bed and Mary Tryphena slipped outside, standing in the cold to listen awhile, testing the quiet. She made her way along the path to the outhouse and called to Jude from the door. His arms coming up through the hole like the pale shoots of some exotic winter plant.

  She was surprised to think Father Phelan and his stories would sit so close to the surface of her mind and Judah’s, these years later. Back in the house she knelt on the bare floor to pray for all her dead and gone, for Father Phelan and for Callum and Lizzie and for Devine’s Widow, for Absalom and for Henley wasting in his shroud of salt in the French Cemetery. Druce came back down to the kitchen and she paused at the door, surprised to see Mary Tryphena on her knees, the woman crossing herself before getting up. Druce was embarrassed to have disturbed her and uncertain what to make of the Catholic gesture.—You were praying for the men, Mrs. Devine?

  Mary Tryphena shook her head.—Prayers are no use to the living, she said.

  For three days constables searched the Gut for Judah. Levi posted a reward of fifty dollars for information leading to his apprehension, though no one came forward. Eli Devine was only nine years old and Barnaby Shambler convinced Levi to release him, but the other Devines were held in the abandoned fishing room in use as a prison. Opinion on the shore was divided as to whether the attack was meant as payback for the burning of Strapp’s barn during the campaign or retaliation for Levi’s ruthlessness as proprietor of Sellers & Co. There was no shortage of people with a grudge against him, some of whom had threatened flesh or property, but no one else was questioned.

  Newman visited Levi to change his dressings and he conducted a casual interrogation while examining the sutures.—They were disguised as mummers, is that right?

  —Rags and bags and women’s clothes, the works of them.

  —They had their veils on, did they?

  —Of course they had their veils on.

  Newman straightened from his work. Levi’s enormous nose was precipitous, his head unnaturally square. The loss of the ears wasn’t going to do the man’s appearance any favours.—How did you identify them, Mr. Sellers?

  —The smell, he said.

  —The smell?

  —There’s only one person on the shore with that stink on him, Doctor.

  —You mean Judah?

  —Of course I mean Judah.

  —Hold still, the doctor said, and he worked in silence for a time. Newman had long ago figured out that Absalom Sellers was Henley Devine’s father. He didn’t understand Levi’s particular hatred for Judah, the innocent cuckold in the affair. He seemed to despise the man for mirroring his own humiliation to the world so passively.—I don’t mean to play counsel for the defence, Mr. Sellers, but what is your justification for holding the men you have in custody?

  —You have just made a very close inspection of the justification, Doctor.

  —But your evidence, such as it is, applies only to a man not yet apprehended.

  —Birds of a feather, Levi said.

  —None of this could possibly hold up before a judge.

  —You forget, Doctor, that I am the judge.

  Newman reported the gist of the conversation to Bride and she walked the Tolt Road after supper to speak with Mary Tryphena. Patrick’s crowd had moved over from the house at the edge of the Little Garden to stay with her and they were all at the table, Druce, and Martha who was helping Eli with his letters, the boy copying Bible verses she’d written out on a scrap of paper.

  —Dr. Newman thinks Levi’s got no case, Bride said.

  —Levi will see them hanged, every one, Mary Tryphena told her.

  —Hush now, Druce said, nodding toward the youngsters.

  Bride said, Levi couldn’t sit as accuser and judge, is what the doctor says.

  Mary Tryhpena waved off the technicality.—Then he’ll have one of his merchant friends from St. John’s sit the case. The result will be the same, mark my words.

  There was an acrid undertone to the air at Mary Tryphena’s that suggested Judah was listening in from the pantry or the upstairs hall. Bride said, Does Jude know what’s happening at all?

  Mary Tryphena glanced toward the stairs.—How would you tell?

  He came down to them then, as if the mention of his name was a signal. Mary Tryphena said, I told you to stay in out of it, Jude.

  Bride nodded up at him.—Hello Judah, she said. His strangeness was so familiar to her as a child that it barely registered, the smell of the man and his chalky skin, his fish eyes, his mute good nature that made him seem harmlessly retarded. But there was a strangely purposeful look about his face now, fear and resolve and an incongruous peacefulness. He stepped to the table to look down on the work the children were doing, moving the slate and shifting the lamp close. He turned Martha’s slip of verses facedown and reached for the pen, dipping it into the in
kpot. He glanced at the women sitting across the table and began writing.

  Mary Tryphena stared at Judah as he worked.—Have Patrick been teaching this one his letters?

  —He never mentioned any such thing, Druce said.

  Judah blotted the ink with sand, shaking the excess onto the floor before extending the page toward the women. The letters were so ornate it took Bride a moment to recognize the verse.—Let the enemy persecute my soul, and take it; yea, let him tread down my life upon the earth, and lay mine honour in the dust.

  —Gentle Redeemer God, Mary Tryphena said.

  —It’s from Psalms, Martha said.

  —We know where it’s from, maid.

  Druce said, Where ever did he learn his letters, I wonder.

  Mary Tryphena was staring at her husband who had retreated from the table to the centre of the room.—He’ve always known his letters, she said.—Haven’t you, Jude?

  But he refused to look at her.

  —There’s more, Bride said.—They that trust in their wealth, and boast themselves in the multitude of their riches, none of them can by any means redeem his brother, nor give to God a ransom for him.

  Mary Tryphena was still watching Judah.—Are you sure this is what you wants, Jude?

  He glanced at her and nodded.

  She said, Do you think the doctor would bring a message to Levi for us, Bride?

  —I’m sure he would.

  —He’s to tell Levi that Jude will give himself up if Levi lets the others go. Is that right? Mary Tryphena asked him.—Is that what you wants?

  Bride looked down at the paper, reading over the verses a second and then a third time.—That’s a lot to say from what he got wrote here, Mrs. Devine, she said.—Are you certain?

  Judah was already out the door when she looked up and Mary Tryphena reached to take the paper she held, her hand shaking.—You see the message gets passed on, she told Bride and she left them all at the table then, walking up the stairs without another word.

  Mary Tryphena went to her bed where she lay awake the full of the night, the Bible verses in her hands. That delicately belled cursive, those spiralling letters tilted at an acute angle. She thought of Judah following her to Jabez Trim’s when she was a girl, standing by the door while she refused the hand of the one she thought had written the letter. She couldn’t have imagined a second suitor on the margins of her life. It seemed a ridiculous joke, a mute competing with a helpless stutterer for her affections.

  My sister, my bride.

  Judah keeping his counsel as she turned down one proposal after another, through the decades of their marriage. For fear or spite, out of reticence or doubt or some murkier impulse, he chose to hide the fact she had married into love. As if it was her job to guess the truth. By the time the first hint of morning appeared at the window Mary Tryphena was angry enough to spit nails. She thought she’d never manage to wash the cold taste of metal from her mouth in all the years that were left her.

  ——

  Patrick Devine was only three years married to Druce Trock when an English vessel bound for the Arctic wrecked on shoal ground off the Rump. Salvagers out of Red Head Cove and Spread Eagle had brought the crew safe ashore and ransacked the galley and cabins and most of the provisions in the hold by the time the Devines sailed down the shore with Az and Obediah Trim. The Trims stayed with the bully boat after setting the Devines aboard to collect whatever scraps remained. The hold was a deathtrap by then, already half filled with water. Lazarus and Jude picked through the remains in the galley while Patrick went off to see if anything had been overlooked elsewhere. The ship was tilted hard to starboard and Patrick spidered along the passageways with one foot on the floor and the other on the wall. The vessel rocked forward suddenly, pitching him face-first through a doorway and he fell into a pool of novels and books of poetry, tomes on botany and science and history, philosophy and religion, bound copies of Punch. Dozens tossed onto the floor by the storm and hundreds more behind the wooden barriers meant to keep them on the shelves.

  Only Ann Hope and the Reverend Dodge had more books to their names than Patrick Devine. He was always searching for strays on the shore or in Labrador and he bartered away tools and clothes and food and alcohol to take home any book he encountered. Lazarus more than once threatened to blind him to keep their materials safe from his bizarre obsession. But the wrecked library Patrick had fallen into was unlike anything he’d ever imagined. Worlds within the world and he sat there a moment, trying to take it in. Just the smell of leather and binding glue made him dizzy.

  The vessel shifted again, a tremor through the length of her, and Patrick pushed himself to his feet, slipping off his coat to lay it on the floor, stacking books side by side and tying them up by the sleeves. He crawled back to the passage and made his way toward open air, the vessel heeling on the shoals as he went. When he reached the rail off the breezeway he hailed Obediah and Az Trim and they eased near enough for him to throw down his jacket of books. On the way back he passed Laz and Jude pushing a green leather chesterfield toward the stern.—Give us a hand for jesussake, Patrick shouted, stripping out of his gansey as he went. He had tied up the neck and was already stuffing the woollen sack with books when his father appeared in the doorway. Judah’s fish eyes agog as he took in the foreign sight.

  —Come on then, Patrick said, this is all going under the once.

  Patrick went at the job pell-mell, desperate to pack up as much as possible, and Judah took off his own sweater to mimic his son. But he seemed only to wander aimlessly among the shelves, tucking away one random book at a time. The vessel let go, slipping three or four degrees more to starboard before bringing up, and his father’s retarded puttering was making Patrick furious.—You jesus idiot, he shouted, but Judah carried on as if he was picking the ripest fruit from a tree, all the time with the same terrified expression on his face. Once he’d stuffed his own, Patrick filled Judah’s sweater in the same blind panic, shouting at the man to hurry. The two of them went back along the passageway then, dragging their improvised sacks behind them. All hands were off the wreck by the time they came out into the open, Lazarus with the chesterfield lashed across the bow of the bully boat. The Trims eased in over the starboard side of the stern which had slipped underwater and Patrick slid the books down to them from where he and Jude held to the aft rail. Judah made a jump for it then, grabbing hands to be hauled aboard the boat, and the men were waving for Patrick to follow after. But he turned back to the library, scuttling along with a grip on the rail, the decks awash below him. He sloshed along the passageway as it filled with water, hauling his shirt over his head. Patrick clung to the shelves as he grabbed at the spines and stuffed the books into the sleeves of his shirt, the sea sucking through the doorway and rising around the room behind him. The vessel let go a long groaning sigh then as its weight hauled free of the shoals altogether and keeled into the depths.

  He managed to drag himself up into the passageway before a pintail of churning water swallowed him, the wild current turning and turning him until he lost track of up and down and east and west. His lungs burning in the black chill and he surrendered to the scald of it finally, taking in mouthfuls of cold salt just for the relief, knowing it was the end of him. A strange, narcotic peace flooding his limbs when he gave himself up to the notion. He wasn’t a religious man but a vision of what Paradise might be came to him, a windowed room afloat on an endless sea, walls packed floor to ceiling with all the books ever written or dreamed of. It was nearly enough to make giving up the world bearable.

  He saw a grey flicker of sunlight beyond that image and the last candle still burning in him clawed toward it, kicking for the sky. He was shirtless and still holding a book in his right hand when he surfaced into wind and rain, thirty feet from the Trims’ boat.

  The Bible was the only book the Trims had an interest in and they refused to take any salvage from the trip.—He’d as like crawl into the house of a night and slit our throats to have the
m back anyway, Obediah said. Lazarus insisted Patrick take the chesterfield as well, a green leather monument to his lunatic stupidity, and it occupied pride of place in the house ever after.

  Druce was all of nineteen and pregnant for the first time. World within a world. Patrick sorting through the trove of books on the kitchen floor while Lazarus recounted the event. The ship pulled under in a matter of moments, Patrick breaking the surface with the book held above his head like a torch. Druce watched her husband pottering on his knees as if he were a toddler playing with blocks of wood. She said, Would you have done as much to save your wife and child, Patrick Devine? But he seemed not to hear her. She had never felt so helpless, watching her husband absorbed in the alien world on the floor, their baby moving under her hands, and an urge to violence took hold of her. After she killed her husband she planned to burn each and every book, feeding them one at a time to the fire.

  It was a momentary impulse but it filled her with a sense of dread that would not lift. She went into labour four months premature and the baby died before it saw the light of day. Druce suffered late miscarriages seven times in the next five years, a little graveyard of nameless children growing in a corner of the garden. She began hiding her pregnancies from everyone but her husband who dug the graves and set the tiny failures into the ground. They never spoke of the affliction, out of humiliation or superstitious fear, and Patrick filled the darkening silences between them by reading aloud from his library of salvaged stories. Druce listened to him hours at a time, the sad facts of their own lives suspended while he led them through those foreign tales. The end of every book left them feeling melancholy and sentimental and they lay awake half the night in bed, the sex charged with loss and helplessness and a furious, unjustifiable hope they lacked the means to express any other way.

  Amos was the first pregnancy Druce carried to term, followed quickly by Martha and then Eli. The children left her little time to sit still and Patrick seemed happy enough to have the library to himself. He could read through a gale, oblivious at the end of the chesterfield while the youngsters played puss-puss-in-the-corner, as the little ones rode Amos around the floor, squealing like donkeys. It was a private space he retreated to at every opportunity and Druce sometimes referred to herself as a book widow when company called, making a show of her grievance. But she never begrudged Patrick the pleasure, having spent the worst of the hard years there with him.