Michael Crummey

by Galore

  —Unless the man is judged insane, Newman said.

  —An open-and-shut case, clearly.

  —In which instance he would be imprisoned indefinitely.

  —It seems the only prudent course of action.

  —And Mr. Shambler claims Judah made these threats in his presence?

  —You have the affidavit, Doctor.

  Newman nodded over the documents before folding them away. —Doesn’t it seem strange to you, Mr. Sellers, that Judah Devine, who has not spoken a single word in all his years on the shore, would suddenly begin uttering threats to the Crown?

  —No more strange, Doctor, than a man who was never known to read or write suddenly copying Bible verses from memory.

  Levi offered an uncharacteristic grin and Newman turned his head away from the sight of it. —I’ll have an opinion for the court as soon as I can, he said.

  ——

  Newman had been asked to see Judah Devine early in his incarceration, when Mary Tryphena claimed he was refusing to eat. There was nothing written on the walls and no indication the prisoner was starving and he submitted to the examination with his typical passiveness. Newman didn’t know what to expect this time around, given the rumors in circulation.

  He opened the padlocks with the keys given him by Levi and waited for his eyes to adjust as he stepped inside. There was a rustle along the near wall, the head of white phosphor rising from the pallet. —Hello Judah, he said. Details slowly came into the clear—the open offal hole covered with an iron grate, bread and capelin untouched on the floor. Newman nodded toward the scored wall behind Judah. —You’ve been busy, he said.

  He took out the confession and affidavit and he set them side by side on the lungers where Judah could see them, then looked up at the long lines of fragments on the wall. To bind their kings with chains and their nobles with fetters of iron Deliver me out of great waters from the hand of strange children Happy shall he be that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones. It made Newman think there might be a case for madness after all, for the author of the Psalms if not for Judah. —Do you recognize the signature on this confession, Jude? God’s Nephew? He pointed to the paper but Judah didn’t glance down. —Barnaby Shambler accuses you of threatening the King and claiming the English throne. Is there any truth to that?

  Jude pushed himself to his feet and shuffled by the doctor to piss through the grated hole in the floor. Which may have been a comment on Shambler’s claims, Newman thought, or simply the call of nature.

  The first patients of the day were waiting for him at the clinic—an ingrown toenail black with infection, a broken finger, a strained back. Bride had already prepped the toenail, the infected digit washed and stained with iodine, the scalpel and retractor and scissors in a porcelain bowl. Newman went to the office to change and he was helping himself to a quick cocktail of ethyl alcohol and juniper berries when Tryphie barreled into the room, the door swinging against the wall. Newman set his glass under the desk. —Let’s have a look at you, he said, turning the boy and pushing up his shirt.

  He’d performed half a dozen rudimentary skin grafts across the shoulders and along the left side but he was reaching the limit of what he could do in Paradise Deep. And Tryphie was still bent nearly double by the scar tissue on his back. He traveled in a loping primate fashion, his hands swinging near the floor as he wandered through rooms to talk to patients, observing simple operations. He passed the hours of imposed bedrest by taking apart any gadget the doctor was willing to risk, a pocket watch, a gyroscope, a barometer, sketching each individual spring and screw before reassembling it. The youngster had the hands of a surgeon, the same distilled concentration and dexterity. He never failed to reconstruct any contraption and often in better working order than when he began. Newman’s natural discomfort around children was swallowed up by his admiration for Tryphie’s precociousness.

  Bride knocked at the door. —Do you want me to do the toe, Doctor?

  He glanced up at her. —I’ll be right there, he said.

  All the while he rooted after the rogue toenail, Newman tried to decide what to do about Judah. There was something in the whole affair that pricked at him, a sliver of some larger thing that he couldn’t quite guess the shape of. Bride’s hip grazed his shoulder as she reached for additional gauze and he lost his train of thought altogether. She wrapped the toe when he was done, offering the patient instructions on disinfecting and bandaging while Newman washed up under the window. He turned from the basin and the sight of her stole the wind from his chest. He went to his office, mixing another clandestine cocktail and sipping at it as he waited for the surge to pass. The innocent weight of her breasts against her blouse, the attention she lavished on the naked foot. Jesus loves the little children.

  In the year since Henley Devine was carried home in his coffin Bride had insinuated herself into every facet of the clinic’s operation. She managed the daily administration, organized fundraising teas, oversaw the volunteers who laundered and chopped firewood and set the hospital’s vegetable garden. They spent most of their time in each other’s company and she didn’t give the slightest indication she felt anything for Newman but collegial admiration and a primly religious gratitude. He couldn’t guess how a proposal would strike her but this much was certain—propriety would force her to move out of the clinic if her answer was no. Marry her or let her go, these were the guillotine choices a proposal presented, and he abandoned the notion of marriage. He would never touch Bride as he dreamed of touching her, never so much as hint at how he felt. It was safer to live with the inadvertent nudge of her hip, with the purgatorial weight of her breasts, with the sudden tidal surges that threatened to choke him.

  He drank the cocktail to the dregs and set his forehead on the desk with his eyes closed until Bride came for him. He splinted the broken finger and prescribed strict bedrest for the strained back and spent the rest of the morning dealing with the steady stream of patients as they arrived. That sliver of discomfort with him the entire time, its suggestion of some buried thing he couldn’t guess the borders of. He’d just lifted his head from an impacted molar when Barnaby Shambler appeared at the door. The member opened his coat to reveal the neck of a bottle in an inside pocket. —You’ll want a little pick-me-up, Doctor.

  It was half an hour more of work before he was able to join Shambler in the office. He poured a tumbler of rum for his guest and mixed himself another cocktail of ethyl alcohol and juniper berries. —You prefer the medicinal drink? Shambler said.

  —I prefer not smelling like a drunk while I work.

  —Your Methodist inamorata disapproves, I imagine?

  —Don’t talk riddles to me this morning.

  —Now Doctor, Shambler said. —Let’s not be coy.

  —Fair enough, Newman said. He took the affidavit out of a drawer and tossed it across the desk. —You are a disgrace to your office, Shambles.

  —Without a doubt.

  —You don’t have a single shred of integrity.

  Shambler raised his glass. —Preaching to the choir, Doctor.

  —You are an absolute pig of a man.

  Shambler drew his head back, a look of feigned hurt on his face. —I preferred you when you were being coy.

  —Judah Devine is no more danger to the King than the ass you’re sitting on.

  —Undoubtedly so.

  —Goddamn it, Newman said. —I don’t understand how you can be party to such a farce.

  Shambler raised his shoulders and dropped them in an elaborate sigh. —I live here, he said. He seemed genuinely exhausted. —Look, he said, play along and you’ll have the hospital you want. No one ends his days with his neck in a noose. And Levi gets some satisfaction for the loss of his ears, among sundry other complaints. It seems a perfectly reasonable course of action to the ass I’m sitting on.

  Newman finished his drink. —Damn it, he said. —Damn it all to hell.

  Shambler looked into his empty glass, hesitating over
a question. Glanced up at Newman finally. —Any regrets, Doctor?

  The last of his patients was dealt with by mid-afternoon and Newman took his muzzle-loader into the backcountry, tramping through the first heavy frost of the fall. He wanted motion and silence, to let his mind skim out over the barrens like a stone across the surface of a pond. To see where it came to rest once it settled.

  He crested a rise a mile beyond Nigger Ralph’s Pond just as the sun was dipping behind the Breakers, three hills spooned one into the next like a run of waves curling onto a beach. He’d always loved those hills, the sculpted look of them mirroring one another precisely. They loomed on the horizon and regardless how far he traveled in their direction they always appeared the same distance off. The melancholy surge he’d felt in Bride’s presence that morning came over him again, knowing he’d never get closer to them than this. And his mind dropped into the edgeless black of what had been worrying him all day.

  None of this was his. He was being swallowed up body and bone by the shore and he didn’t belong here regardless. The place he loved would never return his feelings as he wished. The irrefutable fact of it made him turn on his heel like a soldier ordered about-face and he made his way back toward the coastline. The sky startling alive with constellations as he went, an orange moon lifting off the rim of the horizon. When he reached the Tolt he took the road down into the Gut and stood at Mary Tryphena’s door. There was a light through the window but he hesitated outside until she called him in. —You had no luck, she said and she gestured to the muzzle-loader under his arm.

  —Didn’t see a living creature out there, he said.

  She sat him to a stew of cods’ heads and potatoes and poured him a mug of tea. She asked no questions until he was done his meal and she’d cleared away the dishes, sitting across from him with her hands folded on the tabletop like she was awaiting some verdict. —I went to see Judah this morning, he said.

  —So I’m told.

  He said, I’ve been charged with making an assessment of your husband’s mental state, Mrs. Devine. Mary Tryphena nodded and Newman guessed there wasn’t a soul on the shore who hadn’t heard this news by now. —Do you have any idea why he’s covering the walls like that? With those scripture verses?

  —I didn’t even know the man had his letters, she said. There was a bitterness in her voice that surprised Newman. —Do you know the Bible well, Doctor?

  —Enough to dislike it.

  —I suppose I’m not as well versed in the Good Book, she said, being as I can’t read. But I’ve heard it most the way through a time or two. Do you know Proverbs?

  —I couldn’t quote you.

  —An open rebuke, she said, is better than a secret love. Now tell me, Doctor, why would a man keep such a thing from a woman?

  He opened his mouth to defend himself but couldn’t manage a word. He felt he’d been pulled wrong-side out like a wet sweater, that all his insides were in plain view.

  Mary Tryphena said, It’s the only thing the world gives us, you know. The right to say yes or no to love.

  A memory of stitching Bride together came to him, how Mary Tryphena hovered at his shoulder to watch. She spoke as if she knew something where Bride was concerned that he did not and it occurred to him she might carry enough influence to swing things in his favor. His career, the hospital, his credibility, every shred of personal integrity, all of it seemed a fair wager for that kind of help. He tried to think how it might be worded to not sound like a threat. —Mrs. Devine, he said, if I determine your husband is competent. Treason is a hanging offense, he said. —On the other hand if I make a finding of insanity.

  —Judah is never going to leave that room he’s locked up in.

  —That’s one possibility. But if you could do something to settle things, he said and he shifted in his chair. —With myself and Bride, he said. —I could perhaps arrange to have Judah placed in the hospital’s care.

  Mary Tryphena nodded at him, not following. —Judah’s mind is set.

  —I’m sorry?

  —They could take the locks off tomorrow, she said, and he won’t be moved out of there.

  Newman could barely hear her over the roar in his ears. —That makes no sense.

  —And I suppose that makes your report easier to write, Doctor.

  Mary Tryphena saw him to the door as he left, handing him his rifle from the corner where he’d laid it. He felt like a fool, like an absolute pig of a man. She said, I’ll have a word with Bride if you like.

  —No, he said, turning back to her. —Under no circumstances, he said.

  She shrugged. —You’re welcome any time, Doctor.

  He was still trying to slow the conversation down in his head, to understand what had passed between them. Denial and silence were his only defense and they were useless to him now. He might as well have declared himself to Bride from the roof of the clinic while the entire harbor trooped past on their way to Sunday services. He went over the Tolt Road at a run, as if there was a chance the news of how he felt might reach the clinic before him. He came into the kitchen out of breath and wild-eyed, like someone chased over half the shore by Mr. Gallery. Bride turned from the stove, taking him in with a calm stare of appraisal. —You’ve gone and missed your supper, Doctor.

  He raised his eyes to the ceiling to hide the emotion playing like a magic-lantern show behind them. He said, I don’t suppose you’d marry me would you, Bride?

  —I kept a plate warm for you, she said. —You’ll want to wash up.

  Newman ate the full of his supper a second time that evening while Bride was upstairs settling Tryphie for the night and he was still famished when he was done. He thought there was nothing in the world would fill him up. He could hear the crisp hammer-stroke of her heels overhead, each one a little explosion in his chest. He couldn’t stay here, that much was clear. There was Alaska on the opposite end of the continent, still unsullied by his stupidity. South America, India, all the ancient histories of Asia to fall into if he chose.

  Bride came back into the room and he swung around to face her. She let that appraising look linger on him. —You know you’ll have to give up the drink, Doctor.

  He had no idea what she was talking about.

  —When we marry, she said.

  —Of course, he said, nodding stupidly. —Of course I will.

  They were wed in the Methodist chapel that spring and Newman took Bride to Connecticut for the honeymoon. They spent most of the summer in the States where Newman attended fundraisers to outfit the new hospital while Tryphie was guinea-pigged through skin grafting and physical therapy. Bride came home that fall with a set of false teeth and pregnant with a second child.

  They moved into Selina’s House and set about renovating the rooms for wards and an operating theater and an office, for waiting and examination rooms and storage for equipment and supplies. Barnaby Shambler was on hand for the official opening and he toasted the new facility and the generosity of Levi Sellers who sold Selina’s House for the sum of one dollar. He toasted the new couple and then led the local dignitaries in an assault on the tables of booze laid out for the occasion. He cornered Newman hours later, waving his glass of rum.

  —She’s a fine-looking woman with the teeth in, I’ll grant you that, he said.

  Judah Devine was officially placed under Newman’s care at the same time the title to Selina’s House was signed over. He arranged to move the patient to an outbuilding behind the hospital fitted with a proper bunk and a small woodstove but Judah could not be enticed or coerced through the door of the fishing room. Eventually he was left to Mary Tryphena’s oversee and she was the only person to lay eyes on her husband in the years that followed. Newman relied on her for news of any change that might require his intervention but there was never any change. From the upstairs windows of Selina’s House he sometimes caught sight of her on her daily pilgrimage to the waterfront, a solitary figure carrying her parcel of food. Widow in all but name.

  Every two
years, Tryphie returned to Connecticut to undergo additional skin grafting while Newman scrounged after money and medical staff for a northern practice. Tryphie’s posture improved after each visit though he was never able to stand fully upright and his right shoulder was hunched at an awkward angle all his life. Twice Eli made the trip through Boston en route to Hartford with his cousin and he fell in love with the endless avenues of shops, the factories and train stations and opera houses, with the industry at the heart of the undertaking. It was a revelation to see that work could do more than strip a person of their health, that things might be created, that accumulation was possible. Tryphie grew up despising America for the pain it inflicted on him, but to Eli it looked like a fairy-tale kingdom.

  The youngsters spent most of their time on the shore alone together. They holed up in Patrick Devine’s library in the Gut, flipping through illustrations in the science and botanical volumes. At Selina’s House they worked on one or another of Tryphie’s inventions, a rotating contraption that toasted bread on two sides at once, a hand-held periscope fashioned from wood and mirrors that allowed them to spy around corners. Tryphie’s affinity for material and the mechanical was at the heart of each design but he lacked Eli’s nose for the pragmatic. The years of enforced rest had made him a bit of a dreamer. He spent months rigging canvas over a frame of intricate wooden hinges that he intended to strap to his back before launching himself off the Tolt. Newman confiscated the machine before Tryphie killed himself though it was too beautiful to destroy. It hung above the doctor’s bed like a crucifix, the eight-foot wingspan nearly touching the walls on either side of the room.