Michael Crummey

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Michael Crummey Page 33

by Galore


  —If you have something in particular you wanted.

  —I’m not going to live forever, is what I mean. And you’re the closest thing to blood I have in this country.

  —Frig off out of it, Levi.

  —I’m willing to sign over the portion of Sellers & Co. by rights is yours.

  Tryphie straightened as much as his humpback allowed. —Out of the goodness of your heart, is it?

  Levi laughed and shook his head. —We need something on your darling Mr. Coaker.

  —We?

  —Myself and others like me. Men with similar interests.

  —Men of your interests, Tryphie said, are too goddamned stunned to see there’s none but Mr. Coaker could put a stop to this now.

  A flicker ran under the mask of Levi’s face, something that made him look nearly human a moment. —I imagine you’re right, he said and then pressed ahead. —We’re after an affidavit that would hold up in court. It won’t even have to be made public, just something to set in front of the man, make him listen to reason.

  —An affidavit saying what exactly?

  —The man’s a sodomite, Tryphie. Everyone knows that.

  Tryphie turned to the desk and leaned over it.

  —One third of what I own, Levi said. —That’s near enough to look after that daughter of yours, and maybe keep your wife from killing you in your sleep some night.

  Tryphie turned to whip a paperweight across the room but Levi was already through the door.

  He went by Selina’s House on his way home that evening, found Hannah alone in the kitchen. They sat at the table with tea and talked briefly about the war and whether Esther was any better or worse. —I had a visit from Levi Sellers today, he told her finally.

  She said, He’s turning into a social creature, that one.

  Tryphie nodded, unsurprised. —What did he offer you, Hannah?

  —A knife, she said and she smiled for just a moment, like the flame of a match lit and shaken out. —Why would he come to us, Tryphie?

  —Only blood can make something like this stick. Otherwise it’s just rumor. Are you going to tell Abel?

  —Tell him what?

  —About his father, maid. Him and Coaker.

  A red spall rose on Hannah’s neck and face. —I got no truck with gossip, she said.

  —The boy’s bound to hear of it sooner or later, he said.

  —Not from me, he won’t, Hannah said.

  Eli didn’t come back to the shore until after Christmas, traveling with Coaker on a winter tour to report on the progress at Port Union and to make a plea for volunteers to the Newfoundland Regiment. There was no sign of an end to the war. The Russians signed an armistice with Germany in November and tens of thousands of German troops were being transported to the Western Front. The regiment suffered heavy losses before Christmas and spent the holiday season licking their wounds in Fressen, waiting for new recruits to join them. Coaker addressed a public meeting in the F.P.U. Hall, the crowd respectful but unenthusiastic, like all the union crowds he’d spoken to. They had barely enough hands to crew the boats as it was and no one outside St. John’s showed any appetite for the war.

  Coaker worked the crowd afterwards, making a more personal pitch for volunteers. Eli stood with Abel and Dr. Newman, the three of them watching Coaker shake hands and plead and cajole.

  —He seems worked up, Newman said.

  —We might have to pull the regiment off the front lines if we don’t shore it up, Eli said.

  —It hardly seems the union’s job to keep the regiment in soldiers.

  —Be hard to hold off conscription if we don’t meet the need with willing bodies.

  The doctor pursed his lips. —And I suppose it does you no service in the House if the union looks like a crowd of shirkers.

  —Perception is half the game, Eli said.

  Coaker came around to them finally and he shook hands with the doctor and the youngster beside him.

  —Mr. Coaker, Abel said.

  —Uncle Will, Coaker corrected him. —You’re looking well, Abel.

  —He’s in the blush of health, Newman said. —A miracle recovery, Mr. Coaker. I’ve never seen the like.

  Coaker nodded and stared at him longer than Abel would have liked. He looked away, waiting for the appraisal to end. Newman excused himself to get back to the hospital and they watched him go, skeletal and stooped under his clothes.

  —What is he, Coaker asked Eli, seventy-five now?

  —Older, I’d say. And looking every inch of it since Bride passed away.

  —Cancer, was it?

  —She didn’t last a month.

  —Is he drinking again?

  —He’s heartbroken, Eli said. —A person’s liable to do anything in that state.

  Abel shifted his feet, feeling again like he was eavesdropping on a private conversation. Eli turned to him and said, Come see us over in the Gut tonight. Be good to catch up on your news.

  The crowds dispersed by mid-afternoon and Abel helped take down the bunting and tables before walking back to Selina’s House. He carted a turn of spruce from the shed as he let himself in the back door, dropping the junks into the woodbox. Hannah was at the stove. —Supper’s almost ready, she said.

  Abel nodded, brushing the bark from his jacket. —I’ll go see if Esther’s hungry.

  —She’s never hungry.

  —I’ll go see, he said.

  He let himself into the gloom of curtained windows, the smell of her sleeping under the sting of frost in the air. He crossed to the bed and laid a hand against her face. —Esther, he said. Abel could hear the clank of cast iron on the stove downstairs, his mother letting him know she was there. They’d all three shared the house more than a year now with Hannah doing what she could to stand between them. Abel was forced to seek Esther out with pretend errands that gave him a few moments alone in her company. —Esther? he said again.

  She muttered something guttural into the mattress. She’d been idly teaching him bits and pieces of all the languages she knew these last months and he’d picked up enough to sort one from another. —Guten Tag, he said and he asked in his broken German if she supper interested in was having?

  Esther turned on the bed, covering her face with her hand. —Did I ever tell you how the widow died? Devine’s Widow?

  —Who was she to me again?

  —She was Mary Tryphena’s grandmother. Your great-great-great-grandmother.

  Abel sat on the edge of the mattress. They hadn’t slept together since the day his mother moved into the house and he’d had to satisfy himself with this, listening to the woman he loved tell him who he was. He suspected she was making most of it up as she went, but there was something intimate and illicit in the telling. As if she was undressing him one item of clothing at a time as she filled out the bare genealogy with courtships and marriages, arguments and feuds and accidents, the myriad circumstances in which his people left the world. —How did the widow die? he asked. Meaning her to know he was hers completely.

  —She lay down, Esther said. —Went to her bed one afternoon and refused to get out of it. She said, I had enough of this. It was Lizzie looked out to her at the end, washed and fed her and brushed out her hair. You’ll be happy enough to see me gone, the widow said to her.

  —And what did Lizzie say?

  —She said, I’ll be happy to think something and not have you know it just looking at me.

  Hannah interrupted from the foot of the stairs to say supper was on the table.

  —Will you eat something? he asked.

  —I’ll be down the once.

  It might be hours before she showed her face, he knew, or she might stay upstairs the rest of the night and he felt a new impatience bloom in his chest. He’d always assumed Esther was telling the stories to make company for his strangeness, to keep him close. But there were moments it seemed she was holding him at bay with the tale, hiding herself behind it. He went to the door and a sudden fear stopped him there. H
e said, You haven’t had enough have you, Esther?

  —Enough of what?

  —This, he said. —Us.

  —You go on, she said. —I’ll be down now the once.

  Abel sat alone at the table with Hannah. He knew his father had come by Selina’s House when he arrived that morning though neither of his parents said a word to him about the visit. And they ate now without mentioning the afternoon’s events or the union or Eli. He was nearly finished his meal when he looked up to see his mother crying. He put his fork and knife across the plate.

  —She’s twice your age, Hannah said.

  —I knows how old she is.

  —And you’re in love are you?

  —Maybe I am.

  —Why let that ruin the rest of your life?

  He got up to bring his plate to the pantry and when he came back into the kitchen Hannah had wiped her face dry. She pushed away from the table and stood there holding her plate. —Don’t you go overseas, Abel.

  —Why would I do that? he said, startled by the sudden shift.

  —Promise me you won’t.

  —All right, he said.

  She shook her head, fighting back the tears again, as if he’d denied her.

  He left the house after supper without telling his mother where he was going. Clear and still over the Tolt and in the moonlight he could see the roof of Laz Devine’s house had foundered, all the windows scavenged from Mary Tryphena’s place. He found his father and Coaker in the house across the garden talking in the flicker of light from a damper left open on the stove. They took Abel’s arrival as a signal to light a lamp and Eli set about making tea, asking after Dr. Newman and Azariah Trim and a handful of others without ever mentioning the women Abel lived with at Selina’s House. They talked then about the war and about Port Union, picking up the conversation Abel had interrupted.

  Coaker excused himself to go to bed an hour later and they could hear him settling into bed in Abel’s old room at the back of the house. It was a private sound that embarrassed them both and Eli cleared his throat against the noise. —How’s Esther getting along? he asked.

  —She haven’t changed much since the last you saw her.

  Eli leaned forward in his chair to stare at his folded hands. —Your mother, he said. —She says you and Esther. She thinks it might be good if you moved out of Selina’s House.

  Abel watched the flicker of firelight on the wall above the stove, a lump of hot wax in his throat. Eli asked if he’d considered volunteering for the regiment now he was eighteen and Abel turned his head so quickly that his father held up a hand. —Uncle Will could make arrangements to see you get overseas right away.

  Abel stretched his legs, kicking one heel off the toe of the other boot, trying to dislodge the ache at the back of his throat. He motioned toward the ceiling with his head. —Is this his idea?

  —He asked what I thought of it.

  Abel knocked his heel against his toe a while longer.

  —You don’t have to decide anything this minute, Eli told him.

  Abel nodded. —Did you ever know Judah Devine? he said.

  Eli sat back in his chair. —When I was a youngster. I hardly remember a thing about him.

  —Esther says he was born out of the belly of a whale. And stunk like a dead fish.

  —Esther, Eli said and sighed. —You know Esther isn’t a well woman, Abel.

  —I should get home, he said.

  Abel started across the garden and halfway to Mary Tryphena’s he stopped, turning back toward the house. Just the one lamp in the kitchen and he stood a long time in the cold, watching. He saw the lamp lift from the table finally, the brief glow of it at the turn of the stairs on the second floor as his father made his way to bed.

  Esther spoke to him out of the darkness of the parlor when he came into Selina’s House. —Where have you been this evening, Abel?

  —Over to see father, he said and he paused a moment. —They want me to join up.

  —Who does?

  —Father, he said. He couldn’t bring himself to say Uncle Will. —And Mr. Coaker.

  There was only silence in the parlor’s black. Hannah had scrubbed the floors and washed the curtains and aired out the furniture months ago but Abel could still smell the goat. He thought Esther might have fallen asleep in there. He said, How did Judah Devine find his way into the belly of that whale?

  —How should I know?

  Abel leaned against the door jamb. —That’s the best you can do, is it?

  —Maybe he was a fisherman washed overboard in a storm, she said. —Or a sailor drove mad by being too long at sea.

  —That still don’t say how he wound up swallowed by a whale.

  —What does it matter, Abel?

  She was drunk and he found his impatience welling up again. —You could care less if I join up, he said. —It wouldn’t matter to you if I lived or died.

  —Don’t be a sook, Abel.

  He walked along the hall and through the kitchen, pulling off his coat as he went. Certain it was all a lie, the life she’d given him, her mouth on his, her hands, the preposterous little history she’d spun to make him feel at home in the world. He felt he’d been made to look a fool.

  Eli and Coaker rose early the next morning, both men all business over their breakfast. They discussed the general council at Port Union, the progress of bills in the House of Assembly, what would become of the price of fish when the war ended. —What did Abel say about signing up? Coaker asked finally.

  —He’s going to think about it.

  Coaker looked up from the bread he was buttering.

  —He seemed interested, Eli insisted.

  Coaker set his food down and sat with his hands beside the plate. Eli turned to the stove so as not to see the panic Coaker was just managing to tamp down. They had so much to lose now, Port Union, Coaker’s cabinet position in the coalition government, the new fisheries regulations that might save the industry from itself. So much the union had fought for on the verge of realization and Coaker already fearful it might slip away in the bog of the country’s petty politics. —I know it’s a lot to ask, Coaker said. —But he’d never see action, Eli, I promise you that. We can have him assigned a stretcher-bearer, he’ll be safe as houses.

  Eli couldn’t help thinking Abel’s volunteering to carry stretchers was a trifle in the grand scheme and he said as much. —It hardly matters one way or the other, does it?

  —Everything matters, Coaker said. —Perception is half the game.

  They were still eating when Tryphie put his head around the door. They’d both noted him absent the day before though neither had mentioned it. Coaker said, I was starting to think you were trying to keep clear of us, Tryphie.

  Eli went to fetch him a mug but Tryphie waved him off. He refused even to take a chair. —I just come by to let you know, he said, if Hannah haven’t already mentioned it. Levi Sellers come around to see us.

  —When was this?

  —Before Christmas. He was looking for something on Mr. Coaker.

  —He only has to read the St. John’s papers if it’s gossip he wants, Coaker said. —Reprobate, abuser of the fairer sex, delinquent father, it’s all in there.

  —He was after something a little different than that, Mr. Coaker. Offered me a third of his estate to swear out an affidavit.

  —An affidavit stating what exactly?

  —Something that would implicate you—Tryphie made a motion with his hand—in acts. Unnatural acts.

  Coaker was staring steadily at Tryphie, as if daring him to elaborate.

  —He claimed he was acting on behalf of more than just himself, Tryphie said. —I thought you ought to know.

  —I have nothing to be ashamed of, Coaker said.

  —You’ll want to watch out to yourselves, just the same.

  —Levi went to Hannah? Eli asked.

  —Right after he spoke to me.

  Eli reached for the table edge and looked away out the window, caught s
ight of Abel coming across the garden at a run. Moments later the boy slammed through the door. —I wants to join up, he said. —Father says you can get me in, Uncle Will, is that right?

  Coaker managed a smile as he stood from his chair. He seemed happy for the distraction. —I might be able to pull some strings, he said.

  A series of telegraphs went back and forth between Paradise Deep and several government departments in St. John’s and by mid-afternoon arrangements were all but made. There was a meeting of the local union executive that evening where Coaker announced Abel’s intentions and made a show of him in front of the group. He’d be traveling into St. John’s with them at the end of the week to sign up, Coaker told the assembly, and men lined up to shake Abel’s hand and wish him well.

  The news reached Selina’s House before Abel walked the hundred yards back from the F.P.U. Hall. Hannah waiting at the door for him when he came in. —You made a promise to me, Abel Devine.

  —I didn’t know Mr. Coaker wanted me to join the regiment.

  —And that’s God’s word, is it? What Uncle Will wants, he gets?

  —You said yourself you wanted me out of this house.

  Hannah grabbed a coat and pushed past him to the door. He watched her march down the path in the moonlight, an unfamiliar hitch in her step as she went, as if she was hobbled by some private grief, and he almost called out to her before he heard Esther moving above him. She was on the landing when he turned toward the stairs. —Hello Cannon Fodder, she said.

  —What do you care? Abel said.

  She turned away toward her room and he climbed the stairs after her. She had a fire lit and she waved him in to lie beside her. He stared up at the stained ceiling, trying to comprehend what he’d agreed to. It had happened so quickly it felt like an accident now, a fall from a rooftop. Regret funneling through him at the thought of leaving Esther behind and he shook his head, fighting off tears. —This was all a mistake, he said.

  —You don’t have to go, Abel.

  —Mr. Coaker is after telling everyone I’m joining up, he said. He moved to get out of bed but Esther pulled him back, lifting herself over him. She rocked slightly side to side and then steadied herself, Abel already hard beneath her. —Come on, she said, grinding into him.

 

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