Ian McGuire - The North Water

The priest spoons up a piece of meat and chews it slowly. Sumner reaches for his mug of tea, picks it up, sips, then puts it back down on the table. For the first time in days he feels the words gathering inside him, dividing, accumulating, taking on strength and form. Soon, he knows, they will begin to rise up his throat and then they will spill out onto his bruised and ulcerated tongue, and then, whether he likes it or not, whether he wants it or not, he will speak.

The priest looks at him.

“Are you ill?” he asks.

Sumner shakes his head. He raises his right hand a moment, then opens his mouth. There is a pause.

“What medicines?” he says.

It comes out in a blurred mumble. The priest looks confused, but then smiles and leans eagerly forwards.

“Say that again,” he says. “I didn’t quite catch…”

“Medicines,” Sumner repeats. “What medicines do you have?”

“Oh, medicine ,” the priest says. “Of course, of course.”

He stands up, goes into the storeroom at the rear of the cabin, and comes back with a small medicine chest. He places it down on the table in front of Sumner.

“This is all I have,” he says. “I’ve used the salts a good deal, of course, and the calomel for the native children when they have the flux.”

Sumner opens the box and begins taking out the bottles and jars, peering at the contents and reading the labels. The priest watches him do it.

“Are you a doctor?” he asks. “Is that what you are?”

Sumner ignores the question. He takes out everything in the chest, and then tips the chest upside down to make sure it is truly empty. He looks at the collection arrayed on the tabletop and shakes his head.

“Where’s the laudanum?” he says.

The priest frowns but doesn’t answer.

“The laudanum,” Sumner says again more loudly. “The fucking laudanum, where is it gone to?”

“We have none of that left,” the priest says. “I had one bottle but it’s used up already.”

Sumner closes his eyes for a moment. When he opens them again, the priest is putting the medicines carefully back into the chest.

“I see you can talk plain English after all,” he says. “For a while there I was fearing you were a Polack or Serb or some other strange denomination.”

Sumner takes up the bowl and spoon, and starts eating again as if nothing has happened.

“Where are you from?” the priest asks him.

“It doesn’t matter so much where I’m from.”

“Perhaps it doesn’t to you, but if a man is being fed and kept warm in a spot where he would likely die if left to fend for himself, you might expect a little courtesy is due to the people who are doing it for him.”

“I’ll pay you back for the food and the fire.”

“And when will you do that, I wonder?”

“In the spring, when the whaling ships come back.”

The priest nods and sits down again. He rakes his fingers through the edges of his gray beard, then scratches the point of his chin with his thumbnail. His cheeks are flushed, but he is struggling to remain charitable in the face of Sumner’s insults.

“Some might call it a kind of miracle what happened to you,” he says, after a pause, “being found preserved alive on the ice inside the body of a dead bear.”

“I wouldn’t call it that myself.”

“Then what would you call it?”

“Perhaps you should be asking the bear.”

The priest stares back at him for a moment, then yaps out a laugh.

“Oh, you’re a clever kind of fellow, I can see that,” he says. “Three days lying over there silent as the grave, not a single word from your lips, and now you’re up and making merry with me.”

“I’ll pay you back for the food and the fire,” Sumner says again flatly, “just as soon as I get another berth.”

“You’re sent here for a reason,” the priest says. “A man doesn’t just appear like that from nowhere. I don’t know what the reason is yet, but I know the Good Lord must have one.”

Sumner shakes his head.

“No,” he says. “Not me. I want no part of that rigmarole.”

* * *

Half a week later, a sledge arrives carrying two hunters the priest has not seen before. He pulls on his anorak and mittens and goes outside. The woman, whose Christianized name is Anna, comes out of the igloo at the same time, greets the men, and offers them food. They talk to her for several minutes, and then, speaking more slowly so he will understand them, they talk to the priest. They explain that they have found a ruined tent a day’s journey away with four dead white men lying frozen within it. They show him, as proof, the items they have salvaged — knives, ropes, a hammer, a grease-stained copy of the Bible. When he asks if they will go back there to retrieve the bodies so they can be buried with the proper rites, they shake their heads and say they must continue on with their hunting. They feed their dogs on walrus meat, then eat in the igloo and rest awhile but do not stay overnight. They try to sell him the Bible before they leave, but when he refuses to trade for it, they hand it to the woman Anna as a gift. After they have gone, Anna comes to the cabin and explains that the hunters told her they also found two dead Esquimaux at the white men’s camp. They were both stripped naked, she reports, and one had been murdered with a knife. She points to her own neck and indicates the location of the wounds.

“One here,” she says, “and the other here.”

Later, when the two of them are alone, and after he has thought on it a little while, the priest tells the hunters’ story to Sumner. He watches his reactions.

“As I understand it, the place they found the bodies is not so very far from where you were found yourself,” he says. “So I’m guessing you will know the men who died; I’m guessing that they were your own shipmates.”

Sumner, who is seated by the stove whittling at a piece of driftwood, scratches his nose and nods once in agreement.

“Were they dead when you left them?” the priest asks him.

“Only the Yaks.”

“And you didn’t think to go back there?”

“I knew that blizzard would have killed them.”

“It didn’t kill you.”

“I’d say it tried its damnedest.”

“Who murdered the Esquimaux?”

“A man named Henry Drax, a harpooner.”

“Why would he do such a thing?”

“Because he wanted their sledge. He wanted to use it to escape.”

Frowning and shaking his head at this extraordinary intelligence, the priest picks up his pipe and fills it with tobacco. His hand is trembling as he does so. Sumner watches him. Charcoal ticks and crackles in the stove beside them.

“He must have traveled north,” the priest says after a pause. “The northern tribes of Baffin Land are a law unto themselves. If he fell amongst them there is no way of us ever finding out where he is or what has become of him. He may be dead, but more likely he has traded the sledge for shelter and is waiting for the spring.”

Sumner nods. He watches the candle’s shimmering ghost hovering in the darkened windowpane. Beyond it, he sees the pale template of the igloo, and, beyond that, the high hard blackness of the mountains. He thinks of Henry Drax still alive somewhere and shudders.

The priest stands up. He takes a bottle of brandy from the cabinet near the door and pours them both a glass.

“And what is your name?”

Sumner looks up at him sharply, then turns back to the driftwood and continues whittling.

“Not Henry Drax,” he says.

“Then what?”

“Sumner. Patrick Sumner from Castlebar.”

“A Mayo man,” the priest says lightly.

“Aye,” he says. “Once upon a time.”