Michael Crummey - Sweetland

He started along the trail heading north. It was half a mile to where he’d tailed his rabbit slips and it looked like he’d wasted the trip early on. Nothing in the first half-dozen, though one had been taken and managed to twist free. He would have taken up the snares altogether without Jesse to keep him company but for Clara’s self-righteousness. He reset the wire slip out of bald spite, settled the spruce branches he’d cut snug to either side on the run. The day was lightening and Sweetland shucked his rain jacket, stuffed it away in his pack. Took a mouthful of water from the Mason jar. Headed on to the next snare.

At first glance he thought a fox or weasel had gotten at the creature in the slip, some savage thing eating ugly, making a bloody mess. It crossed his mind it might have been Loveless’s little lapdog to blame. That he might be forced to shoot the pup, to keep him clear of the snares.

He pushed his cap high and knelt to clear the ruined thing from the run. Froze there on his knees. The animal decapitated, the guts and entrails pulled out through a knife’s incision in the stomach. Hind feet chopped off. He looked away from the mess and the rabbit’s dead eyes were staring at him. The head set in the branches of the tree above the snare, one brown ear nailed to the trunk to hold it in place.

He stood the.22 on its stock and hauled himself to his feet. “Jesus fuck,” he said. He took up the packsack and walked fifty feet back along the trail to sit against a boulder. It was too early for lunch but he took out the sandwich, chewing on the tasteless bread and washing it down with water. A shower of rain started to fall and he glanced up, trying to guess how long it might last. He put his rain gear on and made his way back along the path to the snare. He took the grocery bag that had held his sandwich and scooped the ruined game into it. The smear of viscera dark through the white plastic. He worked the fabric of the rabbit’s ear over the nail’s hold and placed the head in the bag as well.

There were two other rabbits in the snares, both of them violated in a similar fashion. He looked for their heads in the nearby trees but there was no sign that he could see. He filled the plastic bag with the bodies and tied it off and carried it with him, taking up each of his snares as he backtracked along the trail to the quad. He tied the.22 on the rack and walked down past the keeper’s house, out to the helicopter pad. It was raining steadily and the wind had come up, his slicker cracking in each gust. He walked to the far end of the platform and flung the foul bag into the sea.

The Priddles didn’t come by until their last evening on the island. He’d begun to think they wouldn’t show their faces at all. It was an awkward fit they’d made at the best of times and, sometime soon, whatever held them in the same orbit was likely going to wear through. There’d always been a current of animosity buried in their connection to him, as if they resented the fact he was all they had to turn to when they were boys. And some small corner of his heart suspected it was the brothers who’d mutilated the animals in his snares, just to fuck with him. It was well within the compass of their twisted sense of entertainment. And it would have been a relief to Sweetland if that were the truth.

He heard them coming along the path, shouting and laughing their fool heads off. The night so still they sounded like a carnival driving through town, a truckload of drunken clowns with megaphones. It struck Sweetland what an unfamiliar racket it was, people out for a good time, raising hell for the fun of it. It almost made him feel nostalgic the minute or two it took them to come barrelling through the door.

They were too loud for the tiny space and low ceilings. They shouted for homebrew, Keith heading into the pantry to help himself. They could be heard halfway out Church Side, Sweetland guessed. Keith reappeared with beers clutched between all his fingers. The bottle caps setting off the words H*O*P*E and F*E*A*R on the knuckles. My prison tats, Keith explained the first time Sweetland noticed them there, after they’d been released from Her Majesty’s Pen in St. John’s.

Where’s yours? Sweetland had asked Barry.

He got a heart with the word MOTHER stamped across his arse, Keith said.

Keith flicked the caps off the bottles with the base of a Bic lighter as Sweetland took down glasses from the cupboard and set about pouring a share to each. Keith took a mouthful and shook his head like a dog climbing out of a pond. “Jesus,” he said. “That’s still the worst brew ever I tasted. Remember what we used to call this, Barr?”

“Piss & Boots.”

“Piss & Boots,” Keith repeated and they fell over themselves laughing. They were both stoned out of their heads, eyes glassy as marbles.

“We could make a fortune off this stuff in Alberta,” Barry said. “What is it they calls it? Boutique breweries? They’re all the rage up there.”

“But it tastes like shit.”

“They all tastes like shit, Keith. It’s just a question of marketing.”

“Well no one’s going to buy something called Piss & Boots.”

“We could call it Scarface. That would sell. Scarface Lager.”

“It’s an ale,” Sweetland said uselessly.

“Whatever the fuck,” Barry said. “Scarface Ale. Scarface Pilsner.”

“Scarface Dark,” Keith said.

“Fuck, yes. Scarface Dark. Skull and crossbones on the label.”

“That’s money, that is,” Keith said. “Hey, tell Moses here about the cove idea.”

“What idea is that?” Sweetland asked while Barry waved the suggestion away.

“Come on,” Keith said. “Out with it.” He turned to Sweetland. “This is real money we’re talking about now,” he said. “We could make a killing on it.”

“I’m all ears.”

“Well,” Barry said, “the idea is we buys up the cove after everyone shifts out.”

“I’m not moving anywhere.”

“Hypothetical, Scarface,” Keith shouted. “Speculation is all we’re doing.”

“All right then,” Sweetland said.

“So, houses and sheds and wharves and whatnot. I figure we could get the works for ten or fifteen thousand.”

“Hypothetically,” Sweetland said, “wouldn’t this place be reverted to Crown land once people leaves?”

“So we leases it or some such. We’ll let the lawyers worry about that. Then we comes in here and rips out all the vinyl siding.”

“Get rid of it all,” Keith said with an elaborate swing of his arm.

“Paints the whole place up with ochre and whitewash, puts out a couple of dories behind the breakwater. And we sells package tours to a vintage Newfoundland outport. It’ll be like one of them Pioneer Villages on the mainland. Only, you know—”

“Authentic,” Keith said.

“That’s exactly right. The real McCoy. We could have people out here dressed up in oilskins, take the tourists fishing, show them how to split and salt the cod.”

“No one knows how to salt cod anymore,” Sweetland said.

“Shut up there, Eeyore,” Keith said.

“Whatever the fuck,” Barry said. “Feed them a bit of Jiggs’ dinner. Get someone to play the accordion, put on a dance.”

“We could do weekend packages,” Keith said. “Week-long, ten days. People would pay a fortune for that kind of time.”

They were always chasing after money when they were high. Sweetland had heard them spin a thousand get-rich-quick schemes, each more unlikely than the last. Bootlegging out of St. Pierre, smuggling drugs up from Mexico by sailboat. Shipping seal penises to the Chinese as aphrodisiacs.

“I got the advertising for this thing all figured out,” Barry said and he raised both hands like he was displaying a banner. “Experience Life in Sweetland.”