Michael Crummey - Sweetland

When Sweetland moved back into the cove from the keeper’s house, he spent most of his evenings at Pilgrim’s, eating his supper there and watching an hour or two of television with Jesse. America’s Funniest Home Videos. Wipeout. Two and a Half Men . Then Jesse would begin the first of the many elaborate stages required to get him to bed. Clara and Wince took turns saying their good-nights and bringing the boy a glass of water and adjusting the pillows to his satisfaction, and then he’d call for Sweetland. Lying in the dark with Jesse to answer endless questions about hockey and fishing and wrestling, about the saucy rooster Sweetland killed when it went after Ruthie, about the boatload of Sri Lankans he’d happened on near Burnt Head.

It was impossible to say what Jesse made of these stories, why he returned to them so obsessively, insisting they be told in the same manner each time. He seemed to be constantly checking the world at large against the one in his head, making sure they were one and the same. Though at night, in his bedroom, it seemed just another ploy to delay the inevitable. Jesse clinging to wakefulness like a drowning man, rousing himself out of near sleep to ask one more thing.

Tell me about the coat, he would say.

What coat? Sweetland asked.

The one you and Hollis wore.

I don’t know if I remembers much about it.

You had to go out and check the nets in the morning before school.

You want to tell the story?

No, Jesse said. You tell it.

All right, Sweetland said.

Up before light, the two of them. Putting a bit of fire in the stove, the house cold as stone. A cup of tea and fried capelin and they went along to the stagehead, climbed down into the punt and set the oars. They had to sell the skiff with the inboard after their father died and it was an hour’s rowing out to the nets, longer if the wind was southerly. Only the one decent coat between them, their father’s old jacket kept on a hook in the porch. Neither of them big enough to fill it out on their own, sitting side by side with one arm each in the sleeves, coming back on the oars. Uncle Clar telling them how they looked like a fat little two-headed man on his way to check his herring nets.

Why did you have to share a coat? Jesse asked.

It was hard times after Father died. Just me and Hollis to look after the fish. Hollis wouldn’t as old as you when all that was going on.

Jesse was quiet a moment and then he said, You was with Hollis when he drowned.

That’s enough of that now.

But Hollis says—

I heard enough of what your imaginary friend says about it all.

He’s not imaginary, Jesse said in the same flat tone.

Well I’m not talking to him either way. You want another story or not?

Clara usually had to call an end to the interrogation, her silhouette at the bedroom door. Last one, she’d say and then stand there to make sure Jesse didn’t sneak in another. But occasionally Sweetland outlasted the boy and he lay a few minutes longer, letting the spell of sleep settle in before he moved. Jesse’s face blank but animate, a living thing. The last of Sweetland’s blood beside him. The smell of woodsmoke in his hair. The untainted sweetness of a child’s breath.

Uncle Moses, Jesse whispered one evening. He had turned to face the wall, a sure sign he was about to go under, and Sweetland leaned in close to hear him. I have a secret to tell you, Jesse whispered. Sweetland raised his head, listening, and he waited there a good while before he realized the boy was sound asleep.

He doubted Jesse even remembered the announcement of a secret about to be shared, but some childish part of Sweetland’s mind was still expectant in his presence. As if a riddle at the heart of things was about to be revealed. He was like the world itself, Sweetland thought, a well you would never see the bottom of, that might swallow you whole if you weren’t careful.

He went to the fridge and leaned into the cool. “You want something else to eat,” he asked.

“Can we go see the cow?”

“I had enough of cows for one day.”

“You don’t have any cows.”

“I got to eat something,” he said. “And then I got some work to do in the shed.”

“I’d rather go see the cow.”

“Well go see the bloody cow then,” Sweetland said.

He was at the table saw ripping a length of two-by-six to replace the sill in the shed’s side door when Glad Vatcher came to see him. He shut down the machine, ran his hand along the cut. Waited for the younger man to say something.

“You had a night, I hear,” Gladstone said finally.

“Tried to send Loveless over to get you,” Sweetland said. “Was your bull caused all the trouble to begin with.”

Glad smiled down at his boots. A faint odour of animal coming off him where he stood in the open doorway. “I tried to talk him out of it,” he said. “Offered to buy the cow off him, to save him the trouble.”

“You might as well talk to his little dog as talk sense to Loveless.”

“He come to see me just now. Cow’s laid down and he can’t get her up out of it.”

“You have a look at her?”

“Poked my head in,” he said. “You had some job getting that calf clear from the looks of things.”

“Like trying to pull a tooth.”

“Loveless wants we should try to get the cow on her feet.”

“I had enough of that animal for one day.”

Glad let a smile prick at the corners of his mouth, but wouldn’t look at Sweetland direct. “There’s no one over there to help but youngsters and old men,” he said.

Sweetland took a broom from the corner and swept up the spray of sawdust. It was their first conversation since Glad decided to take the package, against everything Sweetland had ever heard him say on the matter. Glad had a finger in every enterprise in Chance Cove, a position he inherited from his father. He and his wife ran the cove’s only store, shipped in fishing equipment and outboards and building materials, sold fresh lamb in the spring and beef in the fall. The resettlement talk never amounted to more than talk before Glad signed on. It was hard to blame the man, given the state of things on the island, but Sweetland blamed him regardless.

“I spose it’s a waste of time trying to get her up,” he said.

“Likely it is,” Glad said. “Still,” he said.

“Loveless got any rope over there?”

“I’d say Sara had just about anything a man could need, we minds to look for it.”

Sweetland took his coat off a hook by the door and they walked over together without speaking, stood just inside the barn entrance to let their eyes adjust to the dim. A crowd gathered at the far end near the cow. Every youngster in school had come to the barn during the dinner break and not a one was going back while the animal was down. Most of the men in the cove were there as well, including some who hadn’t spoken a civil word to Sweetland in months. Loveless holding court, both his arms going as he talked.

“He haven’t had this much attention since Sara died,” Glad Vatcher said.

Loveless was pointing at Sweetland as they walked over. “Sawed up the calf,” he heard Loveless say, “like a bit of old driftwood.”

Sweetland glanced around at the assembly, to see what they had to work with. Duke and Hayward, Reet Verge in her pink hoodie, Ned Priddle, a handful of others. Glad was the only adult under the age of fifty, the rest nursing one chronic infirmity or other. All the young folk off at jobs on the rigs or into St. John’s or somewhere on the mainland.

The cow was down against the wall, panting shallowly and staring blind at the barnboards. “She won’t have any life in them legs,” Glad said. “She’s going to be dead weight to get up.”