Michael Crummey - Sweetland

Sweetland glanced out the window and back.

“Clara’s going to be left alone with the youngster is what’s going to happen. She’ve got a chance to go somewhere with a bit of money to see the boy looked after. And you’re going to fuck it up.”

Sweetland could hear the man breathing, his head turned away in a snit. He looked over at Jesse sitting oblivious, bobbing his head to his music. Sweetland went across the room to lean over him, took the headphones out of the boy’s ears. Jesse grabbed at them, automatically agitated, and Sweetland had to hold his wrists to keep him still. “Jesse,” he said, “your Poppy thinks we should all leave Sweetland like Hayward Coffin. Pack everything up and go. What do you think about that?”

“Leave the boy alone, Mose.”

“You want to go live in St. John’s?”

Jesse’s face went still, his dark eyes darting.

“Hey? We’ll burn the whole place down and leave, will we?”

Pilgrim was on his feet and coming toward them, both hands aloft like a man about to cast a stagey magic spell. “Jesse,” he said.

Sweetland let go of his wrists and Jesse pressed them against his ears, rocking and moaning where he sat. Sweetland took a step back, his own hands shaking. Feeling ashamed of himself, and vindicated, and murderous. He said, “We’ll get on the ferry tomorrow and you’ll never see anyone you knows from here ever again.”

Pilgrim bumped into him from behind and he pushed Sweetland away. Crouched over the wailing youngster. “Jesse,” he said, “it’s all right now, Jesse. Moses is just playing around.”

But there was no pulling the boy out of his spiral. Pilgrim phoned down to Clara and by the time she came running Jesse was on the floor, knocking his forehead rhythmically against the boards. She exchanged words with Sweetland, the two shouting back and forth, Jesse yelling louder still to drown out the noise. Eventually they had to send for the Reverend, who cleared everyone out of the kitchen and spent the better part of an hour trying to calm the youngster. A small crowd had gathered outside and they watched Jesse walk down to his house, leaning on the Reverend’s arm like a septuagenarian, exhausted and disoriented.

“I hope you’re happy,” Clara said to Sweetland as she followed her son along the path. Her voice viciously calm.

Sweetland spent the rest of the afternoon splitting wood. Stunned, and sick of himself, and hoping he might disappear awhile in the mechanical strain of work, of occupation. He stood the junks on the chopping block, cleaving the dry birch and spruce with a clipped thock, like the sound of some massive timepiece ticking steadily. He leaned on the axe to catch his breath and it came flooding back, the look on Jesse’s face, Sweetland with a head of steam and barrelling down on the youngster. He reared back with the axe suddenly and flung it over the roof of the shed.

He heard footsteps along the side of the house behind him then and he turned to stacking the freshly split junks. Wouldn’t look up from the work even after his visitor stopped behind him.

“You want a hand with that,” the Reverend asked.

Sweetland set the wood on the pile along the side of the shed. Brushed the bark from his coat. “You idn’t dressed for this kind of work,” he said. Sweetland carried on as the Reverend stood watching in his black pants and jacket. “How’s the young one now?”

“He was asleep when I left him.”

“He’s all right, then.”

“I wouldn’t mind hearing what made him act out like that.”

Sweetland shook his head. Acting out, the Reverend called it. Like it was all just a show, something put on to entertain. He swore under his breath, walked out past the shed to look for the axe. Trying to settle himself as he searched around. The Reverend followed behind him to the back wall of the shed and Sweetland brushed past the man, walking to the side door with the recovered axe in his hand. Sat inside with the head in his lap, working the stone across the cutting edge. The Reverend came as far as the door and stood waiting there.

“I imagine Pilgrim already give you the play-by-play,” Sweetland said.

“He gave me his version of events.”

“Well who am I to argue with a blind man?”

The Reverend looked away out the door and Sweetland thought he might leave without saying anything else. But he turned back to the gloom in the shed. “I know how you feel about that boy,” he said.

“What you knows about how I feels,” Sweetland said, but the Reverend pushed ahead, talking over him.

“And you might think you’re watching out for Jesse in all of this. You’ve got everyone else convinced. But I don’t buy it.”

“Is that a fact?”

“That’s a fact, yes.”

“And I imagine you’re about to tell me how you sees it different.”

“I think you’re being a selfish son of a bitch, is what I think.”

Sweetland looked up from his lap, surprised by the obscenity, mild as it was. “Well,” he said, “you would be an expert on selfish sons a bitches.”

“You can muddy the waters if that makes you feel better. But it doesn’t change what’s going on here. The only card you have left in this game is Jesse. And you just might get what you want if you keep playing him.”

“There’s the door,” Sweetland said.

“I want you to ask yourself,” the Reverend said, “if using that youngster is worth the price.”

“You make sure you close it behind you when you go.”

The Reverend watched him a few moments longer before he left, pulling the door shut. Sweetland leaning back over his lap, repeating the sickle-shaped motion of the sharpening stone against the blade on his knee, the scrape of it like something working at bone.

He flicked on the radio in the kitchen when he went inside, a voice announcing the dates for the summer food fishery. Five cod per person per boat per day, the voice said. He hadn’t eaten a morsel since breakfast and he opened a can of tuna, put two slices of bread in the toaster. Staring out the window over the sink as he waited. Flicked off the radio and slapped Miracle Whip on the toast. Sat at the table, looking at the sandwich a few minutes before throwing it in the garbage can under the sink.

He walked down to Duke’s barbershop and let himself in, stood awhile studying the stalled chess game, then scanned blankly across the photos and clippings pasted to the wall. Stopped at an old Polaroid from their second stint on the mainland. Duke and himself grinning at the camera, in hard hats and undershirts. Both of them hungover no doubt. The colours had faded over the years, but it was his old face in the picture, without the purple scarring, without the grafted skin as tight and smooth as the skin of an apple. A shock still, to see himself in that other life, unmarked.

It was oppressively hot all that summer, a pulsing furnace heat through July and August. Six days a week they were at it, twelve hours a day, framing in the sprawling suburbs of York and Etobicoke, hammering two-by-fours in the sink of merciless humidity. He had never felt so recklessly lonely, so desperate to lose himself in the mindless drudge of work, in drink. Homesickness felt like the only thing keeping him alive.

He heard the door and turned to see the proprietor ducking his head under the frame.

“You’re looking thoughtful,” Duke said. “You have a notion for the game finally?”

“Might be I do.”

Duke raised his face to the ceiling. “The night is far spent,” he said, “the day is at hand.” He crossed to the board and stared. “So what’s your notion?”

“Throw the fucken thing in the stove.”

“You’re not giving up on it?”

“I’m done,” Sweetland said.