Michael Crummey - Sweetland

Dark now the once, Duke said. Maybe we should overnight here.

Sweetland shook his head. Darker the better, he said, given what we’re carting.

I hope it don’t taste like bear meat.

Sweetland glanced across at the man beside him. When have you ever tasted bear?

I haven’t, he said. Just don’t think I’d like it.

Duke stood and dried his arms on the wet sweater under his jacket, the burnished wedding ring glinting in the day’s last light.

Maybe I’ll come with you, Sweetland said then. Up to the mainland.

Duke watched him a few seconds, still drying his arms. I thought you hated fucken old Toronto?

Buck fifty an hour, like you says.

Sweetland couldn’t say what possessed him to make that decision, any more than he could explain why he’d called the government man to take the package when he did. There was no saying how things might have turned out if he’d stayed at home instead of going to Toronto. But it all went sideways there on Little Sweetland, the buffalo’s blood still under his nails, his hands numb with the ocean’s cold.

A life was no goddamn thing in the end, he thought. Bits and pieces of make-believe cobbled together to look halfways human, like some stick-and-rag doll meant to scare crows out of the garden. No goddamn thing at all.

THREE MONTHS AFTER the Sri Lankans passed through Chance Cove, the Reverend announced he was leaving Sweetland for another parish. Telling the congregation during a Sunday morning service.

This will come as a shock to you, he said, and I apologize for that.

He and his wife were shipping out within the month, moving to a church closer to her parents, who were aged and ailing and had no one else to watch out to them. Half the women were in tears to hear it. Digging crumpled tissues from dress sleeves to dab at their rheumy eyes. Sweetland glancing at Ruthie where she sat with Pilgrim, one row ahead of him. Stone-faced. As though the news was no surprise to her.

Ruthie’s pregnancy was just beginning to show by then and it was an endless source of amusement in the cove. It had taken the blind man that long to find his way into his wife’s drawers, people said. Pilgrim had finally figured out which lock his key was meant for. Men stood him drinks at the Fisherman’s Hall. Thought you was going to be firing blanks your whole life, they said. Must have been one of them dark fellas off the lifeboat, they said, Ruthie must have took special care of them. Those reporters was out here, they said, she charmed the pants off them.

It was too much for Sweetland to sit through. Go fuck yourselves, he told the tormentors.

Never mind now, Pilgrim said.

Christ, Sweetland said. You just sits there and takes it, that’s the worst of it. Makes me sick.

Pilgrim picked aimlessly at the label on his bottle. You’re not going to stop them having their fun, he said.

I want to talk to you today, the Reverend said from the pulpit, about our recent unexpected visitors to Sweetland. He read a few verses from the Psalms. He wanted the congregation to imagine themselves in the position of those unfortunates in the lifeboat, he said. To be set adrift without warning or explanation, with nothing to say if they would ever be found. Or if anyone was even looking for them. Orphaned on an ocean that seems endless.

Sweetland had to credit the man for gall, standing up there in his robes with a straight face. In front of his own wife and Ruthie.

We could see it as a metaphor, the Reverend said, for our own place in the universe, for the questions we ask about our own lives.

Ruthie got up as he spoke and she crabbed her way past the others in her pew, whispering apologies, walking for the entrance with a hand to her mouth. People watching her go, nodding or shaking their heads. The morning sickness, they were all thinking. How it was about time the couple had a child in the house. How they had all stopped expecting it to happen and how God works in mysterious ways.

The Reverend droning on about hope and faith, like he hadn’t noticed her leaving.

AWEEK AFTER HE MADE THE CALL to the government man, Sweetland received a slender stack of forms in the mail. Clara came up to witness his signature, to fold the papers into the self-addressed envelope provided.

“That’s it, then,” she said. “You sending them on the ferry this week?”

“You take them,” he told her. “Be sure they gets out.”

She ironed the envelope flat on the table with the palm of her hand. “I guess I owe you a thank-you for this,” she said.

He jerked his head back, the motion barely perceptible but enough to stop her following through. He said, “You going to tell the boy now?”

Clara had asked Sweetland not to say anything to Jesse until all the papers were signed. Thinking he might back out and not wanting to risk the upheaval for nothing. “Not just yet,” she said. “Want to pick the right moment. He’s going to hate my guts for awhile, I imagine,” she said, and she tried to laugh at the notion.

“I should be the one to break the news,” Sweetland said. “He’ll likely blame me for it all anyways.”

“Why do you say that?”

“I told him I wouldn’t going anywhere. He was counting on me sticking it out.”

Clara shook her head. “I’ll tell him,” she said.

She pushed a clutch of loose papers across the table, information on relocation and retraining and various government assistance programs. “Have you decided?” she said. “Where you’re going to shift to?”

“Haven’t give it much thought.”

Clara stared down at her hands. “You know you’d be welcome to come into St. John’s with us,” she said.

Sweetland made a noise in his throat to say he’d as likely live on the moon as in St. John’s. He shifted in his chair to turn halfways away from her.

Clara tapped the papers with an index finger. “You should hang onto these.”

“All right,” he said, though he didn’t so much as glance at them.

“Jesse will come around,” she said.

The first week of August there was a town meeting at the Fisherman’s Hall, the government man in on the ferry. Sweetland waited at the kitchen window, watching as people made their way over, Ned Priddle, Glad and Alice Vatcher, Rita Verge, Duke Fewer. He saw Clara heading out with Pilgrim on her elbow, Jesse straggling behind, looking despondent. Maybe the news had finally trickled down to the boy, he thought.

Sweetland gave the crowd a few minutes to get settled into the Fisherman’s Hall before he gathered up his chainsaw and gas can and walked down to the government wharf. Diesel barking and lunging at the end of her chain as he went by. The ferry was still docked at the wharf, adding an extra hour and a half to its stop in order to take the government man back to the mainland after the meeting. Sweetland waved up at the crewmen on deck as he walked past. He had his own boat out on the collar and was bringing it in hand over hand when Loveless spoke to him. “Going for a bit a wood?” he said.

Sweetland looked behind to where Loveless was sitting on a lobster pot in the shade of the ATM. He had his little dog on its length of string, sitting between his feet.

“You’re not going up to the meeting?”

“Don’t like meetings,” Loveless said. “Sitting still that long.”

Sweetland smiled at the objection. “Sure all you does all day long is sit, idn’t it?”

“On my own schedule,” Loveless said. “I can get up to take a leak whenever the urge strikes.”

“Fair enough.”

“You going for a bit a wood?” he asked again.

“Thought I might.”

“Late to start across. You’ll have to spend the night.”