Michael Crummey - Sweetland

He left the Priddles cabin and walked back up to the keeper’s house, then drove overland on the quad. Stopping every few hundred yards to listen and call out. He could hear voices in all directions, calling the same. He took the trail back down into the cove, parked behind the house. Did a quick walk through, turning lights on in all the rooms as he called Jesse’s name. He walked out the arm then, past the burnt-out timbers of his stage, as far as the decommissioned incinerator. Let the beam of his flashlight play around the inside of the metal bell, picking out the blackened shards of incombustible refuse. Stopped short on the remains of the dead calf lying inside the incinerator’s maw. Bone showing through the dead leather of its skin. The maggots already done with it.

Fucken Loveless.

Shortly before ten he went back to the house, stood listening in the kitchen. He could tell the boy wasn’t in the building but he walked through the rooms anyway, upstairs and down, to be able to say he had. He made his way to the Fisherman’s Hall, the main lights on and the room crowded with people. A pot of soup on a hot plate, loaves of bread, cheese and crackers. Tea and coffee. Clara was sitting beside Pilgrim with her hand in his. She nodded at Sweetland quickly but didn’t hold his eye. For fear of crying, he knew, and he walked to a seat near the back to spare her having to look at him.

There was no news. Rita Verge had called the Coast Guard and they were sending a chopper with a search and rescue team if there was no sign of Jesse come morning. The Priddles had printed up a satellite photo of the island off of Google Earth and they were gridding it with a marker, circling the most likely spots to look.

“There’s no sense tramping around out there in the dark,” Duke Fewer said. “Someone’s going to get themselves killed at that.”

“Well I’m not going to sit here with a finger up my ass,” Keith said.

“He’ll be looking for us up there now,” Barry said. “We just wants to make it easier for him to find us.”

“We should get a bonfire going up on the mash,” Keith said. “Out at the keeper’s house. Over on the Mackerel Cliffs.”

“Not the cliffs,” Clara said. “Not the cliffs,” she repeated. “He could walk right off the cliffs trying to make his way to the fire.”

“All right,” Keith said, “we’ll get a fire going somewhere on the trail, half a mile or so shy of the cliffs.”

The Reverend said, “We should make sure all the lights are on here, help him find his way down if he’s looking.”

“He won’t see the lights in the cove till he gets to the King’s Seat,” Sweetland said. “If he’s on the mash, they won’t help a damn. Does that PA in the steeple work at all?”

“Hasn’t been used in twenty years.”

“Be worth checking. You could hear that racket halfways to Little Sweetland. It might lead him in.”

“I’ll see what I can do with it,” the Reverend said.

Before they had finished dividing up into parties and filling the gas tanks of their ATVs, they heard the sickly hum of an amplifier, then the click and scratch of a needle touched on vinyl. Ray Price singing “Just a Closer Walk with Thee.” Sweetland saw Clara turn away from them at the first words of the chorus, the back of her hand pressed against her mouth, going off into the dark alone.

Sweetland followed the Priddles up to the King’s Seat and on out to the keeper’s house where they started a fire in the clearing below the building. Keith went down to the cabin then, to start up the generator and keep the lights on there.

The fog had lifted while they were inside the hall, the sky overhead so clear now that the stars felt almost close enough to touch. Barry had a flask of rum that he offered across, but Sweetland shook his head. Settled in the circle of heat, waiting. The two men watched the flames eat away at the wood in silence. Listening to the vague sound of music from the cove and the endless rustle of the surf against the Fever Rocks beyond the keeper’s house, a commotion so distant and so insistent that it almost seemed to be the noise of the stars overhead.

Every hour or so Barry wandered off with a flashlight after deadfall and scrap wood to keep the fire burning, eventually hammering the rails and boards from the deck to feed the flames as the night passed. At some point he came back from the quad with a blanket that he draped over Sweetland’s shoulders, and Sweetland drifted off where he sat, despite the rat’s nest of commotion in his chest. Woke from a dream of Hollis staring up at him through cold fathoms of water, the white of his face fading as he sank down and swiftly down and no way on God’s earth to reach him. Sweetland had no idea where he was. Raised his head to see Barry sitting across the fire, hugging his knees.

“The fire’s bringing in the lost sheep,” Barry said, and he gestured down at Sweetland’s feet where Loveless’s little dog was curled up in the orange light.

“Hello, Smut,” Sweetland said.

Before first light they boiled a kettle on the coals of the fire and they drank instant coffee and shared out a handful of Jam Jams from Barry’s pack. The dog had long since disappeared again on its wander. They talked back and forth about what they might do when the sun came up. The recorded hymns from the church steeple still audible, though barely.

“Could be he’s home and dry by now,” Barry said.

“They’d have turned off that friggin music for long ago if he was home.”

“I expect you’re right about that.”

When it was grey enough to pick out the chopper pad over the Fever Rocks they packed up their materials and kicked the last coals of the fire apart. Barry decided to walk down after Keith who would otherwise sleep until noon, then meet Sweetland back at the Fisherman’s Hall. “Gotta take a leak,” Barry said, and he walked out around the corner of the keeper’s house. Sweetland was tying his pack on the quad when Barry shouted for him. He had wandered down toward the chopper pad, calling back over his shoulder.

“What is it?” Sweetland asked.

“You see anything down there?”

“Where are you looking?”

Barry pointed inside the Fever Rocks, near the Coast Guard ladder. The sea throwing a white spume up the red cliff face. They walked all the way down to the pad, straining against the gloom. A bit of flotsam down there being tossed against the rocks, lifeless in the ocean currents. Sweetland turned and started up toward the keeper’s house. Grunting with the strain of the climb.

Barry called after him. “It might not even be the youngster, Moses.”

“That’s him,” Sweetland said. “That’s Jesse.”

Barry chased Sweetland back up to the quads where the older man was picking through the materials in his carryall. “We’ll drive back into the cove,” Barry said, “send out a boat.”

“Tide’s turning,” Sweetland said. “He could be halfways to Boston by then. How much line you got on your machine?”

“You can’t carry him up that Jesus ladder.”

“I’m not leaving him down there.”

“All right,” Barry said. “I’ll see if I can get a rope on him. Hitch him to the ladder until we can get a boat out from the cove.”

“I’ll go,” Sweetland said.

“You won’t help nothing getting yourself killed out here this morning.”

“I’m going to need something to hook him with.”

Barry watched Sweetland a moment, trying to gauge whether talking was any use at all. “I got the grapple on the front of the quad.”

“He won’t hold still there for long.”

The two men went out across the chopper pad and paused a moment in the lee of the winchhouse, adjusting the gear they carried. They went down the ladder one after the other, pausing now and then to check their progress and to keep an eye on the body being slammed against the rocks. Sweetland was below Barry and he went to the foot of the ladder, stepping knee deep into the ocean down the last rung. He turned sideways to the rock face, hooking one arm into the rail to hold himself steady. He reached his free hand above his head. “Pass me the grapple,” he shouted.