Michael Crummey - Sweetland

The dog wandered off on its own during the day but came barking to be let in after the lamps were lit. It lay at his feet beneath the table and followed him upstairs when he took himself to bed at eight or nine o’clock. Sweetland heated a beach rock in the oven and carried that with him in a pillowcase, slipping it under the covers to warm the sheets. The dog lay at the foot of the bed beside the rock or nosed its way under the blankets to curl against Sweetland’s back. He slept a dead sleep as the house clicked and whined into the deepening winter.

He often woke in the middle of the night, feeling rested and ready to start the day, though he could tell by the stars through the window it was too early to move. It was something he’d come to expect since he started going to bed in the early evening, this lull in his sleep. As if a body required the break before he finished dreaming. A natural intermission. He’d taken to filling the dead time with plans for the following day, with lists and inventories, with family trees, mindless mathematical sums. The number of stairs he’d climbed at the light tower in his time as keeper (268 stairs × [(365 days × 10 years) × 3 trips a day]). The number of strokes he and Hollis put in at the oars going to and from the traps before old Mr. Vatcher sold them the second-hand skiff. The names of everyone in the Loveless family back four generations. Three nights in a row Sweetland drifted to sleep trying to fish up the name of a fierce Salvation Army woman from Heart’s Desire who was married to Loveless’s great-uncle Baxter.

Occasionally he tried to recreate one of Jesse’s lectures on volcanoes or icebergs and it was a surprise to realize how little of the boy’s endless yammer he’d taken in. He couldn’t recall any of the Latin names of the whales or what exactly defines an ungulate or the name of the rocks dropped by glaciers. The boy claimed Sweetland and St. Pierre and Ramea and most of Newfoundland’s south coast were submerged by the weight of the glacial ice sheet and they had all bobbed above the surface like corks as the glaciers retreated. It was a fact Sweetland remembered only because he’d pooh-poohed the fanciful notion for months afterwards. Jumping up and down on the mash, then waving at Jesse to hold still as he cocked his head. She bounced that time, he’d say. Did you feel it? He’d give another little hop while Jesse stared at him with a look of stoic disbelief.

It was Sweetland’s job to remain ignorant in those ritual exchanges, to offer inane questions and commentary, to nitpick and quibble while the youngster tried to sink his objections under the weight of pure knowledge. They were like pro wrestlers circling one another in a ring where all the moves were choreographed, the winner predetermined. Sweetland hadn’t realized how much he enjoyed the farcical pageant, how much he’d been missing it. But the memory of Jesse’s dogged seriousness in the face of his clowning was so raw that it forced him out of bed, and he learned to stay clear of it, moved on to other distractions.

Most nights he pictured a map of the island and set about naming every feature and landmark from the south-end light to Chance Cove and on to the Fever Rocks, before he did the same thing along the lee side. The litany started at the Mackerel Cliffs and went from there to Pinnacle Arch, to Lunin Rock, the Devil’s Under-jaw, the Flats, Murdering Hole, Tinker Cliffs, Old Chimney, Gannie Cliff Point, Wester Shoals, Mad Goat Gulch, Upper Brister, the Founder. He took his time, being careful to include as much detail as possible, as though the island was slowly fading from the world and only his ritual naming of each nook and cranny kept it from disappearing altogether. Coffin Pond, Cow Path Head, the Tom Cod Rocks, the Offer Ledge, Gansy Gulch, Lunin Cove, Lower Brister, Watering Gulch, the Well. Each time, he remembered some additional feature, an abandoned grebe’s nest, the heart-shaped fissure in the sea-stack rocks near Music House, the radio beacon west of Clay Hole Pond. The map each time becoming more complete.

It was a night in mid-December when Sweetland wandered up into the valley above Music House on that imaginary map, and for the first time he placed the Priddles’ cabin in its place, two-thirds of the way to high ground. He’d never thought to name it before and it occurred to him he hadn’t made the trip out there since having the island to himself. The brothers had a generator at the cabin which meant there’d be gasoline stored there, a resource so obvious he felt stupid not to have thought of it. Beyond that essential, there might be cans of beans or corned beef or Chef Boyardee pastas; batteries and matches; bottles of rye or dark rum or Scotch; soap and shaving cream; magazines or old newspapers or books of word searches. The thought of the plunder on the opposite side of the island was so diverting, Sweetland was afraid he wouldn’t sleep the rest of the night. But eventually he drifted off.

Blue skies when he woke, but the morning looked for weather. An augural bank of cloud away off west and south. The temperature hovering around the freezing mark, a clammy feel to the air. The radio forecast saying snow or rain or some mix of the two, depending on how the system tracked. Wind and a couple of days of December fury coming on, and it wasn’t sensible to head out there with that sentence hanging over him. But the thought of the cabin, now that he’d struck on it, was impossible to resist.

He stripped the tarp off the quad. There was enough gas to get him partway to the lighthouse, which would save him lugging a full container all the way back across the island, and give him a ride home into the cove through whatever weather was coming. The Priddles had never locked their place to his memory, but he brought a hammer and a set of screwdrivers and the axe, just in case. The dog chased him as he pulled out of the shed and started up the path toward the mash, Sweetland driving slow and glancing back now and then to see the animal was with him. He cut across Vatcher’s Meadow and he was halfway to the lighthouse when the engine sputtered and quit. Sweetland sat on the machine a few minutes after it died, as if all it needed was a rest, as if it might pick itself up after a nap and carry on.

The clouds were a long ways to the south, the day still bright. He glanced up at the sun, ghosted on both sides by blurred reflections of itself. Sun hounds, Uncle Clar called them. A fierce bit of weather approaching, all appearances to the contrary. He had an hour’s walk to the light and that far again down to the Priddles’ cabin. And he was likely going to find himself holed up there awhile.

He climbed off the quad, took his pack from the carryall. He called for the dog, turned a circle where he was standing. The ground lying flat as far as he could see and no sign of the animal. He put his fingers to his mouth, whistled for all he was worth. He looked up at the sun hounds, watched them shimmer as the moisture being pushed ahead of the storm flexed and bowed. He whistled again and shouted until he was hoarse. A little dwy of snow blew in off the ocean from the distant clouds. “Jesus fuck,” he said.

He walked on to the lighthouse as the storm descended, a soft, steady fall of snow settling on his shoulders as the sun disappeared. By the time he crested the rise above the keeper’s house the wind had shifted to the east and was blowing hard, catching him broadside. The snow suddenly wet and heavy and driving and Sweetland kept his head down to protect his face, to be able to take a breath without choking on the drift. He carried on past the lighthouse for the shelter of the path through the tuckamore, the trees offering some protection from the weather. The snow blowing overhead in fierce sheets but it was surprisingly warm and quiet out of the wind, and Sweetland opened his coat as he went, making his way toward the valley. He was fifteen minutes into that descent when the dog burst past him on the trail, bounding ahead. The black coat barely visible under the spray of white in the fur.