Michael Crummey - Sweetland

Sweetland had expected Clara to bolt for St. John’s as soon as the resettlement money came through and he didn’t know what it was kept her from leaving but grief. And he supposed that was enough to hold a body still a long time. He thought of Sandra claiming Clara had come back to the island to have him in Jesse’s life. He’d stopped himself asking Clara about that a dozen times and stopped himself again now. For fear it wasn’t true.

She staggered past him, through the porch to the outside door. You’ll be happy to know, she called, I won’t remember a word of this tomorrow. And she sang out merry Christmas as she left.

He took the tree down in the morning and brought it to the shed with Pilgrim still passed out on the daybed. He and Clara never acknowledged the conversation and Sweetland was happy enough pretending it never happened. Though he had a hard time looking at Pilgrim ever after. All the talk the man sat through at the Fisherman’s Hall about Ruthie looking after those dark-haired men in her house. About the mainland reporters saying she gave the best “interview” they’d ever had, ha ha.

Pilgrim never breathing a word about what he knew from the beginning.

The weather turned bitter on Boxing Day, with winds out of the north-northwest that made the temperature feel colder still. Sweetland left a trickle running in the sinks upstairs and down to keep the pipes from freezing. It was too frigid to leave the kitchen at night and he bunked down on the daybed, the chill waking him when the fire burned low. He stirred the coals and filled the firebox until it was humming and crawled back under the quilts.

The dog stayed indoors except when Sweetland went to carry in a turn of wood from the shed, which was just time enough for the animal to look after its business and roll in the snow and sniff at the wind with its head high in the air. It didn’t show any interest in staying out longer and spent the better part of a week in front of the stove while Sweetland dozed on the daybed or played endless games of patience or polished the soot off the glass bells of the kerosene lamps. He went out to the shed on the third day and took a ratty old herring net out of the rafters. He broke into Reet’s museum a second time and came away with a net needle and a ball of nylon and, on a whim, stepped into Duke’s barbershop to take the pile of magazines beside the chessboard, his face averted to avoid seeing whether or not the game had progressed since his last visit. He strung the herring net across the length of the kitchen and he spent hours trying to knit the thing into workable shape, walking back and forth to string the cables together. Leafed through a National Geographic to rest his back.

Every day the radio weather predicted clear skies and milder than normal temperatures along the south coast. Sweetland glancing out the window each time he heard the forecast and talking back to the announcers. “I don’t know where you fuckers is living,” he said.

There was drifting snow at the windows, the details of the outside world fading in and out like a television signal from the seventies. Time drifted and bowed in much the same fashion, the wind rattling endlessly in the chimney, the days blurring into one another. It was only the radio that kept them in order in Sweetland’s head, and when he turned it off to save the batteries he had trouble recalling the day of the week.

The cold moderated a little on New Year’s Eve and Sweetland broke open a fresh batch of homebrew, making his way through half a dozen bottles as he listened to the year wind down on the radio. He called out the ten-second countdown to the dog, standing in the kitchen in his boots and coat with the.22 under his arm. He went to the door as the last seconds ticked away and the dog followed him outside. A clear evening lit by the moon, the wind just brisk enough to add an edge to the frost. Sweetland raised the rifle toward the hills ringing the cove and fired off three rounds to welcome the New Year. It was something people on the island had been doing as long as he could remember, standing at their doors to shoot into the air at the stroke of midnight. Sweetland feeling drunkenly nostalgic and willing to waste a precious handful of shells. His shots echoed off the rock face overhead and the dog cowered by the shed doors, growling at the racket.

“It’s all right,” Sweetland said. “Just having a bit of fun.”

And he froze then, hearing the pop pop pop of a rifle in the distance, up on the mash, he thought. The dog barking madly at the night sky and Sweetland shouted at the creature to shut up. He heard it again, pop pop pop, down over the hill this time, in the cove. More shots following on their heels, and Sweetland ran around the side of the house, standing in the open there. Looking over the dark cove below, the silvered silhouette of empty buildings. He raised the rifle and fired another shot into the air, stood with the cold stock against his face as the echoes died away. Waited there a long time listening, the silence below like a tide rising to lap at his boots, at his frozen knees, at the waist of his coat.

He turned finally and hustled back into the house, rushing to lock the door and put out the lamp, and he sat on the daybed beside the stove with the.22 across his lap.

The cold woke him. The fire in the stove guttered to ash and the air in the kitchen crystalline, an arctic stillness about him. He was on the daybed in his boots and coat and he didn’t move for fear of rolling onto the dog. He felt around for the creature, but it wasn’t anywhere within reach. And he realized then he’d left the dog outside, when he ran into the house and barred the door. Hours ago, he guessed.

Sweetland was calling for it before he’d even gotten to his feet, yelled its name from the open door. The moon gone down and only the stars for light. He walked around the building, calling into the wind. He crouched at Diesel’s doghouse to look inside, the towel on the floor drifted over with snow. He walked a little ways down toward the cove, shouting at the top of his lungs.

He went out to the shed where he’d seen the dog last and he found a blur of tracks beyond it, to the back of his property and heading through drifts to the path leading out of the cove. Sweetland went into the house for a hat and gloves and the rifle, a flashlight. The dog spooked by the flurry of gunshots and could be anywhere up there, he guessed. Running mad on the mash until it holed up somewhere out of the wind. There wasn’t enough meat or fur on the creature to keep it alive through a night this cold, that much he knew.

He put in a fire, so the kitchen wouldn’t be a complete icebox when he got back. Took an old blanket from the shelf over his boots and went to the shed where he stripped the tarp off the quad. He picked up a red gasoline container from beneath the workbench and shook it. Put the empty down and grabbed the Priddles’ container beside it, poured the last of the fuel into the tank. It hadn’t been started since the cold snap settled in and Sweetland wasn’t even sure it would turn over. The engine rolling sluggishly at first, like something buried in taffy. He didn’t want to flood it and he took his time, coaxing the reluctant spark along, leaning over the machine like he was protecting a flame in the bowl of his hands. When it finally took hold it roared in the enclosed space, choppy and discontented. Sweetland kept it alive with the accelerator and he let it idle a long time after it settled into a steady rhythm. He thought long enough on the gunshots he’d heard at midnight to take his last box of ammunition from a cupboard over the workbench and he packed it with the blanket into the carryall. Opened the front doors and kicked the machine into gear, edging out into the night. He couldn’t guess how much time the dog had left, if it was still alive at all. He stopped long enough to close the doors behind him and then started up out of the cove.