Michael Crummey - Sweetland

He started down the path with the.22 and then turned back to the shed, to haul the oars down out of the rafters. Hoofed his awkward load toward the water, his coat hanging open, his head bare to the wind. It was bitterly cold despite the sunshine, but he didn’t feel a thing in the rush. Giddy with seeing the animal, taking it as a sign the world was shifting back into an orbit he recognized.

He went to the government dock, which was high enough to give him a shot anywhere across the cove. Spring seals tended to sink and even if he managed to hit the animal he’d likely have nothing to show for the effort. If he was lucky, it would float at the surface long enough to get Loveless’s boat in the water. He was too weak to hold the rifle steady and he knelt behind a capstan to rest an elbow on the metal.

A lop on the cove, sunlight strobing across the surface. A dozen times he thought he spotted the seal amid the glimmer and black. Saw it bobbing in the shade of the breakwater rocks finally, its sleek head like something carved out of stone and sanded smooth. Sweetland took a breath, letting it out slowly. A spit of ocean kicked up and the sound of the rifle echoed in the ring of hills behind him. Sweetland scanned back and forth across the area he’d fired at. He might have missed the creature altogether and it wouldn’t come up for air again until it was safe in open water. It might be floating there dead or already sinking to the bottom.

Loveless’s boat was still weighted with beach rocks and iron junk. Sweetland emptied the bilge as quickly as he could manage, using the butt-end of an oar to hammer the frozen stones free of one another. He set the drain plug with the heel of his hand and he dragged the boat toward the landwash. It seemed to have gained weight in the winter cold, Sweetland grunting it backwards in foot-long increments. He went around to the bow once he reached the water and shoved it out far enough to float, used an oar to pole into deeper water after he climbed aboard.

He pulled across the cove toward what was left of the breakwater, craning over his shoulder as he went. He was almost on top of it before he caught sight of the body, a dark figure just under the dark surface. He hadn’t thought to bring a gaff or a hook in the rush and he hauled his sleeves up past the elbow as he drifted toward it. He lifted one oar clear of the thole-pin lock and leaned over the gunwale to bring the water-logged weight of the corpse alongside, trying to lever it closer to the surface. Reached down into the stinging cold with his bare hand.

The animal’s coat was slick and surprisingly loose on the body. He wrapped his fist in the hide, leaned the other hand on the gunwale to ratchet the thing out of the water, and a young boy’s lank head of hair broke the surface, the scalp glowing a tuberous white beneath it. The sight clapped all the breath from Sweetland’s lungs. He fell back against the far side of the dory, his feet kicking against the boards in spasms. He lifted his head over the gunwale and vomited into the ocean, choking on the bile. He drew in a wet, ragged breath and screamed up at the hillside, at the blank houses. He dropped into the bilge, his back against the gunwale, his eyes on the low sky. “Leave off me,” he said. “For the love of Jesus, leave off me.”

The dory drifted around as he lay there, swinging Sweetland toward the body again. It had turned belly up and he could see the smashed nose and missing ear, the eyes wide and staring at the clouds. He grabbed the oar and flailed savagely at the thing until he was far enough away to set the oars and row back toward the beach. A sickening, guttural grunting in the air, like the sound of someone being electrocuted. He was halfway up the path to the house before he recognized the sound was coming from his own mouth.

When he reached the house he turned the kitchen table on its side, dragging it crabwise into the porch and nailing the Formica across the door. He didn’t put in a fire but he kept the radio on low for the intermittent comfort of human voices as the tidal signals drifted in and out. He slept in troubled snatches, coming to himself like someone shaking themselves out of a nightmare. Kept himself awake making a list of what to pack, debating the best time to start out and the likeliest way off the island. It was a bad time of year to chance the crossing, especially in a crate as feckless as Loveless’s dory. It was riskier to row out past the north-end light around the Fever Rocks, but twice the distance to round the Mackerel Cliffs. He would have to hopscotch across to Little Sweetland, break into one of the cabins there to spend the night. Then try for the mainland the following morning if the weather held.

He stayed clear of the windows, spying on the cove from behind a curtain’s edge. He hadn’t hauled Loveless’s dory up onto the landwash when he came ashore, jumping over the bow into water past his knees, sloshing up onto the beach, raving like a lunatic. The boat had been drifting unmoored around the harbour ever since. There was just enough of a breakwater left to stop it floating away altogether and Sweetland watched for it to come back into shallow water or close enough to the government wharf to get a line on it somehow. Trying not to think what else might be drifting unmoored inside the breakwater.

He emptied out his packsack to take stock of what he had on hand, shaking the thing upside down on the kitchen table. A dozen shells for the.22. A pair of woollen vamps. The crumpled map he’d stolen from the Priddles’ cabin at the height of his glassy stone and forgotten about. He set the map on the counter and went about packing the bag with tins of peaches, with salt fish wrapped in tinfoil, the last of his ammunition and a blanket and a change of clothes, fresh water in a glass jar. Wanting to be ready to make a run for it when he saw a chance. He cut a new bailer to replace the one he’d used to clean the magnificent cod in the fall.

He listened to the marine forecast morning and evening, but he’d long ago given up lending it any credence. Rain it called for and the sky offered intermittent flurries. It predicted winds out of the north at fifteen knots and the house shook in a gale blowing southeasterly. Sweetland watched the sky at sunrise and sunset and the clouds on the horizon and at night he watched the moon for any sign he might glean there about approaching weather.

On the third night of his vigil he saw the boat riding tight up against the government wharf. The moon almost full, the sea beyond the breakwater’s ruins lying flat calm, a shimmering ladder of moonlight across the surface. It was four in the morning and two full hours to the first glimpse of sunrise. Not a breath of wind.

He chanced turning on a flashlight to find his pack and a jigger he’d tied to twenty foot of line. He shoved the flashlight into his pocket, removed the nails from the table tipped across the door frame, levering his weight on the hammer so they slid silently from the wood. Eased the doors open and snuck out with his packsack.

He collected his rifle where he’d left it on the landwash and then carried on to the wharf where he could hear the hollow thunk of the dory butting concrete. He dropped the jigger from the dock to hook it at the bow, hauling the dory along to the metal rungs of the ladder. He climbed down far enough to hold the boat in place with a foot on the bow, reached up to grab his pack and rifle. Water had been seeping into the dory for days, eight or ten inches collected in the bilge, and Sweetland bailed for all he was worth, working himself into a sweat. Took up the oars before he was halfways done and swung the head around for open water, wanting out of the cove.

He could feel the dory lift on the easy swell as he cleared the edge of the breakwater and he turned east for the Fever Rocks. He stayed close enough to shore he could hear the waves shushing the cliffs. The sheer headlands white and black in the moonlight, looking like dented sheets of metal. The night so still it unnerved him. There could only be weather on the other side of a calm so complete. He had a three-hour haul to the Fever Rocks and the better part of the day then on to Little Sweetland. He glanced up at the moon, setting now and edged with frost. The flash of the north-end light a lifetime away over his shoulder.