Michael Crummey - Sweetland

He worked off his jacket and sweater, but couldn’t get his shirt over his injured shoulder. He tore it along the seams, dressed himself again in the soaking gansey and coat before wringing as much water as he could from the torn fabric. It was still too wet to soak up the little gasoline in the tank and Sweetland tipped the machine onto its side. Rested against it as the waves of pain pulsed through him. Removed the gas cap and hauled the machine all the way over onto its back, holding the shirt underneath to catch whatever might leak out. Shaking the quad back and forth to get every drop. He could smell gas on the cloth when he was done, but couldn’t even say if it was enough to burn.

He walked back over the rise and down toward the light and he stood considering the pathetic pyre of scrap wood. Glanced across at the keeper’s house, took in the wasted length of the place that was slowly rotting into the ground. He moved what he’d gathered against the house’s foundation with the shirt balled underneath it. Flicked the lighter. The material so wet that the flame burned blue a few seconds, before the wood caught hold. Sweetland stepped away when the fire got going, but only far enough to stop himself scorching his skin. The heat so feral and delicious he almost wept.

The building’s skirt scorched black behind the fire, but for a while it looked like the house would survive his attempt at arson with the smallest of scars to show. He wandered further afield looking for fuel, piled every knuckle of driftwood, every twisted branch of tuckamore he could find against the foundation. Within an hour the place was alight, the boarded windows belching smoke. Sweetland kept moving back as the inferno grew, as it threw wider bands of heat where the flames ate through to open air. He took off his coat and laid it flat on the ground, turning it regularly, like a cut of meat he was cooking over coals. He took off his gansey sweater and pants and socks and did the same with them. It was still snowing outside the fire’s fierce circle but not a flake touched him. When his clothes had dried, he dressed and lay down to sleep in one of the outer rings. Waking now and then to shift closer as the fire collapsed and settled.

By late afternoon the walls and ceiling were down and the open flames burned off. The blackened stump of the building was still radiating enough warmth to keep him comfortable, but he expected it wouldn’t last through the night and he couldn’t risk staying out in the open. The snow coming at him in waves over the remains of the fire. The Priddles’ cabin was the closest bit of shelter but he’d cleaned out every scrap of food and firewood in the fall. And he knew he would never manage the climb out of the valley once he got down there.

He pulled his jacket slowly over his injured shoulder, pushed on the one boot left to him. His head was throbbing with a concussion or a weed hangover or a fever, or some combination of all three. He had no idea how much daylight was left to him. He started up the rise toward the mash, the charcoaled ruins of the keeper’s house smoking behind him. By the time he made the crest, the snow was steady and drifting and he could just make out the path along the headland, the intermittent cairns marking the way. The ocean in a lather against the base of the cliffs.

The back end of the storm came around as he scuffled along, the wind freshening and blowing northwest, and he walked into the blizzard, the ground drifting over so the path was almost impossible to distinguish. He turned back on to the wind now and then to clear the ice frozen to his eyelashes, trying to guess his location from what he could see nearby. The whiteout so complete that Sweetland lost sight of the ocean and light tower and the smoulder of the keeper’s house behind him.

It was coming on to evening before he admitted to himself he was well off the path. He considered turning back to try for the Priddles’ cabin, but guessed he was closer to the cove than the lighthouse now, and an hour of daylight at best to travel in. The drifts were knee-deep and Sweetland walked with a curiously mechanical gait through the snow, all the feeling gone out of his legs, his injured arm cradling his injured ribs. Talking himself past the urge to lie down.

It was nearly dark when he walked into the fence around Vatcher’s Meadow and it took him a few moments to recognize it for what it was, standing still in the storm, turning the thing over in his head. “Now, Mr. Fox,” he said when it finally came clear to him. He was in no shape to climb the fence and he followed the line south, looking for the gate. From there he angled across the meadow until he reached the fence on the far side, using the poles as markers. At the gate he struck as straight as he could manage from the corner post. Stumbled on the King’s Seat at the top of the hill above the cove, crouching out of the wind in its shelter awhile. Startled from a snug well of sleep that was almost too narrow to climb out of. He got to his knees, lifted himself into the wind’s crosscut.

It was steeply downhill into the cove from there, and he stumbled all the way to the back of his property, his body alight with rivets and hinges and underground cables of pain as he lurched and righted himself and lurched opposite. He leaned against the shed when he reached it, catching his breath. The door of his house invisible in the dark and the blowing snow, though he knew it was only twenty steps distant. Sweetland not quite relieved to have made it back alive.

He woke on the daybed, though he had no memory of coming into the house or lying down. He was still wearing his coat and his single boot. His hands felt miles away and they seemed to expand and shrink with his pulse. He was dying for a drink of water but the sink was too far off to get to and he stared helplessly across the room. He couldn’t guess what time of day it was, or what day of the week. It was bright outside and the sunlight made his head ache.

Someone walked by the kitchen window as he lay there and he was too feverish to be startled or to wonder who it might be. There was a knock at the door and he took his time trying to fashion a response to it. “Come in,” he said finally. The knock came again and Sweetland worked himself onto an elbow, to give some heft to his voice. “Door’s open,” he called.

The knocking continued and he got to his feet, reaching with his good arm for chairs and door jambs to stay upright as he crossed the kitchen to the porch. He paused in front of Uncle Clar, out of breath, sipping at the air against the welling ache in his chest. Saw the outline of himself superimposed on the ancient picture there, a ghostly image hovering in the background, as if he was a second exposure on the same strip of film. A figure bled of detail and substance, so that all the world showed through him. Moses Sweetland. This is he .

The knock startled him and he turned to the door, swung it wide and lifted the latch on the storm door. His visitor standing there in a tweed jacket and tie, tan pants. Hands folded at the waist holding the inevitable briefcase. Sweetland couldn’t make out the man’s face through his one good eye, the features lost in a glare of sunlight.

“Mr. Sweetland,” a voice said from the place where the mouth should have been.

He paused a moment, waiting for the face to resolve out of the shine. He lifted a hand to shade his eyes.

“Do you mind if I come in,” the government man said.

Sweetland stood back to let the man go by, followed him into the kitchen. There was something he was meant to do for visitors and he groped through the murk, trying to think of it. The government man took a seat beside the window and placed the briefcase flat on the table in front of him, his hands folded on top. Sweetland went toward the stove and turned back slowly. “I could boil the kettle,” he said and stopped short, staring at the man.