Michael Crummey - Sweetland

“As if I could have picked her up like a rat,” he said to Jesse.

There wasn’t room enough on the raft for the creature to turn around. She tried to catch herself at the edge but bowled over, top-heavy as she was. A splintered wall of the crate was floating beside the raft and the buffalo fell onto it, the wooden sheet tipping beneath her weight. Sweetland standing over her as she thrashed, trying to right herself. She went down slowly at first, submerging like a boat taking on water. But once she was under she sank like a stone, as though she was on a line and being dragged down from below. That dark face staring up at Sweetland on the surface, eyes wide, bubbles streaming from the massive nostrils. He could see her descending through the clear water for a long, long time.

“Could you see her on the bottom?” Jesse asked.

“Too deep out there near the schooner,” he said. “Lost sight of her after awhile.”

The rest of the animals survived the trip, but for one of the bulls who died within two days of the landing. Calves were born every spring and the remnants of the herd hung on for almost thirty years, though the buffalo never managed to take hold on the island. Sweetland would watch for them on the headlands as he passed by Little Sweetland, those shaggy outlines adrift in the mist like something called up from the underworld.

“What happened to them all?” Jesse asked.

“No one really knows. They used to walk out on the cliffs to lick the salt off the rocks. There’s a good many got killed that way. Could be poachers took some of them.”

The boy considered that possibility a moment. “You ever tasted buffalo?”

“Now, Jesse,” he said. “That would be telling, wouldn’t it.”

He docked at the government wharf, for the flat expanse of it. Sent Jesse up to the house for his ATV and trailer, unloading the wood from the boat while he waited, throwing the ten-foot lengths up on the cement surface. Loveless stood across the way, leaning against a building about the size of an outhouse where the island’s bank machine was located. He had his lapdog at his feet, a bit of string tied around its neck as a leash. He had an unlit pipe in his mouth that he chewed from one corner to the other, running it back and forth like a gear shift.

“More wood,” Loveless said finally.

“You’ve got a real gift for observation, Mr. Loveless.”

“Duke says you got enough split and stacked to keep hell in flames half of eternity.”

“I’m planning on sticking around a good while.”

Loveless looked up toward the ring of houses. “I heard Hayward signed on to the package,” he said. And when Sweetland didn’t respond he said, “Just the two of us now.”

“Two is as much as we needs,” Sweetland said.

Loveless said nothing then, his pipe repeating and repeating its mechanical journey.

“Your little dog was running loose out the arm last night,” Sweetland said.

“Can’t keep ’en barred in, Mose. I swear the little fucker knows how to turn a doorknob.”

Sweetland had a look at the animal. There was some other P dog in the mix, Pekinese or Pomeranian, Loveless couldn’t remember which. Paid a fortune for it, Sweetland guessed, although Loveless refused to confess how much. Sara would never have allowed such a sentimental purchase where animals were concerned. Lotsa dog on the island, she’d have said. No good for working, that one. He’s hypoallergenic, Loveless liked to say, quoting the breeder’s advertisement, as if that excused the expense.

“You got to get the dog fixed,” Sweetland said. “Won’t wander half so much after that.”

Loveless reached down and the animal stretched on its back to have its belly scratched, the legs spread wide. “That’s a darlin set of balls he got,” Loveless said, and he gave the testicles an affectionate little rub. “Be a sin to cut them off.”

Sweetland shook his head. He tossed the logs with a steady rhythm, every movement unhurried and deliberate. The wood cast up on the dock like it was coming off a conveyor belt. “Your cow ready to have her calf yet?” he asked.

“Any day.”

“Going to look after it yourself, are you?”

“Sara’s no use to me dead and gone.”

“You were no use to her, alive and well.”

“I learned a thing or two off her,” Loveless said. “Never you mind.”

“She didn’t teach you a goddamn thing about playing chess.”

Loveless stared blankly, thrown by the sudden turn in the conversation.

“You fucked up the chess game with Duke,” Sweetland said.

Loveless took the pipe from his mouth, pointed the wet end down at Sweetland. “Duke told me it was a smart move I made,” he said.

Sweetland straightened up from the work, put his hands on his hips. “How many times have Duke lost a game of chess in the shop?”

Loveless raised the pipe to answer but realized there was nothing he could say to that point. He clamped the end back in his teeth and turned to watch Jesse creeping down the hill with the quad. The boy swung the machine around so it sat next to the growing pile of wood. Jesse took off his helmet and walked over to crouch an arm’s length away from the dog, wanting to know how old it was and where it was born and what it liked to eat and if it could be trained to use a toilet. Cut from the same cloth, man and boy, Sweetland thought. And regretted thinking it straight away. There was something wrong with the young one, but he was a different creature than Loveless altogether.

They loaded the trailer with Loveless as an audience and Sweetland dropped Jesse at his door on the way up the hill.

“You going out to check the snares tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow’s Sunday.”

“What about Monday?”

“If the weather’s half decent.”

“I could go with you.”

“You got school,” Sweetland said.

He drove along the side of his house to the shed. Stood the green wood against the fence at the end of his property. It would be next spring before he could cut and junk it up. He had longers in various stages of drying around the property, all waiting for the chainsaw. He was soon going to have to find somewhere else to pack it away. The back porch was full, one side of the shed stacked floor to ceiling with junks in rows, and more along the lee side wall. The twine shed and the old outhouse long ago converted to hold firewood. He’d stolen a section of metal culvert left over from road construction on the Burin, towed it across on Hayward Coffin’s punt. Packed it front to back, forty or fifty cords of wood, he figured. People said he would never live long enough to burn it all and he couldn’t stay out of the woods after more. It was like having money in the bank.

SWEETLAND CAME AROUND at the government wharf with his boatload of survivors in tow and he threw a line up to Duke Fewer. Call out to the lighthouse, he said. See if Bob-Sam can raise the Coast Guard.

We haven’t heard nothing about a ship gone down, Duke said.

Well maybe they was out for a row and got lost. Give Bob-Sam a call.

They were small, slight men, wide-eyed and unsteady on their feet. Sweetland climbed in to lend a hand as they were lifted up onto the dock. From there they were helped along to the Fisherman’s Hall where the women swaddled them in blankets and set about spooning soup into their mouths.

There were two still sitting aft when the boat was emptied out, younger than the rest, Sweetland thought. The larger of the two with an arm around the other’s shoulders, a blue windbreaker spread over top of them. They looked like they had no intention of moving from where they were sitting.

Sweetland called out to Duke without looking away from them. Go get the Reverend, he said.