Sweetland

by Michael Crummey

  He had taken to stopping in at his stagehead every evening, poking around inside, half expecting to find the last rabbit’s head nailed up or some other indignity done to the place. It could be any one of half a dozen men to blame, he knew, or some combination of the group in cahoots. Trying to put a fright into him, thinking he could be scared off. Might be it was Hayward Coffin was at it, he thought, in which case there was nothing more to worry about.

  He’d been expecting to see more of Jesse with school out for the summer. But the boy had been knocked off kilter by Queenie’s funeral and further again after Hayward’s disappearance, which made even less sense to him. Sweetland had been taking him to fish for trout up at Lunin Pond, a bribe to muscle the youngster into sitting through sessions at the Reverend’s house, but Jesse lost interest in that excursion in the upheaval around him. He’d been torturing every adult in the cove with the same questions about Hayward’s departure, why he left and what he was going to do with himself in Edmonton and whether Jesse would ever see the man again. The day after Hayward left Jesse started claiming he saw a light in Queenie’s living room window. Even being told that the electricity to the house was shut off wasn’t fact enough to sway him. Sweetland set two chairs outside the window one evening and they stared at the blackened pane until Clara came looking to get him to bed.

  “Now,” Sweetland said, “you just imagined it.”

  The boy seemed to hold that demonstration against Sweetland, as if it was designed to make a fool of him, and he grew more standoffish and cold than Sweetland could remember. He was regressing on every level, according to the Reverend. Singing nonsense syllables and waving his hands and rocking on his feet. It was only when he was plugged into some electronic device that the boy seemed to calm down, to lose himself briefly.

  The Priddles came back to Sweetland shortly after Hayward went west, and the loss in the cove made even the brothers relatively subdued and reflective. They stayed more or less sober and visited at houses they hadn’t gone into in years. Sweetland walked up to the cemetery with them when they went to pay their respects and they stood around the fresh grave, handing a flask back and forth between them. The brothers telling stories of stealing cigarettes from Queenie’s stash as youngsters, climbing halfway into her window when she went upstairs to use the bathroom, reaching for the pack where she’d left it beside her chair. Tearing off up to the old cemetery, Queenie cursing at them from the window vent beside the toilet.

  It struck Sweetland again it could have been the Priddles who nailed the rabbit head to the door of the stage while he was trying to birth the dead calf in Loveless’s barn. For a lark, a little fuck you remembrance on their way off the island.

  Before they left the graveyard Keith stopped at his mother’s marker, kneeling at the white marble to trace a finger across the dates scored into the stone. Barry and Sweetland walked on to the gate. “He’s going to have a little bawl now,” Barry said, his tone dismissive and affectionate both.

  “Spose he can’t help feeling it’s his fault somehow,” Sweetland said.

  “He’s just drunk is all. He cries watching fucken Marley & Me. Keith,” he called. “Let’s fly the Jesus out of this.”

  Barry held out the flask but Sweetland shook his head. The boys had never asked him about their mother. It was an odd reticence on their part, he thought, though he was relieved not to have to say anything about the woman or what passed between them.

  Barry turned his back on the sight of his brother kneeling at their mother’s grave. He glanced across at Sweetland and rolled his eyes. “Keith,” he called over his shoulder. “Me and Mose are going on ahead.” But he didn’t move from where he stood. And they waited there until Keith had finished communing with whatever he imagined his mother might have been before he ended her life on his way into the world.

  Two weeks after Hayward left on the ferry for Alberta, Pilgrim came to see Sweetland at the house, Jesse leading him up the path by the hand. A changeable day, threatening rain awhile and then brightening, the clouds scoured away for half an hour before they crowded back.

  Jesse sat on the daybed with his headphones, listening to his iPod, in another world altogether while the two men settled at the table. Sweetland watching the mercurial weather as it skated across the afternoon’s surface. They talked about the funeral service and Hayward’s sudden departure and the Priddles’ visit to the island, though the conversation was skittish, distracted. As if they expected any moment to light on a topic more serious and consequential.

  The phone rang, so loud in the tiny room that both men started. Sweetland stared at the unlikely contraption where it was fixed to the side of the kitchen cupboard.

  “You going to answer that?” Pilgrim asked.

  “Trying to think who it might be. No one I wants to speak to, I’m guessing.”

  “I’d say that’s Clara, calling us down to our dinner,” Pilgrim said, and he rushed up from the table to look for the corner of the cupboard. He waved his hand until he knocked the phone. “Hello,” he said with his back to the room. “No,” he said. “Yes, hang on. No, sir, no, he’s right here.” He held out the phone with a hand over the mouthpiece. “It’s that one from the government,” Pilgrim said. “The fellow was out here for the last town meeting.”

  “Well, tell him I’m not here.”

  “I just said you was.”

  “Tell him you made a mistake, you’re blind for chrissakes.”

  Pilgrim shook the phone in the direction of Sweetland’s voice. “Answer the goddamn phone, Moses.”

  “Jesus,” Sweetland whispered, and he got up to grab it from Pilgrim’s hand.

  “Mr. Sweetland,” the government man said.

  “This is he,” Sweetland said. This is he. He must have heard someone on television use that phrase. And it sounded exactly right for the false prick on the other end.

  “I hope you’re keeping well.”

  “I imagine you wishes I was dead, like everyone else around here.”

  There was a pause on the other end and Sweetland looked down at the slack length of cord that hung to the floor and pooled there in a beige spiral. It was the only phone in the house, a rotary dial that had been installed when telephone service first reached the island in the early seventies. His mother used to haul the twelve feet of cord all the way across the hall to the living room so she could talk and watch the afternoon soaps at the same time. Sweetland forced to duck under it on his way in or out of the house. Used so little now he’d never thought to replace it.

  “Mr. Sweetland,” the government man said, “I’ve heard the news about Queenie Coffin. I just wanted to say I’m sorry for the loss.”

  He turned to look at Pilgrim. “So this is a sympathy call, is it?”

  “I’ve also been in touch with Mr. Loveless and he has committed to signing on to the package, you’re aware of this I presume.”

  “News to me.”

  Sweetland could almost hear the man roll his eyes.

  “I thought I should check in with you,” the government man said finally, “to see if there have been any developments since we talked last.”

  Other than someone mutilating the rabbits on his line and nailing a severed head to his stage door. Other than a drawerful of anonymous threats. Other than Queenie Coffin days in the ground and Hayward packed off to the mainland. Other than fucken Loveless.

  “No developments,” he said, “no.” There was a short intake of breath on the line, and Sweetland could feel the man gearing up a prepared speech. “Good of you to call, all the same.”

  “Mr. Sweetland.”

  “Bye now.” And he set the phone back in its cradle. He glanced across at Pilgrim, who kept his face turned away. “That was Clara, was it?” he said. “Calling you down to your dinner?”

  “Now, Moses.”

  “You knew he was going to call here today, didn’t you.”

  Pilgrim turned his head left and right. “Clara and Reet have been talking to him.�
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  “And the women sent you up here to make sure he got through.” Pilgrim looked naked and adrift in his seat, not able to set his blind eyes anywhere to anchor himself.

  “You’re a gutless wonder, you are.”

  “Jesus Christ, Mose,” Pilgrim said. He slapped a hand against his thigh. “You got to stop being so goddamn bullheaded about this.”

  “Why?” Sweetland said. “Tell me why it is I got to stop?”

  Pilgrim made a motion with his arms that seemed almost involuntary, a spasm of frustration and spite. He uncrossed his legs and crossed them the other way. He said, “How much longer is it you expects to be around, Moses?”

  “Fuck,” Sweetland said. “How should I know?”

  “You’re an old man,” Pilgrim said. “We’re all old men. And what’s Jesse going to have here once we goes?”

  “I don’t know. He’ll have the Reverend.”

  “The Reverend is older than we are, for Jesus sake.”

  Sweetland glanced out the window and back.

  “Clara’s going to be left alone with the youngster is what’s going to happen. She’ve got a chance to go somewhere with a bit of money to see the boy looked after. And you’re going to fuck it up.”

  Sweetland could hear the man breathing, his head turned away in a snit. He looked over at Jesse sitting oblivious, bobbing his head to his music. Sweetland went across the room to lean over him, took the headphones out of the boy’s ears. Jesse grabbed at them, automatically agitated, and Sweetland had to hold his wrists to keep him still. “Jesse,” he said, “your Poppy thinks we should all leave Sweetland like Hayward Coffin. Pack everything up and go. What do you think about that?”

  “Leave the boy alone, Mose.”

  “You want to go live in St. John’s?”

  Jesse’s face went still, his dark eyes darting.

  “Hey? We’ll burn the whole place down and leave, will we?”

  Pilgrim was on his feet and coming toward them, both hands aloft like a man about to cast a stagey magic spell. “Jesse,” he said.

  Sweetland let go of his wrists and Jesse pressed them against his ears, rocking and moaning where he sat. Sweetland took a step back, his own hands shaking. Feeling ashamed of himself, and vindicated, and murderous. He said, “We’ll get on the ferry tomorrow and you’ll never see anyone you knows from here ever again.”

  Pilgrim bumped into him from behind and he pushed Sweetland away. Crouched over the wailing youngster. “Jesse,” he said, “it’s all right now, Jesse. Moses is just playing around.”

  But there was no pulling the boy out of his spiral. Pilgrim phoned down to Clara and by the time she came running Jesse was on the floor, knocking his forehead rhythmically against the boards. She exchanged words with Sweetland, the two shouting back and forth, Jesse yelling louder still to drown out the noise. Eventually they had to send for the Reverend, who cleared everyone out of the kitchen and spent the better part of an hour trying to calm the youngster. A small crowd had gathered outside and they watched Jesse walk down to his house, leaning on the Reverend’s arm like a septuagenarian, exhausted and disoriented.

  “I hope you’re happy,” Clara said to Sweetland as she followed her son along the path. Her voice viciously calm.

  Sweetland spent the rest of the afternoon splitting wood. Stunned, and sick of himself, and hoping he might disappear awhile in the mechanical strain of work, of occupation. He stood the junks on the chopping block, cleaving the dry birch and spruce with a clipped thock, like the sound of some massive timepiece ticking steadily. He leaned on the axe to catch his breath and it came flooding back, the look on Jesse’s face, Sweetland with a head of steam and barrelling down on the youngster. He reared back with the axe suddenly and flung it over the roof of the shed.

  He heard footsteps along the side of the house behind him then and he turned to stacking the freshly split junks. Wouldn’t look up from the work even after his visitor stopped behind him.

  “You want a hand with that,” the Reverend asked.

  Sweetland set the wood on the pile along the side of the shed. Brushed the bark from his coat. “You idn’t dressed for this kind of work,” he said. Sweetland carried on as the Reverend stood watching in his black pants and jacket. “How’s the young one now?”

  “He was asleep when I left him.”

  “He’s all right, then.”

  “I wouldn’t mind hearing what made him act out like that.”

  Sweetland shook his head. Acting out, the Reverend called it. Like it was all just a show, something put on to entertain. He swore under his breath, walked out past the shed to look for the axe. Trying to settle himself as he searched around. The Reverend followed behind him to the back wall of the shed and Sweetland brushed past the man, walking to the side door with the recovered axe in his hand. Sat inside with the head in his lap, working the stone across the cutting edge. The Reverend came as far as the door and stood waiting there.

  “I imagine Pilgrim already give you the play-by-play,” Sweetland said.

  “He gave me his version of events.”

  “Well who am I to argue with a blind man?”

  The Reverend looked away out the door and Sweetland thought he might leave without saying anything else. But he turned back to the gloom in the shed. “I know how you feel about that boy,” he said.

  “What you knows about how I feels,” Sweetland said, but the Reverend pushed ahead, talking over him.

  “And you might think you’re watching out for Jesse in all of this. You’ve got everyone else convinced. But I don’t buy it.”

  “Is that a fact?”

  “That’s a fact, yes.”

  “And I imagine you’re about to tell me how you sees it different.”

  “I think you’re being a selfish son of a bitch, is what I think.”

  Sweetland looked up from his lap, surprised by the obscenity, mild as it was. “Well,” he said, “you would be an expert on selfish sons a bitches.”

  “You can muddy the waters if that makes you feel better. But it doesn’t change what’s going on here. The only card you have left in this game is Jesse. And you just might get what you want if you keep playing him.”

  “There’s the door,” Sweetland said.

  “I want you to ask yourself,” the Reverend said, “if using that youngster is worth the price.”

  “You make sure you close it behind you when you go.”

  The Reverend watched him a few moments longer before he left, pulling the door shut. Sweetland leaning back over his lap, repeating the sickle-shaped motion of the sharpening stone against the blade on his knee, the scrape of it like something working at bone.

  He flicked on the radio in the kitchen when he went inside, a voice announcing the dates for the summer food fishery. Five cod per person per boat per day, the voice said. He hadn’t eaten a morsel since breakfast and he opened a can of tuna, put two slices of bread in the toaster. Staring out the window over the sink as he waited. Flicked off the radio and slapped Miracle Whip on the toast. Sat at the table, looking at the sandwich a few minutes before throwing it in the garbage can under the sink.

  He walked down to Duke’s barbershop and let himself in, stood awhile studying the stalled chess game, then scanned blankly across the photos and clippings pasted to the wall. Stopped at an old Polaroid from their second stint on the mainland. Duke and himself grinning at the camera, in hard hats and undershirts. Both of them hungover no doubt. The colours had faded over the years, but it was his old face in the picture, without the purple scarring, without the grafted skin as tight and smooth as the skin of an apple. A shock still, to see himself in that other life, unmarked.

  It was oppressively hot all that summer, a pulsing furnace heat through July and August. Six days a week they were at it, twelve hours a day, framing in the sprawling suburbs of York and Etobicoke, hammering two-by-fours in the sink of merciless humidity. He had never felt so recklessly lonely, so desperate to lose himself in the mi
ndless drudge of work, in drink. Homesickness felt like the only thing keeping him alive.

  He heard the door and turned to see the proprietor ducking his head under the frame.

  “You’re looking thoughtful,” Duke said. “You have a notion for the game finally?”

  “Might be I do.”

  Duke raised his face to the ceiling. “The night is far spent,” he said, “the day is at hand.” He crossed to the board and stared. “So what’s your notion?”

  “Throw the fucken thing in the stove.”

  “You’re not giving up on it?”

  “I’m done,” Sweetland said.

  Duke stood with his hands on his hips a moment before he began moving the pieces back to their starting positions, glancing up now and then to see how Sweetland was taking it. “I hear you had a little racket with Jesse,” he said.

  Sweetland made a dismissive motion with his hand.

  Duke turned the board slightly after he had set the pieces, lifted the pawn on the far left ahead two spaces. The same opening, every time. “Your move, Bobby Fischer.”

  “I think I’ll sit this one out,” he said.

  Duke nodded helplessly. He climbed into the barber’s chair and the two men watched each other in the mirror. “I’m sure Jesse’ll be fine,” he said.

  Sweetland went to bed early, not expecting to sleep. He turned his head periodically to check the time, the digital figures changing at such a glacial pace he finally unplugged the clock altogether. Stars through the window, a she-moon’s narrow sliver of light.