Sweetland

by Michael Crummey

  He dialled the number incorrectly three times, which was almost too much to get through. He stood with the receiver in his hand, trying to quiet his breath. Walked himself through the digits one more time on the rotary dial, listened to the ring travel.

  “Hello,” the government man said.

  “Yes,” Sweetland said. He tried to bring the man’s face to mind, but the features wouldn’t coalesce out of the blur of light that masked him when he’d first arrived at Sweetland’s door. He grabbed for the back of a chair and pulled it out from the table to sit down. “It’s Sweetland calling,” he said.

  “Who’s that?” the voice said. “Moses Sweetland?”

  “Yes,” he said. “This is he.”

  Sweetland was up early the next morning and down to the wharf while the stars were still bright. He hadn’t slept and couldn’t lie still any longer. He took his chainsaw and gas can, though he had no real interest in cutting wood. He just wanted out of the cove before the news made the rounds.

  He drove to Burnt Head and around the Fever Rocks, riding slow as the day’s light came up on the world, without a notion as to where he was going or why. He went into the lee of Little Sweetland and stared up at the bare hillsides as he passed Tilt Cove. Not a sign to say where the dozens of houses and flakes and outbuildings once stood. He came about, chugged into the abandoned harbour. There was a wooden wharf kept up by the mysterious owners of the two cabins on the hill, and he tied up there.

  Sweetland sat on the dock with a cup of tea from the thermos, waiting for the sun to lift the cove out of shadow. Walked up onto the beach then, strolled aimlessly across the hillside. The community’s remains might have been a thousand years old for all that was left of them. There were depressions to show where the houses and root cellars had been, the overgrown outline of shale foundations. Not a board or shard of glass or shingle otherwise, all of it scavenged or rotted or blown to hell and gone. He tried to imagine the buildings in their places, tried to unearth the names of the people who’d lived in them. Dominies and Barters and Keepings.

  He glanced toward the harbour now and then, trying to tell by its location which outline had been the Dolimounts’ house. It was still standing the last occasion he’d come ashore with Duke Fewer—1966 that was, the first Come Home Year sponsored by the Smallwood government, a campaign to encourage the diaspora of economic refugees to spend their summer vacation at home in Newfoundland. Sweetland had given up working on the schooner to stay closer to Chance Cove at the time, fishing on Duke’s longliner, and they’d had a poor season at it. Dozens of people coming back to the cove from the mainland as the fishery floundered. They flaunted their store-bought, handed out suitcases full of trinkets to the youngsters, talked hourly wages and hockey games at Maple Leaf Gardens and how much they missed Newfoundland. Most of them hadn’t shown their faces home in a decade and Sweetland couldn’t wait for the fuckers to leave.

  He and Duke did some hook and line in the early fall and trawled through October, with barely enough luck to warrant the money they were spending on gas. They decided to go across to the Burin to try for moose. A cold rain on the barrens and no sign of a living thing to shoot at for three days. Spent their time tramping through sodden gorse and tuckamore, slept nights in a leaky tent not half big enough to accommodate Duke’s appendages. They ate potted meat sandwiches on white bread, drank instant coffee laced with rye. Hands and feet numb from the unrelenting chill and every item of clothes they’d packed soaked through.

  I’ve had enough of this bullshit, Duke said. They were crouched under a square of canvas angled over a scraggly fire, their fourth morning out, waiting for the kettle to boil.

  Sweetland had his hands stretched to the flame but couldn’t feel any heat coming off it at all. Be a long winter, he said, without a bit of moose meat put aside.

  The winter won’t be half as long as the last three days have been, Duke said.

  They had a two-hour tramp back to the bay where they’d moored the boat and they walked it in silence, one behind the other. They piled all their gear in the wheelhouse and huddled there in misery as Sweetland nosed into open ocean. And they travelled most of the way back to Sweetland without speaking a word.

  I been thinking about going up to Toronto, Duke said when Little Sweetland was in sight. Next spring sometime.

  You talk to Ange about it?

  Duke was recently married, just long enough for his wife to have the one child and be two months toward having a second.

  Not yet, no.

  What do you think she’ll think of it?

  Probably she’ll be happy to be clear of me awhile.

  Yes, Sweetland said. I finds women likes nothing better than being left alone to look after two young ones.

  Duke stared across at him.

  I’m only saying.

  Well shut up out of it, for chrissakes, Duke said. And a moment later he said, You should come with me.

  Sweetland shook his head. I hates fucken old Toronto, he said.

  Fucken old Toronto pays a buck fifty an hour. Never going to make that kind of money at the fish.

  They were swinging out around the cliffs of Little Sweetland, a cloud of mist like a shroud over the east end of the island.

  It’s Effie keeping you home, is it? Duke said.

  We idn’t married, Sweetland said.

  Duke watched him a second. Jesus, he said, I’m gut foundered.

  Sweetland looked up to the headlands and, sure enough, there were a handful of figures standing in the fog, their massive shadows motionless on the cliff edge.

  Look up there, he said.

  Where?

  On the headland there.

  Can’t see a thing.

  Just watch, Sweetland said.

  And a moment later the shadowy creatures turned and moved off into the grey.

  Jesus, what a size they are.

  You think they’re fit to eat? Duke asked.

  They looks to me like they’d be tougher than the hobs of hell, Sweetland said, even if you managed to get them on a plate.

  Duke shrugged. I don’t mind chewing, he said.

  Sweetland eased off the throttle outside the entrance to Tilt Cove, turned into the calmer water.

  It’s a big frigging island, Duke.

  We’ll just go for a stroll, he said. See what we can see.

  They walked up out of the cove, following the old path to the pond on the high ground above the harbour, their woollen socks squelching in their boots.

  Be hard to get a clear shot in this weather, Sweetland said.

  They’re big as barns. Pilgrim could probably pick one off.

  The trail went through a trough of scrub spruce, not a single tree the height of Duke, but the branches crowding the path held tufts of hair pulled from the bison hides as the animals walked past. An hour to reach the headlands and nothing to see there but buffalo pies, some still steaming in the cold air.

  They can’t be far, Duke whispered.

  They could be halfway to Hibb’s Hole for all you knows.

  They skirted the cliffs to the east end of the island, walking until they risked not getting back to the boat before dark. They hadn’t eaten since morning and Sweetland could hear Duke’s stomach grumbling as they cut across the island, the rolling echo like a distant thunderstorm. They walked down into the cove, along the side of one of the few houses still standing, the door long gone, the windowpanes beaten out by weather. Gotta take a leak, Sweetland said, and he turned to the wall out of the wind, let loose against the shale foundation while Duke waited two paces ahead.

  This was the Dolimounts’ place, Duke said idly. He was facing away from Sweetland, watching the cove. Jim Dolimount? he said. Married to Eunice?

  Sweetland staring into the gloom as he pissed, nearly dark inside. The kitchen empty of furniture, the wallpaper stained and peeling. The floor littered with what looked to Sweetland to be buffalo patties, the animals using the building as a shelter to get out of the we
ather. He leaned to look through into the living room and his water went dry.

  They had nine youngsters, Duke was saying, before Eunice had the hysterectomy into St. John’s.

  Duke, Sweetland whispered. He was tucking himself in but never glanced away, afraid the creature would disappear if he did. He reached for the rifle where he’d leaned it against the house, nosed the barrel into the frame to let it rest on the sill. The animal shifted on its feet, the hooves against the wood floor drumming in the hollow space.

  What in the Jesus was that? Duke asked just as Sweetland fired. The rifle shot echoed in the empty room like a cannon, knocking the last pane of glass from the window. Duke was shouting but Sweetland couldn’t hear anything over the ringing in his ears.

  They tried to haul the buffalo out of the house before they dressed it, but there was no way to get the dead animal through the doorway. Duke brought up a storm lamp from the boat and they butchered the buffalo where it lay, the stink mushrooming in the enclosed space. They carried the quarters down to the water, the thigh bones like a stick over their shoulders, the massive parcel of meat lying pelt side down against their backs. Duke wanted to leave the rest of the carcass where it was but Sweetland wouldn’t have it.

  Those wildlife officers is out here two or three times a season, he said. I don’t want anyone coming around Sweetland looking for poachers.

  They dragged the head and spine across the threshold and down to the shoreline, throwing it into a fathom of water. They gathered up the shin bones and the mess of the internal organs in the bloody cloak of the pelt and tossed that into the cove as well, but for the heart and liver that they wrapped in a square of cloth and tucked away in Duke’s pack. Sluiced the blood and offal out the door of the house with buckets of water. They crouched in the landwash then to clean the blood off their hands and forearms in the bitter cold of the ocean.

  Dark now the once, Duke said. Maybe we should overnight here.

  Sweetland shook his head. Darker the better, he said, given what we’re carting.

  I hope it don’t taste like bear meat.

  Sweetland glanced across at the man beside him. When have you ever tasted bear?

  I haven’t, he said. Just don’t think I’d like it.

  Duke stood and dried his arms on the wet sweater under his jacket, the burnished wedding ring glinting in the day’s last light.

  Maybe I’ll come with you, Sweetland said then. Up to the mainland.

  Duke watched him a few seconds, still drying his arms. I thought you hated fucken old Toronto?

  Buck fifty an hour, like you says.

  Sweetland couldn’t say what possessed him to make that decision, any more than he could explain why he’d called the government man to take the package when he did. There was no saying how things might have turned out if he’d stayed at home instead of going to Toronto. But it all went sideways there on Little Sweetland, the buffalo’s blood still under his nails, his hands numb with the ocean’s cold.

  A life was no goddamn thing in the end, he thought. Bits and pieces of make-believe cobbled together to look halfways human, like some stick-and-rag doll meant to scare crows out of the garden. No goddamn thing at all.

  THREE MONTHS AFTER the Sri Lankans passed through Chance Cove, the Reverend announced he was leaving Sweetland for another parish. Telling the congregation during a Sunday morning service.

  This will come as a shock to you, he said, and I apologize for that.

  He and his wife were shipping out within the month, moving to a church closer to her parents, who were aged and ailing and had no one else to watch out to them. Half the women were in tears to hear it. Digging crumpled tissues from dress sleeves to dab at their rheumy eyes. Sweetland glancing at Ruthie where she sat with Pilgrim, one row ahead of him. Stone-faced. As though the news was no surprise to her.

  Ruthie’s pregnancy was just beginning to show by then and it was an endless source of amusement in the cove. It had taken the blind man that long to find his way into his wife’s drawers, people said. Pilgrim had finally figured out which lock his key was meant for. Men stood him drinks at the Fisherman’s Hall. Thought you was going to be firing blanks your whole life, they said. Must have been one of them dark fellas off the lifeboat, they said, Ruthie must have took special care of them. Those reporters was out here, they said, she charmed the pants off them.

  It was too much for Sweetland to sit through. Go fuck yourselves, he told the tormentors.

  Never mind now, Pilgrim said.

  Christ, Sweetland said. You just sits there and takes it, that’s the worst of it. Makes me sick.

  Pilgrim picked aimlessly at the label on his bottle. You’re not going to stop them having their fun, he said.

  I want to talk to you today, the Reverend said from the pulpit, about our recent unexpected visitors to Sweetland. He read a few verses from the Psalms. He wanted the congregation to imagine themselves in the position of those unfortunates in the lifeboat, he said. To be set adrift without warning or explanation, with nothing to say if they would ever be found. Or if anyone was even looking for them. Orphaned on an ocean that seems endless.

  Sweetland had to credit the man for gall, standing up there in his robes with a straight face. In front of his own wife and Ruthie.

  We could see it as a metaphor, the Reverend said, for our own place in the universe, for the questions we ask about our own lives.

  Ruthie got up as he spoke and she crabbed her way past the others in her pew, whispering apologies, walking for the entrance with a hand to her mouth. People watching her go, nodding or shaking their heads. The morning sickness, they were all thinking. How it was about time the couple had a child in the house. How they had all stopped expecting it to happen and how God works in mysterious ways.

  The Reverend droning on about hope and faith, like he hadn’t noticed her leaving.

  7

  AWEEK AFTER HE MADE THE CALL to the government man, Sweetland received a slender stack of forms in the mail. Clara came up to witness his signature, to fold the papers into the self-addressed envelope provided.

  “That’s it, then,” she said. “You sending them on the ferry this week?”

  “You take them,” he told her. “Be sure they gets out.”

  She ironed the envelope flat on the table with the palm of her hand. “I guess I owe you a thank-you for this,” she said.

  He jerked his head back, the motion barely perceptible but enough to stop her following through. He said, “You going to tell the boy now?”

  Clara had asked Sweetland not to say anything to Jesse until all the papers were signed. Thinking he might back out and not wanting to risk the upheaval for nothing. “Not just yet,” she said. “Want to pick the right moment. He’s going to hate my guts for awhile, I imagine,” she said, and she tried to laugh at the notion.

  “I should be the one to break the news,” Sweetland said. “He’ll likely blame me for it all anyways.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “I told him I wouldn’t going anywhere. He was counting on me sticking it out.”

  Clara shook her head. “I’ll tell him,” she said.

  She pushed a clutch of loose papers across the table, information on relocation and retraining and various government assistance programs. “Have you decided?” she said. “Where you’re going to shift to?”

  “Haven’t give it much thought.”

  Clara stared down at her hands. “You know you’d be welcome to come into St. John’s with us,” she said.

  Sweetland made a noise in his throat to say he’d as likely live on the moon as in St. John’s. He shifted in his chair to turn halfways away from her.

  Clara tapped the papers with an index finger. “You should hang onto these.”

  “All right,” he said, though he didn’t so much as glance at them.

  “Jesse will come around,” she said.

  The first week of August there was a town meeting at the Fisherman’s Hall, the govern
ment man in on the ferry. Sweetland waited at the kitchen window, watching as people made their way over, Ned Priddle, Glad and Alice Vatcher, Rita Verge, Duke Fewer. He saw Clara heading out with Pilgrim on her elbow, Jesse straggling behind, looking despondent. Maybe the news had finally trickled down to the boy, he thought.

  Sweetland gave the crowd a few minutes to get settled into the Fisherman’s Hall before he gathered up his chainsaw and gas can and walked down to the government wharf. Diesel barking and lunging at the end of her chain as he went by. The ferry was still docked at the wharf, adding an extra hour and a half to its stop in order to take the government man back to the mainland after the meeting. Sweetland waved up at the crewmen on deck as he walked past. He had his own boat out on the collar and was bringing it in hand over hand when Loveless spoke to him. “Going for a bit a wood?” he said.

  Sweetland looked behind to where Loveless was sitting on a lobster pot in the shade of the ATM. He had his little dog on its length of string, sitting between his feet.

  “You’re not going up to the meeting?”

  “Don’t like meetings,” Loveless said. “Sitting still that long.”

  Sweetland smiled at the objection. “Sure all you does all day long is sit, idn’t it?”

  “On my own schedule,” Loveless said. “I can get up to take a leak whenever the urge strikes.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “You going for a bit a wood?” he asked again.

  “Thought I might.”

  “Late to start across. You’ll have to spend the night.”

  “Might do.”

  Loveless chewed his pipe back and forth awhile. “You’ll just have to leave all the wood behind come this time next year, won’t you?”