Michael Crummey

by Galore

  It was a full week before he was sure of Bride and he engaged the Trim brothers for a call to Spread Eagle he’d put off to stay close to her. A day of still cold, clear skies and nearly windless, the sound of the dogs’ barking echoing crisp off the hills. They stopped in a sheltered valley to boil the kettle and Azariah said, So you been round to see the Devines.

  —I have.

  —Mary Tryphena says they’d have lost the girl and the baby both if you hadn’t come by.

  Newman brushed the notion aside. —How did Lazarus lose that leg?

  The brothers glanced at one another and shook their heads. They gave a brief account of the hard times that fell on the shore forty years ago, sneaking up on the details. How many seasons the new sealing vessel lay frozen in the harbor before it was able to make its maiden voyage to the ice. Everyone hungry and in debt and there was a fight for berths aboard the ship. The Devines with only two tickets and Lizzie insisted Laz be accompanied by his father. But Devine’s Widow wouldn’t suffer Lazarus to go to the ice without Judah, thinking it unlucky somehow.

  Obediah said, We two was there when she come to the house to ask for Father’s ticket.

  —We’re all fair gone here, Jabez told Devine’s Widow. Olive was lying on a daybed near the fireplace, the young brothers fussing over her like spinster aunts. —That’s a payment of cash money if we gets into the fat and enough pelts are taken.

  —Jude will hand over whatever he makes on the trip. I’ll see to that, Jabez.

  —I was never much for living off charity.

  —That’s fine, the widow woman said. —There’s Laz’s death if he goes off without Judah, she said. —I’m telling you now.

  Jabez sighed and got up to put more wood on the fire. There was no logic to the notion but that made it no easier to dismiss.

  —I’d be happier having you home, Olive told him. —We’ll manage somehow.

  The Devines loaded aboard the Cornelia the last of March, their boots hobnailed for the ice, a sealing box packed with salt meat and hard-boiled eggs and pork tongues. The Cornelia sailed north for the Front with a crew of twenty-nine men and the entire population turned out to see them off, waving and cheering as if they were at a carnival. And that mood persisted until the weather turned two days later. The harbour was blocked with drift ice pushed ashore by an unfavorable wind and in the first week of April two gales blew down from the Labrador. They heard rumors of ships wrecked by the storms, and no one slept for fear of what their dreams might tell them. By the tenth of April survivors from Bonavista and Conception Bay began trickling through on their way home. As many as fifty sealing ships were icebound and then wrecked, they said, the Cornelia among them. Some sealers were able to reach Belle Isle on foot but were stranded there without food or shelter for days. Those that felt strong and foolhardy enough struck out over the ice toward communities on the Northern Peninsula and from there hitched rides on coastal boats and fishing schooners that were ferrying them home.

  The governor dispatched a vessel from St. John’s to collect the sealers still stranded on Belle Isle and eventually it arrived in Paradise Deep with most of the Cornelia’s crew aboard. Flags at half-mast and corpses stacked like cordwood on the deck, the bodies still frozen in the postures in which they’d died.

  —We was all down on the waterfront to see the boat come in, Obediah said. —And not a sound for all the crowd was there. You could hear the chain let go when they anchored off in the harbor.

  Boats were rowed out to collect the survivors and the dead and no one knowing still which of the two was being brought home to them. Eleven corpses all told. Seventeen haggard survivors.

  Lazarus went through the ice as they made for Belle Isle and soaked himself to the waist, his feet frozen, and he was forced to lean on Judah the rest of the way. On the treeless island the sealers built snow walls to block the wind and trudged in endless circles through the nights, knowing they would perish if they lay down. Lazarus lost all feeling in his right foot and couldn’t walk without help. Their last day out he was too exhausted to stand and Judah stripped him of his clothes, wrapping the younger man under his gansey sweater next to his skin. He crouched under the snow wall then and covered them both in Laz’s coat. The rescuers found them there like that, huddled one around the other and Lazarus thought dead by all who looked at him. Couldn’t separate the two even after they got them carted aboard the vessel. The captain wouldn’t allow Judah to go below with the corpse in his arms so he sat out on the deck with a seal pelt for a blanket, a shroud of April snow settling over them. Lazarus didn’t so much as open his eyes before he was carried home to the Gut and set before the fire. Devine’s Widow cutting him free of Jude’s clothes with a knife.

  Azariah said, Laz was frostbit to the ankle and the gangrene set in. It was Devine’s Widow took his leg off, a carpenter’s saw all she had for the job. Az paused at the thought of it. —That woman was a fierce creature, Doctor. Tied off the leg above the knee and reefed it tight, put a horse bit in young Laz’s mouth. Cauterized the wound with a poker hotted up in the fireplace.

  —Same as she did with her four-legged chick, Obediah said.

  The brothers shaking their heads, struck by the odd coincidence book-ending the woman’s life on the shore.

  —What happened to Callum? Newman asked.

  Azariah emptied the dregs of his tea into the fire and rinsed his cup with snow. —Callum never made it to Belle Isle.

  —They left the vessel together, but Callum wasn’t with them when they reached the island.

  —The weather was blowing and he must have fallen behind, lost sight of their tracks. Or just sat for a spell and never got up.

  —He was an old man, is what he was, Obediah said. —That gimpy leg of his. Shouldn’t have been to the ice at all probably.

  —Lizzie went a bit strange after that. She set Callum’s place at the table every meal until the day she died.

  —And she doted on young Henley when he come along a few years later. She ruined the boy if you ask me. Still wiping his behind when he was near old enough to vote.

  —Lizzie wouldn’t have let Bride Freke get near the man, I guarantee.

  —Why, Newman said, what’s wrong with Bride?

  —A hard case, she is, Doctor. Hardest kind. Her mother was a Tibbo from over in the Gut, a bushborn she was. Died giving birth to Bride.

  —And her father, Jim Freke, he married one of Henry Jolliff’s girls then. Loretta.

  —Loll never took to Bride, her being another woman’s youngster.

  —And a bushborn, Azariah said. —Called the girl a Jackie-tar. Treated her like dirt, if you wants the bare facts of the matter. And Bride, she more or less got raised up by her mother’s people in the Gut.

  Obediah: They caught Bride trying to sneak off with a bagful of their garden soil last spring, Henley and Mary Tryphena did, and they had a row you could hear halfway to Red Head Cove.

  —She was stealing a bag of dirt?

  —People holds a bit of soil very dear in these parts, Doctor. Years turning in capelin and seaweed to make earth enough to grow a few spuds. There’s been blood spilled over half an acre of garden.

  —There was no real blood this time, mind. Just Henley holding on to Bride while Mary Tryphena wrestled the soil away and Bride screaming her fool head off.

  —Hard to see how they went from a scrap like that to living in the same house with a child between them.

  —Almost as odd a match as Mary Tryphena and Judah, those two.

  Newman held a hand in the air. —Mary Tryphena is married to the albino?

  —All the widow’s doing, that was, Azariah said.

  —Devine’s Widow?

  —The same.

  —So, Newman said, trying to slow the conversation. —Mary Tryphena is who to the widow?

  The Trims shifted on their haunches but there was no other sign of impatience. —Devine’s Widow, Obediah said, is mother to Callum Devine. Callum married King-me Selle
rs’ daughter, Lizzie. He paused to wait for a sign the doctor was following. —Callum and Lizzie had Mary Tryphena and Lazarus between them. And Mary Tryphena is married to Judah.

  —And that was the widow’s doing?

  —You been in Judah’s company, Doctor. No woman in her right mind would have him to wed of her own accord.

  —They’ve never shared the same house, mind, let alone a bed. And you can’t blame Mary Tryphena for that.

  —Still and all, Newman said. —There’s Patrick and Henley between them.

  —Well, Obediah said, there’s Patrick between them at least.

  —Now Brother, Azariah warned him.

  The dogs were whining and restless in their traces, anxious to get moving, and the brothers began collecting their gear aboard the sled. They insisted the doctor ride the rest of the way and after a token argument he settled under a fur, watching the country pass. He fell into a light sleep and dreamed again of Bride, of her upturned face as he wrenched molars from the back of her mouth, the dark eyes wide and watching him steadily. Of kneeling between her legs to suture the brutalized flesh, his fingers tatting the delicate folds into some semblance of womanhood while Bride whispered to him words he tried and tried and was unable to recall when he finally came to himself in the cold.

  It was the consensus on the shore that the Devine men were destined to live in the shadow of their women. And Bride Freke was too much woman for Henley Devine, even so he was twice her age.

  Henley was born with the air of someone mistreated by the world and he was pampered and protected and coddled all his young life. His grandmother devoted her every waking moment to sussing out and meeting the boy’s needs. It gave Henley the idea his safety and comfort were the sole purpose of a woman’s love and this notion ensured he remained a single man through his twenties.

  Bride was exactly the sort Henley wanted no part of in a wife, hard-edged and reckless and spoiling for a fight. He’d no more thought of love and marriage when he bedded her than Bride herself. He was drunk and she fucked him as a kind of revenge, to humiliate the helpless stutterer who held her down while his mother stole away her brin bag of dirt. She led him by his cock like a puppet on a string, left him on his back in the moss with his pants around his ankles. She had him twice more, to reef the knot tighter, before she turned her back. Ignored him or mocked his stutter and considered herself done with the man. Four months later she came to Mary Tryphena’s house with all her teeth gone and the pregnancy just beginning to show.

  —You know that child is Henley’s, Bride?

  —I do, Missus.

  —She don’t know that for a f-f-fact, Henley said quietly.

  Mary Tryphena turned to look at her son. He was rubbing his knuckles against the little chin he was blessed with, as was his habit during difficult conversations. It gave the impression he was hedging when he spoke, that his actual thoughts were different from the ones he expressed. —If you made your bed, Mary Tryphena said to him, you will bloody well lie in it.

  —He lay in his bed, Bride corrected her, and now he’ll fucken well make it.

  Mary Tryphena removed Bride’s stitches two weeks after the baby’s delivery. She made no effort to be gentle, jigging the thread clear to make the girl’s breath catch. She had no idea what circumstances conspired to bring a child into the world through the unlikely couple, but she had little sympathy for the girl or her own son.

  The night Henley was conceived, Mary Tryphena told herself it was surrender to fate, to the stars. That threadbare little lie. Absalom pushing the lamp to the back of the table, darkness settling on them like the shade of the inevitable. Never mind he was married and father to five children, the youngest only hours old and asleep beside his wife in an upstairs room. Absalom’s hands under her breasts as he kissed her and she’d never been kissed like that before, not once. She could feel his cock when he pulled her close and they shuffled awkwardly to Virtue’s bed in the servant’s quarters, struggling with clasps and buttons.

  —Go easy, Bride hissed but Mary Tryphena gripped and tugged the stitches clear, furious at the memory. She said, It’s time you and Henley got married, my maid.

  Bride moved into the house the day she announced the pregnancy, but Mary Tryphena wouldn’t allow the couple to share a room until they were wed. The girl was raised Catholic and refused to convert simply to satisfy the self-righteous Reverend Dodge, so they kept to their separate beds. They disliked one another but still managed to screw on the sly when they found themselves alone, taking the sex as consolation for their predicament. Bride straddling Henley’s lap while she slapped his chinless face or pushed her fist into his mouth. —You long sonofab-b-bitch, she taunted him and he roared through the gag of her hand, nearly bucking her onto the floor. Their only other interactions were arguments about conversion and marriage. Henley threatened to throw her and the baby out if she wouldn’t listen to reason. Bride threw shoes and junks of wood in return, forks and knives, a red-hot iron from the stove. Lazarus Devine was just home from a season on the Labrador coast. He could hear the racket from the house he’d built on the stone foundation of the widow’s old tilt next door. —She’ll as like kill him as marry him, he said to Judah. Through it all Mary Tryphena carried on without taking sides. —Wait until the child comes, she said, and things will settle out.

  She tweezed hold of another stitch and pulled. —You can’t have that youngster go unbaptized, she told Bride.

  —He’ll be baptized.

  —And which preacher is it you think will christen him before you and Henley are wed?

  Bride felt it was an unfair time to broach the subject, she on her back with her skirts around her waist and Mary Tryphena rooting at her down there. It seemed to give the woman an unfair advantage. —He’ll be baptized, never you mind, she insisted.

  The baby came down with thrush, his mouth cankered white, and the infection made breastfeeding a torture. It felt as if a hundred tiny blades were slicing at Bride’s nipples as the youngster nursed. The sweet head of black hair, the innocent appetite. There was no helping the pain and Bride never shed a tear. —You little fucker, she whispered as the baby fed, her hand cradling the soft spot at the back of his head. She knew as she’d known nothing in all her life that she was his, that she would do anything for him. Mary Tryphena came through the kitchen with a basket of laundry and Bride said, All right Missus, we’ll get married.

  —It’s the proper thing.

  But Bride wasn’t ready to surrender all say in the matter and she added, We’ll join the Methodist crowd.

  —Jesus Bride.

  —You tell Henley if he wants to marry the mother of his son.

  The wedding took place in the plain board Methodist chapel and after the marriage Harold Callum Devine was baptized into the Methodist faith. Bride nursed the child under a receiving blanket while the service went on with hymns and scripture readings, the latch of his mouth like razors at her flesh, the pain so intense it was blinding, all her thoughts wiped clean of thought. Reverend Violet delivered a forty-five-minute sermon, the hypnotic peak-and-vale rhythm of his voice lulling Henley and the baby to sleep. But Bride took it all in. The physical relief when the infant was done nursing was like a heightened state of awareness, her mind clarified and focused. Parishioners began witnessing from their seats after the sermon and old Clar Bozan stood with his hands raised to the rafters. Bride had seen Clar get the glory while he worked on the flakes or walked along the waterfront and she’d always thought him a fool, his head thrown back, his clothes so untidy they looked to have been dropped on him from a height. —Praise the Lard, praise the Lard, he shouted. —Gonna meet me dear old mudder over there.

  She felt only compassion watching him now, a pity that felt biblical and maternal both. She knew as she hadn’t known anything in her life. She raised her free hand in the air and startled Henley awake when she wailed Amen over the noise of the congregation.

  Henley stared at his new wife, leaning away from
her in the pew. On the night Harold Callum Devine was born he’d been forced to watch the girl cut from stem to stern by the doctor, blood and shit on the table, the baby hauled clear like a tree stump uprooted with axes and rope. Seeing her so helpless and fouled spoiled the girl in his mind and he felt only revulsion at the thought of lying with Bride as a husband was meant. And he was terrified now, watching her overcome by some foreign spirit.

  That night she placed the sleeping child between them as if she were drawing a line and Henley made no attempt to cross it. Bride intended the child as a temporary restraint, too raw still to allow anyone between her legs, her mind too full of the Lord’s light to think of more carnal pleasures. But Henley seemed to consider himself released for good. They spent years together in the same bed but the marriage between Bride and Henley Devine was never consummated.

  Bride’s sudden conversion was as complete as it was surprising. She swore off drinking and cursing, she went to prayer meetings and attended church twice on Sundays, she sang hymns as she nursed and changed the baby, as she worked on the flakes and around the house. She took evening instruction at the church so she could read the scriptures on her own. Laz allowed Bride might bore Henley to death dragging him to the interminable Methodist services, but a bloodier murder no longer seemed likely.

  Mary Tryphena knew the couple had been stealing time alone when Bride was pregnant and thought it a hopeful sign, but for all the couple was sharing in the marriage bed Henley might as well be sleeping next door with Laz and Jude. And the obvious distance between the newlyweds mirrored the lack at the heart of her own marriage. The house was quieter with Bride become such a gentle lamb of God and Mary Tryphena was thankful for that. But she couldn’t help feeling lonelier in their company.

  Lazarus and Patrick came to the house to see her on a Sunday in April. She was watching the baby while Bride and Henley were at the evening service. Patrick took the youngster up, walking back and forth the kitchen with the baby on his shoulder while Lazarus sat at the table and removed his wooden leg, setting it on a chair and rubbing absently at his stump. Laz took a cup of tea and asked how the infant was sleeping and he speculated on the summer’s weather and spoke for a time about their mother’s habit of setting Callum’s place at the table after he died. When he was almost finished his tea he said, Henley wants a spot on the Labrador crew this year. As if it were just one in a series of unconnected notions floating through his mind.