Sweetland Read online

  ALSO BY MICHAEL CRUMMEY

  Arguments with Gravity

  Hard Light

  Salvage

  Flesh and Blood: Stories

  River Thieves

  The Wreckage

  Galore

  Under the Keel

  COPYRIGHT © 2014 MICHAEL CRUMMEY INK

  All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication, reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system without the prior written consent of the publisher—or in the case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, license from the Canadian Copyright Licensing agency—is an infringement of the copyright law.

  Doubleday Canada and colophon are registered trademarks of

  Random House of Canada Limited.

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Crummey, Michael, author

  Sweetland / Michael Crummey.

  ISBN 978-0-385-66316-8

  eBook ISBN 978-0-385-68221-3

  I. Title.

  PS8555.R84S94 2014 C813′.54 C2014-903125-4

  C2014-903126-2

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Cover image: Michael Pittman, “Chthonic Spirit,” 2009 © CARCC 2014

  Published in Canada by Doubleday Canada, a division of Random House of Canada Limited, a Penguin Random House company

  www.randomhouse.ca

  v3.1

  for Stan Dragland

  Contents

  Cover

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  The King’s Seat

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  The Keeper’s House

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Acknowledgements

  THE KING’S SEAT

  Even unto them will I give in mine house and within my walls a place and a name.…

  —ISAIAH

  HE HEARD THEM BEFORE HE SAW THEM. Voices in the fog, so indistinct he thought they might be imaginary. An auditory hallucination, the mind trying to compensate for a sensory lack. The way a solitary man will start talking to furniture, left alone long enough.

  Anyway, voices out there.

  He’d gone across to the mainland after a load of wood on Saturday morning and was stranded overnight by the fog. Slept in the wheelhouse under an old blanket with a pair of coveralls rolled up as a pillow. The mauze lifted a little at first light and he thought he might be able to pick his way home. Had the island in sight when the mist muffled in, so thick he couldn’t see ten feet past the bow. Cut the engine to drift awhile, listening blind for other boats. Just the lap of waves against the hull for the longest time. The wail of the foghorn on Burnt Head. And in the lull between, a murmur that seemed vaguely human. Then a single wordless syllable shouted, like a dog’s bark.

  Spooked him. Miles out on the water and that voice seeming to rise from the ocean itself. He had to work up the nerve to respond, hoping there was nothing in that blankness to answer him. Hello, he called. Half a dozen voices shouting wildly in response and he leaned away as if he’d been pushed by a hand reaching out of the fog. Jesus fuck, he said.

  He started up the engine and the voices rose, wanting to be heard above it. Put-putted in the direction he guessed they came from, his head cocked to follow the racket being sent up like a flare. A shape slowly taking shape in front of him, a darkening bruise in the fog, the lifeboat’s red burning through.

  He slipped the engine into reverse to avoid running broadside into the open boat. Figures standing along the length, waving frantically. A dozen or more it looked to be and no one local. Dark skin and black heads of hair. Some foreign trawler gone down on the Banks, he thought, a container ship on its way to the States. All of them in street clothes and not a one wearing a lifejacket.

  A man leaned out over the bow as he came around, cantilevered at such an angle Sweetland didn’t know what stopped the fellow pitching head first into the water. He looked Indian, Sweetland thought, or some variation of Indian, he never could tell that crowd one from the other. There were more people huddled below the gunwale, none dressed for the weather and half-frozen by the look of them. Sweetland passed a tow rope that the man tied to the bow of the lifeboat and then he made a motion to his mouth, tipping his head back. Sweetland rummaged around for the two Javex bottles of fresh water he carried, grabbed the blanket and a folded canvas tarp, handed them along.

  Those faces staring across at him with looks of deranged relief. He was riding low with the load of wood and it occurred to him they might try to come over the gunwale onto his boat and swamp him, much as drowning swimmers were reported to drag their rescuers under. He made what he intended to be calming gestures with his arms and started up the engine to pull ahead to the full length of the tow rope, then headed slow slow slow toward the cove.

  Glancing back now and again, startled each time to see what was following in his wake.

  1

  HE SAW THE GOVERNMENT MAN WALKING up from the water. The tan pants, the tweed jacket and tie. The same fellow who came out for the last town meeting, or one exactly like him—there seemed to be an endless supply on hand at the Confederation Building in St. John’s. The briefcase looking for all the world like something that was in his hand when he left his mother’s womb. Sweetland turned away from the window, as if he could hide from the man by not looking his way. Glimpsed a flash of him as he went to the front door of the house, heard the knock.

  No one in the cove ever knocked at a door. He thought to ignore it, but the knock came a second and then a third time and he pushed away from the table, went out through the hallway. No one in the cove used their front doors, either. Sweetland’s hadn’t been opened in years and he had to jimmy it loose of the frame. The man standing there lost in the sun’s glare, a voice from the nothing where his mouth should be. “Mr. Sweetland?”

  He waited until the figure resolved out of the light, until he could see the eyes. “Just come off the ferry, did you?”

  “Just this second, yes.”

  Sweetland nodded. “I must be some fucken important.”

  The government man smiled up at him. “You’re at the top of my list.”

  Sweetland stood to one side to let the man by. “Cup of tea?”

  “You don’t have coffee by any chance?”

  “I got instant.”

  “Tea is fine,” the government man said.

  Sweetland moved the kettle onto the stove while the young one took a seat at the table. He tried to think of when a stranger sat there last, seeing the kitchen for the first time. Low ceilings, the beams an inch or two clear of Sweetland’s crown. Painted wood floor, a daybed under one window, a Formica table with chrome legs pushed up to the other. His mother’s china teacups on hooks below the cupboards. All so familiar to him he hadn’t noticed it in years.

  The man’s briefcase was lying on the table in front of him like a placemat and Sweetland set a spoon and the sugar bowl on the flat surface of it.

  “No sugar for me,” the youngster said, setting the bowl to one side. “A drop of milk if you have some.” He put the case on the floor beside his chair.

  “No fresh,” Sweetland said. “Just
tin.”

  “Tin is fine,” the government man said. He took a BlackBerry from his coat pocket and held it to the window a moment.

  “You’re not the fellow was out last time around.”

  “I just took over the file.”

  “You won’t get a cell phone signal out here,” Sweetland told him.

  He shrugged. “The edge of the civilized world.”

  “They was talking about putting up a tower years back. Never got around to it.”

  The government man gestured past him to the counter. “You have a laptop there.”

  Sweetland glanced over his shoulder, to confirm the fact. “We got the internet for long ago. Does my banking on that,” he said. “Bit of online poker. Passes the time.” Sweetland poured the tea and took a seat directly across the table.

  “You’re not on Facebook, are you?”

  “Look at this face,” he said and the government man glanced down at the table. “Now Arsebook,” Sweetland said. “That’s something I’d sign up for.”

  “I’m sure it’s coming.”

  “I wouldn’t doubt it. Given the state of things.”

  It was an easy road into the subject at hand and he was surprised the government man didn’t take it, smiling out the window instead. Perfect teeth. They all had perfect teeth these days. Careful haircuts, accents Sweetland couldn’t place. This one might be from the mainland somewhere, for all he could tell.

  “So,” the younger man said abruptly. “Are you coming to the meeting this afternoon?”

  Sweetland almost laughed. “Not planning on it, no.”

  “I couldn’t talk you into it?”

  “Listen,” Sweetland said, “I’m not the only one who voted against this thing.”

  “That’s true. Forty-five in favour, three against, by the most recent ballot. But as of yesterday, yours is one of only two households who have not agreed to take the package we’re offering.”

  “Two?” Sweetland said.

  The government man paused there, to let the information sink in. He stirred his tea slowly, the clink of the spoon like a broken lever inside a mechanical doll.

  “It’s just me and Loveless?”

  “That’s where things stand,” he said.

  Sweetland rubbed absently at the tabletop a moment and then excused himself. He went out through the hall and up the narrow stairs to the bathroom. He put the toilet seat down and sat there a few minutes, leaning an elbow on the windowsill. He could see the back of Loveless’s property from there, the ancient barn, the single gaunt cow with its head to the grass. Loveless famously drank a pint of kerosene when he was a toddler, which to Sweetland’s mind told you everything you needed to know about the man. He’d suffered a twenty-four-hour attack of hiccups while he passed the fuel, his diapers reeking of oil and shit. No one was allowed to light a match near the youngster for a week.

  And it was all down now to him and fucken Loveless.

  “Sorry,” Sweetland said when he came back into the kitchen.

  The government man waved the interruption away. He said, “I have to admit I’m curious, Mr. Sweetland.”

  “About what?”

  “I don’t mean to pry,” he said, which Sweetland took to mean he was about to pry. “But you’re turning down a substantial cash payout. Practically the whole town is against you.”

  “And?”

  “I’m just wondering what your story is exactly.”

  He didn’t like the little fucker, Sweetland decided. Not one bit. He gestured toward the briefcase with his mug. “I imagine you got everything you needs to know about me in that bag of yours.”

  The government man watched him a second, then pulled a folder from the case. “Moses Louis Sweetland,” he read. “Born November fourteenth, 1942. Which makes you—” He glanced up.

  “Sixty-nine this fall.”

  “Math isn’t my strong suit,” he said. “Next of kin: none.”

  “Christ,” Sweetland said. “I’m related to half the people in Chance Cove.”

  “No immediate next of kin, I think is what that means. Parents deceased. Brother and sister?”

  “Both dead.”

  “Marital status: single.” He looked up again. “Never married, is that right?”

  Sweetland shrugged and said, “Look at this face,” which made the younger man turn back to his papers.

  “Occupation,” he said. “Lightkeeper, retired.”

  “I was let go when they automated the light ten years back.”

  “You were a fisherman before that?”

  “Right up until the moratorium in ’92.”

  “So you’ve never lived anywhere else?”

  “A couple of trips to Toronto for work,” he said, “when I was about your age.”

  The government man made a motion toward his own face, afraid of pointing directly at Sweetland’s scars. “Is that where?”

  “What else is it you got in there?”

  He closed the folder and sat back. “That’s everything,” he said.

  “Not much when you lays it out like that.”

  “Not enough to tell me why you’re so set against this move.”

  “Just contrary, I guess.”

  “You’d rather stay here with the dead, is that it?”

  “A body could do worse for company.”

  The government man brushed his fingers lightly back and forth across the edge of the table, as if he were at a piano and not wanting to strike a note. “How long is it your people have lived out here, Mr. Sweetland?”

  “Time before time,” Sweetland said and then smiled at himself. “People been fishing here two hundred years or more. I expect my crowd was the first ones on the island.”

  “Because it’s eponymous, you mean?”

  Sweetland stared blankly.

  “It’s named after them. Your family and the island have the same name.”

  “Yes,” Sweetland said. “That’s what I mean.”

  They stared at one another then and Sweetland could see the youngster was casting about in his mind for some other tack to take. He put his chin in one hand and tapped his nose with the index finger. Then he leaned to one side to put the folder back into his briefcase. “As you are aware,” he said, “the government is offering a package to the residents of Sweetland to move anywhere in the province they like. A minimum of one hundred thousand dollars per household, up to one hundred and fifty thousand, depending on the size of the family and other considerations. Plus adjustment assistance and help looking for work or retraining or returning to school.”

  “Jesus,” Sweetland said, “I thought the government was broke.”

  The younger man ignored him. “But we will not move a soul out of here unless we have a commitment from everyone to the package.”

  Sweetland nodded. “Same old bullshit.”

  “This is not the 1960s, Mr. Sweetland. This move isn’t being forced on the town. We will pay to resettle the residents, as we’ve been asked to do. But we will not be responsible for some lunatic alone in the middle of the Atlantic once everyone else is gone.”

  “Me being the lunatic.”

  “There won’t be any ferry service after the move. Which means no supplies coming in. There will be no phone service. No online banking, no poker. No electricity. By definition, I’d think anyone out here on their own would have to be certifiable.” The government man glanced at his watch. “You’ve been made aware of the September deadline.”

  “I been made aware.”

  “There are people hoping to make the move across as early as this fall, which means everyone would have to sign by the first.”

  “I am aware,” Sweetland said again.

  The government man reached into an inside pocket of his coat. “My email address is on there, my cell number, you can contact me anytime.”

  Sweetland set the card on a shelf above the counter and followed his guest along the hall, to let him out the door he came in. Placing a hand to the back of
a chair and then the wall as he went, the room tilting under his feet.

  The light blared in through the open door and Sweetland came out as far as the doorstep. He shaded his eyes to gaze down toward the water. Folks in their yards or on the paths or at the wharf, all busy not looking his way.

  The government man was staring down to the harbour as well, and Sweetland couldn’t help taking the place in through the stranger’s eyes. A straggle of vinyl-sided bungalows, half of them sitting empty. Saddle-roofed sheds and propane tanks and ATVs and old lumber in untidy piles, like trash dumped on the slope by some natural disaster. The white church on the point, the Fisherman’s Hall with Rita Verge’s hand-lettered MUSEUM sign at the side entrance. A handful of geriatric boats moored off in the cove.

  “That’s a beautiful view,” the government man said. “I can see why you don’t want to leave it.”

  “You didn’t strike me,” Sweetland said, “as an ass-kisser.”

  “I work for the government,” the youngster said and he shrugged good-naturedly. “It’s just part of the job.”

  He didn’t like the fucker, it was true. Not one bit.

  He levered the door into the frame and leaned back against the wall. Stared across at an oval black-and-white portrait of his grandfather hung by the door. A young man from another age—a high starched collar, a waistcoat, the chain of a pocket watch, an elaborate waxed moustache.

  “Now Uncle Clar,” he said. “It’s just me and Loveless.”

  The eyes of the man in the picture looking off to one side, as if to avoid the issue altogether.

  Sweetland went out to his root cellar for the last of his seed potatoes, spent an hour setting spuds in the garden. He hosed the rake and spade clean when he was done and set them away in the shed. He washed his hands in the kitchen and through the tiny window over the sink he caught sight of Queenie Coffin next door, scattering a packet of seeds through her window onto the patch of ground below it. Which meant the summer—what passed for summer—was well and truly started.

  Practically everyone else in the cove was gathered at the Fisherman’s Hall for the meeting with the government man and there was an eerie stillness about the place, as if the island was already abandoned. He expected Reet Verge would be sent across to badger him when the meeting was done and he packed a few things into his knapsack, drove his quad up out of the cove to avoid her. He climbed past the trail to the new cemetery and beyond it to the peak of the hills.