Galore (29 page)

—So, Levi said. —God’s Nephew, is it?

He stood watching awhile, wondering what was to be done with him. The confession was more or less useless, signed as it was by a relative of the Lord, and Shambler convinced him there was little hope of proving the case on the testimony of his nose alone. The whole affair had been hanging in legal limbo long enough that Levi had grown to like the arrangement. He thought for a time he might skip a trial altogether, to deny the Devines any hope of resolution. Let the man rot in his cell. But letters had begun arriving from citizens as far away as St. John’s demanding Judah’s release in the absence of criminal charges. The governor had requested a complete report on the case. Even Shambler thought it inadvisable to hold Judah indefinitely. —Who catches hell, he asked, when Judah starves himself to death in custody? Hang him or let him go, Shambler said, those are your choices.

Levi stepped toward the pallet. —We haven’t had the pleasure, he said, since our meeting Christmas last, Mr. Devine. Levi was wearing his black hair long to cover the sides of his head and used his free hand to reveal first one ear, then the other. —My wife tells me I look a little lopsided but none the worse, really, for that.

Judah glanced at him and then stared back up at the darkness. Levi was close enough to the wall to make out the verses etched into the wood. All cribbed from the Old Testament, a wild tide of quotations thrown helter-skelter at the boards.
For all our days are passed away in thy wrath We spend our years as a tale that is told A whip for the horse a bridle for the ass and a rod for the fool’s back Thy way is in the sea and thy path in the great waters and thy footsteps are not known Whoso stoppeth his ears at the cry of the poor he also shall cry himself
.

Then in letters twice the size of any others on the wall:
They have ears but they hear not
.

Levi reeled away from the pallet to the far wall. Judah turned his back and pulled the canvas up around his shoulders, as if he’d made his point and was done. Only the preternatural white of his hair visible in the gloom.
They have ears but they hear not
. Levi shook his head to sidestep the sensation of being spoken to by some otherworldly voice. His heart hammering. He went to the door to leave but a line of verse scored into the wood at eye level stopped him. Even as he raised the lamp he tried to convince himself not to read it.

Their fruit shalt thou destroy from the earth and their seed from among the children of men
.

He swung around to face the figure lying in the darkness. It sounded vaguely like the threat Devine’s Widow cursed King-me Sellers with a hundred years ago and Levi felt the words had been placed there for him alone, that otherworldly voice announcing itself again. —You royal son of a bitch, he said.

Flossie was still awake when Levi came into the bedroom. He undressed without speaking and she waited for him in the same silence. She knew he’d gone to see Judah and expected he was in need of reassurance or comforting. But she was surprised to feel her husband sidle against her, his cock like a little brick heated in the oven and laid between them for warmth. They had three children in quick succession after they married and both Levi and Flossie seemed to feel they were released from their obligations in that regard. His foreign urgency frightened her and she kept her hands on his shoulders, willing herself not to think of his ruined ears under the long flaps of hair. She thought he might carry on rocking into the cradle of her thighs until daylight, her legs burning with fatigue and his forehead laid flat against her chest. She whispered the Twenty-third Psalm to herself but it seemed to goad Levi into more furious activity and she stopped. He was like a dog burying a bone out of reach of all other creatures, the same hunch and singleness of purpose, the same proprietary determination. He paused against her finally, holding his body rigid for so long she thought he might have suffered a stroke. Then he turned away and fell asleep.

Flossie was already at the table with Adelina when Levi came down to his breakfast in the morning. After he settled into his seat she said, I’ve been thinking, Levi, that perhaps it’s time I move into a room of my own.

He raised his head from his plate, looking first at his wife and then his sister. He could see they had discussed the matter before he came down the stairs and the obvious collusion was too much for him. —Has everyone on the shore taken leave of their bloody senses?

—Now Levi, Adelina said.

—Tell me, he shouted, how a sensible man is supposed to deal with this insanity.

—We were only thinking, Florence said but she stopped there. Levi’s face had gone blank suddenly, as if he was listening to a voice in another room. He went out the door and then came straight back to them at the table. —Adelina, he said. —Do you know if the good doctor is still interested in turning Selina’s House into a hospital?

A meeting was arranged for the following morning and Newman was a self-righteous prick about the entire undertaking, as Levi expected. He offered his condescending American smile when Levi hinted the fate of Selina’s House might be tied to whatever conclusions were reached. Newman insisted on examining the prisoner himself and implied he was above any incentive Levi might offer to sway him. Levi gave Newman the written confession with the lunatic signature as well as an affidavit freshly sworn out by Barnaby Shambler stating Judah Devine had threatened the life of His Majesty, the King of England, and claimed the throne as his birthright. —The governor has requested a full report on this case, Levi said, and I will be including the affidavit in that report. As I’m sure you know, Doctor, treason is a hanging offense.

—Unless the man is judged insane, Newman said.

—An open-and-shut case, clearly.

—In which instance he would be imprisoned indefinitely.

—It seems the only prudent course of action.

—And Mr. Shambler claims Judah made these threats in his presence?

—You have the affidavit, Doctor.

Newman nodded over the documents before folding them away. —Doesn’t it seem strange to you, Mr. Sellers, that Judah Devine, who has not spoken a single word in all his years on the shore, would suddenly begin uttering threats to the Crown?

—No more strange, Doctor, than a man who was never known to read or write suddenly copying Bible verses from memory.

Levi offered an uncharacteristic grin and Newman turned his head away from the sight of it. —I’ll have an opinion for the court as soon as I can, he said.

——

Newman had been asked to see Judah Devine early in his incarceration, when Mary Tryphena claimed he was refusing to eat. There was nothing written on the walls and no indication the prisoner was starving and he submitted to the examination with his typical passiveness. Newman didn’t know what to expect this time around, given the rumors in circulation.

He opened the padlocks with the keys given him by Levi and waited for his eyes to adjust as he stepped inside. There was a rustle along the near wall, the head of white phosphor rising from the pallet. —Hello Judah, he said. Details slowly came into the clear—the open offal hole covered with an iron grate, bread and capelin untouched on the floor. Newman nodded toward the scored wall behind Judah. —You’ve been busy, he said.

He took out the confession and affidavit and he set them side by side on the lungers where Judah could see them, then looked up at the long lines of fragments on the wall.
To bind their kings with chains and their nobles with fetters of iron Deliver me out of great waters from the hand of strange children Happy shall he be that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones
. It made Newman think there might be a case for madness after all, for the author of the Psalms if not for Judah. —Do you recognize the signature on this confession, Jude? God’s Nephew? He pointed to the paper but Judah didn’t glance down. —Barnaby Shambler accuses you of threatening the King and claiming the English throne. Is there any truth to that?

Jude pushed himself to his feet and shuffled by the doctor to piss through the grated hole in the floor. Which may have been a comment on Shambler’s claims, Newman thought, or simply the call of nature.

The first patients of the day were waiting for him at the clinic—an ingrown toenail black with infection, a broken finger, a strained back. Bride had already prepped the toenail, the infected digit washed and stained with iodine, the scalpel and retractor and scissors in a porcelain bowl. Newman went to the office to change and he was helping himself to a quick cocktail of ethyl alcohol and juniper berries when Tryphie barreled into the room, the door swinging against the wall. Newman set his glass under the desk. —Let’s have a look at you, he said, turning the boy and pushing up his shirt.

He’d performed half a dozen rudimentary skin grafts across the shoulders and along the left side but he was reaching the limit of what he could do in Paradise Deep. And Tryphie was still bent nearly double by the scar tissue on his back. He traveled in a loping primate fashion, his hands swinging near the floor as he wandered through rooms to talk to patients, observing simple operations. He passed the hours of imposed bedrest by taking apart any gadget the doctor was willing to risk, a pocket watch, a gyroscope, a barometer, sketching each individual spring and screw before reassembling it. The youngster had the hands of a surgeon, the same distilled concentration and dexterity. He never failed to reconstruct any contraption and often in better working order than when he began. Newman’s natural discomfort around children was swallowed up by his admiration for Tryphie’s precociousness.

Bride knocked at the door. —Do you want me to do the toe, Doctor?

He glanced up at her. —I’ll be right there, he said.

All the while he rooted after the rogue toenail, Newman tried to decide what to do about Judah. There was something in the whole affair that pricked at him, a sliver of some larger thing that he couldn’t quite guess the shape of. Bride’s hip grazed his shoulder as she reached for additional gauze and he lost his train of thought altogether. She wrapped the toe when he was done, offering the patient instructions on disinfecting and bandaging while Newman washed up under the window. He turned from the basin and the sight of her stole the wind from his chest. He went to his office, mixing another clandestine cocktail and sipping at it as he waited for the surge to pass. The innocent weight of her breasts against her blouse, the attention she lavished on the naked foot. Jesus loves the little children.

In the year since Henley Devine was carried home in his coffin Bride had insinuated herself into every facet of the clinic’s operation. She managed the daily administration, organized fundraising teas, oversaw the volunteers who laundered and chopped firewood and set the hospital’s vegetable garden. They spent most of their time in each other’s company and she didn’t give the slightest indication she felt anything for Newman but collegial admiration and a primly religious gratitude. He couldn’t guess how a proposal would strike her but this much was certain—propriety would force her to move out of the clinic if her answer was no. Marry her or let her go, these were the guillotine choices a proposal presented, and he abandoned the notion of marriage. He would never touch Bride as he dreamed of touching her, never so much as hint at how he felt. It was safer to live with the inadvertent nudge of her hip, with the purgatorial weight of her breasts, with the sudden tidal surges that threatened to choke him.

He drank the cocktail to the dregs and set his forehead on the desk with his eyes closed until Bride came for him. He splinted the broken finger and prescribed strict bedrest for the strained back and spent the rest of the morning dealing with the steady stream of patients as they arrived. That sliver of discomfort with him the entire time, its suggestion of some buried thing he couldn’t guess the borders of. He’d just lifted his head from an impacted molar when Barnaby Shambler appeared at the door. The member opened his coat to reveal the neck of a bottle in an inside pocket. —You’ll want a little pick-me-up, Doctor.

It was half an hour more of work before he was able to join Shambler in the office. He poured a tumbler of rum for his guest and mixed himself another cocktail of ethyl alcohol and juniper berries. —You prefer the medicinal drink? Shambler said.

—I prefer not smelling like a drunk while I work.

—Your Methodist inamorata disapproves, I imagine?

—Don’t talk riddles to me this morning.

—Now Doctor, Shambler said. —Let’s not be coy.

—Fair enough, Newman said. He took the affidavit out of a drawer and tossed it across the desk. —You are a disgrace to your office, Shambles.

—Without a doubt.

—You don’t have a single shred of integrity.

Shambler raised his glass. —Preaching to the choir, Doctor.

—You are an absolute pig of a man.

Shambler drew his head back, a look of feigned hurt on his face. —I preferred you when you were being coy.

—Judah Devine is no more danger to the King than the ass you’re sitting on.

—Undoubtedly so.

—Goddamn it, Newman said. —I don’t understand how you can be party to such a farce.

Shambler raised his shoulders and dropped them in an elaborate sigh. —I live here, he said. He seemed genuinely exhausted. —Look, he said, play along and you’ll have the hospital you want. No one ends his days with his neck in a noose. And Levi gets some satisfaction for the loss of his ears, among sundry other complaints. It seems a perfectly reasonable course of action to the ass I’m sitting on.

Newman finished his drink. —Damn it, he said. —Damn it all to hell.

Shambler looked into his empty glass, hesitating over a question. Glanced up at Newman finally. —Any regrets, Doctor?

The last of his patients was dealt with by mid-afternoon and Newman took his muzzle-loader into the backcountry, tramping through the first heavy frost of the fall. He wanted motion and silence, to let his mind skim out over the barrens like a stone across the surface of a pond. To see where it came to rest once it settled.