Sweetland (25 page)

The Reverend turned off his flashlight and stood still in the black across the room.

Sweetland said, You knew about Clara all along.

Ruth told me she was pregnant.

That’s the reason you left when you did, I imagine.

That’s why I left, he said. And that’s the reason I came back. Clara, he said. And Jesse.

Strange you haven’t said a word to Clara about it, all this time.

I don’t think that’s what Ruth would have wanted.

Sweetland threw his head back and laughed. That’s very Christian of you.

The Reverend cleared his throat again. I was hoping we might have gotten this conversation out of the way years ago.

How many others were there?

How many what?

All them parishes you moved through, Sweetland said. Ruthie wasn’t the only one you dipped your wick into.

Well, the Reverend said. She was better off without me, don’t you think?

Sweetland scrubbed at his temples with the knuckles of both hands and sighed. That’s a job to say, Reverend.

There was a long pause between them, like they’d lost their way in the woods at night and were afraid to take another step forward.

You remember that young one, Sweetland said. The fellow died on the lifeboat we had in here.

I remember him.

I thinks about those fellows now and then, Sweetland said. How they wound up here, of all places.

Wasn’t in their minds when they started out, I’m sure.

What was it you said about it all? In that sermon?

You remember a sermon of mine?

Just the one. It was something about all of us being in the same situation. Lost on the ocean, like.

The Reverend shifted behind the desk. I was always a bit obvious when it came to preaching, he said.

Sweetland scooched his backside up onto the cupboard where the bulletins and mimeograph machine used to be stored, his flashlight trained on the floor between his feet. He flicked it off before he spoke again. I been wanting to ask you, he said. What happened with Jesse last year. You believe he drowned himself?

On purpose, you mean?

Everyone else seems to think as much.

The Reverend flicked his light slowly on and off, on and off. I have no idea, he said.

Hazard a guess for me, then.

Honestly? I don’t think Jesse had it in him.

He was all guts, that youngster.

I don’t think the idea would have occurred to him, is what I mean. He might have made his mother’s life hell for a while with tantrums or going to the bathroom in his clothes or God knows what else. But killing himself? I don’t think so.

It was an accident, then.

You know how literal he was. He saw your boat missing down in the cove, I’d say. Might have thought you’d already left for good.

And what? Headed out to the lighthouse to see if he could spot the boat off of Burnt Head?

Seems about right. And then the fog came in.

He missed the cairns on the path, you think. Fell off the headland out there in the fog.

More than likely.

Sweetland looked up into the darkness. He couldn’t tell if the man believed what he was saying. Or if it made any real difference to think it was true.

The Reverend flicked his light on and off again, on and off, the face of it pressed against his hand so the flesh lit up like a Chinese lantern.

Did Ruth tell you she used to talk to me about Hollis? he said.

Hollis? Sweetland said vaguely, as though he didn’t recognize the name.

Your brother, yes.

No, she never said. Not that I remembers.

She told me Hollis was—what did she call it? He was a bit touched, she said.

He was a strange creature, all right. Moody, like. He’d go weeks at a time and not say a word to a soul. Got right low, sometimes. Spent half the days in bed. Always had his head into his school reader or some other book.

He wanted to leave Sweetland to finish high school, didn’t he?

He talked about it. I imagine he’d have gone over to Burgeo or Fortune or somewhere if Father was still with us. But there was just me and Hollis to go after the fish.

Ruth thought he was sick with something. Physically ill, I mean.

That’s what Mother told her.

She didn’t even know he was at the Waterford in St. John’s those months he was gone. She thought he was doing some kind of schooling.

Well we couldn’t very well tell her that her brother was in the mental, could we? She was just a youngster still.

She knew a lot more than you gave her credit for, the Reverend said. And he stopped there. Waiting to be encouraged, Sweetland knew, but he wouldn’t give the man the satisfaction.

That story about Hollis falling across the trawl line, the Reverend said finally, and you cutting it loose to take off the strain. She didn’t believe a word of it.

None of this is any of your goddamn business, is it?

Sorry, the Reverend said. Occupational hazard.

They settled back into silence awhile longer, though there was no leaving things where they sat. Each man trying to wait out the other.

Ruthie never said a word to me about any of this, Sweetland said.

She wasn’t looking to cause trouble, the Reverend said. We were just talking about Hollis and she mentioned the story about the codfish running under the boat and you throwing the engine into reverse. She spent a long time thinking about that fish.

The fish, Sweetland repeated dumbly.

She said she saw you coming in alone and knew something was wrong. Ran down to the stage to meet you. And there was plenty of cod in the boat. But nothing the size you talked about.

This is what she was paying attention to when she heard her brother was drowned, was it?

It was a long time before it came to her, the Reverend said. And she’d probably never have taken note if there weren’t other things about
the day that struck her funny. She said Hollis was different that morning. Happy almost. Gave her a hug, told her how much he loved her. Did the same with your mother.

Sweetland was drumming his heels against the wall involuntarily and he made himself stop.

Ruth thought he had it in his mind before he left the house, the Reverend said. To cut the trawl line himself, let the weight take him under.

Jesus fuck, Sweetland whispered.

And you made up some story about a fish because you wanted to spare your mother.

Sweetland nodded in the dark. Set to hammering his heels against the wall again. That would have been the end of the woman, he said, knowing her son killed himself.

It occurred to Sweetland he’d lied to Jesse for the same reason he lied to his mother, to spare the boy knowing the truth about his imaginary friend. He raised his face to the ceiling, fighting the ridiculous sense they were all standing in the darkness beside him, his mother and Ruthie and Hollis. Jesse.

Hollis was suffering, the Reverend said.

I expect he was. I wouldn’t very good to him about it all.

It wasn’t your fault, the Reverend said.

That’s your professional opinion, is it?

If you like.

I’d have done things different, Sweetland said, all the same. And a minute later he said, You misses him something awful, I spose.

Who?

Jesse.

The Reverend flicked the light into his palm again, the pink lamp of his hand aglow across the room. Sweetland could see the dark bones of his fingers under the skin.

Yes, he said. I miss him something awful.

He took the scythe up to the new cemetery to cut the grass back around the graves.

He’d been the unofficial custodian of the cemetery for years, mowing and raking the plots and keeping up the fence and straightening headstones tipped by frost heaves. He never named it as a reason for staying behind on the island, though it sat at the back of his mind beside all the other reasons he never articulated. Watching over Jesse’s grave. But he hadn’t gone near the place in his time alone in the cove. He hadn’t even walked up to the graveyard to look in on his way down from the mash, which had been a regular side trip since his mother died.

He avoided the mowing until he risked the season’s first snowfalls, dragged his ass up the path wearing a hair shirt of dread. The grass past his knees by then and he had to cut a trail in from the gate toward the family stones. There was a new marker among them, a white wooden cross he didn’t notice until he was near enough to read the inscription, hand-lettered in black:
Moses Louis Sweetland 1942
—
2012
.

It was set beside Jesse’s grave, in the same row as Ruth and Uncle Clar and his mother, and he laughed when he saw it, as if he’d managed to pull off an elaborate practical joke. But it was a fright to him all the same. They had never raised a marker in the graveyard for Hollis, lacking a body to mark, and it never occurred to Sweetland that someone might see fit to put one up for him. He left without finishing the mowing and spent the rest of the day anxious, expectant almost. Though he couldn’t settle on what was disturbing him exactly.

He woke in the middle of the night and lay still a few moments. Seeing clearly what the visit to the graveyard had lit up for him, what he’d been avoiding all this time—that surreal, impenetrable experience on the Fever Rocks, lashed to the ladder with the dead boy in his arms. Sweetland was shivering uncontrollably before Barry finished making the climb and he shouted after the man, wanting to be untied from the corpse. Bawling
for all he was worth. Barry didn’t hear him over the ocean’s racket or ignored what he heard and Sweetland watched those distant legs disappear at the top of the ladder. He bent his face to Jesse then, rested his forehead against the cold nape of the boy’s neck. Counted off seconds and minutes to mark the time passing but lost himself in the run of numbers, which made the wait seem infinite, and he spent what felt a long while in miserable silence. His teeth jackhammering as the fits of trembling ran through him. He pissed into his soaking clothes for the brief warmth of it and was colder again moments later.

Jesse, he said, and then looked up the endless length of the ladder to stop himself talking to the dead boy. He could feel himself drifting despite the ropes at his back, his hold on the visible world slipping, and he started singing to stay awake. “Michael, Row the Boat Ashore” and “Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer” and “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star,” as though it was the youngster he was trying to comfort. He sang the three childish songs in an endless round, his arms like a useless tourniquet around the last of his blood.

Sweetland sat up in the bedroom’s blackness, feeling for his clothes. He lit the storm lamp in the porch and carried it outside where the flame curtsied in each gust of wind. He walked his quavering bowl of light up the path to the graveyard where the white marker was set in the ground beside Jesse’s. The cross couldn’t be left there, he knew. It was a false thing, which made the boy’s death seem even more inconsequential than it was.

He hadn’t brought any tools, thinking the cross had simply been knocked into the dirt with a maul. He set the lamp down in the grass beside Jesse’s headstone, crouched behind the wooden marker and levered his arms beneath the cross-tie to pry it loose. Pushed and hauled from the top, trying to rock it free. He brought the lamp in close and parted the grass around the base to see it had been set in concrete.

He caught a blur of movement outside the circumference of light then, a shadowed scurry that made him swing around in the dark. His
heartbeat in his ears. “Fucken rabbits,” he said. Decided it was a job for daylight after all and walked down the path to his house. Refusing to allow himself a glance left or right as he went.

He went back up to the cemetery in the morning, before he’d so much as started the fire, and sawed the cross off at the base. He carried it down the hill on his shoulder. My cross to bear, he thought, ha ha. He propped it against the back wall of the house while he laid a fire in the stove and boiled the kettle. Briefly considered sawing it up and burning it, though there was something in the notion that seemed sacrilegious. After his breakfast he dragged the cross into the shed, angling it awkwardly among the copper pipe and door trim and two-by-fours and dip nets stored above the rafters. Then he took his scythe up to the graveyard and finished mowing the long grass.

There was a fall of snow the last week of October, a wet slurry that came down through the morning. Sweetland sat at the table longer than usual. Dealt himself a hand of solitaire and drank a bare-legged cup of tea. The snow covered the roofs of buildings and the packed earth along the paths and showed no sign of letting up. It would likely be gone by next morning, he knew, but it made him think about the winter he was about to sail into, how much of it he’d be forced to spend at the kitchen table with little enough to fill the time. No television, no online poker, no visitors. He’d have to find something to occupy himself besides solitaire if he didn’t want to lose his mind altogether.

There were two boxes of Queenie’s books in the porch and he brought the top one into the kitchen, set it on the table. Newspapers were as much as he’d read in his adult lifetime, the odd “Laughter, the Best Medicine” column in a
Reader’s Digest
at the barbershop as he waited for Duke to make a move. All the years at the lighthouse he never wanted for distraction, the job kept him busy most of the daylight hours and through part of the night as well. He’d never cracked the cover of a book.