Galore - Michael Crummey [1]
—Toronto Star
“Pitch-perfect, boisterous.… Well told and strangely credible, despite the magic.… Galore is an endearing romp. For the language alone—and there is so much more—I loved the book.”
—Katherine Govier in the National Post
“Michael Crummey’s new novel, Galore, is a tour de force. Long touted as a terrific storyteller, the Newfoundland writer has exceeded himself in this two-century saga of almost mythic proportions. The book is a page-turner; fresh, surprising, and brimming with life.… A chronicle full of sheer energy and sudden surprise … [it] places Michael Crummey, in one giant leap, among the top rank of Canadian novelists.”
—Toronto Sun
“A work that surprises and reveals. With this new novel … [Crummey] reaffirms his position as a leading voice in the literature of the Rock.… [Galore is a] dense, intricate, and absorbing tale, rich in the nuances of human relationships.”
—Quill & Quire
ALSO BY MICHAEL CRUMMEY
River Thieves
Copyright © 2009 Michael Crummey Ink
Other Press edition 2010
Production editor: Yvonne E. Cárdenas
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from Other Press LLC, except in the case of brief quotations in reviews for inclusion in a magazine, newspaper, or broadcast. For information write to Other Press LLC, 2 Park Avenue, 24th Floor, New York, NY 10016.
Or visit our Web site: www.otherpress.com
The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:
Crummey, Michael, 1965–
Galore / by Michael Crummey. — Other Press ed.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-1-59051-435-1 1. Rural families—Newfoundland and Labrador—Fiction. 2. Newfoundland and Labrador—Fiction. 3. Domestic fiction. I. Title.
PR9199.3.C717G36 2011
813′.54—dc22 2010040763
PUBLISHER’S NOTE:
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
v3.1
for Arielle, Robin and Ben
The invincible power that has moved the world
is unrequited, not happy, love.
GABRIEL GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ
I will bring my people again from the depths of the sea.
PSALMS
Contents
Cover
Other Books by This Author
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
Part One
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Part Two
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Acknowledgments
{ PART ONE }
{ 1 }
HE ENDED HIS TIME ON THE SHORE ina makeshift asylum cell, shut away with the profligate stink of fish that clung to him all his days. The Great White. St. Jude of the Lost Cause. Sea Orphan. He seemed more or less content there, gnawing at the walls with a nail. Mary Tryphena Devine brought him bread and dried capelin that he left to gather bluebottles and mold on the floor.
—If you aren’t going to eat, she said, at least have the decency to die.
Mary Tryphena was a child when she first laid eyes on the man, a lifetime past. End of April and the ice just gone from the bay. Most of the shore’s meager population—the Irish and West Country English and the bushborns of uncertain provenance—were camped on the gray sand, waiting to butcher a whale that had beached itself in the shallows on the feast day of St. Mark. This during a time of scarcity when the ocean was barren and gardens went to rot in the relentless rain and each winter threatened to bury them all. They weren’t whalers and no one knew how to go about killing the Leviathan, but there was something in the humpback’s unexpected offering that prevented the starving men from hacking away while the fish still breathed. As if that would be a desecration of the gift.
They’d scaled the whale