Galore - Michael Crummey [101]
Matthew Strapp announced his candidacy in early December and his barn was burned to the ground a week later. The animals were let loose before the fire was set and only the building was lost, but Strapp took the warning at face value and withdrew. No one with Strapp’s property and credentials was willing to risk standing in his place and by Christmas it was clear the Tory seat in the Legislature would go unopposed.
The season was a week-long celebration at Shambler’s public house, the proprietor presiding till the wee hours with a lecherous generosity, with winks and nudges and knowing looks. Bands of drunken Tories wandered the streets and fell in with the mummers roving house to house. Levi Sellers was not a drinker or a social creature and he waited till Old Christmas Day to make his obligatory appearance, setting his public seal of approval to events as they’d unfolded. He took a seat in a corner, hugging a glass of brandy diluted with water while the room pitched and rolled around him. Shambler had just that fall imported a plate of Wellington teeth from England to replace his own, the set scavenged from corpses on some European battlefield or from the mouths of executed criminals. His cadaverous smile made Levi’s skin crawl and he refused to look Shambler in the face when the Honorable Member came to the table.
—I half expected not to see you, Mr. Sellers.
Levi raised his glass an inch. —I wouldn’t be so miserable.
—Well if you’re in such a fine mood, Shambler said, I’ve been wanting to talk to you about Selina’s House.
—You aren’t going to make me regret coming, Mr. Shambler.
—Dr. Newman thinks it would make a fine hospital.
—He does.
—The clinic is too small by half for what the shore requires. And Selina’s House is going to rot boarded up so.
—And how does the good doctor plan to buy Selina’s House?
—Well now, Shambler said. —Can I get you another? he said and Levi shook his head. —We were thinking it would be a gesture of good will to the people on the shore, he said. —If it’s only going to rot there as it is.
Levi stood from his chair and pulled on his overcoat. —I’ll give it due consideration, he said.
Shambler insisted he have one more drink before leaving but Levi ignored him. He stood outside a moment to let his eyes adjust to the black, sorry to have come. The indigo glow of the snow under stars all there was to light his way home. He started around the ring of the harbor, the noise of Shambler’s muffled by the frost. He turned up Sellers’ Drung toward Selina’s House which had been sitting empty since his mother left for Boston. He stood below the building in the dark, thinking what a scabrous bastard Shambler was to suggest giving it up for nothing. As if it was something Levi owed. Any debt between them was settled the night Strapp’s barn burned to the ground. And he’d see Selina’s House fall in on itself before Bride Devine and her son of a bastard moved in there with Newman.
He heard voices coming his way and carried on toward the lamps in the windows of his own house. He could make out a group approaching from the Gaze, mummers dressed in castoffs and rags, their faces hidden under veils.
—Master Sellers sir, the man in the lead said, using that grating ingressive voice. He was wearing a brin sack dress and a crown of spruce boughs and carried a scepter improvised from a barrel stave.
—Gentlemen, Levi said.
—Have you any drink for a poor