Galore - Michael Crummey [108]
Even Levi Sellers was made curious enough to visit Judah, sneaking to the shoreline after dark with a storm lamp. He set the light on the floor between himself and Jude who was lying under a blanket of canvas. The man was awake but wouldn’t acknowledge him, staring at the black void in the rafters above the yellow glow of the lamp.
—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