Galore - Michael Crummey [116]
Bride had always been able to tell what men wanted that way. Even as a girl of twelve and thirteen she could suss it out. It was a kind of weakness in them all and men distrusted her for knowing so much about their private selves. Newman, at least, seemed not to despise her for it.
The chastity of her marriage to Henley Devine felt like a penance for her particular sins and there was nothing in lying with a man that Bride couldn’t live without if God required the sacrifice. She’d resigned herself to a life of abstinence before Tryphie’s accident set her squarely in the way of the doctor. Her son permanently scarred and her husband carted home in a box and she couldn’t escape the thought it was God at work in her life. She prayed over the blasphemous notion for months and still it made no sense to her. The Lord was the only man Bride ever felt helpless to figure out and that helplessness was almost a relief. She set to work at the hospital as if it was her vocation and left the question of the doctor to Jesus.
She lay catching her breath after they made love, her face pressed against her husband’s back. She never tired of it, the afterglow of giving and giving and being fed in return. And there was something in Tryphie that made her worry he’d never experience anything like it. He was different than her two younger sons, there was an insularity pushed on him by his long convalescence, an attachment to the mechanical world that seemed unnatural. She thought at times he might be incapable of recognizing love. —You won’t deny Tryphie a chance for this, she whispered. —So help me, Harold Newman.
The wedding was set for Old Christmas Day and Newman didn’t speak against it the rest of the season. There was a dry dance at the Methodist church hall that went on late into the night, drinkers slipping outside to nip at flasks before coming back into the crush of noise and heat. Eli sat with Druce and Mary Tryphena all evening, in a sulk. He was happy to see Tryphie married off, as if it relieved him of some debt. But there was a weight on his chest as the vows were traded and the rings exchanged, and the weight would not leave him. Druce was watching her son out of the corner of her eye. —It’ll be your turn next, she said. —To get married, have a family.
—Perhaps it will, he said.
Druce nodded across the hall where John and Magdalen Blade sat at a table with Hannah. —I’ve always thought she was sweet on you, Druce said. —Why don’t you ask her up to dance?
—I think I’ll wander home out of it, he said.
It was after midnight at the tail end of the Christmas season and it was a surprise to everyone when the crowd of mummers came through the door of the hall, King Cole and Horse Chops and a retinue in rags behind them playing spoons and ugly sticks. They looked to have been on the move most of the night, drunk and rowdy to the edge of violence, shoving their way onto the dance floor, stealing women from their partners, yelling their fool heads off. Eli started for the door as soon as they came in but Druce grabbed his arm. —Don’t leave me alone with those savages, she said, smiling and happy to see them.
King Cole made a proprietary round of the hall, shaking hands and begging drinks from teetotalers while people guessed at his identity. A Woundy, some thought, or one of the Toucher crowd. The King bowed low to the newlyweds before touching their shoulders with his staff as a blessing. Eli was in a chair behind his mother and the King almost passed by in the dim light. Raised both hands above his head when he laid eyes on him. —Horse Chops, he shouted in his high falsetto.
Eli bolted for the door but a handful of mummers fell on him, dragging him back to a chair set in the center of the hall, the crowd urging them on.
—This one, this one, the King said, shaking his staff at Eli. Horse Chops stood at the King’s side, draped in a brown blanket, the horse’s head rough-carved of wood, one brown eye and one blue painted on the face, the jaws on a hinge of leather. —Is this fellow in love, Horse Chops?