Galore - Michael Crummey [124]
By his third month the boy was making a show of living through the ordeal when an infection took hold and even Bride was forced to admit there was no hope for him. —That’s a sin now, she whispered. —The child’s had enough torment.
—There’s no lack of that in the world, Druce said. She was thinking of the small garden of children she’d planted next her house, infants who’d never taken a breath before the earth stopped their lungs for good. And this one now in his metal coffin, waning under a pane of glass.
It was Mary Tryphena who suggested Kerrivan’s Tree. Hannah hadn’t left the child’s side in three days but to wash her face and she was exhausted watching the slow ebb of his life. She was ready for something decisive to happen, one way or the other. —The doctor won’t ever allow it, she said.
Mary Tryphena nodded. —You bring him by tonight, she said. —Once the house is asleep.
Eli considered himself an idiot to be humoring the women, but the child was lost regardless. Newman came in on his last round after midnight, listening to the tiny heart struggle through the noise of the lungs. He closed the glass cover and nodded to the mother and father in their chairs to say their time with the boy was all but gone.
After the hospital settled Hannah lifted the infant out of the incubator, wrapping him in a sheepskin blanket. He was paler than the palest Devine, the wisp of hair at the crown so blond it was nearly invisible. They carried him along the deserted roads and over the Tolt to the Gut. Mary Tryphena was sitting up when they came for her and she followed them back out the door. The tree shining silver in the moonlight on the far side of the cove.
Hannah and Eli had both been christened in the old way but the ritual had fallen out of use in their lifetime and they stood in silence when they reached the tree, unsure how to proceed. Mary Tryphena picked her way through the maze of branches and gestured for them to follow. They passed the nearly weightless package through the dead limbs in the dark, hand to hand to hand, the child silent the entire time. As she let him go Mary Tryphena said, A long life to you, Abel Devine. And Eli wept all the way back to Selina’s House with the helpless infant in his arms, the last child ever to be welcomed into the world at Kerrivan’s Tree.
There was no change in his condition the next morning but Abel survived the day. —Tough little bugger, Newman said each time he found the infant still breathing.
It was a sentiment that followed Abel through his childhood. He was smaller than other youngsters his age and prone to fevers and infections that packed his lungs with fluid and threatened to drown him in his bed. A raw smell of decay rising with his temperature, as if the death he’d cheated was leaching from his pores. Mary Tryphena refused to leave Abel’s side when he was ill. Hannah was forced to wear a rag across her face against the smell. —I don’t know how you can stand it, Mrs. Devine.
—The child’s no worse than Judah, Mary Tryphena said.
There were half a dozen occasions when Abel’s life hung in the balance and each time he pulled through when there seemed no chance of recovery. It was exhausting to live in hope until they gave him up, to live in hope and give him up, to live in hope. Druce eventually moved down the shore to Devil’s Cove where Martha was married to a Tuttle, abandoning her garden of dead youngsters to be spared the torture of watching Abel teeter on the brink.
For years before they married Eli held Hannah at a distance and something of the habit stayed with him afterwards, though he wished it different. Hannah’s pregnancy made him think they might find their way, that he could learn to properly love his wife through the child. But he was never able to wrangle his feelings for the boy into a manageable shape. For a time he shared Druce’s sense of impending grief. But Abel’s flirtations with death began to feel orchestrated, designed to pull them along in the youngster’s wake. He stepped a little further back from the