Galore - Michael Crummey [126]
They fell into their oldest argument then, bickering back and forth. Bride’s willingness to surrender human questions to mystery so blithely was a kind of laziness, Newman thought. He didn’t understand why it appealed to a woman who despised sloth in any other guise.
—You can’t bear the notion there’s more to the world than what your little mind can swallow, Bride told him.
There was more to Bride than his little mind could swallow, that much he was willing to admit. He’d known from the outset that something of his wife would remain a stranger and his jealousy of that private corner kept his appetite for her keen. All their disagreements seemed to end with his face buried in her neck, his hands on her thighs to bring her close and closer again. Glory and mystery enough in those moments to shut him up awhile.
Levi Sellers had Judah’s fishing room torn down after Mary Tryphena died. The rotten wood was tossed to a scrap fire on the waterfront—the pallet Jude slept on, the wallboards tattooed every inch with scripture as if the words offered some insulation from the cold. All of it set adrift on the wind, along with the ferocious smell that hung in the room until it came down, the unmistakable scour of blood and salt that Judah left behind him like a fingerprint.
Abel was listless and inconsolable without Mary Tryphena’s company and his parents were at a loss to lift him out of his funk. Dr. Newman suggested that isolation and lack of activity were half the problem and Eli, who had been working one of Matthew Strapp’s inshore crews since the Trims’ sawmill shut down for lack of trees, convinced Hannah to let him take the boy out on finer days. Abel was surprisingly hardy on the water, cutting tail to identify the cod he jigged aboard, the marked fish set in store with his father’s share at season’s end. He proved himself a dab hand with a fish knife, though Hannah refused to let him stand in the cold and damp of the splitting room for long. The cod ran strong all summer which the fishermen credited to Abel’s presence in the boat and it was hard to keep him off the water then, despite Hannah’s misgivings. The Labrador crews came home with more fish than they’d seen in years and everyone on the shore was buoyant to see their fortunes turn.
The same fool’s-gold story played out across the country, the same crushing disappointment. Prices collapsed with the glut of high-grade fish dumped on the European market and most hands were paid off with less than they’d seen since the bank failures of 1894. It was a bleak lesson, to be blessed with plenty only to learn that abundance could be a tool of destitution, and all through that fall people abandoned the shore. James and Matthew Blade left for the Boston States, and after three months at work they sent money to their families for passage and a little extra to ensure their children arrived in half-decent shoes. John Blade, who knew nothing but the ocean the length of his life, left with them. Two dozen more set out for Halifax and Quebec, for Boston and New York and homesteads further west. The sudden groundswell of movement had the feel of a natural disaster, something irresistible and ruinous bearing down on them. Tryphie was looking for positions in furniture factories in Connecticut and Maryland. Even Levi Sellers’ youngsters were going off one by one to join kin who were prospering in the milk-and-honey states of America. Given the shape of things, people said, he’d have no need of an heir on the shore.
Eli and Hannah considered following after the Blades themselves before