Galore - Michael Crummey [148]
—She’s twice your age, Hannah said.
—I knows how old she is.
—And you’re in love are you?
—Maybe I am.
—Why let that ruin the rest of your life?
He got up to bring his plate to the pantry and when he came back into the kitchen Hannah had wiped her face dry. She pushed away from the table and stood there holding her plate. —Don’t you go overseas, Abel.
—Why would I do that? he said, startled by the sudden shift.
—Promise me you won’t.
—All right, he said.
She shook her head, fighting back the tears again, as if he’d denied her.
He left the house after supper without telling his mother where he was going. Clear and still over the Tolt and in the moonlight he could see the roof of Laz Devine’s house had foundered, all the windows scavenged from Mary Tryphena’s place. He found his father and Coaker in the house across the garden talking in the flicker of light from a damper left open on the stove. They took Abel’s arrival as a signal to light a lamp and Eli set about making tea, asking after Dr. Newman and Azariah Trim and a handful of others without ever mentioning the women Abel lived with at Selina’s House. They talked then about the war and about Port Union, picking up the conversation Abel had interrupted.
Coaker excused himself to go to bed an hour later and they could hear him settling into bed in Abel’s old room at the back of the house. It was a private sound that embarrassed them both and Eli cleared his throat against the noise. —How’s Esther getting along? he asked.
—She haven’t changed much since the last you saw her.
Eli leaned forward in his chair to stare at his folded hands. —Your mother, he said. —She says you and Esther. She thinks it might be good if you moved out of Selina’s House.
Abel watched the flicker of firelight on the wall above the stove, a lump of hot wax in his throat. Eli asked if he’d considered volunteering for the regiment now he was eighteen and Abel turned his head so quickly that his father held up a hand. —Uncle Will could make arrangements to see you get overseas right away.
Abel stretched his legs, kicking one heel off the toe of the other boot, trying to dislodge the ache at the back of his throat. He motioned toward the ceiling with his head. —Is this his idea?
—He asked what I thought of it.
Abel knocked his heel against his toe a while longer.
—You don’t have to decide anything this minute, Eli told him.
Abel nodded. —Did you ever know Judah Devine? he said.
Eli sat back in his chair. —When I was a youngster. I hardly remember a thing about him.
—Esther says he was born out of the belly of a whale. And stunk like a dead fish.
—Esther, Eli said and sighed. —You know Esther isn’t a well woman, Abel.
—I should get home, he said.
Abel started across the garden and halfway to Mary Tryphena’s he stopped, turning back toward the house. Just the one lamp in the kitchen and he stood a long time in the cold, watching. He saw the lamp lift from the table finally, the brief glow of it at the turn of the stairs on the second floor as his father made his way to bed.
Esther spoke to him out of the darkness of the parlor when he came into Selina’s House. —Where have you been this evening, Abel?
—Over to see father, he said and he paused a moment. —They want me to join up.
—Who does?
—Father, he said. He couldn’t bring himself to say Uncle Will. —And Mr. Coaker.
There was only silence in the parlor’s black. Hannah had scrubbed the floors and washed the curtains and aired out the furniture months ago but Abel could still smell the goat. He thought Esther might have fallen asleep in there. He said, How did Judah Devine find his way into the belly of that whale?
—How should I know?
Abel leaned against the door jamb. —That’s the best you can do, is it?
—Maybe he was a fisherman washed overboard in a storm, she said. —Or a sailor drove mad by being too long at sea.
—That still don’t say how he wound up swallowed by a whale.
—What does it matter, Abel?
She was drunk and he found his impatience welling up again. —You could care