Galore - Michael Crummey [55]
The charity of the communities kept her fed and provided enough fuel to heat the house but no one came near the droke other than to drop potatoes or salt cod or a turn of wood in the clearing outside the door. Absalom Sellers occasionally escaped his grandparents long enough to place a keepsake on the window frame or at the door of the outhouse, and that single sign of affection was all Virtue had to sustain herself. Mr. Gallery was seen at times perched like an owl on the roof of the house and people occasionally crossed paths with him on the trails in the backcountry, though he took no note of other travelers, muttering fiercely to himself as if in argument with the universe itself. They crossed themselves or whispered the Twenty-third Psalm and walked as quickly as they could in the opposite direction.
Father Phelan spent Lent and the holy days of Easter in other parts of the country and it wasn’t until the Labrador pack ice moved past the coast and the first buds appeared on Kerrivan’s apple tree that he came back to them. Jabez Trim searched him out as soon as he heard word of his return, tracking him down at the widow’s home. The priest had a weakness for stories of hauntings and unclean spirits and ritual exorcisms, recounting them in all their arcane and nauseating detail. He was full of questions for Jabez, wanting to know what Mr. Gallery was wearing when he saw him and if his features appeared changed and what language he spoke.
—No language what can be made out, Father.
—You buried him, Jabez.
—Myself and Callum there, we dug the grave away out past Nigger Ralph’s Pond where no one would have to look on it. Never left a stick of wood or a stone for a marker.
Lizzie said, He’s out there looking for his grave is what he’s doing, wandering all over God’s creation like that.
—Hush Lizzie, Callum whispered. He considered it bad luck even to speak of the man and wished the conversation were going on in someone else’s house. Mary Tryphena was in his lap and he leaned down to hum a tune into the child’s ears, as if it might protect her from the conversation.
The priest turned to Devine’s Widow. —You’ve an opinion on this, Missus.
—He wants something of that woman, I’d say. And there’s no one else alive or dead can give it to him.
—Do you not know what to do, Father? Lizzie asked.
—The dead are more like mortal creatures than we know, he said. —Each one rises to a different bait.
The priest set out early the next morning and walked to the house in the droke. Mrs. Gallery didn’t get up from the table, calling him in from where she sat. Her husband occupied his usual chair by the fire, huddling close to the flames, as if against a draft.
—He’s forever cold, Mrs. Gallery said. —I think sometimes he might sit his arse right in the fire to try and get warm.
—There’s fire galore awaiting him elsewhere, Father Phelan said. —Does he talk to you at all?
—He talks only to himself. And I can’t pick out a word of it.
The priest sat at the table and watched the two awhile. It was difficult to say which of them looked lonelier or more forlorn. —Why do you think he’s here, Mrs. Gallery?
She slammed a hand on the table and even the ghost startled in his chair by the fire. —Isn’t it your job to tell me such things, Father?
He smiled at her. —I don’t want to tell you what you already know, is all.
—I won’t forgive him, she said. —May he burn in hell, I won’t.
The priest walked across to the figure by the fire, crouching to look up into the face. —Would you like to make confession, Mr. Gallery? he said, but the specter’s mouth only went on working at its indecipherable monologue. —It’s not forgiveness he’s after, Father Phelan said.
—Well what then?
—It seems to me, Mrs. Gallery, your husband thinks you know exactly what.
They fucked on the dirt floor beside the fireplace, Mrs. Gallery’s skirts hauled to her waist, the priest’s black cassock unbuttoned and his drawers at his feet, and the woman’s dead husband kicked at the fireplace crane to drown the feral noise of them together, the cast iron clanging like a church