Galore - Michael Crummey [73]
Newman refused all invitations to attend church and let it be known in an offhand manner that he was an atheist. Some thought the assertion would be the end of his appointment, but Reverend Dodge and the Catholic priest let the matter be. Dodge had served the parish nearly half a century, Father Reddigan more than a decade, and neither was willing to see the shore stripped of its sole medical professional. Only the Methodist evangelist took issue with the scandalous claim, pushing handwritten copies of his sermons on the doctor. He’d converted half the local Protestants and a handful of Romans in his two years in Paradise Deep and he considered the atheist doctor a personal challenge. —Since you’re too busy to join us on Sundays, he said, pointing to the sheaf of papers he’d laid on Newman’s desk. Reverend Violet sported a tidy navy-man’s beard, black strings of hair combed over the bald pate of his head. There was an agitated optimism about him that kept his hands in motion as he spoke. Newman glanced down at the sermons, the topmost epistle titled Sleep as the Urging of the Devil. —I prefer sleep to reading, he said, pushing the pile back across the desk.
He spent what little free time he had in the open air. Half a dozen government roads ran miles into the backcountry beyond Nigger Ralph’s Pond, built by destitute fishermen forced to work for their dole during the worst years of the century. They were intended to open up the island’s interior where fields of arable land were simply waiting to be plowed and planted, according to Shambler and his like. That mythic Arcadia never materialized and the roads petered out among the same dense stands of spruce and low scrub and blackwater marshes that covered the entire island. The gravel thoroughfares were in constant use by horse and cart hauling wood or bog turf, by berry pickers and trout fishermen and youngsters in search of freshwater swimming holes. Newman walked them all with a fishing rod or rifle in the early mornings and on Sundays when his surgery was closed. Everyone he crossed paths with was civil but a little distant, he thought. They warned him to carry bread in his pockets to ward off the Little Ones who might lead him astray when he tramped through the woods and offered tips on the best rivers for trout and then wished him a good day. They were a people at their best with visitors, he was learning. They would turn their own children from their beds to give a night’s sleep to a stranger. But Newman occupied an odd middle ground, an outsider they were beholden to, someone who might very well overstay his welcome, and they were slightly wary of him. He took what kindness came his way and was grateful otherwise to be left alone.
While the weather held through the fall Newman occasionally traveled by foot to the smaller coves and inlets within the district or was ferried along the shore in a bully boat owned by Obediah and Azariah Trim. In his first week of practice he’d removed an egg-shaped fibroid below Obediah’s Adam’s apple, slipping it through an incision that could be hidden afterwards behind a shirt collar. The trips were intended as payment for that procedure but the Trims carried on with the service for years as a Christian duty. They were among Reverend Violet’s first converts on the shore and like all Methodists they were teetotalers who never took the Lord’s name in vain regardless of provocation. They quoted the Gospels endlessly and let the atheist doctor know they were praying he be brought to Jesus. Once the snow settled in they carted Newman to medical emergencies by dogsled, harnessing their motley assortment of animals at a moment’s notice.
The brothers were chalk and cheese to look at—Azariah a squat tree trunk of a man, his face as livid and sinewy as a plate of salt beef, Obediah nearly six foot, a dimpled chin like the cheeks of a baby’s arse—but they were twinned