Galore - Michael Crummey [87]
By the time he descended the Tolt Road the streets were busy with parishioners on their way home from evening worship. Levi and his wife were at Selina’s House when he arrived, seated in the living room with Ann Hope and Virtue while Adelina served tea. He took his seat beside Virtue as if he had just returned from a quick visit to the kitchen.
—How was your father’s sermon? he asked Flossie, addressing the person least likely to ignore him.
—If you are so interested in the theological musings of Reverend Dodge, Ann Hope said, perhaps you should have attended the service.
—Fresh air was all the blessing I needed this evening. Walked out the Tolt Road as far as the Pond.
Reverend Dodge arrived after dispersing the last of his congregation and once he was settled with a cup of tea he said, We missed you at church this evening, Absalom.
—I converted to the Methodists, Absalom said. —Like everyone else.
Dodge pursed his lips to say he understood the comment was meant to be humorous.
—I expect you’ll be preaching to an empty church before long, Reverend.
—The Lord works in mysterious ways, Mr. Sellers, he said.
Levi was turning his cup in circles on its saucer during this exchange and he waited until he was sure it was done before he spoke. —I’ve heard reports from several sources this past week, he said. He used his most perplexed and innocent tone. —That Dr. Newman made a call at the house?
—He came to have a look at my knees, Absalom lied.
—They’ve been bothering you more of late? Levi had his mother’s nose and seemed always to be looking down that eagle’s beak as he spoke.
—I’m an old man, Absalom said. —Everything bothers me.
—And what miracle cure did the good doctor offer that made you want to walk out as far as Nigger Ralph’s Pond this evening?
—Levi, Ann Hope said.
Adelina set her cup in her lap and sighed. Virtue reached to take Absalom’s hand and she smiled across at him with her vacant look of affection. The old housekeeper was the excuse he gave when Levi or Flossie or Reverend Dodge raised the possibility of a retirement to the States. Virtue wasn’t well enough to leave behind or take with them, he said. And there was enough truth in it to give the claim some conviction. But everyone sitting in the parlor knew Absalom chose to stay for the sake of Mary Tryphena and for Henley, a man he’d never spoken to directly.
Even to Absalom it made little sense, cleaving the family he had for an illegitimate son he couldn’t acknowledge. But he couldn’t bring himself to leave Henley behind completely, to vanish from his son’s life as his own parents had. Thinking an opportunity would come to make things right if he stayed close and waited.
The Labrador crews began returning by mid-September and the Devines arrived home on the afternoon of the twenty-third. Patrick’s oldest boy, Amos, had grown half a foot over the summer. Mary Tryphena wouldn’t have recognized him but for the white hair and the pale pale blue of the eyes. Henley nodded warily to Bride when they reached the garden and she held the baby up for him to see. At the house the men stripped off their clothes in the yard where the lice and fleas would be boiled out of the seams. Judah stood a little off to himself and Mary Tryphena couldn’t help taking him in. He looked almost normal among the group of naked men, their torsos the same cold slug-white under the one change of clothes they’d lived in nearly half a year. The same hum of filth rising from each and everyone.
It struck her that Judah had barely changed in the years since she’d first seen him naked on the landwash, his age still a mystery to judge by sight alone. Time had been kind to him, she thought, though the notion was a poor gloss for what she actually felt and couldn’t articulate to herself. That something in the man seemed to stand apart from time altogether.
They were all in a fine mood. They’d made a good voyage of it, the fish cured to a high grade. No one was killed, there’d been no injuries beyond cuts and bruises. Amos was given his head with the rum bottle the season’s last