“You going to answer that?” Pilgrim asked.
“Trying to think who it might be. No one I wants to speak to, I’m guessing.”
“I’d say that’s Clara, calling us down to our dinner,” Pilgrim said, and he rushed up from the table to look for the corner of the cupboard. He waved his hand until he knocked the phone. “Hello,” he said with his back to the room. “No,” he said. “Yes, hang on. No, sir, no, he’s right here.” He held out the phone with a hand over the mouthpiece. “It’s that one from the government,” Pilgrim said. “The fellow was out here for the last town meeting.”
“Well, tell him I’m not here.”
“I just said you was.”
“Tell him you made a mistake, you’re blind for chrissakes.”
Pilgrim shook the phone in the direction of Sweetland’s voice. “Answer the goddamn phone, Moses.”
“Jesus,” Sweetland whispered, and he got up to grab it from Pilgrim’s hand.
“Mr. Sweetland,” the government man said.
“This is he,” Sweetland said. This is he. He must have heard someone on television use that phrase. And it sounded exactly right for the false prick on the other end.
“I hope you’re keeping well.”
“I imagine you wishes I was dead, like everyone else around here.”
There was a pause on the other end and Sweetland looked down at the slack length of cord that hung to the floor and pooled there in a beige spiral. It was the only phone in the house, a rotary dial that had been installed when telephone service first reached the island in the early seventies. His mother used to haul the twelve feet of cord all the way across the hall to the living room so she could talk and watch the afternoon soaps at the same time. Sweetland forced to duck under it on his way in or out of the house. Used so little now he’d never thought to replace it.
“Mr. Sweetland,” the government man said, “I’ve heard the news about Queenie Coffin. I just wanted to say I’m sorry for the loss.”
He turned to look at Pilgrim. “So this is a sympathy call, is it?”
“I’ve also been in touch with Mr. Loveless and he has committed to signing on to the package, you’re aware of this I presume.”
“News to me.”
Sweetland could almost hear the man roll his eyes.
“I thought I should check in with you,” the government man said finally, “to see if there have been any developments since we talked last.”
Other than someone mutilating the rabbits on his line and nailing a severed head to his stage door. Other than a drawerful of anonymous threats. Other than Queenie Coffin days in the ground and Hayward packed off to the mainland. Other than fucken Loveless.
“No developments,” he said, “no.” There was a short intake of breath on the line, and Sweetland could feel the man gearing up a prepared speech. “Good of you to call, all the same.”
“Mr. Sweetland.”
“Bye now.” And he set the phone back in its cradle. He glanced across at Pilgrim, who kept his face turned away. “That was Clara, was it?” he said. “Calling you down to your dinner?”
“Now, Moses.”
“You knew he was going to call here today, didn’t you.”
Pilgrim turned his head left and right. “Clara and Reet have been talking to him.”
“And the women sent you up here to make sure he got through.” Pilgrim looked naked and adrift in his seat, not able to set his blind eyes anywhere to anchor himself.
“You’re a gutless wonder, you are.”
“Jesus Christ, Mose,” Pilgrim said. He slapped a hand against his thigh. “You got to stop being so goddamn bullheaded about this.”
“Why?” Sweetland said. “Tell me why it is I got to stop?”
Pilgrim made a motion with his arms that seemed almost involuntary, a spasm of frustration and spite. He uncrossed his legs and crossed them the other way. He said, “How much longer is it you expects to be around, Moses?”
“Fuck,” Sweetland said. “How should I know?”
“You’re an old man,” Pilgrim said. “We’re all old men. And what’s Jesse going to have here once we goes?”
“I don’t know. He’ll have the Reverend.”
“The Reverend is older than we are, for Jesus sake.”
Sweetland glanced out the window and back.
“Clara’s going to be left alone with the youngster is what’s going to happen. She’ve got a chance to go somewhere with a bit of money to see the boy looked after. And you’re going to fuck it up.”
Sweetland could hear the man breathing, his head turned away in a snit. He looked over at Jesse sitting oblivious, bobbing his head to his music. Sweetland went across the room to lean over him, took the headphones out of the boy’s ears. Jesse grabbed at them, automatically agitated, and Sweetland had to hold his wrists to keep him still. “Jesse,” he said, “your Poppy thinks we should all leave Sweetland like Hayward Coffin. Pack everything up and go. What do you think about that?”
“Leave the boy alone, Mose.”
“You want to go live in St. John’s?”
Jesse’s face went still, his dark eyes darting.
“Hey? We’ll burn the whole place down and leave, will we?”
Pilgrim was on his feet and coming toward them, both hands aloft like a man about to cast a stagey magic spell. “Jesse,” he said.
Sweetland let go of his wrists and Jesse pressed them against his ears, rocking and moaning where he sat. Sweetland took a step back, his own hands shaking. Feeling ashamed of himself, and vindicated, and murderous. He said, “We’ll get on the ferry tomorrow and you’ll never see anyone you knows from here ever again.”
Pilgrim bumped into him from behind and he pushed Sweetland away. Crouched over the wailing youngster. “Jesse,” he said, “it’s all right now, Jesse. Moses is just playing around.”
But there was no pulling the boy out of his spiral. Pilgrim phoned down to Clara and by the time she came running Jesse was on the floor, knocking his forehead rhythmically against the boards. She exchanged words with Sweetland, the two shouting back and forth, Jesse yelling louder still to drown out the noise. Eventually they had to send for the Reverend, who cleared everyone out of the kitchen and spent the better part of an hour trying to calm the youngster. A small crowd had gathered outside and they watched Jesse walk down to his house, leaning on the Reverend’s arm like a septuagenarian, exhausted and disoriented.
“I hope you’re happy,” Clara said to Sweetland as she followed her son along the path. Her voice viciously calm.
Sweetland spent the rest of the afternoon splitting wood. Stunned, and sick of himself, and hoping he might disappear awhile in the mechanical strain of work, of occupation. He stood the junks on the chopping block, cleaving the dry birch and spruce with a clipped thock, like the sound of some massive timepiece ticking steadily. He leaned on the axe to catch his breath and it came flooding back, the look on Jesse’s face, Sweetland with a head of steam and barrelling down on the youngster. He reared back with the axe suddenly and flung it over the roof of the shed.
He heard footsteps along the side of the house behind him then and he turned to stacking the freshly split junks. Wouldn’t look up from the work even after his visitor stopped behind him.
“You want a hand with that,” the Reverend asked.
Sweetland set the wood on the pile along the side of the shed. Brushed the bark from his coat. “You idn’t dressed for this kind of work,” he said. Sweetland carried on as the Reverend stood watching in his black pants and jacket. “How’s the young one now?”
“He was asleep when I left him.”
“He’s all right, then.”
“I wouldn’t mind hearing what made him act out like that.”