What, they didn’t?
Nope.
Never? Sweetland said. Not once?
Jesus, I don’t know about never, Clara said. Never for a long time though. Long before I come along, anyway.
He told you all this?
After Mom died. Thought he should come clean with me, I guess.
It struck Sweetland that Clara was assuming he already knew the truth of the matter, that it wasn’t a secret she was divulging. Which likely meant Pilgrim assumed as much as well. The heat in the room was stifling. He got up from his chair and opened the door to the hallway, stood in the door frame a few minutes with his back to the kitchen. Breathing in the cool.
How’s Uncle Clar doing out there? Clara said.
He’s all right.
Sin to leave him alone out in the hall like that, don’t you think? You should put him in the porch here, so’s he’ll have some company when you comes and goes.
Clara, Sweetland said without turning to look at her. Do you know who your father is?
Not a clue, she said. But I got my money on Loveless. And then she started giggling. Fucken Loveless! she shouted and she laughed drunkenly, almost hysterical. She caught her breath long enough to say, Can you imagine? Mom and Loveless?
That’s my sister you’re talking about, Sweetland said, and Clara doubled over at the table, slapping her hand on the Formica.
Jesus loves the little children, Sweetland said. He made his way to his chair unsteadily, waited there while Clara calmed down and wiped her eyes, ran her hands through her hair.
Sorry, she said. Couldn’t help myself. She grimaced across the table and tapped at her front teeth with a fingernail. Can’t feel a damn thing, she said. And then she said, I expect you knows his name. My father’s. But I don’t care, to be honest. She tossed her head toward the man snoring beside the stove. We did all right, she said, not knowing.
Sweetland nodded down at the table. That’s grand, he said.
I don’t know how Mom managed to keep it a secret in this town, that’s what really amazes me.
It don’t seem likely, I grant you that.
Clara got up from her seat and steadied herself with a hand to the back of her chair. I should head home out of it, she said, before I makes a fool of myself.
What about Jesse? Sweetland said.
What about him?
What happened to his father?
His father got laid, Clara said. And I got knocked up. Just a one-night thing. Didn’t even know the guy’s last name.
Jesus, Clara.
You want to know the worst of it? she said. It wasn’t even a decent bit of skin.
Jesus, Clara.
She wavered on her feet, fighting to hold herself still. She covered her eyes, her mother’s gesture with a drunken weight added to it, the heel of the hand pushing her nose and lips askew. I hates the thought of leaving Jesse up there, she said. With no one even to cut the grass on his grave.
Sweetland had expected Clara to bolt for St. John’s as soon as the resettlement money came through and he didn’t know what it was kept her from leaving but grief. And he supposed that was enough to hold a body still a long time. He thought of Sandra claiming Clara had come back to the island to have him in Jesse’s life. He’d stopped himself asking Clara about that a dozen times and stopped himself again now. For fear it wasn’t true.
She staggered past him, through the porch to the outside door. You’ll be happy to know, she called, I won’t remember a word of this tomorrow. And she sang out merry Christmas as she left.
He took the tree down in the morning and brought it to the shed with Pilgrim still passed out on the daybed. He and Clara never acknowledged the conversation and Sweetland was happy enough pretending it never happened. Though he had a hard time looking at Pilgrim ever after. All the talk the man sat through at the Fisherman’s Hall about Ruthie looking after those dark-haired men in her house. About the mainland reporters saying she gave the best “interview” they’d ever had, ha ha.
Pilgrim never breathing a word about what he knew from the beginning.
The weather turned bitter on Boxing Day, with winds out of the north-northwest that made the temperature feel colder still. Sweetland left a trickle running in the sinks upstairs and down to keep the pipes from freezing. It was too frigid to leave the kitchen at night and he bunked down on the daybed, the chill waking him when the fire burned low. He stirred the coals and filled the firebox until it was humming and crawled back under the quilts.
The dog stayed indoors except when Sweetland went to carry in a turn of wood from the shed, which was just time enough for the animal to look after its business and roll in the snow and sniff at the wind with its head high in the air. It didn’t show any interest in staying out longer and spent the better part of a week in front of the stove while Sweetland dozed on the daybed or played endless games of patience or polished the soot off the glass bells of the kerosene lamps. He went out to the shed on the third day and took a ratty old herring net out of the rafters. He broke into Reet’s museum a second time and came away with a net needle and a ball of nylon and, on a whim, stepped into Duke’s barbershop to take the pile of magazines beside the chessboard, his face averted to avoid seeing whether or not the game had progressed since his last visit. He strung the herring net across the length of the kitchen and he spent hours trying to knit the thing into workable shape, walking back and forth to string the cables together. Leafed through a National Geographic to rest his back.
Every day the radio weather predicted clear skies and milder than normal temperatures along the south coast. Sweetland glancing out the window each time he heard the forecast and talking back to the announcers. “I don’t know where you fuckers is living,” he said.
There was drifting snow at the windows, the details of the outside world fading in and out like a television signal from the seventies. Time drifted and bowed in much the same fashion, the wind rattling endlessly in the chimney, the days blurring into one another. It was only the radio that kept them in order in Sweetland’s head, and when he turned it off to save the batteries he had trouble recalling the day of the week.
The cold moderated a little on New Year’s Eve and Sweetland broke open a fresh batch of homebrew, making his way through half a dozen bottles as he listened to the year wind down on the radio. He called out the ten-second countdown to the dog, standing in the kitchen in his boots and coat with the.22 under his arm. He went to the door as the last seconds ticked away and the dog followed him outside. A clear evening lit by the moon, the wind just brisk enough to add an edge to the frost. Sweetland raised the rifle toward the hills ringing the cove and fired off three rounds to welcome the New Year. It was something people on the island had been doing as long as he could remember, standing at their doors to shoot into the air at the stroke of midnight. Sweetland feeling drunkenly nostalgic and willing to waste a precious handful of shells. His shots echoed off the rock face overhead and the dog cowered by the shed doors, growling at the racket.
“It’s all right,” Sweetland said. “Just having a bit of fun.”
And he froze then, hearing the pop pop pop of a rifle in the distance, up on the mash, he thought. The dog barking madly at the night sky and Sweetland shouted at the creature to shut up. He heard it again, pop pop pop, down over the hill this time, in the cove. More shots following on their heels, and Sweetland ran around the side of the house, standing in the open there. Looking over the dark cove below, the silvered silhouette of empty buildings. He raised the rifle and fired another shot into the air, stood with the cold stock against his face as the echoes died away. Waited there a long time listening, the silence below like a tide rising to lap at his boots, at his frozen knees, at the waist of his coat.