It was steeply downhill into the cove from there, and he stumbled all the way to the back of his property, his body alight with rivets and hinges and underground cables of pain as he lurched and righted himself and lurched opposite. He leaned against the shed when he reached it, catching his breath. The door of his house invisible in the dark and the blowing snow, though he knew it was only twenty steps distant. Sweetland not quite relieved to have made it back alive.
He woke on the daybed, though he had no memory of coming into the house or lying down. He was still wearing his coat and his single boot. His hands felt miles away and they seemed to expand and shrink with his pulse. He was dying for a drink of water but the sink was too far off to get to and he stared helplessly across the room. He couldn’t guess what time of day it was, or what day of the week. It was bright outside and the sunlight made his head ache.
Someone walked by the kitchen window as he lay there and he was too feverish to be startled or to wonder who it might be. There was a knock at the door and he took his time trying to fashion a response to it. “Come in,” he said finally. The knock came again and Sweetland worked himself onto an elbow, to give some heft to his voice. “Door’s open,” he called.
The knocking continued and he got to his feet, reaching with his good arm for chairs and door jambs to stay upright as he crossed the kitchen to the porch. He paused in front of Uncle Clar, out of breath, sipping at the air against the welling ache in his chest. Saw the outline of himself superimposed on the ancient picture there, a ghostly image hovering in the background, as if he was a second exposure on the same strip of film. A figure bled of detail and substance, so that all the world showed through him. Moses Sweetland. This is he.
The knock startled him and he turned to the door, swung it wide and lifted the latch on the storm door. His visitor standing there in a tweed jacket and tie, tan pants. Hands folded at the waist holding the inevitable briefcase. Sweetland couldn’t make out the man’s face through his one good eye, the features lost in a glare of sunlight.
“Mr. Sweetland,” a voice said from the place where the mouth should have been.
He paused a moment, waiting for the face to resolve out of the shine. He lifted a hand to shade his eyes.
“Do you mind if I come in,” the government man said.
Sweetland stood back to let the man go by, followed him into the kitchen. There was something he was meant to do for visitors and he groped through the murk, trying to think of it. The government man took a seat beside the window and placed the briefcase flat on the table in front of him, his hands folded on top. Sweetland went toward the stove and turned back slowly. “I could boil the kettle,” he said and stopped short, staring at the man.
“No tea for me,” the government man said, his face still missing behind a sourceless swarm of light, the voice rising out of that mouthless glitter.
“All right.”
“Maybe you should sit down, Mr. Sweetland.”
“All right.”
“Before I start,” he said, “I wanted to offer my condolences. For the loss of Jesse.”
Sweetland eased himself into a chair without looking directly at the figure across the table, stung by the sound of the boy’s name.
“And the awful business with the dog,” the government man said, “I’m very sorry about that.”
“This is a sympathy call, is it?”
The government man opened the briefcase and took out a sheaf of papers. “No,” he said. “Strictly professional. Some paperwork to get through.”
Sweetland swung the enormous weight of his head around to stare directly at the government man. Squinting to try and push past the blur for some hint of the man’s eyes or nose or mouth. Anything human at all. “Can you get me out of here?” he said. “Is that what you come for?”
The government man lifted his arms. “I’m afraid that ship has sailed,” he said. “This is simply a routine follow-up. I’ll be out of your hair in no time.”
Sweetland nodded dumbly.
“On a scale of one to five,” he said, holding a pen over a virgin form, “with one being completely satisfied and five being completely dissatisfied, how would you rate your living circumstances at the moment?”
Sweetland didn’t answer. There was something in the whole set-up that was wrong and he could almost lay his finger on it.
“Would I be right in thinking a five for this, Mr. Sweetland?” He made a mark on the sheet in front of him. “We’ll say five. On a scale of one to five, one being satisfactory and five being certifiable, how would you rate your current mental status?”
Sweetland shook his head, still trying to get his hands around it, the something he knew was wrong and could almost name.
“A five, then,” the government man said, and he made another mark on the paper.
Sweetland looked out toward the porch. “You come in the wrong door,” he said.
“I’m sorry?”
“Last time you was here, you come to the front.”
“We’re splitting hairs now, Mr. Sweetland.”
“How’d you know about the dog?”
“On a scale of one to five,” the faceless voice said, the pen poised again.
“Who was it told you what happened to the dog?”
The government man set his hands on the folder in front of him. “No one told me,” he said.
“No one told you,” Sweetland whispered. He glanced one more time at the suit across the table, at the face missing behind a shapeless welter of light. He pushed himself out of his chair to reach for the man, but the dark folded in on him like a black comber rolling over and it swallowed the room whole.
The world was askew when he came to himself. He recognized the room, the kitchen of the old house, but couldn’t place the pieces where they belonged. All the angles wrong.
He shifted slightly and everything complained against the motion, shoulder and ribs, hips and knees, his back. He was flat out on the floor, his face against the bare wood. He tried to lift his head, but had to settle for flicking his eyes around the room. Daybed, stove. Silver legs of the chairs. Black boots facing him under the table. Someone sitting beside the window. Rough woollen trousers dripping wet. A pool gathering on the floor beneath the feet, the raw smell of salt water in the room.
Sweetland closed his eyes again. “Is Jesse with you?” he said and he waited a long time for a reply before he glanced around again. Still just the one pair of boots under the table. He felt too vulnerable suddenly to stay where he was and he forced himself to his knees, hefted his fractured weight into the chair he’d been sitting in before he passed out. Looked across at his brother in the chair opposite. The young face so pale it glowed like the underside of sea ice. The kelpy hair streaming, his dead eyes glassy and expressionless.
Sweetland was shaking helplessly again, the tremors stirring the scattered territories of his body that were occupied by pain. “I thought Jesse might be with you,” he said, clenching to stop his teeth chattering long enough to speak. “Being as you two was friends.”
He waited then, expecting something from the figure across the table. “Hollis,” he said, to see if the name might wake the thing. But it sat there in the same silence, without so much as glancing his way. He had never felt so cold, not in all his life, not when he was being drowned in the ocean’s arctic currents, not when he was soaked to the bone and climbing the lighthouse ladder in the knifing wind. Sweetland bent double over his legs, holding his chest against the fever’s palsy as it shook through him. It was a cold he thought would never end. He looked over at his brother again. “You must be some sick of this fucken place by now,” he said.