Free The Wreckage by Michael Crummey Page B

underwater and stirred by ocean currents. Mercedes came into the parlour and leaned into the coffin to kiss the corpse full on the dark hole where his mouth once was. She looked over her shoulder at Wish and said, “Don’t make a whore of me.”
    He didn’t know where he was when she woke him.
    “I’ve only got a few minutes,” she said.
    “I fell asleep.” Trying to clear his head of the clinging accusation in those words.
    She was kneeling beside him and he pushed himself up to a sitting position. She touched his shoulder. “Sorry I had to run off last night.”
    He wiped at his face with both hands.
    “Hardy was at me all evening to say who I was talking to.”
    “Did you tell him?”
    “Not a word. He can stew till his bones go to mush. And I told Agnes to mind her mouth around him too.”
    “You don’t mind much, do you, Mercedes?”
    “I minds what bears minding. The rest won’t ever hurt me to ignore.”
    “I like that in you.”
    “You like it now,” she said, smiling back. “It won’t wear so well once you’re stuck with me.”
    She leaned forward to kiss him but he tilted his head away.
    “It don’t seem right,” he said. “What with your father.”
    “You didn’t mind when he was up at the church saying his prayers.”
    “That was different.”
    She wrapped the woollen shawl around her shoulders and studied him a moment. She said, “It wasn’t just me you come back for, was it.”
    “It was you,” he said.
    “But that wasn’t the only thing.”
    “What makes you say that?”
    She looked down a second. “Aggie says there must be something,” she said.
    “Your sister?”
    “She says there must be something in all that’s going on to have brought you back. And keep you here.”
    He sat up straighter against the rock. There was a tinny buzz across his ears and the taste of Clive’s alcohol came back into his mouth, the burn of it right up through his head.
    She only waited for him.
    “I was born in Renews,” he said. “But we lived over in Burin. In Lord’s Cove. We lost everything in ’29, in the tidal wave, stage and the skiff. The house.”
    “I heard of it.”
    “Mother had an uncle living on his own in Calvert and we shifted over to stay with him. But we had nothing much to bring with us and we had a hard winter of it. Father and Mother’s uncle walked into St. John’s in March for a berth on one of the sealing vessels heading out to the ice.” He looked away again.
    “You lost him,” she said.
    “He was out with a crew in slobby ice. Blowing hard and snow coming up. They were making their way back to the vessel to get in out of it, all in single file. Everyone with their heads down and running to stay afloat on the pans. Father was at the end of the line when they started back. But when they got aboard the ship.” He made a helpless little motion with his hand. “We never did get him. His body. I thought I might help spare your crowd some of that.”
    “Are you going to go overseas, Wish? Like you said?”
    He took her hand. He opened his mouth to speak and closed it again. Finally he said, “I told Hiram I was quitting him.”
    She watched him as if she expected something more to follow, but he sat quiet.
    “They’re expecting me home,” she told him.
    Before she left him she pushed the shawl off one shoulder and slipped the hand she was holding inside her blouse, beneath the white shift to her naked breast. She watched him as he touched her there, the skin soft as down and the nipple against his fingers like a knot of wood.
    She removed his hand and set it against him like some creature she was being careful not to wake. “Tomorrow,” she said. “Same time.”
    “All right.”
    He watched her go, cradling his hand in his lap. He called out, “You’re some beautiful, Mercedes,” and she looked back, her expression almost angry, he thought. “You don’t mind me saying.”
    “You’ve said it before,” she said. “To other girls.”
    “I