Michael Crummey Read online

  PRAISE FOR GALORE

  Winner of the Commonwealth Writers’

  Prize for Best Book (Canada and the Caribbean)

  Winner of the Canadian Authors Association

  Literary Award for Fiction

  Finalist for the Governor General’s

  Literary Award for Fiction

  Finalist for the Thomas Head Raddall

  Atlantic Book Award

  Finalist for the Winterset Award

  Finalist for the Canadian Booksellers Association

  Libris Award for Fiction Book of the Year

  Finalist for the Atlantic Independent Booksellers’ Choice Award

  A Sun Media Book of the Decade

  NAMED A BEST BOOK OF 2009 IN:

  The Globe and Mail

  National Post

  Winnipeg Free Press

  Amazon.ca

  Georgia Straight

  Hour.ca (Montreal)

  “Michael Crummey’s Galore is a fabulous, fable-filled ball of yarns such as I’ve never encountered before. Tall but plausible tales, odd, eccentric but weirdly familiar characters, dialogue straight out of the mouths of outport Newfoundlanders, historicized fiction, fictionalized history—it has, as its title suggests, a superabundance of good things. This is art, but not art full of solemn, self-importance. Galore is artfully, and seriously, entertaining.”

  —Wayne Johnston, author of The Colony of Unrequited Dreams

  “Michael Crummey is a passionate storyteller. His world is intensely imagined and starkly real. Life leaps off the pages of Galore.”

  —Jane Mendelsohn, author of I Was Amelia Earhart and American Music

  “[Crummey’s] two previous novels, River Thieves and The Wreckage, were critical successes and national best sellers, and deservedly so. They were very good books and I enjoyed them immensely. Galore blows them out of the water.… A book that will live in the minds of readers long after they’ve turned the final page.… Crummey is without a doubt one of Canada’s finest writers.… The Newfoundland that exists in my imagination—the one that may not be real and if it ever was real likely doesn’t exist today—smells and tastes and sounds like Galore.”

  —Steven Galloway in The Globe and Mail

  “Magical and ribald … downright intoxicating … an epic tale sprawling across a century.”

  —The Gazette (Montreal)

  “A gorgeous and mysterious whale of a book—part multigenerational love story, part riff on the Bible, and part tall tale. Spanning several generations in a remote Newfoundland outport, this story is bursting with fantastical events, colorful characters, and delicious dialogue. An unforgettable journey.”

  —Governor General’s Literary Award jury citation

  “Rich, abundant, and satisfying as its title suggests.… Crummey forges unforgettable characters and fashions spectacular, riveting stories.… Crummey brilliantly evokes the world of this book, conjuring the claustrophobic isolation of the community—the smells and textures of the place, the harsh climate and the hardness of the people who endure it.… Galore is remarkable.”

  —Winnipeg Free Press

  “One of Newfoundland’s great storytellers.… This novel has the same lushness as One Hundred Years of Solitude, by Gabriel García Márquez.… Deep and intricately woven.”

  —Chronicle Herald (Halifax)

  “Crummey’s powers of storytelling and evocation are considerable. [Galore is] rich in folklore, folk songs, curses, spells, and superstition.”

  —Vancouver Sun

  “Newfoundland and Labrador, situated as it is on the far edge of the country, often seems like another world entirely, and that’s never been truer than in Galore: There are spells and resurrections, curses and ghosts, all of which hold very real places in the history of that province.”

  —Edmonton Journal

  “Galore is an absolute pleasure. In Crummey’s capable hands, the setting breeds magic, and the individuals that populate its rugged terrain are nuanced and real, as gentle as they are harsh, as hateful as they are loving. Each unfolding generation flows into the next in a complex narrative that feels effortless, yet is woven so tightly that the magnificent artistry of its creator cannot be ignored.”

  —The Walrus

  “Fantastic … masterful … Reading any good book a second time lets you in on some of its more craftily hidden secrets. But Crummey has tucked enough into his third novel that reading the aptly titled Galore a second time is like reading a sequel.”

  —Toronto Star

  “Pitch-perfect, boisterous.… Well told and strangely credible, despite the magic.… Galore is an endearing romp. For the language alone—and there is so much more—I loved the book.”

  —Katherine Govier in the National Post

  “Michael Crummey’s new novel, Galore, is a tour de force. Long touted as a terrific storyteller, the Newfoundland writer has exceeded himself in this two-century saga of almost mythic proportions. The book is a page-turner; fresh, surprising, and brimming with life.… A chronicle full of sheer energy and sudden surprise … [it] places Michael Crummey, in one giant leap, among the top rank of Canadian novelists.”

  —Toronto Sun

  “A work that surprises and reveals. With this new novel … [Crummey] reaffirms his position as a leading voice in the literature of the Rock.… [Galore is a] dense, intricate, and absorbing tale, rich in the nuances of human relationships.”

  —Quill & Quire

  ALSO BY MICHAEL CRUMMEY

  River Thieves

  Copyright © 2009 Michael Crummey Ink

  Other Press edition 2010

  Production editor: Yvonne E. Cárdenas

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from Other Press LLC, except in the case of brief quotations in reviews for inclusion in a magazine, newspaper, or broadcast. For information write to Other Press LLC, 2 Park Avenue, 24th Floor, New York, NY 10016.

  Or visit our Web site: www.otherpress.com

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:

  Crummey, Michael, 1965–

  Galore / by Michael Crummey. — Other Press ed.

  p. cm.

  eISBN: 978-1-59051-435-1 1. Rural families—Newfoundland and Labrador—Fiction. 2. Newfoundland and Labrador—Fiction. 3. Domestic fiction. I. Title.

  PR9199.3.C717G36 2011

  813′.54—dc22 2010040763

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE:

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  v3.1

  for Arielle, Robin and Ben

  The invincible power that has moved the world

  is unrequited, not happy, love.

  GABRIEL GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ

  I will bring my people again from the depths of the sea.

  PSALMS

  Contents

  Cover

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Part One

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Part Two

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Acknowledgments

  { PART ONE }

  { 1 }

  HE ENDED HIS TIME ON THE SHORE ina makeshift asylum cell, shut away with the profligate stink of fish that clung to
him all his days. The Great White. St. Jude of the Lost Cause. Sea Orphan. He seemed more or less content there, gnawing at the walls with a nail. Mary Tryphena Devine brought him bread and dried capelin that he left to gather bluebottles and mold on the floor.

  —If you aren’t going to eat, she said, at least have the decency to die.

  Mary Tryphena was a child when she first laid eyes on the man, a lifetime past. End of April and the ice just gone from the bay. Most of the shore’s meager population—the Irish and West Country English and the bushborns of uncertain provenance—were camped on the gray sand, waiting to butcher a whale that had beached itself in the shallows on the feast day of St. Mark. This during a time of scarcity when the ocean was barren and gardens went to rot in the relentless rain and each winter threatened to bury them all. They weren’t whalers and no one knew how to go about killing the Leviathan, but there was something in the humpback’s unexpected offering that prevented the starving men from hacking away while the fish still breathed. As if that would be a desecration of the gift.

  They’d scaled the whale’s back to drive a stake with a maul, hoping to strike some vital organ, and managed to set it bleeding steadily. They saw nothing for it then but to wait for God to do His work and they sat with their splitting knives and fish prongs, with their dip nets and axes and saws and barrels. The wind was razor sharp and Mary Tryphena lost all feeling in her hands and feet and her little arse went dunch on the sand while the whale expired in imperceptible increments. Jabez Trim waded out at intervals to prod at the fat saucer of an eye and report back on God’s progress.

  Halfway along the beach King-me Sellers was carrying on a tournament of draughts with his grandson. He’d hobbled down from his store to make a claim to the animal as it had gone aground below Spurriers’ premises. The fishermen argued that the beach in question wasn’t built over and according to tradition was public property, which meant the whale was salvage, the same as if a wreck had washed ashore. King-me swore he’d have the whale’s liver and eight puncheons of oil or the lot of them would stand before the court he ruled as magistrate.

  Once terms were agreed upon Sellers had his grandson bring down his scarred wooden checkerboard and they set out flat stones for the pieces gone missing through the years. His grandson was the only person willing to sit through a game with Sellers, who was known to change the rules to suit himself and was not above cheating outright to win. He owned the board, he told the complainers, and in his mind that meant he owned the rules that governed it as well. His periodic cries of King me! were the only human sound on the landwash as they waited.

  Mary Tryphena was asleep when the men finally rushed the shallows, her father shouting for her to fetch Devine’s Widow. She left the beach as she was told, walking the waterside pathway through Paradise Deep and up the incline of the Tolt Road. She crossed the headland that rose between the two coves and carried on into the Gut where her grandmother had delivered Mary Tryphena’s brother that morning. The landwash was red with blood by the time she and the old woman made their way back, a scum of grease on the harbor’s surface. The heart and liver already carted up to King-me’s Rooms on fish barrows, two men harvesting chunks of baleen from the creature’s jaw with axes, the mouth so massive they could almost stand upright inside it. Women and children floated barrels in the shallows to catch the ragged squares of blubber thrown down to them. Mary Tryphena’s grandmother knotted her skirts above the knee before wading grimly into the water.

  The ugly work went on through the day. Black fires were burning on the beach to render the blubber to oil, and the stench stoppered the harbor, as if they were laboring in a low-ceilinged warehouse. The white underbelly was exposed where the carcass keeled to one side, the stomach’s membrane floating free in the shallows. The Toucher triplets were poking idly at the massive gut with splitting knives and prongs, dirty seawater pouring from the gash they opened, a crest of blood, a school of undigested capelin and herring, and then the head appeared, the boys screaming and falling away at the sight. It was a human head, the hair bleached white. One pale arm flopped through the ragged incision and dangled into the water.

  For a time no one moved or spoke, watching as if they expected the man to stand and walk ashore of his own accord. Devine’s Widow waded over finally to finish the job, the body slipping into the water as she cut it free. The Catholics crossed themselves in concert and Jabez Trim said, Naked came I from my mother’s womb.

  The body was dragged out of the water by Devine’s Widow and Mary Tryphena’s father. No one else would touch it though every soul on the beach crowded around to look. A young man’s face but the strangeness of the details made it impossible to guess his age. White eyebrows and lashes, a patch of salt-white hair at the crotch. Even the lips were colorless, nipples so pale they were nearly invisible on the chest. Mary Tryphena hugged her father’s thigh and stared, Callum holding her shoulder to stop her moving any closer.

  King-me Sellers prodded at the corpse with the tip of his walking stick. He looked at Devine’s Widow and then turned to take in each person standing about him. —This is her doing, he said. —She got the very devil in her, called this creature into our harbor for God knows what end.

  —Conjured it you mean? James Woundy said.

  It was so long since King-me accused Devine’s Widow of such things that some in the crowd were inclined to take him seriously. He might have convinced others if he’d managed to leave off mentioning his livestock. —You know what she done to my cow, he said, and to every cow birthed of her since.

  It was an old joke on the shore and there was already a dismissive tremor in the gathering when Devine’s Widow leaned over the body, flicking at the shrunken penis with the tip of her knife. —If this was my doing, she said, I’d have given the poor soul more to work with than that.

  King-me pushed his way past the laughter of the bystanders, saying he’d have nothing more to do with the devilment. But no one followed after him. They stood awhile discussing the strange event, a fisherman washed overboard in a storm or a suicide made strange by too many months at sea, idle speculation that didn’t begin to address the man’s appearance or his grave in the whale’s belly. They came finally to the consensus that life was a mystery and a wonder beyond human understanding, a conclusion they were comfortable with though there was little comfort in the thought. The unfortunate soul was owed a Christian burial and there was the rest of the day’s work to get on with.

  There was no church on the shore. An itinerant Dominican friar named Phelan said Mass when he passed through on his endless ecclesiastical rounds. And Jabez Trim held a weekly Protestant service at one of Sellers’ stores that was attended by both sides of the house when Father Phelan was away on his wanders. Trim had no credentials other than the ability to read and an incomplete copy of the Bible but every soul on the shore crowded the storeroom to soak awhile in the scripture’s balm. An hour’s reprieve from the salt and drudge of their lives for myrrh and aloe and hyssop, for pomegranates and green figs and grapes, cassia and cedar beams and swords forged in silver. Jabez married Protestant couples, he baptized their children and buried their dead, and he agreed to say a few words over the body before it was set in the ground.

  Mary Tryphena’s father lifted the corpse by the armpits while James Woundy took the legs and the sorry little funeral train began its slow march up off the landwash. There were three stone steps at the head of the beach, the dead man’s torso folding awkwardly on itself as they negotiated the rise, and a foul rainbow sprayed from the bowels. James Woundy jumped away from the mess, dropping the body against the rocks. —Jesus, jesus, jesus, he said, his face gone nearly as white as the corpse. Callum tried to talk him into grabbing hold again but he refused. —If he’s alive enough to shit, James Woundy said, he’s alive enough to walk.

  Mary Tryphena stood watching the pale, pale figure as the argument went on. A man delivered from the whale’s belly and lying dead in his own filth on the stones. Entrance
and exit. Which should have been the end of the story but somehow was not. Froth bubbled from the mouth and when the corpse began coughing all but the widow and Mary Tryphena scattered up off the beach, running for their homes like the hounds of hell were at their heels.

  Devine’s Widow turned the stranger by the shoulder, thumping his back to bring up seawater and blood and seven tiny fish, one after the last, fry the size of spanny-tickles Mary Tryphena caught in the shallows at Nigger Ralph’s Pond. Selina Sellers came down to the landwash while they stood over him there, her grandson dragging a handbar in her wake. Selina was a tiny slip of a woman and could have passed for the boy’s sister in stature, but there was nothing childlike in her bearing. —You can’t have that one in your house, Selina told them. —Not with a newborn baby still drawing his first breaths in the world.

  Devine’s Widow nodded. —We’ll set him out in the Rooms, is what we’ll do.

  —The cold will kill him for certain, Selina said.

  They all stared at the stranger as they spoke, not willing to look at one another. His body racked up with tremors and convulsions.

  —There’s only the one place for him, Selina said.

  —I don’t think Master Sellers would be so keen.

  —You let me worry about Master Sellers.

  They hauled the stranger onto the fish barrow and started up the path toward Selina’s House on the Gaze. By the time they angled the barrow through the front door everyone in the harbor was watching from a safe distance. Someone sent word to King-me at the store and he was running after them, shouting to keep the foul creature out of his house. He’d sworn that Devine’s Widow would never set foot in the building and no one knew if he was referring to the old woman or to the stark white figure she was carting inside. Selina reached back to bolt the door behind them and they continued on into the house.