Cassie lived with her parents in a narrow two-storey house consisting of a single room downstairs and two bedrooms up a steep, unrailed staircase. It was built adjacent to the pub, though she might have grown up in London, for all she knew of the tavern’s interior as a child. Her mother forbade her to step inside the establishment under any circumstances and she orbited the building like a moon all her young life, never coming within a few yards of the door. “My mother was a good woman, God rest her. She was ashamed to be associated with the public house,” Cassie told him. “And with my father too, I suppose. She used to say that love was a fire to warm fools.”
They fell into a long silence then, as if this idea embarrassed them both. They finished their tea and then set out the food they had brought with them. The day continued clear and mostly warm. Bees hovered over the sealed jar of honey and the crumpled paper stained with molasses, their steady buzzing like the hum of a planet in motion around the sun.
Peyton lifted his forehead from his fist and looked across at Reilly. He was exhausted with the long days of work and the beer had gone straight to his head. His stomach felt hollow.
Reilly said, “I thought you were asleep over there, John Peyton.”
He shook his head. “I was thinking about the first year I came across for the haying with Cassie. The Red Indian,” he said. “Do you remember?”
Reilly smiled. “Thought you were going to come out of your skin when you laid eyes on him,” he said.
Peyton and Cassie had come out of the woods several hundred yards above Reilly’s tilt on their way back from the honey meadow that afternoon and followed the shoreline downriver. Reilly was on the beach with his back to the water. Peyton was about to call to him when another voice sounded across the river. On the weir near the opposite shore, a Beothuk man was kneeling and staring into the swirl of water. He had hair down his back as black as peat, his face and neck and his hands were darkened with an ochre stain the colour of blood. He was dressed in caribou leather and hefted a long staff of spruce wood or boxy fir at his shoulder. He drove the spear into the river and lifted it clear, a late-season salmon impaled and writhing at the tip so that the entire length of the staff vibrated. He stood slowly and looked across at the Irishman on the beach with an expression that was somehow proprietary. “Joe Reilly,” he shouted again.
Peyton ran ahead of Cassie to where Reilly was standing. He kept his eye on the spot where the Indian had disappeared back into the woods and stumbled several times. “What should we do?” he shouted as he ran. “What should we do?” Even standing beside Reilly he stutter-stepped and flailed towards the opposite side of the river with his arm. He stopped suddenly and looked at the Irishman. “He knew your name, Joseph.”
Reilly turned his face down to stare at his boots. There was an uncharacteristic sheepishness about him. Cassie had come up to them, and Annie Boss was making her way down from the tilt. “This used to be their river,” he said. “They come by once or twice a week and take off a fish. It doesn’t cause any harm.”
“They murdered Harry Miller.”
“It’s not my place to speak against the dead,” Reilly said, “but Harry Miller was a hard, hard man.”
“Red man not bad man,” Annie said.
Peyton said, “They killed Harry Miller.”
“Truth be told,” Reilly said, “they could kill any one of us whenever they pleased and we’d never see them.”
Annie Boss reached a hand to hold his forearm. “John Peyton,” she said. She had never touched him before. He could see how her brown eyes were flecked with gold, like small stones starred with mica. “Red man not bad,” she said again.
Reilly shook his head. “I don’t suppose your Da will appreciate the fact I let Red Indians walk off with his fish.”
Peyton looked at Cassie and then back at the hired man.
Annie Boss picked up the skirt of her apron to wipe her hands. “Bread ready,” she said. “We got bread for John Senior.”
She knelt on the sand near the spot where Reilly had been feeding the fire that morning and began digging with a trowel. Steam rose from the ground and she reached in with a bare hand to lift out a round loaf. She brushed away loose grains of sand from the snow-white crust before passing it to Cassie.
The heat scalded her fingers and she had to tip it back and forth from one hand to another. “I’m sure John Senior will appreciate your kindness,” she said and she caught Peyton’s eye and held it for a moment.
“Tell him we were asking,” Reilly said, and there were nods all around.
The afternoon had turned surprisingly humid and warm. Reilly shaded his eyes and looked off into the points of the compass. “It’s a broad day,” he said. “Could be weather behind that.”
As they rowed home to Burnt Island, Peyton sat facing Cassie in the stern, the bread resting in a fold of her skirt between her legs. To the south and west a large front of dark cloud had pushed up quickly over the horizon and the sun had passed behind it. They would be lucky to get in off the water before the rain started and there was likely lightning and wind coming as well. Peyton hauled at the oars. His skin felt tight around him, as if it was no longer large enough to accommodate everything that was going on inside it.
Cassie said, “What are you thinking about, John Peyton?”
He came back on the oars with everything he had. “Nothing,” he said.