River Thieves by Michael Crummey

line this season?”
    Peyton looked across at the Irishman. “He haven’t said anything to me different from other years.”
    Reilly made a face. “Well I’m not meant to be saying anything about it maybe. But he’s not trapping, he tells me. You’re to have a go at it alone.”
    “Since when did he say this?” He tried to keep the smile from his mouth, in case Reilly was simply making a joke.
    “When he come over in June, checking the cure. I tried to talk him free of it is the truth. Sure you haven’t been but JohnSenior’s kedger these years, you’ll be getting yourself lost back there.”
    “Shut up Reilly.”
    “What are you, twenty-six years old now? And haven’t skinned but a buck-toothed rat without your Da to hold your hand.” He was grinning at Peyton with just the tip of his tongue showing between his lips.
    “Shut up,” Peyton said again. But he was too pleased at the thought of running his own line to feel honestly angry. “We’ll see who sets the most hats on the heads in London this winter,” he said.
    “The little bedlamer with his own line,” Reilly had said then, shaking his head. “Next thing you’ll want to be getting married.”
    Peyton carried a halo of frost into the Irishman’s tilt as he stepped inside, as if his frozen clothes were emanating their own cold light after hours in the outdoors. “Get that coat off you now,” Reilly said. “Close the door behind you.” Peyton was propped near the fire with a glass of rum where he presented his frustrations with the scarce take of beaver and explained his decision to move his line closer to Reilly’s own. Through the conversation the Irishman helped Annie prepare the food, nodding and asking questions and throwing out good-natured insults at every opportunity. Reilly’s constant teasing was a kind of flattery, as ritualized and intimate in its way as dancing. Unlike John Senior’s rough silence, which Peyton couldn’t help thinking of as an implicit condemnation of his abilities, his aptitude, his judgement. He felt vaguely guilty about his affection for Reilly, as if he was being unfaithful to his father somehow.
    They sat to a huge meal of salt pork and potatoes and afterwards the two men filled their glasses and their pipes while Annie Boss cleared away the dishes. Annie and Joseph had been married eight years, but she was still known to everyone on the shore as Annie Boss. She spoke over her shoulder with Peyton as she worked and bantered with her husband in a mang of English and Mi’kmaq and Gaelic.
    Annie’s belly, which barely showed when Peyton last saw her during the haying, was now quite obviously pregnant. “She’s improving, that one,” he said to Reilly.
    Annie turned with both hands on her stomach. She said the child was no time too soon, her mother was starting to have doubts about her choice in a husband.
    Reilly smiled at her, his ears rising half an inch on the sides of his head.
    Later that evening, after Annie Boss had climbed into a bunk at the back of the tilt and the men had coddled several more glasses of rum, Peyton said, “Can I ask you a question, Joseph.”
    “Suit yourself.”
    Peyton paused a moment, rolling his glass between the flat of his palms. “What did you,” he said and then stopped. He took a sip of rum. “How did you ask Annie Boss to marry you?”
    The Irishman laughed. “Well we’ve all wondered what’s been holding you up, John Peyton. Have your sights set on some lass finally, is it?”
    Peyton stared into his glass. “Never mind,” he said.
    “There’s not many on the shore to choose from. I bet I could strike the name before the third guess.”
    “Never mind,” Peyton said again, angrily this time.
    “Don’t mind my guff now,” Reilly said. He was surprised by Peyton’s seriousness. He leaned forward on his thighs. “It was Annie’s doing more than mine is the truth of it. If it had been left me, it might never have come to pass. She sent me off to a