E. Proulx - The Shipping News

“They’re calling for snow tonight,” said Harriet and crackled her papers. “What do you hear from Agnis? She like it in St. John’s? I know Dawn likes it. She’s my cousin Arky’s youngest. Guess she’s having the time of her life. Says she’ll never come back here.”

“O.k., I guess,” said Quoyle. Shaking.

In the street he couldn’t find his car. Forced his mind back to Nutbeem’s party, remembered walking miles and miles out to Wavey’s house. Peering in the window. The car must still be at Nutbeem’s. Or had he wrecked it, driven it off the road or into the sea? He didn’t know. But walked to Harbor Cab and took a taxi to the trailer. There was no place he wanted less to see.

“So this where they ‘ad the big pardy,” said the driver. “Never know it. I seen pardies go on three, four days. Not no more, my son. Them good days is gone.” And drove away.

His station wagon was there, but with an indentation in the door. Seven or eight beer cans in the backseat. Shriveled circles of ham on the fender. The trailer sagged at one end. The yard was glassy with a strew of bottles. No sign of Nutbeem, his bicycle or, at the dock, his boat. Had he sailed away drunk in the night without saying good-bye? Must be pitching on the Atlantic with his head in a vise.

Quoyle thought of the barrel full of piss, the tiny aluminum rooms. He did not want to live in the trailer.

Beety gave him a cool look and a mug of hot tea.

“I stayed at the inn last night,” he said, “apparently.”

“Look like you slept in the puppy’s parlor. I never thought you was the type, Quoyle.”

“I didn’t think so, either.” The tea, scalding hot with two sugars and plenty of milk repairing him. “Is Dennis up?”

“Yes. In a way you could say he’s up all night. Come in at daylight with that poor Nutbeem to get some tools, and now he’s out rousting the rest of them that sank the boat. Poor Mr. Nutbeem.”

“Sank the boat? I didn’t see that. I just came from there. I didn’t see anything. There was nobody there. Nothing.”

“They’ve gone to get a crane. Dennis says they got in a wild mood last night. Seemed like a good joke to keep poor Nutbeem here by wrecking his boat. So now they’ve got to fix it.”

“My God,” said Quoyle. “And I thought Nutbeem had left in the night.”

“He didn’t look in shape to cross the road.”

“Dad. Guess what, Dad, I’m sick. And Bunny’s sick, too. And Marty.”

Sunshine stood in the door in droopy pajamas, her nose running. Gripping a sheet of paper.

“Poor baby,” said Quoyle, lifting her up and dipping a bit of toast in his tea for her.

“They’ve all got colds,” said Beety.

“I was going to take them out to the house with me this morning. You’ve had them all week, Beety. You must need a break.”

“They’re like me own,” she said. “But perhaps you’ll be in tomorrow afternoon? Stay with them all for a bit? Winnie will be here, but I’d like for an adult to be on hand, y’know. Dennis and I was going up to see his mother and father. They says ‘come up for evening service, a bite of supper.’ We’d take the kids, but they’s all sneezing and hawking.”

“Glad to stay with them, Beety. You’ve been all the help in the world. I saw Jack and Dennis together last night. They both looked in a good mood. So I gather the coolness is over.”

“That was a lot of gossip. They was never cool. Hot under the collar for a while is more like it, but it passed right off. The old gossips made something out of it.”

Sunshine felt hot under Quoyle’s hand. He looked at her drawing. At the top a shape with cactus ears and spiral tail. The legs shot down to the bottom of the page.

“It’s a monkey with his legs stretched out,” said Sunshine. Quoyle kissed the hot temple, aware of the crouching forces that would press her to draw broccoli trees with brown bark.

“Nutbeem’s trailer looked pretty sad this morning. They lifted one end off the foundation last night. I think I’d rather take the kids into a house than that trailer. If I can find anything. If you hear of anyone who’d rent for a while.”

“Did you talk to the Burkes? They’re down in Florida. A nice house. They want to sell it but they might rent now. Said they wouldn’t at first, but there’s been no buyers. It’s up on the road to Flour Sack Cove. You go past it twice a day. Grey house with a FOR SALE sign on the front. On the corner, there.”

“Black and white picket fence all around?”

“That’s it.”

He knew the house. Neat house with blue trim, high up, a sailor’s wife’s view of the harbor.

“I’ll see what I can find out on Monday. It might be just the place for us. But I can’t buy it. I’ve put a lot of money into that old house out on the point. I don’t have much left. The girls’ money’s put aside for them. All right, here’s the plan,” he said, half to Sunshine, half to Beety. “I’m going out to the green house now to pick up the rest of the things. Then I’m going up to Alvin Yark’s and help with the boat. Then I’ll look in at Nutbeem’s and see what’s happened with his boat. If they fixed it. If Dennis is ready to quit for the day, maybe we’ll pick up some pizzas and a movie to watch. How’s that, Beety? Stalk of the Lust Beast , that’s the kind of movie you like isn’t it?”

“No! Get out of it. Why don’t you bring back a comedy? That Australian one you got before was decent enough.”

He wondered if they’d made the Australian lesbian vampire murders into a movie yet.

The gravel road to Quoyle’s Point, scalloped ice in the potholes, had never seemed so miserable. The wind dead and the thick sky pressed on the sea. Calm. Flat calm. Not a flobber, Billy would say. The car engine seemed unnaturally loud. Beer cans rolled on the floor. Past the turnoff to Capsize Cove and a thread of smoke, past the glove factory, then he was at the grim house like a hat on a rock.

The abandoned silence. The stale smell. As it was the first time. As though they had never lived in it. The aunt’s voice and energy erased.

The house was heavy around him, the pressure of the past filling the rooms like odorless gas. The sea breathed in the distance. The house meant something to the aunt. Did that bind him? The coast around the house seemed beautiful to him. But the house was wrong. Had always been wrong, he thought. Dragged by human labor across miles of ice, the outcasts straining against the ropes and shouting curses at the godly mob. Winched onto the rock. Groaning. A bound prisoner straining to get free. The humming of the taut cables. That vibration passed into the house, made it seem alive. That was it, in the house he felt he was inside a tethered animal, dumb but feeling. Swallowed by the shouting past.

Up the stairs. Someone had laid lengths of knotted twine on the threshold of each room. The dirty clenches at the threshold of the room where his children had slept! Quoyle raged, slammed doors.

He thought of the smoke coming up from Capsize Cove, of what Billy Pretty had said of the old cousin living somewhere down there. Tying his bloody knots! Quoyle seized his shirts from the hangers on the back of the door, found Bunny’s boots. No extra mittens that he could see. And slammed out of the house, the lengths of knotted twine in his pocket.

He pulled up at the top of the Capsize Cove road. Would put a stop to this business. The road was beyond repair. In the frozen mud he saw dog tracks. Picked up a stick, was ready to strike a snarler away. Or to shake at a knot-tier. The deserted village came in sight, buildings stacked on one another in steep terraces. Skeletal frames, clapboards and walls gone. A blue façade, a cube of beams and uprights. Pilings supporting nothing, the rotten planks fallen into the sea.