E. Proulx - The Shipping News

Smoke came from a but at the edge of the water, more boat shed than house. Quoyle looked around, watching for the dog, noticed a skiff hauled up onshore, covered with stone-weighted canvas. Nets and floats. A bucket. The path from the building to an outhouse behind. The old fish flakes for drying cod, racks for squid. Three sheep in a handkerchief field, a pile of firewood, red star of plastic bag on the landwash.

As he approached the sheep ran from him with tinkling bells. No dog. He knocked. Silence. But knew the old cousin was inside.

He called, Mr. Quoyle, Mr. Quoyle, felt he was calling himself. And no answer.

Lifted the latch and went in. A jumble of firewood and rubbish, a stink. The dog growled. He saw it in the corner by the stove, a white dog with matted eyes. A pile of rags in the other corner stirred and the old man sat up.

Even in the dim light, even in the ruin of cadaverous age, Quoyle saw resemblances. The aunt’s unruly hair; his father’s lipless mouth; their common family eyes sunk under brows as coarse as horsehair; his brother’s stance. And for Quoyle, a view of his own monstrous chin, here a somewhat smaller bony shelf choked with white bristle.

In the man before him, in the hut, crammed with the poverty of another century, Quoyle saw what he had sprung from. For the old man was mad, the gears of his mind stripped long ago to clashing discs edged with the stubs of broken cogs. Mad with loneliness or lovelessness, or from some genetic chemical jumble, or the flooding betrayal that all hermits suffer. Loops of fishing line underfoot, the snarl trodden into compacted detritus, a churn of splinters, sand, rain, sea wet, mud, weed, bits of wool, gnawed sheep ribs, spruce needles, fish scales and bones, burst air bladders, seal offal, squid cartilage, broken glass, torn cloth, dog hair, nail parings, bark and blood.

Quoyle pulled the knotted strings from his pocket, dropped them on the floor. The man darted forward. With stubbed fingers he snatched up the strings, threw them into the stove.

“Them knots’ll never undo now! They’s fixed by fire!”

Quoyle could not shout at him, even for witch-knots in his daughters’ footsteps, even for the white dog that had terrified Bunny. Said, “You don’t need to do this.” Which meant nothing. And he left.

Back up the gullied road thinking of old Quoyle, his squalid magic of animal parts and twine. No doubt lived by moon phases, marked signs on leaves, saw bloody rain and black snow sweep in on him from the bay, believed geese spent their winters congealed in the swamps of Manitoba. Whose last pathetic defense against imagined enemies was to tie a knot in a bit of string.

Quoyle ducked into the shop. Alvin Yark in the gloom, smoothing at a curved piece of wood with a spokeshave.

“Good stem, looks like,” droned Yark. “Going along in the woods and I see that spruce tree and says to meself, there’s a nice little stem for Quoyle. Can see it’s got a nice flare to it, make a lean boat, not too lean, you know. Made a boat for Noah Day about ten years ago, stem looked pretty in the tree but too upright, you know, didn’t ‘ave enough flare. So it builds out bluff in the bows. Noah says to me, ‘If I ‘ad another boat I’d sell this one.’ “

Quoyle nodded, put his hand to his chin. Man with Hangover Listens to Boat Builder Project Variables.

“That’s what makes your different boats, you know. Each tree grows a little different so every boat you make, you know, the rake of the stem and the rake of the stern is a little different too, and that makes it so you ‘as different ‘ulls. Each one is different, like men and women, some good, some not so good.” Had heard that in a sermon and taken it for his own. He began to sing in a hoarse, low voice, “Oh the Gandy Goose , it ain’t no use.”

Quoyle there among the ribby timbers, up to his ankles in shavings. Cold. Alvin Yark wore mittens, the zipper of his jacket flashed.

Leaning against the walls were the main timbers.

“Them’s the ones I cut the week before. Don’t cut ‘em all now, you know,” he explained to Quoyle. “I does the three main ones first, the fore’ook, the midship bend, and the after’ook. Got my molds, you know, my father give ‘em to me. ‘E used to measure and cut all his timbers with ‘em, but quite a few of the sir marks is rubbed out, and some was never keyed, so you don’t know what they’s meant to be. So I does the three main ones, you know, and the counter. Then I know where I stands.”

Quoyle’s job was hoisting and lifting. His headache had strengthened. He could feel its shape and color, a gigantic Y that curved from his brain stem over his skull to each eye, in color a reddish-black like grilled meat.

Alvin Yark cut scarf joints, trimmed and smoothed until they fit together like a handclasp. The pieces lay ready. Now they fitted the stem to the keel joint. When Quoyle leaned forward the twin spears of the headache threatened to dislodge his eyes.

“Up the sternpost.” Then the deadwood blocks on top of the inboard seams of the joints.

“Put ‘er together now,” Yark said, driving the four-inch spikes, fastening the bolts. He sang. “Oh it ain’t no use, the Gandy Goose .”

“There’s your backbone. There’s the backbone of your boat. She’s scarfed now. You glance at that, somebody who knows boats, you can see the whole thing right there. But there’s nobody can tell ‘ow she’ll fit the water, handle in the swells and lops until you try ‘er out. Except poor old Uncle Les, Les Budget. Dead now. Would be about a hundred and thirty year old. He was a boat builder along this shore before I saw my first ’ammer and nail. Built beautiful skiffs and dories, butter on a ‘ot stove. Last boat he built was the best one. Liked ’is drop, Uncle Les did, yes, pour the screech down ‘is gullet by the quart. ‘E got old. Strange ‘ow we all do.” At the mention of drink Quoyle’s head throbbed.

“Wife was gone, children off to Australia. Funerals and pearly gates and coffins got to working on ‘is mind. Finally ‘e set out to make ‘is own coffin. Went down to ‘is shop with a teakettle ‘alf full of screech and commenced ‘ammering. ‘Ammering and sawing ‘alf through the night. Then ‘e crawled back to the ‘ouse to sleep it off on the kitchen floor. Me old dad went over to the shop, just as curious as ‘e could be to see the wonderful coffin. There she was, coffin with a stem and a keel, planked up and caulked nice, a little six-foot coffin painted up smart. Best thing about ‘er was the counter, set nice and low, all ready for ‘er little outboard motor.”

Quoyle laughed feebly.

Yark bolted a curved spruce piece he called the apron to the inboard of the stem. “Strengthens the stem, y’see. Support for the planks-if we ever gets to them, if I lives that long.” He crouched, measured, tapped a nail into one end of the keel, hooked the loop of a chalk line over the nail and drew the blue string to a mark on the far end, snapped. A faint mist of blue powder and the timberline was marked.

“Suppose we might ‘ave a cup of tea,” murmured Yark, first wiping his nose on the back of his hand, then leaning over the shavings to snort out sawdust and snot. Sang his bit of song. “Oh it ain’t no use, ‘cause every nut and bolt is loose.”

But Quoyle had to go along to Nutbeem’s trailer.

At the trailer Nutbeem, Dennis, Billy Pretty and the blackhaired man sat on the steps; despite the cold, were drinking beer. Quoyle gagged at the thought. There was no crane, no boat.

“You’re lookin’ dishy, Quoyle.”

“Feel it, too. What’s the situation?” He could see that at least the trailer was back on its cinder blocks, the glass raked into a crooked windrow.