E. Proulx - The Shipping News

“Then Petal is in a coma. She’s sleeping, Dad says, and can’t wake up.”

“Bunny, I’m going to tell you something straight. Petal is dead, she is not in a coma. She is not sleeping. Your dad said that so you and Sunshine wouldn’t be too sad. He was trying to be gentle.”

“She could be in a coma. Maybe they made a mistake like Uncle Jack.”

“Oh Bunny, I’m sorry to say it but she is really and truly dead. Like the little bird was dead because its neck was broken. Some hurts are so bad they can’t get better.”

“Was Petal’s neck broken?”

“Yes. Her neck was broken.”

“Dennis’s friend Carl got a broken neck and he’s not dead. He just has to wear a big collar.”

“His neck was only a little bit broken.”

Silence. Bunny picked at the crocheted stars of the bedspread. Wavey saw the questions would come for a long time, that the child was gauging the subtleties and degrees of existence. Downstairs the hubbub and laughing increased. Upstairs, difficult questions. Why was one spared and another lost? Why did one rise and not another? Ah, she could be years and years explaining and never clear up the mysteries. But would try.

“Wavey. Can we go see if the bird’s still there?” Tense little fingers, pulling the crocheted work.

“Yes,” she said. “We’ll go look. But remember we had a bad storm and such a small thing as a dead bird could blow away, or the waves come up and take it. Or maybe a gull or cat claim it for a lunch. Chances are we won’t find it. Come on. We’ll see if Ken will give us a ride. Then we’ll go to my house and I’ll make cocoa.”

The rock was there, but no bird. A small feather in a tuft of grass. It could have come from any bird. Bunny picked it up.

“It flew away.”

In the weeks that followed Jack’s resurrection, his slow gain on the pneumonia and voicelessness that followed, he whispered out details of his round trip to the far shore and back.

Decent kind of a day. Not many lobsters but some. On the way in the motor had run bad. Then quit. Flashlight battery dead. Fiddled with the motor in the dark for two hours and couldn’t get it running. Couple of skiffs went past, he shouted for a tow. Didn’t hear him. Later and later. Thought he’d be there all night. Flicked his lighter and looked at his watch. Five to ten. Skipper Tom meowing and hopping around like he had the itch. Then dumped a load of cat crap all over a lobster trap. Jack threw it overboard to rinse it, and that’s all she wrote buddy, he was jerked into the water. Pulled at the cord on his belt attached to his knife. Felt the knot slip, the knife strike him on the side of the head as it fell. Breathed water. Convulsed. Peed and shat and twisted. And as consciousness faded, came to believe vividly that he was in an enormous pickle jar. Waiting for someone to draw him out.

Quoyle experienced moments in all colors, uttered brilliancies, paid attention to the rich sound of waves counting stones, he laughed and wept, noticed sunsets, heard music in rain, said I do. A row of shining hubcaps on sticks appeared in the front yard of the Burkes’ house. A wedding present from the bride’s father.

For if Jack Buggit could escape from the pickle jar, if a bird with a broken neck could fly away, what else might be possible? Water may be older than light, diamonds crack in hot goat’s blood, mountaintops give off cold fire, forests appear in midocean, it may happen that a crab is caught with the shadow of a hand on its back, that the wind be imprisoned in a bit of knotted string. And it may be that love sometimes occurs without pain or misery.

E. Annie Proulx lives in Vermont and Newfoundland, but spends much of each year traveling North America. She has held NEA and Guggenheim Fellowships and residencies at Ucross Foundation in Wyoming. Her short story collection, Heart Songs and Other Stories , appeared in 1988, followed in 1992 by the novel Postcards , which won the 1993 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. The 1993 novel The Shipping News won the Chicago Tribune’s Heartland Award, the Irish Times International Fiction Prize, the National Book Award, and the Pulitzer Prize.