The Shipping News

by Annie Proulx

  “What is your work anyway, Aunt? I’m embarrassed to say I don’t know. I mean, I never thought to ask.” Had blundered into the unlikely journey knowing nothing, breathing grief like a sour gas. Hoped for oxygen soon.

  “Understandable under the circumstances,” said the aunt. “Upholstery.” Showed her yellow, callused fingers. “I had the tools and fabric crated up and shipped. Should be here next week. You know, we ought to make a list while we’re right here of the work to be done on this place. Needs a new roof, chimney repair. Have you got any paper?” She knew he had a boxful.

  “Back in the car. I’ll go back and get my notebook. Come on, Bunny, sit here. You can keep my place warm.”

  “See if you can find those crackers on the front seat. I think Bunny would perk up if she had a cracker.” The child scowled. There’s a sweet expression, thought the aunt. Felt the wind hard off the bay. A roll of cloud on the edge of the sea and the black and white waves like a grim tweed.

  “Let’s see,” said the aunt. She had thrown new wood on the fire and the flames sprang about under the gusting wind. “Window glass, insulation, tear out the walls, new wallboard, a new door, a storm door, repair the chimneys, stovepipe, new waterline from the spring. Can these children abide an outhouse?” Quoyle hated the thought of their small bottoms clapped onto the roaring seat of a two-holer. Nor did he like the idea for his own hairy rump.

  “Upstairs floors need to be replaced, the kitchen floor seems sound enough.” In the end Quoyle said it might be cheaper to build a new house somewhere else, the Riviera, maybe. Even with the insurance and what the aunt had, they might not have enough.

  “Think we’ll manage. But you’re right,” she said. “We probably should clear a driveway from the mystery parking lot to the house. Maybe the province will do something about the road. We’ll probably end up paying. Could be expensive. Lot more expensive than a boat.” She stood up, hauled her black coat around and buttoned it to the neck. “It’s getting mighty cold,” she said. “Look.” Held out her arm. Chips of snow landed in the loft of wool. “We better make tracks,” she said. “This is not a good place to get caught in a snowstorm. Well do I know.”

  “In May?” said Quoyle. “Give me a break, Aunt.”

  “Any month of the year, my boy. Weather here beyond anything you know.”

  Quoyle looked out. The bay faded, as though he looked through a piece of cheesecloth. Needles of snow in his face.

  “I don’t believe it,” he said. But it was what he wanted. Storm and peril. Difficult tasks. Exhaustion.

  On the way out the wind buffeted the car. Darkness seeped from the overcast, snow grains ticking the windshield. On the highway there was already a film of snow on the road surface. He turned in at Ig’s Store again.

  “Getting some coffee,” he said to the aunt. “Want some?”

  “There’s a big building in there and a parking lot.”

  “Oh yar. Glove fact’ry it was. Closed up years back.” The man slid two paper cups with folded ear handles at him.

  Shrieking wind. The bitter coffee trembled.

  “Weather,” the man said to Quoyle balanced in the doorway with his damp cups.

  He bent against air. Cracking sky, a mad burst. The sign above the gas pump, a hand-painted circle of sheet metal, tore away, sliced over the store. The man came out, the door jumped from his hand, wrenched. Wind slung Quoyle against the pumps. The aunt’s startled face in the car window. Then the gusts bore out of the east, shooting the blizzard at them.

  Quoyle pried the door open. He’d dropped the coffee. “Look at it! Look at this,” he cried. “We can’t drive to Killick-Claw through twenty miles of this.”

  “Didn’t we see a motel on the way up?”

  “Yes we did. And it’s back in Bloody Banks.” He scraped at the map, his hand spangled with melting snow. “See it? It’s thirty-six miles behind us.” The car trembled.

  “Let’s help buddy with his door,” said the aunt. “We’ll ask him. He’ll know some place.”

  Quoyle got the hammer from under the seat, and they stooped beneath wind. Steadied the door while the man pounded spikes.

  He barely looked at them. Things on his mind, Quoyle thought, like whether or not the roof would lift off. But he shouted answers. Tickle Motel. Six miles east. Third time the year the door was off. First time the sign was off. Felt snowly all morning, he bellowed as they pulled onto the highway. Waved them into sideblown snow.

  Slick road; visibility nil beyond the hood ornament. All dissolved in spinning particles. The speedometer needle at fifteen and still they skidded and jerked. The aunt leaned this way and that, hand on the dash, fingers widespread, as though by leaning she kept their balance.

  “Dad, are we scared?” said Sunshine.

  “No, honey. It’s an adventure.” Didn’t want them to grow up timid. The aunt snorted. He glanced in the rearview mirror. Warren’s yellow eyes met his. Quoyle winked at the dog. To cheer her up.

  The motel’s neon sign, TICKLE MOTEL, BAR & RESTAURANT, flickered as he steered into the parking lot, weaving past trucks and cars, long-distance rigs, busted-spring swampers, 4WD pickups, snowplows, snowmobiles. The place was jammed.

  “Only thing left is The Deluxe Room and Bridal Suite,” said the clerk, swabbing at his inflamed eyes. “Storm’s got everybody in here plus it’s darts playoffs night. Brian Mulroney, the prime minister, slept in it last year when he come by here. A big one, two beds and two cots. His bodyguards slept on the cots. A hundred and ten dollars the night.” He had them over a barrel. Handed Quoyle an ornate key stamped 999. There was a basket of windup penguins near the cash register and Quoyle bought one for each of the children. Bunny broke the wings off hers before they left the lobby. A wet path on the carpet.

  Room 999 was ten feet from the highway, fronted by a plate glass window. Every set of headlights veered into the parking lot, the glare sliding over the walls of the room like raw eggs in oil.

  The inside doorknob came off in Quoyle’s hand, and he worked it back carefully. He would get a screw from the desk clerk and fix it. They looked around the room. One of the beds was a round sofa. The carpet trodden with mud.

  “There’s no coat closet,” said the aunt. “Mr. Mulroney must have slept in his suit.” Toilet and shower cramped into a cubby. The sink next to the television set had only one faucet. Where the other had been, a hole. Wires from the television set trailed on the floor. The top of the instrument looked melted, apparently by a campfire.

  “Never mind,” yawned the aunt, “it’s better than sleeping in the car,” and looked for a light switch. Got a smoldering purple glow.

  Quoyle was the first to take a shower. Discolored water spouted from a broken tile, seeped under the door and into the carpet. The sprinkler system dribbled as long as the cold faucet was open. His clothes slipped off the toilet lid and lay in the flood, for the door hooks were torn away. A Bible on a chain near the toilet, loose pages ready to fall. It was not until the next evening that he discovered he had gone about all day with a page from Leviticus stuck to his back.

  The room was hot.

  “Take a look at the thermostat,” said the aunt. “No wonder.” Caved in on the side as though smashed with a war club.

  Quoyle picked up the phone, but it was dead.

  “At least we can have dinner,” said the aunt. “There’s a dining room. A decent dinner and a good night’s sleep and we’ll be ready for anything.”

  The dining room, crowded with men, was lit by red bulbs that gave them a look of being roasted alive in their chairs. Quoyle thought the coffee filthy, but at other tables they drank it grinning. Waited an hour for their dinner, and Quoyle, sitting with his fractious children, his yawning old aunt and gobs of tartar sauce on both knees, could barely smile. Petal would have kicked the table over and walked out. And she was with him again, Petal, like a persistent song phrase, like a few stubborn lines of verse memorized in childhood. The needle was stuck.

  “T
hanks,” murmured Quoyle to the waitress, swabbing his plate with a bun. Left a two-dollar bill under the saucer.

  The rooms on each side of them raged with crashings, howling children. Snowplows shook the pictures of Jesus over the beds. The wind screamed in the ill-fitted window frames. As Quoyle pulled the door closed, the knob came off in his hand again, and he heard a whang on the other side of the door, the other half of the knob dropping.

  “Oh boy, this is like a war,” said Bunny watching a plywood wall shake. The aunt thought somebody must be kicking with both feet. Turned down the bedcovers, disclosing sheets stitched up from fragments of other, torn, sheets. Warren lapped water out of the toilet.

  “It’s a little better than sleeping in the car,” the aunt said again. “A lot warmer.”

  “Tell a story, Dad,” said Bunny. “You didn’t tell us a story for about a hundred years.”

  Sunshine rushed at Quoyle, grabbed his shirt, hauling herself up into his lap, thumb in her mouth before she even leaned against his chest where she could hear the creaking sounds of his breathing, the thump of his heart, gurglings and squeals from his stomach.

  “Not yet, not yet,” said Quoyle. “Everybody brush their teeth. Everybody wash their face.”

  “And say your prayers,” said the aunt.

  “I don’t know any,” Sunshine blubbed.

  “That’s all right,” said Quoyle, sitting in the chair beside the bed.

  “Let’s see. This is a story about hammers and wood.”

  “No, Dad! Not hammers and wood! Tell a good story.”

  “About what?” said Quoyle hopelessly, as though his fountain of invention was dry.

  “Moose,” said Bunny. “A moose and some roads. Long roads.”

  “And a dog. Like Warren.”

  “A nice dog, Dad. A grey dog.”

  And so Quoyle began. “Once there was a moose, a very poor, thin, lonely moose who lived on a rocky hill where only bitter leaves grew and bushes with spiky branches. One day a red motor car drove past. In the backseat was a grey gypsy dog wearing a gold earring.”

  In the night Bunny woke in nightmare, sobbed while Quoyle rocked her back and forth and said “It’s only a bad dream, only a bad dream, it’s not real.”

  “The Old Hag’s got her,” muttered the aunt. But Quoyle kept on rocking, for the Old Hag knew where to find him, too. Fragments of Petal embedded in every hour of the night.

  Warren made bursting noises under the bed. A rancorous stench. Dog Farts Fell Family of Four.

  A morning of hurling snow. Stupendous snores beyond the walls. Quoyle dressed and went to the door. Could not find the doorknob. Crept around looking under the bed, in the bathroom, in their luggage, in the jammed drawers of Bibles. One of the kids must have brought it into bed with her, he thought, but when they were up there was no knob. He pounded on the door to attract attention, but got a shout from an adjacent wall to “shut the fuck up or I’ll bash yer.” The aunt jiggled the phone receiver, hoping for life restored. Dead. The phone book was a 1972 Ontario directory. Many pages ripped out.

  “My eyes hurt,” said Bunny. Both children had reddened, matter-filled eyes.

  For an imprisoned hour they watched the fading storm and the snowplows, banged on the door, called “Hello, hello.” Both plastic penguins were broken. Quoyle wanted to break the door down. The aunt wrote a message on a pillowcase and hung it in the window, HELP, LOCKED IN ROOM 999. TELEPHONE DEAD.

  The desk clerk opened the door. Looked at them with eyes like taillights.

  “All you do is push the alarm button. Somebody come right away.” Pointed to a switch near the ceiling. Reached up and flicked it. A clangor filled the motel and set off wall pounding until the motel vibrated. The clerk rubbed his eyes like a television actor seeing a miracle.

  The storm persisted another day, winds shrieking, drifting the main highway.

  “I like a storm, but this is more than enough,” said the aunt, her hair down over one ear from collision with the chandelier, “and if I ever get out of this motel I will lead a good life, go to church regularly, bake bread twice a week and never let the dirty dishes stand. I’ll never go out with my legs bare, so help me, just let me get out of here. I forgot what it’s like, but it comes back to me now.”

  In the night it turned to rain, the wind came from the south, warm and with a smell of creamy milk.

  7

  The Gammy Bird

  The common eider is called “gammy bird” in Newfoundland for its habit of gathering in flocks for sociable quacking sessions. The name is related to the days of sail, when two ships falling in with each other at sea would back their yards and shout the news. The ship to windward would back her main yards and the one to leeward her foreyards for close maneuvering. This was gamming.

  A WOMAN in a rain slicker, holding the hand of a child, was walking on the verge of the road. As Quoyle’s station wagon came abreast she stared at the wet car. The stranger. He lifted his hand a few inches but she had already dropped her gaze. The child’s flat face. Red boots. And he was past.

  The road to Flour Sack Cove shot uphill from Killick-Claw, over the height of land, then plunged toward houses, a few hauledup boats. Fish flakes, scaffolds of peeled spruce from the old days of making salt cod. He passed a house painted white and red. The door dead center. A straggle of docks and fishermen’s storage sheds. Humped rocks spread with veils of net.

  No doubt about the newspaper office. There was a weathered teak panel nailed above the door, THE GAMMY BIRD over a painting of a quacking eider duck. Parked in front of the building were two trucks, a rusted, late-model Dodge and an older but gleaming Toyota.

  From inside, shouting. The door snapped inward. A man jumped past, got in the Toyota. The tail pipe vibrated. The engine choked a little and fell silent as though embarrassed. The man looked at Quoyle. Got out of the truck and came at him with his hand. Acne scars corrugated the cheeks.

  “As you see,” he said, “sometimes you can’t get away. I’m Tert Card, the bloody so-called managing editor, copy editor, rewrite man, mechanicals, ad makeup department, mail and distribution chief, snow shoveler. And you are either a big advertiser come to take out a four-page spread to proclaim the values of your warehouse of left-footed Japanese boots, or you are the breathlessly awaited Mr. Quoyle. Which is it?” His voice querulous in complaint. For the devil had long ago taken a shine to Tert Card, filled him like a cream horn with itch and irritation. His middle initial was X. Face like cottage cheese clawed with a fork.

  “Quoyle.”

  “Come in then, Quoyle, and meet the band of brigands, the worst of them damn Nutbeem and his strangling hands. Himself, Mr. Jack Buggit, is up at the house having charms said over his scrawny chest to clear out a wonderful accumulation of phlegm which he’s been hawking for a week.” Could have been declaiming from a stage.

  “This’s the so-called newsroom,” sneered Card. “And there’s Billy Pretty,” pointing, as though to a landmark. “He’s an old fish dog.” Billy Pretty small, late in his seventh decade. Sitting at a table, the wall behind him covered with oilcloth the color of insect wings. His face: wood engraved with fanned lines. Blue eyes in tilted eye cases, heavy lids. His cheek pillows pushed up by a thin, slanting smile, a fine channel like a scar from nose to upper lip. Bushy eyebrows, a roach of hair the color of an antique watch.

  His table swayed when he leaned on it, was covered with a church bazaar display. Quoyle saw baskets, wooden butterflies, babies’ booties in dime-store nylon.

  “Billy Pretty, does the Home News page. He’s got hundreds of correspondents. He gets treasures in the mail, as you see. There’s a stream of people after him sending him things.”

  “Ar,” said Billy Pretty. “Remember the omaloor that brought me some decorated turr’s eggs? Hand painted with scenic views. Bust in the night all over the desk. A stink in here for a year afterward.” Wiped his fingers on his diamond-pattern gansey, mended in the elbows and spotted with white nobs of g
lue and paper specks. “‘Omaloor?’ As in Omaloor Bay?”

  “Oh yes. An omaloor—big, stun, clumsy, witless, simpleminded type of a fellow. There used to be crowds of them on the other side of the bay,” he gestured toward Quoyle’s Point, “so they named it after them.” Winked at Quoyle. Who wondered if he should smile. Did smile.

  Near the window a man listened to a radio. His buttery hair swept behind ears. Eyes pinched close, a mustache. A packet of imported dates on his desk. He stood up to shake Quoyle’s hand. Gangled. Plaid bow tie and ratty pullover. The British accent strained through his splayed nose.

  “Nutbeem,” he said. “Nutbeem of the Arctic.” Threw Quoyle a half-salute, imitation of a character in some yellowed war movie.

  “That’s B. Beaufield Nutbeem,” said Tert Card, “miserable ugly Brit cast away on the inhospitable Newfoundland shore a year ago and still here. Among other things, imagines he’s the foreign news chief. Steals every story off the radio and rewrites it in his plummy style.”

  “Which bloody misbegotten Card takes the liberty of recasting in his own insane tongue. As the bloody bog-rat’s just done.”

  Nutbeem’s news came from a shortwave radio that buzzed as though wracked by migraine. When the airwaves were clear it had a tenor hum, but snarled when auroral static crackled. Nutbeem lay across his desk, his ear close to the receiver, gleaning the waves, the yowling foreign voices, twisting the stories around to suit his mood of the day. The volume button was gone, and he turned it up or down by inserting the tip of a table knife in the metal slot and twisting. His corner smelled of radios—dust, heat, metal, wood, electricity, time.