The Shipping News

by Annie Proulx

  Quoyle’s mouth was watering. It was the aunt’s old trick, to reel out the names of succulent dishes, then retreat to the simplest dish. Not Partridge’s style.

  “Lobster salad is nice, too, but maybe a little light for supper. You know, there’s a way Warren and I used to have it at The Fair Weather Inn on Long Island. The tail meat soaked in saki then cooked with bamboo shoots and water chestnuts and piled into the shells and baked. There was a hot sauce that was out of this world. I can’t get any of those things here. Of course, if we had some shrimp and crabmeat and scallops I could make stuffed lobster tails—same idea, but with white wine and Parmesan cheese. If I could get white wine and Parmesan.”

  “I bought cheese. Not Parmesan. It’s just cheese. Cheddar.”

  “Well that settles it. Lobster pie. We don’t have any cream, but I can use milk. Bunny will eat it without roaring and it’ll be a change from boiled. I want to make something a little special. I asked Dawn to come over to supper. I told her six, so there’s plenty of time.”

  “Who?”

  “You heard me. I asked Dawn to come over. Dawn Budgel. She’s a nice girl. Do you good to talk to her.” For the nephew did nothing but work and dote.

  There was a prodigious pounding from the living room.

  “Bunny,” called Quoyle. “What are you making? Another box?”

  “I am making a TENT.” Fury in the voice.

  “A wooden tent?”

  “Yeah. But the door is crooked.” A crash.

  “Did you throw something?”

  “The door is CROOKED! And you said you would give me a ride in the boat. And didn’t!”

  Quoyle got up.

  “I forgot. O.k., both of you get your jackets on and let’s go.”

  But just outside the door Bunny invented a new game while Quoyle waited.

  “Lie down on your back, see, like this.”

  Sunshine thumped down on her back, stretched out her arms and legs.

  “Now look up near the top of the house. And keep looking. It’s scary, it’s the scary house falling down.”

  And their gazes traveled up the clapboards, warped crooked with storms, to the black eaves. Above the peak of the house the thin sky and clouds raced diagonally. The illusion swelled that the clouds were fixed and it was the house that toppled forward inexorably. The looming wall tipped at Sunshine who scrambled up and ran, deliciously frightened. Bunny stood it longer until she, too, had to get up and tear away to safe ground.

  Quoyle made them sit side by side in the boat. They gripped the gunwales. The boat buzzed over the water. “Go fast, Dad,” yelled Sunshine. But Bunny looked at the foaming bow wave. There, in the snarl of froth, was a dog’s white face, glistering eyes and bubbled mouth. The wave surged and the dog rose with it; Bunny gripped the seat and howled. Quoyle threw the motor into neutral.

  The boat wallowed in the water, no headway, slap of waves.

  “I saw a dog in the water,” sobbed Bunny.

  “There is no dog in the water,” said Quoyle. “Just air bubbles and foam and a little girl’s imagination. You know Bunny, that there cannot be a dog that lives in the water.”

  “Dennis says there’s water dogs,” sobbed Bunny.

  “He means another kind of dog. A real live dog, like Warren”—no, Warren was dead—“a live dog who can swim, who swims in the water and brings dead ducks to hunters.” Christ, was everything dead?

  “Well, it looked like a dog. The white dog, Dad. He’s mad at me. He wants to bite me. And make my blood drip out.” The tears coming now.

  “It’s not a true dog, Bunny. It’s an imaginary dog and even if it looks real it can’t hurt you. If you see it again you have to say to yourself, ‘Is this a real dog or is this an imaginary dog?’ Then you’ll know it isn’t real, and you’ll laugh about it.”

  “But Dad, suppose it is real!”

  “In the water, Bunny? In a stone? In a piece of plywood? Give me a break.” So Quoyle tried to vanquish the white dog with logic. And headed back to the dock very slowly so there was no bow wave. Getting fed up with the white dog.

  In the afternoon Quoyle set the table while the aunt squeezed and folded piecrust.

  “Put on the red tablecloth, nephew. It’s in the drawer under the stairs. You might want to change your shirt.” The aunt stuck two white candles in glass holders although it was still full sunlight outside. The sun would not set until nine.

  Bunny and Sunshine were tricked out in white tights, their velvet Thanksgiving dresses with lace collars. Sunshine could wear Bunny’s patent leather Mary Janes, but Bunny sulked in grimy sneakers. And her dress was too small, tight under the arms and short. Hot, as well.

  “Here she comes,” said the aunt, hearing Dawn’s Japanese car curving toward the house. “You girls mind your manners, now.”

  Dawn came up the steps, balancing in white spike heels big enough to fit a man, smiling with brown lips. Her nylon blouse glowed; the hem of the skirt hung low behind. She carried a bottle. Quoyle thought it was wine but it was white grape juice. He could see the Sobey’s price tag. The toes of her shoes jutted up at a painful angle.

  He thought of Petal in her dress with the fringe, the long legs diving down to slippers embroidered with silver bugles, Petal, darting around in a cloud of Trésor, shooting glances at her reflection in mirror, toaster, glass, flicking her fingers at Quoyle’s openmouth desire. He felt a pang for this poor moth.

  The conversation dragged, Dawn saying the bare floors and hard windows were “striking.” Sunshine heaped grimy bears and metal cars in her lap, it’s a bear, it’s a car, as though the visitor came from a country where there were no toys.

  At last the aunt thumped the fragrant pastry in front of Quoyle. “Go ahead and dish it up, Nephew.”

  She lit the candles, the flames invisible in the cylinder of sunlight that fell across the table, but the smell of wax reminding them, brought the dish of peas and pearl onions, the salad.

  “Let me help,” said Dawn, half up, her skirt caught under the chair leg. But there was nothing she could do. Her voice echoed in the hard room.

  Quoyle pierced the crust with an aluminum implement. Bunny stuck her fork into the candle flame.

  “Don’t do that,” said the aunt dangerously. A section of lobster pie rose from the steaming dish, slid onto Dawn’s plate.

  “Oh, is it lobster?” said Dawn.

  “Yes, indeed.” The aunt. “Lobster pie, sweet as a nut.”

  Dawn made her voice very warm, addressed the aunt. “I’ll just have salad, Agnis. I don’t care for lobster. Since I was a girl. We had to take lobster sandwiches to school. We’d throw them in the ditch. Crab, too. Like big spiders!” Tried a laugh.

  Bunny looked at the crust and orange meat on her plate. Quoyle braced himself for screeching but it did not come. Bunny chewed ostentatiously, said “I love red spider meat.”

  Dawn to Quoyle. Confiding. Everything she said overwrought. Pretending an interest.

  “It’s so awful what those people did to Agnis.” Didn’t actually care.

  “What people?” said Quoyle, his hand at his chin.

  “The people in the Hitler boat. The way they just sneaked out.”

  “What’s this?” said Quoyle, looking at the aunt.

  “Well, looks like I got stiffed,” she said, flames of rage sweeping into her hair roots. “We installed the banquettes on the yacht, all chairs but two done and delivered, all that. And they’re gone. The yacht’s gone. Pulled out after dark.”

  “Can’t you track them through the yacht registry? That boat’s one of a kind.”

  “I thought I’d wait a little,” said the aunt. “Wait to hear. Maybe there was a reason they had to leave in a hurry. Sickness. Or business. They’re involved in the oil business. Or she is. She’s the one with the money. Or she remembered a hair appointment in New York. That’s how they are. Why I didn’t say anything to you.”

  “Didn’t you do some work for them back in the States?
That would show their address?”

  “Yes, a few years ago I upholstered the sofas. But those papers are still back on Long Island. In storage.”

  “I thought you were having everything sent up here,” said Quoyle, noticing again the emptiness of rooms, the lack of the furniture she said was being shipped. Two months now.

  Dawn noticed his lips were slippery with butter from the lobster pie.

  “It takes time,” said the aunt. “Rome wasn’t built in a day.”

  Outside the wind was up and humming in the cables. Bunny at the window.

  “Who wants to play cards,” said the aunt. Chafing her hands and squinting like a stage villain card shark.

  “Know how to play All-Fours?” said Dawn.

  “Girl,” said the aunt, “you know it.”

  Glanced at the cupboard where she kept her whiskey bottle. Could bite the top off.

  19

  Good-bye, Buddy

  “The Russian Escape. A prisoner is . . . secured to his guard. . . . In his efforts to escape he rubs his hands together until the heels of his hands pinch a bight of the rope. It is then an easy matter to roll the bight down as far as the roots of the fingers, where it can be grasped with the finger tips of one hand and slipped over the backs of the fingers of the other hand. The prisoner then pulls away and the . . . rope slips over the back of his hand and under the handcuff lashing.”

  THE ASHLEY BOOK OF KNOTS

  SOMETIMES Tert Card blew everybody out of the place. It was a hot, windless noon hour like a slot between two warring weather systems. They squeezed into Billy’s truck, off to the Fisherman’s Chance in Killick-Claw for fish and chips, escaped and away from Tert Card who scratched with both hands. Who had the itch in his armpits.

  They sat on the public wharf eating out of Styrofoam boxes, stunned by the heat. Quoyle breathed through his mouth, squinted against dazzle. Although Billy Pretty warned, pointed to the northeast horizon at violet clouds pulled from a point as a silk scarf is pulled from a wedding ring. In the southwest they saw rival billows in fantastic patterns, as though a paper marbler had worked through them with his combs making French curls, cascades and winged nonpareil fountains.

  “This week I’ve the most sexual abuse stories I’ve ever had,” said Nutbeem. “Jack ought to be happy. Seven of them. The usual yaffle of disgusting old dads having it on with their kiddies, one more priest feeling up the choirboys, a nice neighborly uncle over in Stribbins Cove who gives the girls rides to Sunday School and buys them sweets if they pull down their knickers for him. One was a bit unusual—gives you a glimpse into the darker side of the Newfoundland character. This lad was a bouncer at a bar down in Misky Bay, tried to throw out some drunk. But the drunk went to his truck, got a tomcod from the ice chest in the back, into the bar again, overpowered the bouncer, ripped his trousers stem to stern and sexually assaulted him with the tomcod.” Nutbeem did not laugh.

  “What’s a tomcod?” asked Quoyle.

  Billy leaned against a piling, yawned. “Small one, boy. Small cod. You got your tomcod, your salt cod, your rounders . . . Any way you want to call it, it’s fish.”

  Gazed at the advancing clouds. Tendrils snaking into open blue.

  “ ‘Tis a strange time, strange weather. Remember we had a yellow day on Monday—the sky cast was an ugly yellow like a jar of old piss. Then yesterday, blue mist and blasting fog. Cap it off, my sister’s youngest boy called up from St. John’s, said there was a fall of frozen ducks on Water Street, eight or ten of them, feathers all on, eyes closed like they was dreaming, froze hard as polar cap ice. When that happens, look out, boys. Like the story I got yesterday over the phone. Same place as Nutbeem’s tomcod, Misky Bay. Oh, Misky Bay is going through some kind of band of astral influence. Wouldn’t be surprised to hear if they hadn’t had a fall of frozen ducks down there, too.”

  “Give us the story,” said Nutbeem, coughing into his pipe.

  “Not much of a story, but it shows the feeling that’s took hold of Misky Bay. I wouldn’t go down there—as I get it from the Mounties a mother of three children went at her grandmother with a metal towel rack, laced her up something shocking, then set fire to the house. They got ‘em out, but the poor old lady was bloody as a skinned seal and burned all up and down. And, in the kitchen, the fire volunteers finds a treasure trove. In a bucket under the sink is three hundred dollars worth of religious jewelry shoplifted from Woolworth’s over the past year. Each says the other done it.”

  “I didn’t get any car wrecks this week.” Quoyle, still thinking of the one in his mind. A breeze ruffled the bay, died.

  “Of course,” said Nutbeem, “never rains but it floods the cellar. I’ve got these tremendously nasty sexual assaults, but I’ve also got my best foreign news story—the Lesbian Vampire Trial’s over. Just heard it on the shortwave this morning.”

  “Good,” said Quoyle. “Maybe Jack will give up the car wreck for that. Any pictures?”

  “They’re rather difficult to get on the older radios,” said Nutbeem. “And I think it’s unlikely Jack will give up the car wreck spot to an Australian story. That’s a standing order: a car wreck and pix on page one. You’ll have to use an old one out of Tert’s file unless somebody smashes up between now and five o’clock. You got the shipping news and a boat piece, anyway. Right?” Nutbeem, who touched down and flew away.

  “Right.” Quoyle licked ketchup off the box lid, screwed his napkin into a knot. “The boat that blew up in Perdition Cove Tuesday morning.”

  Billy stretched and yawned, his withered neck taut again for a few seconds. “I can feel the season changing,” he said. “Drawing in. This weather change coming means the end of hot weather. Time I got out to Gaze Island and worked on me poor old father’s grave. Put it off last year and the year before.” Some sadness straining the words. Billy seemed stored in an envelope; the flap sometimes lifted, his flattened self sliding onto the table.

  “What hot weather?” said Quoyle. “This is the first day I can think of over forty degrees Fahrenheit. The rain is always ready to turn into snow. And where’s Gaze Island?”

  “Don’t know where Gaze Island is?” Billy laughed a little. His stabbing blue-eyed look. “Fifteen miles northeast of the narrows. Bunch of whales went aground there once—some calls it Whale Island, but it is Gaze Island to me. Though it had other names in the beginning. A beauty place. A place of local interest, Quoyle.” Teasing.

  “Like to see it,” said Quoyle who had found his tub of coleslaw. “I’ve never been on an island.”

  “Don’t be stun, boy. You’re on one now, just look at a map. You can come out with me. You ought to know about Gaze Island, you ought. Proper thing. Saturday morning. If the weather’s decent I’ll go out Saturday.”

  “If I can,” said Quoyle. “If the aunt doesn’t have major things planned for me.” Kept gazing out at the bay. As-if waiting for a certain ship. “There was a newsprint carrier hove to out in the bay yesterday. I was going to write about it.” The sunlight fading as the clouds came on.

  “Saw her out there. Heard she had some trouble.”

  “Fire in the engine room. Cause unknown. Diddy Shovel says that five years ago she wouldn’t have put in here for mutiny or famine. But now there’s the repair dock, the suppliers, the truck terminal. So they’re coming in. Plans to enlarge the dockyard. He says they’re talking about a shipyard.”

  “Ar, it wasn’t always like this,” said Billy Pretty. “Killick-Claw used to be a couple of rickety fish stages and twenty houses. The big harbor, up until after World War II, was at the same damn place we been talking about—Misky Bay. Ar, she was a hot place— them big warships in there, tankers, freighters, troop carriers, everything. After the war, boy, she laid right down flat on the deck. And Killick-Claw come up and give her a kick overboard. Go ahead, ask me what happened.”

  “What happened?”

  “Ammunition. During the war Misky Bay was a ammunitionloading port. They dropped so goddamn many tons
of the stuff overboard that nobody dare let down an anchor to this day in Misky Bay. The ammunition and the cables. There is a snarl of telephone and telegraph cables down at the bottom of that harbor would make you think a army of cats with a thousand balls of wool been scrabbling and hoovering around.

  “Fact, that’s probably when poor old Misky Bay started down hill, when the blast was put on her. You know, that’d be a good head for my towel rack story, ‘Misky Bay Curse Still Wrecking Lives.’” The sun obliterated, a chop on the water, stiff breeze.

  “Look at that.” Billy, pointing at a tug towing a burned hulk. “Don’t know what they think they’re going to do with that. That must be your story from Perdition Cove. What happened, Quoyle?”

  The stink of char came to them.

  “Got it here,” fishing in his pocket. “Course it’s still rough.” But he’d spent two days talking to relatives, eyewitnesses, the Coast Guard, electricians, and the propane gas dealer in Misky Bay. Read it aloud.

  GOOD-BYE, BUDDY

  Nobody in Perdition Cove will ever forget Tuesday morning. Many were still asleep when the first streak of sunlight painted the stem of the long-liner Buddy.

  Owner Sam Nolly stepped aboard, a new light bulb in his hand. He intended to replace a burned-out light. Before the streak of sunlight reached the wheelhouse Sam Nolly was dead and the Buddy was a raft of smoking toothpicks floating in the harbor.

  The powerful blast shattered nearly every window in Perdition Cove and was heard as far away as Misky Bay. The crew of a fishing boat off Final Point reported seeing a ball of fire roll across the water followed by a dense black cloud.

  Investigators blamed the explosion on leaking propane gas that accumulated forward overnight and ignited when Sam Nolly screwed in the fresh bulb.

  The long-liner was less than two weeks old. It was launched on Sam and Helen (Bodder) Nolly’s wedding day.

  “A shame,” said Billy.

  “Not bad,” said Nutbeem. “Jack will like it. Blood, Boats and Blowups.” Looked at his watch. They got up. A paper blew away, rolled along the wharf and into the water.