The Shipping News

by Annie Proulx

  The trailer shook on its cinder-block foundation. All at once the room was so packed that bottles had to be passed from hand to hand overhead.

  Tert Card was beside him. “There’s something I want to tell you,” he shouted, raised a squat tumbler with a nicked rim to Quoyle. But before he spoke, disappeared.

  Quoyle began to enjoy himself in a savage, lost way, the knots of fatherhood loosened for the night, thoughts of Petal and Wavey quenched. He had only been to two or three parties in his adult life, and never to one where all the guests were men. Ordinary parties, he thought, were subtle games of sexual and social badminton; this was something very different. There was a mood of rough excitement that had more in common, he thought, with a parking-lot fight behind a waterfront bar than a jolly good-bye to Nutbeem. A rank smell of tobacco, rum and dirty hair. Tert Card’s touring cap rose and fell in front of him again as though he were doing knee bends. He mopped at his eyebrows with his forearm.

  “Everybody asks me about the hairy devil,” screamed Tert Card. “But I’ll tell you.”

  Quoyle could barely catch the words of the interminable monologue. “When my father was young up in Labrador . . . Used to call him Skit Card because he was left-handed. Said there was a feeling like he was near a HOLE under the snow. Walk careful or . . . slip straight down SPINNING. . . He walked careful . . . spooky. One day he gets his buddy Alphonse . . . They get to the camp . . . Alphonse says. . . ‘NO GOOD, I’m going back.’ Father persuades him . . . ‘STAY until daybreak’ . . . laid down. In the morning Alphonse was GONE. His tracks . . . straight ahead. Then nothing . . . tracks disappeared, snow untouched.”

  A man with a meaty face the size and shape of a sixteen-pound ham squeezed in front of Quoyle. Although he shouted his voice was distant.

  “Hello, Quoyle. Adonis Collard. Write the food column. Wanted to say hello. Don’t get up to Killick-Claw much. Down in Misky Bay, you know. For the restaurants.” The crowd surged and Quoyle was carried near the beer tub. Nutbeem’s sound system was sending out tremendously low snoring and sawing sounds. Then, Tert Card again, a ham slice protruding from his mouth.

  “Father got a POLE. Poked around where tracks ended. All of a sudden a sound like a CORK being pulled . . . a deep blue well going down . . . polished steel CYLINDER. He throws in the stick. Whistled like a sled runner.”

  Someone pushed between them and Quoyle tried to work toward the front door, working his elbows like oars. But Card was in front of him again.

  “All of a sudden something BEHIND him. A HAIRY DEVIL jumped down the hole like a HOCKEY puck. . . RED EYES. Says to me father . . . ‘BE BACK for you . . . after I washes me POTS AND PANS.’ Father . . . ran forty miles.”

  “My wife,” bawled Quoyle, “is dead.”

  “I know that,” said Tert Card. “That’s not news.”

  By ten, Quoyle was drunk. The crowd was enormous, crushed together so densely that Nutbeem could not force his way down the hall or to the door and urinated on the remaining potato chips in the blue barrel, setting a popular example. The deafening music urged madness. In the yard two fights, and the empurpled Diddy Shovel threw Nutbeem’s bicycle into the bay. The strong man looked around, called for a beam on which to hoist himself by his little finger. Dennis appeared, scorched and reeling with a rum bottle in his hand. A grim-faced man Quoyle had never seen before pulled his pants off and danced in the mud. A terrible lurch as twenty chanting men lifted the end of the trailer and kicked away the cinder blocks. There was Jack, his arm around Dennis, sharing his bottle. A truck randomly bashed others, shot sparkles of glass over the ground. Billy Pretty lay on the steps singing soundless songs, forcing everyone to walk over him. A swaying, wild madness built up, shouting and bellowing that churned with the drumming music, a violent snorting and capering rage. Accents thickened and fell into the old outport patois. Quoyle couldn’t understand a word.

  An emaciated black-haired man, a foot taller than the local men who ran to large jaws, no necks, sandy hair and barrel chests, got up on the steps. He raised an axe he’d picked up near Nutbeem’s woodpile.

  “Ar!” he shouted. “Wants to take ‘is leave, do ‘e? Us’ll ‘ave ‘im ‘ere. Come along, b’ys, axe ‘is bo’t. Got yer chain saw Neddie?”

  Nutbeem screamed “No! No! Don’t fucking touch her! Fucking leave her alone!”

  With a roar a dozen rushed to follow the black-haired man. Quoyle didn’t understand what was happening, saw that he had been left behind. The party had gone somewhere else without him. Just like always. Quoyle left out. Not a damn thing had changed. In a huff of rejection he reeled away down the road toward—what? Something.

  “Quoyle, you fucking bitch get back here and help me save her!” But Nutbeem’s howl was lost in the cacophony.

  The party charged to the dock where the Borogove was tied up. Some had gotten chain saws from the back of their pickups, others carried sticks and rocks. The black-haired man was in the lead bellowing “We loves old fuckin’ Nutbeem!”

  The homely little boat lay at the dock, repaired and ready, provisioned, freshwater tanks filled, new line, the few bits of bright-work polished. Nutbeem staggered along the road crying and laughing as the wild men swarmed over his boat. The black-haired man lifted his axe and brought it down on the deck with all his strength. A chain saw bit into the mast. Tremendous pummeling and wrenching noises, splashes as pieces of the Borogove went into the water. The black-haired man got below deck with his axe and in a few minutes chopped through the bottom.

  “Every man for hisself,” he shouted, rushed forward and jumped onto the pier. In ten minutes Nutbeem’s boat was underwater, nothing showing but the roof of the cabin, like a waterlogged raft.

  Quoyle did not remember leaving the maelstrom. One moment he was there, the next, on his hands and knees in the ditch on the far side of the bridge. The air was like water in his flaming mouth. Or had he fallen in the water, and was now steaming rudderless in the night? He got up, staggered, looked back at the trailer. The windows glowed in a line of tilted light like a sinking passenger ship. Ships could hear Nutbeem’s speakers five miles out at sea, he thought. The howling of the mob.

  He started to walk, to lurch along the road into a greater silence. The hell with Nutbeem. He had his own affairs. Past the houses and up the steep streets of Killick-Claw. His head cleared a little as he walked. He did not know where he was going, but climbed up and on. The hill over the town. The same route he took to work every day. He could see the harbor lights below, a large ship coming slowly down the bay. The lighthouse on the point swept its beam over the sea. Quoyle walked on. He felt he could walk to Australia. Down the long hill now, past the dark Gammy Bird office. Cold television light in the Buggits’ house; Mrs. alone with her snowdrifts of doilies. Looked across the bay where Quoyle’s Point was lost in caliginous night. The moon cleared the landmass, cast a sparkling bar on the water.

  He was outside her kitchen window. A wry, reedy music within. He knelt at the window. The hard illumination of the neon circle from the ceiling. A clattering. He looked in at Wavey on a kitchen chair, her legs wide, the skirt a hammock for the red accordion on her lap. Her foot rising and falling, slapping the time in a rhythm that was sad in its measured steadiness. And on the empty linoleum stage in front of the stove Herry, dancing and hopping a jig, the pie-face split with a grin of intense concentration.

  Quoyle crawled out to the road. The moon’s reflection bored into the flat water like a hole into the sea, like the ice well where Tert Card’s father’s hairy devil washed his pots and pans. The painted wooden dogs in Wavey’s father’s yard watched, their bottlecap collars catching the light as though in convulsive swallowing. He started back toward Killick-Claw, toward the inn where he would rent a room. He had forgotten Beety and Dennis’s house, his cot in the basement.

  33

  The Cousin

  “Magic nets, snares, and knots have been, and in some instances probably still are, used as lethal weapons.”
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br />   QUIPUS AND WITCHES’ KNOTS

  AT TEN in the morning the chambermaid knocked on Quoyle’s door, then stuck her head in and called “Comin’ to do the room, m’dear.”

  “Wait,” said Quoyle. “Half hour.” Dead boiled voice.

  “Guess you was at the party where they sunk the boat! Harriet says the kitchen wants to put away the breakfasts so they can get started on lunch. Shall I tell her to save you a bit of eggs and tea then?”

  But Quoyle was on his knees in front of the toilet, retching, suffering, full of self-hatred. Heard her voice like a wasp in a jar. At last he could turn on the shower, stand beneath the hot needles, face thrust near the spray head, feeling the headache move back a little. His legs pained.

  The bedroom was icy after the steam. He pulled on clothes, the fabric rucking like metal. Bending to tie his shoes brought the headache into his eyes again and his stomach clenched.

  Out the window the sky was dirty, sand swirled in the street. A few trucks passed, exhaust twisting out of tail pipes. Cold. His jacket sleeve was torn from shoulder to wrist.

  Downstairs Harriet smirked.

  “Hear it was some party,” she said. Quoyle nodded.

  “You ought to have a cup of tea. Nice hot cup of tea.”

  “I’ll make one out at the house,” he said. “Got to get out there this morning and pick up some things.” Sunshine’s boots, kids’ extra mittens, the rest of his shirts, a library book now weeks overdue. Some tools. Supposed to be at Alvin Yark’s in the afternoon. He had a recollection of Nutbeem’s trailer being pulled apart. Suppose they couldn’t live in it? Tried to telephone Nutbeem, fumbled the coins into the slot. No answer.

  “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 facade, a cube of beams and uprights. Pilings supporting nothing, the rotten planks fallen into the sea.

  Smoke came from a hut 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.