Shipping News_A Novel

by Annie Proulx

  “See you!” called Dennis eagerly.

  ¯

  It took Quoyle and Nutbeem an hour and a half to get to the trailer. They made long stops at the liquor authority loading boxes of beer and rum into the station wagon until the rear end sagged, stacking the backseat with plastic-wrapped party platters of sliced ham, turkey, cold cuts and red-eyed olives from the town’s only supermarket, then on to the fish processing plant for a tub of ice which Nutbeem somehow lashed on top. Early darkness. A few more weeks until the winter solstice.

  “Isn’t this is too much?” said Quoyle. “Too much everything.”

  “You’re forgetting the contributors and advertisers, and those two discriminating food critics, Benny Fudge and Adonis Collard, who write the food column. Did you read their latest? Sort of a ‘Newfoundland Guide to Fried Bologna.’ Then there’s your pal, the old chap down at the harbor, and the court laddie who gives me the S.A. news. There’ll be the odd midnight arrival. And maybe fifty layabouts. You’ll see. Killick-Claw is a party town. Why I got six gallons of screech.”

  “Actually, fried bologna isn’t bad,” said Quoyle.

  “You have gone native.”

  They drove to the south end, over a one-lane bridge to a trailer behind a cluster of houses. Faded pastel pink with a stenciled frieze of girls with umbrellas, a low picket fence. Nutbeem’s scabby bicycle leaned near the steps.

  “The Goodlads live in the proper houses,” said Nutbeem. “Fishermen. Lambie and John and his mother in the green house, the two younger sons, Ray in the white and red house and Sammy in the blue. The oldest son is a fisheries biologist in St. John’s. This is his trailer. He came up once last summer, but left after two days. On his way to New Zealand to study some kind of exotic Southern Hemisphere crab.” Nutbeem himself was drawn to crabs in a culinary sense, although a surfeit gave him hives on his forearms.

  “Come in,” he said and opened the door.

  Just another trailer, thought Quoyle, with its synthetic carpet, cubbyhole bedrooms, living room like a sixties photograph except for four enormous brown speakers ranged in the corners like bodyguards, kitchen the size of a cupboard with miniature refrigerator and stove, a sink barely big enough for both of Quoyle’s hands. The bathroom had one oddity. Quoyle looked in, saw a yellow spray hose coiled on the mat like a hunting horn, and in the shower cubicle, half a plastic barrel.

  “What’s this, then?” he asked Nutbeem.

  “I longed for a bath-I still do, you know. This is my compromise. They ship molasses in these barrels. So I cut it in half with a saw, you see, and stuck it in here. I can crouch down in it. It’s not awfully satisfactory, but better than the cold plastic curtain twining about one’s torso.”

  Back in the living room Nutbeem said “Wait until you hear this,” and switched on a tower of sound components. Red and green running lights, flashing digital displays, pulsing contour bands, orange readouts sprang to life. From the speakers a sound as of a giant’s lung. Nutbeem slipped a silver disc into a tray and the trailer vibrated with thunder. The music was so loud that Quoyle could not discern any identifiable instrument, nothing but a pulsating sound that rearranged his atoms and quashed thought.

  Quoyle rammed the beer bottles into the tub of ice, helped Nutbeem push the table against the wall. The taut plastic over the party platters vibrated visibly.

  “When the first guests pull up,” shouted Nutbeem, “we’ll rip the plastic off.”

  They looked vainly through the cupboards for a bowl large enough to hold thirty bags of potato chips.

  “What about your barrel in the shower?” screamed Quoyle. “Just for tonight. It’s big enough.”

  “Right! And have a beer! Nutbeem’s good-bye party has officially begun!” And as Quoyle poured potato chips into the soap-scummed barrel, Nutbeem sent a ululating call into the night.

  Through the picture window framed in salmon-pink curtains, they saw a line of headlights approaching the narrow bridge. The beer in Quoyle’s bottle trembled in the batter of sound. Nutbeem was saying something, impossible to know what.

  Tert Card was the first one through the door, and his stumble carried him against the table with the party platters. He was clenching a rum bottle, wore a linen touring cap that transformed the shape of his head to that of a giant albino ant. He plucked at the plastic wrap, seized a handful of ham and pushed it into his mouth. A crowd of men came in, shouting and swaying, and as though at a ham and cheese eating contest, snatched up the food from the party platters. Crammed potato chips as though stuffing birds for the oven.

  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 yet 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 brightwork 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 bottle, cap 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.”

  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 w
ay 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.”