The Shipping News (25 page)

30

The Sun Clouded Over

QUOYLE
and his daughters walked from Beety and Dennis’s house to the Sea Gull Inn where the aunt roosted, damp and ruffled. Sunshine, grasping Quoyle’s hand, slipped again and again. Until he saw it was a game, said, stop that.

The road shone under a moon like a motorcycle headlight. Freezing December fog that coated the world with black ice, the raw cold of the northern coast. Impossible to drive, though earlier he had driven, had made it to Little Despond and back, following up on the oil spill. Closed up. Old Mr. Eye in the hospital with pneumonia. A rim of oil around the cove.

Through the lobby with its smell of chemical potpourri, to the dining room where the aunt waited. Past empty tables. Bunny walked sedately; Sunshine charged at the aunt, tripped, [239] crash-landed and bawled. So the dinner began with tears. Chill air pouring off the window glass.

“Poor thing,” said the aunt, inspecting Sunshine’s red knees. The waitress came across the worn carpet, one of her shoes sighing as she walked.

Quoyle drank a glass of tomato juice that tasted of tin. The aunt swallowed whiskey; glasses of ginger ale. Then turkey soup. In Quoyle’s soup a stringy neck vein floated.

“I have to say, after the first day of peace and quiet, I’ve missed every one of you. Badly.” The aunt’s face redder than usual, blue eyes teary.

Quoyle laughed. “We miss you.” Sleeping in Beety and Dennis’s basement. Did miss the aunt’s easy company, her headlong rush at problems.

“Dad, remember the little red cups with the pictures at Wavey’s auntie’s house?”

“Yes, I do, Bunny. They were cunning little cups.”

“I’m writing a letter to Santa Claus to bring us some just like it. At school we are writing to Santa Claus. And I drew a picture of the cups so he would make the right kind. And blue beads. And Marty wrote the same thing. Dad, Marty makes her esses backwards.”

“I want a boat with a stick and a string,” said Sunshine. “You put the boat in the water and push it with the stick. And it floats away! Then you pull the string and it comes back!” She laughed immoderately.

“Sounds like the kind of boat I need,” Quoyle eating the cold rolls.

“And if I get those little red cups,” said Bunny, “I’ll make you a cup of tea, Aunt.”

“Well, my dear, I’ll drink it with pleasure.”

“Now, who’s having the scallops,” said the waitress holding a white plate heaped with pallid clumps, a mound of rice, a slice of bleached bread.

“That was my idea,” said the aunt, frowning at her pale food, whispering to Quoyle. “Should have gone to Skipper Will’s for squidburgers.”

[240] “When we’re at Beety’s house she makes jowls and britches sometimes,” said Bunny, “which I Love.”

“And I hate them,” said Sunshine, making a sucking noise in the bottom of her ginger ale glass.

“You do not. You ate them all.”

The cod cheeks and chips came.

“Ahem,” said the aunt, “This is something of an announcement dinner. I’ve got an announcement. Good news and bad news. The good news is that I’ve got a big job that will take most of the winter. The bad news is that it’s in St. John’s. How it came about, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about my yacht upholstery affairs. Let’s face it, yacht owners are not as numerous here as on Long Island. Newfoundland is not high in the yachtman’s ports of call. So I’ve been worried. Because I haven’t had much work the last six weeks. If it hadn’t been for the Mystery Money from Macau, no mystery to me, and to think of that strange woman who dismembers her husband but pays her bills, I’d have been pinched. So I put on my thinking cap. Plenty of commercial shipping in Newfoundland. Am I hoisting the wrong flag? Maybe so. Tried out some new names. Hamm’s Yacht Upholstery sure not bringing them in droves. How about, I says to Mrs. Mavis Bangs, what do you think of Hamm’s Maritime Upholstery? Could be yachts, could be tankers, could be anything that floats. She thought it was good. So then I called up refitters and boat repair yards in St. John’s, introduced myself as Agnis Hamm of Hamm’s Maritime Upholstery, and sure enough, there’s a need. Right off the bat, a big job, a cargo ship, the
Rome
, that had a bad fire. Destroyed the bridge, upholstery in the ward room, crew lounge, everywhere ruined by smoke and water damage. Months of work. So, I’m taking Dawn and Mrs. Mavis Bangs down to St. John’s with me and we’ll work until it is done. They want a rich-colored burgundy Naugahyde. And a royal blue, very smart. Leather is not for everyone. It can mould, you know. Dawn is thrilled to be getting to St. John’s. Bunny, put your napkin in your collar if you’re going to drip ketchup. You’re so sloppy.”

“Dad,” said Bunny. “I can make something. Skipper Alfred showed me it. It’s ‘The Sun Clouded Over.’ ”

“Um-hm,” said Quoyle twirling a cod cheek in a stainless steel cup of tartar sauce. “But Aunt, where will you stay? A hotel in St. John’s for a couple of months will cost a fortune.”

“Watch,” said Bunny, folding a bit of string.

“That’s the good part,” the aunt said, chewing scallops. “Atlantic Refitters keeps two apartments just for this kind of thing. Mr. Malt—he’s the lad I’m dealing with—says they quite often have to put up experts in certain fields, metal stresses, propeller design, inspectors and such. So we can have one of the company’s apartments at no cost—got a couple of bedrooms. It’s part of the deal. And there’s a work space. Set up the upholstery work. So, Dawn’s brother will help us load everything into the back of my truck. They got the Naugahyde coming in from somewhere, New Jersey I believe. And we’ll be off by the end of next week. All in the change of a name.”

“It sounds quite adventuresome, Aunt.”

“Well, I’ll be back in the spring. We can move out to the green house again as soon as the road is open. It’ll be the sweeter for waiting. I mean, if you still like it here. Or maybe you’re thinking of going back to New York?”

“
I’m
not going back to New York,” said Bunny. “Marry Buggit is my friend-girl forever. But when I’m big I’ll go there.”

Quoyle was not going back to New York, either. If life was an arc of light that began in darkness, ended in darkness, the first part of his life had happened in ordinary glare. Here it was as though he had found a polarized lens that deepened and intensified all seen through it. Thought of his stupid self in Mockingburg, taking whatever came at him. No wonder love had shot him through the heart and lungs, caused internal bleeding.

“Dad,” said Bunny near tears. “I did it twice and you didn’t watch. And Aunt didn’t either.”

“
I
watched,” said Sunshine. “But I didn’t see anything.”

“I wonder if you need glasses,” said the aunt.

“I’m sorry, Bunny girl. Show me one more time. I’m watching like a hawk.”

“So am I,” said the aunt.

The child pulled a loop of string taut, coiled and arranged it [242] around her fingers in overlapping circles, thumbs and forefingers in the four corner loops.

“Now watch the sun,” she said. “The sun is the hole in the middle and the rest is the clouds. Watch what happens.” Slowly she drew the loops taut, slowly the center circle grew smaller and at last disappeared.

“It’s a cat’s cradle,” said Bunny. “I know another one, too. Skipper Alfred knows hundreds and hundreds.”

“That’s extraordinary,” said Quoyle. “Did Skipper Alfred give you that string?” He took the smooth line, counted seven tiny hard knots and, joining the ends, one clumsy overhand. “Did you tie these knots?” His voice light.

“I tied
that
one.” The overhand. “I found it this morning in the car, Dad, on the back of your seat.”

31

Sometimes You Just Lose It

“A sailor has little opportunity at sea to replace an article that

is lost overboard, so knotted lanyards are attached to everything

movable that is carried aloft: marlingspikes and lids, paint cans

and slush buckets, pencils, eyeglasses, hats, snuffboxes,

jackknives, tobacco and monkey pouches, amulets, bosuns’

whistles, watches, binoculars, pipes and keys are all made fast

around the neck, shoulder, or wrist, or else are attached to a

buttonhole, belt, or suspender.”

THE ASHLEY BOOK OF KNOTS

“
ON NOVEMBER
21
the
Galactic Blizzard
, a Ro-Ro railcar-ferry with twin rudders and twin controllable pitch propellers left St. John’s en route to Montreal,” wrote Quoyle, still cold from his dawn excursion to the damaged ship.

Though ice was forming along the shore it was a fine day. The sky was blue, the sea was calm and visibility was unlimited. An hour after leaving St. John’s harbor, the ship struck the south cliff of Strain Bag Island head-on. The collision awakened the officer of the watch who had dozed off. “Sometimes you just lose it,” he told Coast Guard investigators.

Tert Card slammed through the door. “I’m shinnicked with cold,” he shouted, blowing on his chapped hands, backing his great rear up to the gas heater, “this degree of cold so early in the season takes the heart out of you for the place. Trying to drive along the cliffs this morning with the snow off the ice and the wipers froze up and the car slipping sideways I thought ‘It’s only November. How can this be?’ Started thinking about the traffic statistics. Last January there was hundreds of motor vehicle accidents in Newfoundland. Death, personal injury, property damage. In just one month. That’s how the need begins, on a cold day like this coming along the cliff. First it’s just a little question to yourself. Then you say something out loud. Then you clip out the coupons in the travel magazines. The brochures come. You put them on the dashboard so you can look at a palm tree while you go over the edge. In February only one thing keeps you going—the air flight ticket to Florida on your dresser. If you make it to March, boy, you’ll make it to heaven. You get on the plane in Misky Bay, there’s so much ice on the wings and the wind from hell you doubt the plane can make it, but it does, and when it glides down and lands, when they throws open the door, my son, I want to tell you the smell of hot summer and suntan oil and exhaust fumes make you cry with pleasure. A sweet place they got down there with the oranges.” He sucked in a breath, exhaled a snotty gust thinking of sleek yellow water like a liqueur. Addressed Quoyle. “Now, buddy, you got some kind of a car or boat wreck this week or not?”

“I wouldn’t go down there. I wouldn’t set foot on one of they planes.” Billy Pretty scratching notes, looking up from his weltering desk, red-rimmed eyes, face like a pricked pastry. “I hope you got all kinds of wrecks Quoyle, because I got not much—couple more unknown bodies and two naked men in court. Here’s a boyyo nabbed creeping out of a window loaded down with a sewing machine, the microwave, a shortwave radio, a color television, and the old missus and skipper sleeping away up in their bedroom, all sweet dreams, never woke up. The police patrol saw him hung up on a nail in the windowsill. So down to the Killick-Claw lockup he goes. In the middle of the night he commences to bawl and hoot, tears off all his clothes. They said he was mental. Sent him over to Waterford [245] for observation. It’s bloody spreading! Here’s another. A young lad, father’s a fisherman down to Port aux Priseurs, hit it rich in shrimps so he buys the boy a horse. Builds a barn and buys the boy a horse. Boy wanted a horse. ‘All the advantages I never had, blahblah.’ Didn’t know anything about horses. Put it out in the barn. After a week or so lad gets tired of it and forgets about it. Finally the horse starves to death. They give the kid some kind of dressingdown and fines the dad a thousand dollars. He’s got it, y’know, but what d’you think he does? Stands there in the court in front of the judge. Tears off all
his
clothes. So they sent him over to Waterford too.

“Now, over here we got missing persons and unidentified bodies, and none of them match up. Man from Chaw Cove went out hunting. All they found was his mittens. Down here in Puddickton missus finds a cold wet corpus floating under the skipper’s dock. Total stranger, and not the feller from Chaw Cove. Not a stitch on him. Makes you wonder if he hadn’t been in court recently. The worst one is this dog case. Another shrimp fisherman in Port aux Priseurs. This feller bought some fancy mainland dogs, a couple of pit bulls, couple of rottweilers, couple of Doberman pinschers, kept ‘em all out in this big run. Now they can’t find the man. Seems he went out to the dog pen and didn’t come back. Family’s all sitting around watching television. After a couple of hours somebody says ‘Where’s old dad, then?’ They shine a light out at the dog pen, holler yoo-hoo. There’s blood all over the snow and some of dad’s clothes in a poor condition. So, even though he is missing, they think they know where he is.”

Tert Card mooning against the window, staring south. “They ought to give up on the animals in Port aux Priseurs. They don’t have the touch. Stick to cars and drugs. Quoyle, you got some kind of a wreck to brighten the front page?”

Nutbeem raised his head, unfolded his arms. “Seeing it’s my last week, of course the foreign news is plummy. First, the Canadian Minister of Health has his knickers in a twist over hair removal.”

“There are some of us, Nutbeem, who do not think of Canada as a foreign power,” said Card.

“Leave him be,” said Billy Pretty. “Go on with it, boy.”

[246] “All right. Hundreds of doctors are billing Health Insurance Plan for removing unwanted facial hair from women patients. A Ministry of Health official is quoted as saying ‘This thing is hot.’ Probably means the electrolysis machine. Millions and millions of dollars for millions and millions of electrolysis treatments.”

Card sniggered. He was all grease spots and hunger. Fingernails like sugar scoops.

“Thought you’d have a giggle over that,” said Nutbeem.

Quoyle was astonished to hear Billy Pretty bellow. “You may laugh, Card, but it’s a rotten, bitter thing for a woman to see the shadow of a mustache creeping across her face. You’d be sympathetic now, wouldn’t you, if it was men having breast fat removed?” He stared at Card’s pointed breasts. A silence hanging for a few seconds, then Tert Card’s wet laugh, Billy’s snigger. It was only a joke. Quoyle still couldn’t recognize a joke when he heard one.

“Ah,” said Card, snorting into a tissue, spreading it open in the light of the window. “My sister had the problem, only it was hair on her arms. The old woman had other ways to go at it. We had Skipper Small, was a charmer. He’d write down on a little piece of paper, throw it in the fire, watch it burn until just a pelm laid over the coals, all white and wizzled. He’d take a stick, poke it in and break up the pelm, the bits would fly off to the chimney. ‘There,’ he’d say, ‘there goes your affliction.’ ”

“Did it fix your sister’s arms?”

“Oh yes, boy. Her arms come smooth as silk, they did, it was a pleasure to be squeezed by ‘em. So they all said. I hope that’s not the extent of your foreign news, Nutbeem, hair removal in Ontario.”

“Well, there’s the cholera epidemic in Peru. Argentina and Paraguay now refuse to play soccer in Peru. Fourteen thousand cases have been reported in the last six weeks.”

“Good. We’ll run that story next to the one on unknown insects biting employees in the Social Service office in Misky Bay after a recent influx of Peruvian immigrants.” He looked at Quoyle. “Have you got a wreck, buddy?”

“Um,” said Quoyle. Giving nothing to Tert Card.

“Well, then, what is it, where is it and did you get pictures?”

[247] “The ship collision on Strain Bag. Then I shot a couple of frames of a vehicle fire—unexplained causes. Truck was parked in front of the funeral home and just burst into flames while the family was inside. Looked like a roasting pan on fire.”

“That’s a very good tip, Quoyle. If we ever get hard up for pictues we can get a roasting pan, fill it up with oil and set it on fire. Jiggle the camera a little when we take snaps. Who’ll ever know?”

“Something in Misky Bay. Apparently a grudge between twin brothers, Boyle and Doyle Cats.”

“I know them,” said Billy Pretty. “One of them drives a taxi.”

“Right. Boyle drives the taxi. There’d been some trouble the night before. Something to do with a drug deal, they think. On Wednesday afternoon Boyle picks up a passenger at the fish plant, makes a U-turn, and is ambushed by a masked man on a late-model blue Yamaha snowmobile with the word
PSYCHOPATH
painted on the cowling. His brother Doyle is alleged to own such a snowmobile. The snowmobile rider fires a shotgun at the taxi and speeds away, the taxi’s windshield is blown out, the vehicle swerves and ends up on the loading ramp of the fish plant. Minor cuts and lacerations. The snowmobile got away.”

“Is there snow down there?”

“No.”

“I’m going to remember this place for many things,” said Nutbeem. “But most of all for the inventive violence and this tearing-off-of-clothes-in-court business. Seems to be a Newfoundland specialty. Here’s a fairly simple arson—some chap set his boat on fire—maybe you’ve got this one too, Quoyle-possibly for the insurance, and he’s been sitting in the pokey for a few days. This morning they go to bring him into court and he did the regular.”

“Tore off his clothes,” droned through the room.

“I can do something with that,” said Billy, tapping on the keys.

“Tert,” said Nutbeem. “That sister of yours. Is she the one you told us that swallowed the sea wolf?”

“Sea wolf? You stun mope, she swallowed a water wolf. A sea wolf is a submarine. Come down in the dark and took up a dipper [248] of water and swallowed it. When she was a kid. Said she felt something go down. Soon after that she commenced to eat like a horse. Eat and eat. Oh, the old woman knew right away. ‘You’ve swallowed a water wolf,’ she said. Nutbeem, I got your
S.A.
stories running down my computer screen. You writing it by the yard, now? Seven, eight, nine—you got eleven sexual abuse stories here. We put all this in there won’t be room for the other news.”

“You ought to see my notebook. It’s an epidemic.” Nutbeem turned to the file cabinets behind him. The khaki metal rang as he wrenched a drawer open. “All this since I’ve been here. What are you going to do when I’m off, then?”

“Jack’s problem. Among others,” said Tert Card with a mouthful of satisfaction. “You still leaving Tuesday?”

“Yes, I’ll be heading out of the lashing snow sailing on my way to the Caribbean, down through the islands looking for adventure and love.”

“It’s late to be leaving. Storm and ice could fasten you in here overnight. The ice is formed up in some places. A dangerous time of year for a sailboat. You probably won’t make it. It’ll be your corpse they find in the ovens next.” Tert Card, picking his teeth with the corner of an envelope. The paper jammed and tore, wedged between the yellow incisors.

“That’s how it goes here. There’s a general emptying out in the late fall. Away they all go to the south,” said Billy Pretty. “There’s few of us has stuck it out all the years, never been away in winter except when at sea. And Quoyle is the only one I ever see come here to settle. I’m just wondering about him. I suppose he’ll be next.”

“Obviously staying,” said Quoyle. “Alvin Yark’s building a boat for me. Bunny’s in school, she’s doing well. And Sunshine loves it at Beety’s. The kids have friends. The aunt will be back from St. John’s in the spring. All we need is a place to live.”

“I can’t see you in Nutbeem’s trailer. You looked that place over yet?” Tert Card smiling at some secret.

“He’s seeing it Friday. Quoyle’s going to help me set up for the party. Getting everything to drink you can think of from screech to ginger beer to champagne.”

[249] “Champagne! That’s what I enjoy,” said Tert Card. “With a ripe peach floating in it.”

“Go on. That’s something you read. There’s never been a ripe peach in Newfoundland.”

“I have it when I go down to Florida. I have Mai-tais, Jamaica glows, beachcombers, banana daiquiris, piña coladas—my god, sitting around in your bathing suit on the balcony drinking those things. Baking hot.”

“I doubt a man can bring up two little girls on his own,” said Billy Pretty. “I doubt it can be done without some savage talk and nervous breakdowns all around.”

Quoyle showed he didn’t hear him.