The Shipping News (28 page)

Quoyle there among the ribby timbers, up to his ankles in shavings. Cold. Alvin Yark wore mittens, the zipper of his jacket flashed.

Leaning against the walls were the main timbers.

“Them’s the ones I cut the week before. Don’t cut ‘em all now, you know,” he explained to Quoyle. “I does the three main ones first, the fore’ook, the midship bend, and the after’ook. Got my molds, you know, my father give ‘em to me. ‘E used to measure and cut all his timbers with ‘em, but quite a few of the sir marks is rubbed out, and some was never keyed, so you don’t know what they’s meant to be. So I does the three main ones, you know, and the counter. Then I know where I stands.”

Quoyle’s job was hoisting and lifting. His headache had strengthened. He could feel its shape and color, a gigantic Y that curved from his brain stem over his skull to each eye, in color a reddish-black like grilled meat.

Alvin Yark cut scarf joints, trimmed and smoothed until they fit together like a handclasp. The pieces lay ready. Now they fitted the stem to the keel joint. When Quoyle leaned forward the twin spears of the headache threatened to dislodge his eyes.

“Up the sternpost.” Then the deadwood blocks on top of the inboard seams of the joints.

“Put ‘er together now,” Yark said, driving the four-inch spikes, fastening the bolts. He sang. “Oh it ain’t no use, the
Gandy Goose
.”

“There’s your backbone. There’s the backbone of your boat. She’s scarfed now. You glance at that, somebody who knows boats, you can see the whole thing right there. But there’s nobody can tell ‘ow she’ll fit the water, handle in the swells and lops until you try ‘er out. Except poor old Uncle Les, Les Budget. Dead now. Would be about a hundred and thirty year old. He was a boat builder along this shore before I saw my first ’ammer and nail. Built beautiful skiffs and dories, butter on a ‘ot stove. Last boat he built [267] was the best one. Liked ’is drop, Uncle Les did, yes, pour the screech down ‘is gullet by the quart. ‘E got old. Strange ‘ow we all do.” At the mention of drink Quoyle’s head throbbed.

“Wife was gone, children off to Australia. Funerals and pearly gates and coffins got to working on ‘is mind. Finally ‘e set out to make ‘is own coffin. Went down to ‘is shop with a teakettle ‘alf full of screech and commenced ‘ammering. ‘Ammering and sawing ‘alf through the night. Then ‘e crawled back to the ‘ouse to sleep it off on the kitchen floor. Me old dad went over to the shop, just as curious as ‘e could be to see the wonderful coffin. There she was, coffin with a stem and a keel, planked up and caulked nice, a little six-foot coffin painted up smart. Best thing about ‘er was the counter, set nice and low, all ready for ‘er little outboard motor.”

Quoyle laughed feebly.

Yark bolted a curved spruce piece he called the apron to the inboard of the stem. “Strengthens the stem, y’see. Support for the planks—if we ever gets to them, if I lives that long.” He crouched, measured, tapped a nail into one end of the keel, hooked the loop of a chalk line over the nail and drew the blue string to a mark on the far end, snapped. A faint mist of blue powder and the timberline was marked.

“Suppose we might ‘ave a cup of tea,” murmured Yark, first wiping his nose on the back of his hand, then leaning over the shavings to snort out sawdust and snot. Sang his bit of song. “Oh it ain’t no use, ‘cause every nut and bolt is loose.”

But Quoyle had to go along to Nutbeem’s trailer.

¯

At the trailer Nutbeem, Dennis, Billy Pretty and the blackhaired man sat on the steps; despite the cold, were drinking beer. Quoyle gagged at the thought. There was no crane, no boat.

“You’re lookin’ dishy, Quoyle.”

“Feel it, too. What’s the situation?” He could see that at least the trailer was back on its cinder blocks, the glass raked into a crooked windrow.

“She’s gone.” Dennis. “Couldn’t get the crane, see, but Carl [268] come with his bulldozer. That was a mess. Tore the cabin right off her. Got that diver lives down No Name there, Orvar, come over and put a cable under her. We drags her at an angle to get a line to shore and she breaks in half. Tide was coming in fast and now it seems like she drifted. She’s out there somewhere in two pieces. So, on top of everything else, she’s a menace to navigation.”

“I’m some disgusted,” Billy Pretty, mud to his knees, side of his face scraped and raw, the enamel blue eyes bloodshot under the brim of his cap. Sipping as though he drank some aperitif.

Nutbeem swallowed a gassy mouthful and looked at the bay. The sky heavy and low. Although it was only three o’clock, darkness seeped.

“I wouldn’t have made it anyway,” he said. “Storm coming. Gale warnings, sleet, snow, followed by deep cold, the whole string of knots. By Tuesday there’ll be fast ice. I wouldn’t have made it.”

“Maybe not,” said Billy Pretty, “but you could have hauled your boat up until spring.”

“No use crying in my beer,” said Nutbeem.

A few small flakes of snow drifted down to Billy’s knees. He glared at them, breathed to make them melt. A few more fell, widely spaced. “Here’s the devil’s feathers.”

But Nutbeem had the stage. “I’ve changed my plans as the day has gone along.”

“Will you stay on a bit, then? Stay for the Christmas pageant and the times, anyway.”

“I don’t expect I shall ever want to go to another party,” said Nutbeem. “It’s like the lad who loved to steal spoonsful of sugar until his grannie sat him down in front of a basin of the stuff, gave him a whacking great stuffing spoon and told him he’d stay right there until the basin was empty. He never had a taste for sugar after that.” He laughed in a wretched puff of cheeks.

“At least you can smile at it.” Dennis, half-smiling himself.

“If I didn’t I’d go round the twist, wouldn’t I? No, I’ve decided to smile, forget and fly to Brazil. Warm. No fog. The water is a lovely swimming-pool green, quite a David Hockney color. Balmy breezes. Perhaps it’s still possible to live pleasantly for a few months. [269] And the fish! Ah, god. Yellowtail steaks. There’s this very simple local sauce—you can put it on fish or in other sauces or salads—just squeeze a cup of lime juice, put in a good pinch of salt and let it stand for a few weeks, then you strain it and put it in a corked bottle and use it. It smells rather strange but has a quite wonderful taste. You sprinkle it on a bit of fish smoking fresh off the grill. And Cuban Green Sauce—lime and garlic and watercress and Tabasco and sour cream and lobster coral. And I make a curry, a conch curry, simmered in coconut milk and served with slivers of smoked sailfish that is, if I do say so, heaven on a plate.”

“Stop,” said Quoyle. Veils of snow swept the bay, dusted their shoulders and hair.

“Dear boy, I haven’t even got to the bloody stone crabs. Stone crabs, the glorious imperial yellow, scarlet and ebony exaltations of all the crabs of all the seven seas, the epicure’s hour of glory, the Moment of Truth at the table. I like them with drawn butter to which I add a dash of the sour lime sauce and a few drops of walnut pickle liquor, maybe a fleck of garlic.”

“You’re a poet with the food, Nutbeem,” said Billy Pretty. “The time you gave me a plateful of your seal flipper curry. It was a poem.”

“I think I’m safe in saying, Billy, that we are the only two people who have ever eaten of that rare dish. And the shrimp. Brazilian style. A big black iron skillet. You heat some olive oil, throw in a few cloves of garlic, then add the shrimp just as they come from the sea—but dry them off a bit, first. When they’re cooked to a lovely orange-red you drain them on brown paper bags, toss some sea salt and a grind or two of green pepper or a shake of the Tabasco bottle over them and serve them on the bags. just bite off the heads, drag the meat out with your teeth and spit out the tails.” The snow swept over them. Nutbeem’s hair and eyebrows were thick with it as he faced into the wind. The others had gyred around to give their backs to the weather.

“That’s how my old friend Partridge used to fix shrimp,” said Quoyle.

[270] The silent black-haired man frowned. There were fluffy white epaulets on his shoulders.

“I dunno. It’s some good the way they do them at Nell’s in No Name Cove. It’s them little shrimp, size of your fingernail. She shucks ‘em, dips ‘em in batter and rolls ‘em in crushed graham crackers, then deep-fries ‘em and serves with packet of tartar sauce. Proper thing! Good too in the flour sauce on baked beans.”

“Yes, those are the sweetest shrimp I’ve ever tasted,” said Nutbeem. “They’re very good, those tiny shrimp. Anyway, later I might just drift up the coast, then go over to Pacific Mexico to some of the shark-fishing villages. Very rough places and a very rough sport. I’m not actually planning anything. A certain period of drifting is in order.”

“Ar,” said Billy, using the edge of his hand as a strigil, scraping the snow off the back of his neck below the tweed cap. “Wish I was young again. I’d go with you. I was to São Paulo and down along the coast. I even had that lime sauce you talk about. Back in the ‘thirties. And stone crabs. Been to Cuber, too. And Chiner. Before the war. Ar, Newfoundlanders are your great travelers. I got a nephew was on a troop carrier here lately, carrying the Americans to their Gulf War. Anywhere in the world you go you’ll find us. But now I’m past the age of interest. I don’t care whether its limes or potatoes, fish or fried.”

“When you going, Nutbeem?”

“Tuesday. Same date. Gives me the last chance to whip up a nice helping of bizarre stories for Jack and Tert. ‘Elderly Widower Elopes with Lobster!’ ‘Prime Minister Bathes in Imported Beer.’ ‘Filthy Old Dad Rapes Childrens’ Horse.’ Perhaps I shall miss
Gammy Bird
, after all. Oh, Quoyle, a bit of bad news for you. The Goodlads say now they won’t rent their trailer out to a newspaperman again. After last night. I pleaded with them, told them you had two sweet little daughters, were a very modest fellow, persnickety housekeeper, never had parties, et cetera, et cetera, but they’ll have none of it. I’m awfully sorry.”

“I’ll find something else,” said Quoyle. With every breath a charge of snowflakes in the nostrils. The headache was a dull background throb.

[271] “It’s too bad,” said Billy Pretty, silvered with snow, changing color with the season. “It’s too bad.” That seemed to cover everything.

Quoyle squinted at the sky where nothing could be seen but the billions of tossing flakes stirred by a rigorous wind.

“It’s a stepmother’s breath,” said Billy.

34

Dressing Up

Sailors once wore their hair in queues worked two ways; laid

up into rattails, or platted in four-strand square sinnets. The

final touch called for a pickled eelskin chosen from the brine

cask. The sailor carefully rolled the eelskin back (as a

condom is rolled), then worked it up over his queue and

seized it. For dress occasions he finished it off with a red

ribbon tied in a bow.

“
QUOYLE
, finish that up and I’ll take you round the corner to the Heavy Weather and buy you a hot grog.” Tert Card, morose and white, staring with hatred at the ice-bound bay. For it had gone very still and cold. Pancakes of submerged ice joined with others into great sheets, the rubbery green ice thickened, ah ice foot fastened onto the shore, binding the sea with the land. Liquid became solid, solid was buried under crystals. A level plain stretched nearly to the mouth of the bay. He watched the ice breaker gnawing through, cutting a jagged path of black water.

“I suppose I can.” Reluctant. Didn’t want to drink with Tert Card but thought no one else would. A quick one. “Let me call Beety and say I’ll be a little late.” But wanted to collect his daughters and go home to the Burkes’ house, a squeaky, comfortable house [273] with many cupboards in unlikely corners. The strangest thing in the place was a lampshade that crackled modestly as the bulb warmed. There was a bathroom with a handmade copper tub wide enough for Quoyle. The first tub he’d ever fit in. Spare rooms for visitors. If any came.

“Then we’ll have a glutch or two, or two,” grinned Tert Card, the devil plucking at the strings of his throat as if it were a guitar. “Follow me.” The vehicles groaned through the cold.

The Heavy Weather was a long room with a filthy linoleum floor and the smell of a backed-up toilet, vomit, stale smoke and liquor. This was where Tert Card drank, the place he scrawled home from, barely able to get up the steps and into his house. Quoyle thought he probably shouted at home. Or worse. The few times he’d seen the wife she looked a bent thing and the children shrank when he said hello to them. For he noticed small children.

Fluorescent halos. A solid row of backs at the bar. Silhouettes of men in caps with earflaps that came down when wanted. Showing each other photographs of boats. The talk was of insurance and unemployment and going away to find work. Quoyle and Tert Card sat at a side table littered with wadded napkins. A smoldering ashtray. Behind them two old slindgers in overcoats and pulled-down Donegal caps, all mufflers and canes and awkward knees. They sat close together on a long bench. Each, a hand on the glass. It might have been a village pub across the water, thought Quoyle.

“What’ll you have?” Tert Card, leaning on the table until it rocked. “What’ll you have, don’t tell me, don’t tell me, it’s going to be screech and Pepsi.” And off he went with his hand worrying his pocket for money.

And back again in the gloom.

They drank. Tert Card’s throat worked thirstily and he swallowed again, lifting the cracking arm and beckoning, thrusting two fingers.

“I seen worse than this.” He meant the weather. “Two years ago how thick the ice was around the shore. The icebreakers was running full clock. And the storms broke your heart. Just a few years ago, first week in December we had screeching bitter winds, fifty-foot waves thrashing around, it was like the bottom of the [274] ocean was going to come up. You should have seen the way Billy sat in his corner shaking alive, scrammed with cold. Then a week or two later the heaviest rain anybody ever see. Floods and destruction. The Lost Man dam broke. I don’t know how many millions of dollars damage it did. December storms are the most treacherous, changeable and cruel. You can go from the warm breeze to the polar blizzard in ten minutes.”

On the wall a fisherman’s calendar showed the last page. The bare tables reflected. Tert Card’s angry yawn. Dark outside, the longest dark of the night. The weather report seeped from a radio behind the bar. A warming trend. Above-normal temperatures forecast.

“That’s the weather we get now. Storm, then cold, then warm. A yo-yo, up and down, coldest, warmest, strongest wind, highest tide. Like some Yank advertising company in charge of it all.”

An old man, in his eighties, guessed Quoyle, and still working, why not, brought them new drinks. His hair cropped to silver stubble, eyes silvery, too, curved as lunettes, the grey shine of a drop under his nose catching the light. A mustache like spruce needles. Mouth agape, an opening into the skull, showing white tongue and gums, staring stupidly at the money Tert Card thrust.

“Be telling you something,” said Tert Card. “Jack and Billy Pretty already knows. I’m leaving, see. I had enough of Killick-Claw. New Year’s Day. They wants me down to St. John’s, put out the newsletter for the oil rig suppliers. I got the phone call yesterday. Applied a year ago. Oh, there’s a waiting list. They only skim the cream. You bet I’m glad to go. If I play me cards right, maybe I’ll get to the States, to Texas and the head office. Though it’s Florida I loves. I’ll think of you, Quoyle, wonder if you’re still up here. See, I’m leaving New Year’s Day. I bet you’ll be the next one to go. You’ll go back to the States. Jack and Billy will have to put out the
Gammy Bird
themselves. If they can.”

“How will your wife like the city?”

“Wife! She’s not going down there. She’s staying right here, right at home. Stay home where she belongs. All her family’s here. She’ll stay right here. A woman stays at home. She’ll stay here.” [275] Outraged at the idea it could be any different. But when he signaled for new drinks Quoyle got up, said he was off to his children. A parting shot from Tert Card.

“You know Jack’s having Billy take up my job. They’ll probably put you on the women’s stuff, Quoyle, and hire a new feller to do the shipping news and the wrecks. I believe your days is numbered.” And his hand went into his shirt and clawed.

¯

Quoyle was surprised by a fever that swept in with the December storms, as though the demonic energy released by wind and wave passed into the people along the coast. Everywhere he went, saws and rasps, click of knitting pins, great round puddings soaking in brandy, faces painted on clothespin dolls, stuffed cats made from the tops of old stockings.

Bunny talked about the pageant at school. She was doing something with Marty. Quoyle braced for an hour of memorized Yule poems. Did not like Christmas. Thought of the time his brother tore the wrappings off a complete set of Matchbox cars, the tiny intricate vehicles in wonderful colors. He must have gotten some toy, too, but remembered only the flat soft packages that were pajamas or the brown and blue knit shirts his mother bought. “You grow so fast,” she accused. Her eyes went back to the moderate-sized brother sending the Alfa Romeo into the red double-decker bus.

He still wasn’t over it now and resented the hectoring radio voices counting down shopping days, exhorting listeners to plunge into debt. But liked the smell of fir trees. And had to go to the school pageant. Which wasn’t a pageant.

¯

The auditorium was jammed. A sweep of best clothes, old men in camphor-stinking black jackets that gnawed their underarms, women in silk and fine wools in the colors of camel, cinnabar, cayenne, bronze, persimmon, periwinkle, Aztec red. Imported Italian pumps. Hair crimped and curled, lacquered into stiff clouds. [276] Lipstick. Red circles of rouge. The men with shaved jowls. Neckties like wrapping paper, children in sugar pink and cream. The puff of scented bodies, a murmur like bees over a red field.

Quoyle, carrying Sunshine, could not see Wavey. They sat beside Dennis who was alone in the third row. Beety probably, thought Quoyle, helping in the kitchen. Recognized the old bar tender from the Heavy Weather in front of him, a couple of slindgers from the wharves, now with their tan hair wetted and combed, faces swelled with drink and the excitement of being in a crowd. A row of bachelor fishermen waiting to hear of jobs away. The slippery boys. Whole truckloads of clans and remote kin squeezing into folding chairs. Sunshine stood on her chair and made a game of waving to people she didn’t know. He could not spot Wavey and Herry. A smell of face powder. She’d said they would be there. He kept looking.

The principal, dressed in her brown suit, came on the stage, a spotlight wavered across her feet and the junior choir began. Shrill, pure voices flooded over the audience.

It was not what he thought. Yes, children lisped comic or religious poems to thunderous applause. But it was not just schoolchildren. People from the town and the outlying coves came onstage as well. Benny Fudge, the black-haired rager who led the attack on poor Nutbeem’s boat—for he was “poor Nutbeem” now—sang “The Moon Shines Bright” in a fruity tenor and finished with two measures of finger snapping and clogging.

“When I was a kid they came around at night and sang outside the door,” whispered Dennis. “Old Sparky Fudge, Benny’s granddad, you see, had a renowned voice. Lost off the Mummy Banks.”

Then Bunny and Marty stood alone on the edge of the stage.

“Hi Bunny!” screamed Sunshine. “Hi Marty!” A ripple of laughter.

“Quiet, now,” whispered Quoyle. The child like coiled wire.

Bunny and Marty wore matching red jumpers. Beety had let them sit at the sewing machine and stitch the long side seams. Quoyle could see Bunny’s knees trembling. Her hands clenched. They began to sing something Quoyle had heard seeping from behind a door, a haunting little tune in a foreign language which [277] he guessed was an African tongue. How had they learned it? He and Dennis mopped at their eyes and snorted with embarrassment.

“Pretty good,” croaked Quoyle.

“Oh, aye,” said Dennis in a robber chiefs voice.

Quoyle remembered Nutbeem’s tape. Had the children memorized some pagan song of unknown meaning from that tape? He hoped so.

A woman, perhaps seventy, glowing hair in a net like a roll of silver above her forehead came smiling onto the stage. Bunched cheeks over her smile like two hills above the valley. Eyes swimming behind lenses. A child ran out and placed a soccer ball on the floor behind her.

“Oh, this is good,” said Dennis, nudging Quoyle. “Auntie Sofier’s chicken act.”

She stood still a few seconds, long old arms in her jersey, the tweed skirt to the knees. Yellow stockings, and on her feet red slippers. Suddenly one of the legs scratched at the stage, the arms became wings, and, with a crooning and cackling, Auntie Sofier metamorphosed into a peevish hen protecting an egg.

Quoyle laughed until his throat ached. Though he had never found hens amusing.

Then Wavey and Herry. The boy wore a sailor suit, clacked across the stage in tap shoes. Wavey, in her grey, homemade dress sat on a chair, the accordion across her breast like a radiator grill. The few false notes. Wavey said something that only the boy heard. A strained silence. Then, “One, two, three,” said Wavey and commenced. The hornpipe rolled into the audience and at once hundreds of right heels bounced against the floor, the boy rattled his way up and down the blank boards. Quoyle clapped, they all clapped and shouted until Herry ran forward and bowed from the waist as his mother had taught him, smiling and smiling through the hinges of his face.

The showstopper was Beety.

The black cane appeared first from behind the curtain and a roar went up in the audience. She came out jauntily. Strutted. Wore dance tights and tunic covered with sequins and glass bugles, rondels, seed beads, satinas and discs, crow beads, crystal diamonds, [278] cat’s-eyes, feather drops and barrels, sputniks and pearls, fluted twists, bumpy-edges and mother-of-pearl teardrops. She had only to breathe to send shimmering prisms at them. A topper that took the light like a boomerang. Leaned on the cane. Twirled the hat on one finger, flipped it in a double somersault and caught it square on her head.

“We all know Billy Pretty’s ways,” she said, voice charged with tricks and amusements, a tone Quoyle’d never heard. He glanced at Dennis who leaned forward, mouth half open, as eager as anyone for her next word.

“Proper thing to save a dollar, eh Billy?”

The audience, laughing, twisted around in their seats to stare at Billy who sat near the back, strangling. The cane twirled.

“Yes, we knows ‘is ways. But ‘ow many knows the time last winter, February it was, time we ‘ad that silver thaw when Billy wanted to ‘ave the old grandfather clock in ‘is kitchen repaired? It was like this, m’dears.” The cane walked around. “Billy called up Leander Mesher.”

The audience creaked and twisted in their seats again to look at the grocer whose hobby was repairing antique watches.

“Leander’s been known to fix a few watches at ‘is kitchen table. The old kind. There may be a few ‘ere remember them. You used to wind them up. Every day. S’elp me, it’s true! Every day. Life was terrible ‘ard in the old days. So! Calls Leander up on the telephone. It was a local call. No charge.” She became an uncanny Billy Pretty, hooped over the phone.