The Shipping News (15 page)

“Me. I'm just working at the paper.”

“You look like you come from here but don't sound it.”

“My people came from Quoyle's Point but I was brought up in the States. So I'm an outsider. More or less.” Quoyle's hand crept up over his chin.

The harbormaster looked at him. Squinted.

“Yes,” said Diddy Shovel. “I guess you got a story there, m'boy. How did it all come about that you was raised so far from home? That you come back?” Even now he could perform feats that would make them stare.

Quoyle rattled his teacup on the saucer. “I was—. Ah, it's complicated.” And his voice fell away. He jabbed at the pad with his pen. Change the subject.

“That ship there,” he said, pointing. “What is it?”

The harbormaster found a pair of binoculars under the chair and looked out into the bay.

“The
Polar Grinder?
Oh yes. She's been tried and tested. Calls here regular to take on fish and sea urchin roe for the Japanese gourmet trade. A refrigerator ship, built in Copenhagen for Northern Delicacies around 1970, 1971. You ever see the way they put the sea urchin roe up at the fish plant?”

“No,” Quoyle thinking of the green pincushions in tidal pools.

“Beautiful! Beautiful. Fancy wooden trays. The Japs think they're quite the gourmet delicacy, pay a hundred dollars for a tray of them. They lay them out all in fancy patterns, like a quilt. Umi, Call it umi. Eat them raw. Get them at sushi bars in Montreal. I had them. I tried it all. Buffalo. Chocolate-covered ants. And raw sea urchin roe. Got a cast-iron stomach, I have.”

Quoyle sucked at his tea, a little revolted.

“Here. Take the glasses and look. She's got the bulbous forefoot that was coming in when she was built. There's a sister ship, the
Arctic Incisor.
Refrigerator ship, four holds, insulated compartments. Chart and wheelhouse amidships, all the latest electronic navigational aids. Highly automated for her day. Since her misadventures in the storm she's been refitted with new navigational gear, new electronic temperature gauges that you can read on the bridge, all the rest of it.

“When she was built, you know, the fashion was for Scandinavian furniture—that's where all the teak went. That song, ‘Norwegian Wood,' remember that?” Sang a few lines in a roaring basso. “That
Polar Grinder
is fitted out with oiled teak furniture. There's a sauna instead of a swimming pool. A lot more useful in these waters, eh? Murals on the walls showing the ski races, reindeer, northern lights and such. You heard about her, I suppose.”

“No. She known for something?”

“That's the ship that drove a wedge between father and son, between Jack and his youngest son, Dennis.”

“Dennis,” said Quoyle. “Dennis is doing some work on our old house. On Quoyle's Point.”

“I might have been in that house,” said Diddy Shovel in a neutral voice, “when I was a boy. Long, long, long ago. Dennis, now, he is a fine carpenter. Better carpenter than fisherman. And that was a relief to Jack—with all that's happened to the Buggits
on the sea. Jack has a morbid fear of it for all he spends as much time as he can on the water. He didn't want his boys to be fishermen. So of course both of them was crazy for it. Jack tells them it's a hard, hard life with nothing to show at the end but broken health and poverty. And a damned good chance of drowning all alone in the freezing boil. Which is what happened to his oldest boy, Jesson. Iced up out on the Baggy Banks with a full load of fish and capsized when the weather went bad. It was forecast a moderate gale but came up storm force all of a sudden. Terrible silver thaw here on shore—the more beautiful they are the more dangerous. More tea.” He poured a black cup for Quoyle. Whose tongue was as rough as a cat's.

“So! Dennis apprentices to a well-known carpenter in St. John's, Brian Corkery, his name was, if I remember right, learns the trade from frame to finish. Then what does he do? First job, mind you. He signs on the
Polar Grinder
as ship's carpenter! She was back and forth from the Maritimes to Europe, twice to Japan, down the seaboard to New York. Dennis is just as crazy about boats and the sea as Jack is and Jesson was. He'd rather fish than anything. But Jack won't hear of it.

“The way Jack carried on. Shocking. Thought if Dennis was a carpenter he'd be safe ashore. He was afraid, you see, afraid for him. And what we fear we often rage against. And Jack was right. See, he knows the sea has its mark on all Buggits.

“In due course we had one of our winter storms. As the bad luck would have it the
Polar Grinder
was caught out. About two hundred miles southeast of St. John's. February storm, savage as they come. Cold, forty-foot seas, hurricane-force wind roaring at fifty knots. Have you been at sea in a storm, Mr. Quoyle?”

“No,” said Quoyle. “And don't want to be.”

“It never leaves you. You
never
hear the wind after that without you remember that banshee moan, remember the watery mountains, crests torn into foam, the poor ship groaning. Bad enough at any time, but this was the deep of winter and the cold was terrible, the ice formed on rail and rigging until vessels was carrying thousands of pounds of ice. The snow drove so hard it was just a roar of white outside these windows. Couldn't see the street below. The sides of
the houses to the northwest was plastered a foot thick with snow as hard as steel.”

Quoyle's teacup cooled in his hands. Listening. The old man hunched his shoulders, words hissed through his teeth. The past bubbled out of his black mouth.

“Ships tried for safe harbors, distress signals all over the North Atlantic from the Maritimes to Europe. Chemical tanker lost its bridge and the captain went with it. A cargo ship loaded with iron ore went down and all the crew with it. A Bulgarian stern trawler broke in half, all hands lost. Ships in harbor dragged their anchors and slammed into each other. A bad storm. There was no safe place. The
Polar Grinder
had a time of it. The seas not fit to look at. The captain kept just enough speed to maintain steerage way and keep her heading off wind, hoping to ride it out. Oh, you get Dennis to tell you about it sometime. Make your blood seize up, the punishment that ship took. Smashed the wheelhouse windows. Immense seas. All anybody could think of all night long—could she make it until morning? They got through that terrible night. The only difference daylight brought was that they could see the monstrous waves coming down on them, see the fury of the raging sea.

“A little after daybreak there was a sea, a great towering wall that seemed made out of half the Atlantic, then a tremendous detonation. Dennis said he thought the ship had smashed into an iceberg or something exploded on board. Said he was deaf for a while afterward. But it was the sea she took. The
Polar
Grinder's steel hull cracked amidships under the weight of that wave, a crack almost an inch wide running from starboard to port.

“Well, there they were, rushing back and forth, mixing concrete and trying to plug up the crack with it, shoring timbers, anything to stop the water, it poured in, filling the hold. They were sloshing around in water up to their waists.”

Sucked in a mouthful of tea.

“The heavy seas and the tons of water pouring in knocked the ship down. She seemed she was about to go and the captain gave the ‘abandon ship.' If you can imagine those small lifeboats in those seas! They lost twenty-seven men. And two peculiar things happened
in the end. First, the
Polar Grinder
—as you see—didn't go down. Wallowed along on her side. When he see she was still afloat the captain turned back and reboarded her, and the next day they got a salvage tug out that fastened a tow and finally brought her in.”

“And Dennis?”

But the telephone rang and the old man creaked away into his chart room, his voice booming over another wire. Came to the doorway.

“Well, I must cut it short. They've seized a Russian side-trawler inside the two-hundred-mile limit fishing without a license and using a trawl with undersize mesh. Second time they've caught the same ship and captain. The Coast Guard's escorting him in. I've got a bit of paperwork. Come again next week and we'll have a drop of tea.”

Quoyle walked along the wharf, craning to get another look at the
Polar Grinder,
but it was lost in the rain. A man in a pea jacket and plastic sandals gazed at the rubber boots in Cuddy's Marine Supply window. Wet, red toes. Said something as Quoyle went past. The liquor store, the marine hardware shop. A longliner drifted toward the fish plant, a figure in yellow oilskins leaning on the rail staring into dimpled water the color of motor oil.

At the end of the wharf, packing crates, a smell of garbage. A small boat was hauled up beside the crates, propped against it a crayoned board:
For Sale
. Quoyle looked at the boat. Rain sluiced over the upturned bottom, pattered on the stones.

“You can have it for a hundred.” A man leaning in a doorframe, hands draining into his pockets. “Me boy built it but he's gone, now. Won five hundred dollars on the lottery. Took off for the mainland. Where they lives ‘mong the snakes.” He sniggered. “Seek his bloody fuckin' fortune.”

“Well, I was just looking at it.” But a hundred dollars didn't seem like very much for a boat. It looked all right. Looked sturdy enough. Painted white and grey. Practically new. Must be something wrong with it. Quoyle thumped the side with his knuckles.

“Tell yer what,” said the man. “Give me fifty, she's yours.”

“Does it leak?” said Quoyle.

“Nah! Don't leak. Sound as a sea-ox. Just me boy built it but he's gone now. Good riddance to him, see? I wants to get it out of me sight. I was gonna burn it up,” he said shrewdly, taking Quoyle's measure. “So's not to be troubled by the sight of it. Reminding me of me boy.”

“No, no, don't burn it,” said Quoyle. “Can't go wrong for fifty bucks, can I!” He found a fifty and got a scrawled bill of sale on the back of an envelope. The man's jacket, he saw, was made of some nubby material, ripped, with stains down the side.

“You got a trailer?” The man gestured at the boat, making circles in the air to indicate a rolling motion.

“No. How'll I get it home without one?”

“You'n rent one down at Cuddy's if yer don't mind paying his bloody prices. Or we's'll lash it into the bed of yer truck.”

“I don't have a truck,” said Quoyle. “I've got a station wagon.” He never had the right things.

“Why that's almost as good, long as you doesn't drive too speedy. She'll hang down y'know, in the front and the back some.”

“What kind of boat do you call it, anyway?”

“Ah, it's just a speedboat. Get a motor on her and won't you have fun dartin' along the shore!” The man's manner was lively and enthusiastic now. “Soon's this scuddy weather goes off.”

In the end Quoyle rented a trailer and he and the man and half a dozen others who splashed up laughing and hitting the man's shoulder in a way Quoyle ignored, shifted the boat onto the trailer. He headed back to the
Gammy Bird
. Hell, fifty dollars barely bought supper for four. The rain ran across the road in waving sheets. The boat wagged.

Saw her. The tall woman in the green slicker. Marching along the edge of the road as usual, her hood pushed back. A calm, almost handsome face, ruddy hair in braids wound around her head in an old-fashioned cornet. Her hair was wet. She was alone. Looked right at him. They waved simultaneously and Quoyle guessed she must have legs like a marathon runner.

Sauntered into the newsroom and sat at his desk. Only Nutbeem and Tert Card there, Nutbeem half asleep with low atmospheric pressure, his ear against the radio, Card on the phone, at the same time whacking the computer keys. Quoyle was going to say something to Nutbeem, but didn't. Instead, worked away on the shipping news. Dull enough, he thought.