The Shipping News (19 page)

Now Quoyle balanced half a square of shingles on his shoulder, climbed back. It was easier, and he got up the roof without crawling, laid the shingles over the ridge and set to work. He glanced at the sea once or twice, saw the profile of a tanker on the horizon like a water snake floating in ease.

He was on the last row. It was fast now because he could straddle the ridge. The nails sank into the wood.

“Hi, Daddy.”

He heard Bunny's voice, glanced toward the ground, but the glance stopped high. She stood on one of the rungs above the roof level, straining to put her foot on the roof. She held the hammer with the red-striped neck. Quoyle saw in a tiny vivid window that
Bunny was going to put her foot on the roof, was going to step forward onto the edge of the steep pitch as though on a level path, was going to fall, to pinwheel shrieking to the rock.

“I'm going to help you.” Her foot reached for the roof.

“Oh, little child,” breathed Quoyle. “Wait there.” His voice was low but passionately urgent. “Don't move. Wait there for me. I'm coming to get you. Hold on tight. Don't come on the roof. Let me get you.” The mesmerizing voice, the father fixing his child in place with his starting eyes, inching down the evil slope on the wrong side of everything, then grasping the child's arm, her hammer falling away, he saying “Don't move, don't move, don't move,” hearing the painted hammer clatter on the rock below. And Quoyle, safe on the rungs, Bunny pinned between his chest and the ladder.

“You're squashing me!”

Quoyle went down with trembling legs, one hand on the rungs, his left arm folded around his daughter's waist. The ladder shook with his shaking. He could not believe she hadn't fallen, for in two or three seconds he had lived her squalling death over and over, reached out time after time to grip empty air.

12

The Stern Wave

“
To prevent slipping, a knot depends on friction, and to provide friction there must be pressure of some sort. This pressure and the place within the knot where it occurs is coiled the
nip.
The security of a knot seems to depend solely on its
nip.”

THE ASHLEY BOOK OF KNOTS

IT WAS like mirror writing. The slightest change in reverse sent the trailer on the opposite tack, and Quoyle squinted in the side mirror at reflections of opposition. Again and again it folded like a jackknife blade seeking its bed, and twice it gouged the new dock. He was sick of it when finally the thing went straight back and into the water. A trick to it.

Got out and looked at the trailer. Wheels were in the water, the boat poised. His hand was on the tilt latch when he thought of a securing line. That would be fun, launch the boat and watch it float away.

He managed to attach bow and stern lines, yanked the latch. The boat slid down. He got the winch line loose, scrambled onto the dock and made the boat fast. It was something of a two-man
operation. Then back to the trailer, close the latch, wind up the cable. The fifty-dollar boat was in the water.

He got in, remembered the damn motor. Still in the station wagon. Carried it onto the dock, put his foot on the gunwale and fell into the boat. Cursed all vessels from floating logs to supertankers.

Quoyle didn't see he'd mounted the motor in a position that would force the bow up like the nose of a bird dog. He poured in gas from the red can.

The motor started on the first pull. There was Quoyle sitting in the stern of a boat. His boat. The motor was running, his hand was on the tiller, wedding ring glinting. He moved the gearshift to reverse, as he had seen Dennis do, and gingerly applied a little power. The boat swung in toward the dock at the stern. Jockeyed back and forth until he was beyond the dock. Shifted into forward. The motor gave a low roar and the boat went—too fast—parallel with the shore. He eased back on the throttle and the boat wallowed. Now forward again, and rocks leaped up ahead of him. Instinctively he pushed the tiller toward the shore and the boat curved out onto Omaloor Bay. The water curled. Traveling on a glass arrow.

He worked the tiller, traced curves. Now faster. Quoyle laughed like a dog in the back of a pickup. Why had he feared boats?

There was an offshore breeze and the waves slapped the boat bottom as he sped at them. A sharp turn and he felt the boat skid. Pushed the throttle back. The stern wave roared up behind him and sloshed over the transom, swirled around his ankles and spread out in the boat. He pulled at the throttle again and the boat leapt forward, but sluggishly, and the water on the floor rushed toward the stern, adding its weight to Quoyle's. He looked for something to bail out the water; nothing. Turned very carefully toward the dock. The boat was vague and unwilling, for the water had altered the trim. Yet he moved forward, not afraid of sinking only two hundred feet from the dock.

As he approached he jerked back on the throttle again, and again the stern wave sloshed over the transom. But close enough
to cut the motor and let the boat grind against the dock. He threw his mooring lines over the piles and went up to the house for a coffee can bail.

Back on the water again, he played the throttle delicately, turning with care, wary of the stern wave. There had to be a way to keep the water out when you slowed down.

“Of course there is,” said Nutbeem. “Your transom's cut too low. What you need is a motor well, a bulkhead as high as the sides of the boat forward of the motor, with self-bailing drains in each corner. Build one in an hour. I'm flabbergasted they registered it the way it is.”

“It's not registered,” said Quoyle.

“You'd better hop on down to the Coast Guard and do it,” said Nutbeem. “You get caught without a registration, without a motor well, without the proper lights and flotation devices they'll fine your ass off. I suppose you have an anchor?”

“No,” said Quoyle.

“Oars? Something to bail with? Distress flares? Do you have a safety chain for your motor?”

“No, no,” said Quoyle. “I was just trying it out.”

On a Saturday Dennis and Quoyle hauled the boat out of the water. Bunny on the dock, throwing stones.

“She's a rough bugger,” said Dennis. “In fact, you might burn her and start over.”

“I can't afford to. Can't we put in a motor well? When I tried it out last week it went right along. It was fine until the water came in. I just want to get back and forth across the bay with it.”

“I'll put in a bulkhead and give you some advice—only take this thing out on quiet days. If it looks rough better get a ride with your aunt or drive your wagon. It isn't fit, you get in a hard nip.”

Quoyle stared at his boat.

“Look at it,” said Dennis. “It's just a few planks bunged together.
The boy that built it deserves a whack of shot in the backside.”

Quoyle's hand went up to his chin.

“Dad,” said Bunny, crouched on the pebbles, ramming a stick into the sand. “I want to go in the boat.”

Dennis clicked his tongue as though he'd heard her say a dirty word.

“Talk to Alvin Yark. See if he'd make you something. He makes good boats. I'd make something for you, but he'll do it quicker and it'll cost you less. I'll put a bulkhead in, long as nobody sees me doing it, touching this thing, but you better talk with Alvin. You got to have a boat. That's certain.”

Bunny ran up to the house, thumb and forefinger pinched together.

“Aunt, the sky is the biggest thing in the world. Guess what's the littlest?”

“I don't know, my dear. What?”

“This.” And extended her finger to show a minute grain of sand.

“I want to see.” Sunshine charged up and the particle of sand was lost in a hurricane of breath.

“No, no, no,” said the aunt, seizing Bunny's balled fist. “There's more without number. There's enough sand for everybody.”

13

The Dutch Cringle

“A
cringle will make an excellent emergency handle for a suitcase.”

THE ASHLEY BOOK OF KNOTS

“BOY, there's a sight down here to the wharf. Never the like of it in these waters.” The booming voice rattled out of the wire and into Quoyle's ear. “With the smell of evil on it. I wouldn't put to sea in it for all the cod in the world. Better take a look, boy. You'll never see anything like it again.”

“What is it, Mr. Shovel? The flagship of the Spanish Armada?”

“No, boy. But you bring your pencil and your camera. I think you can write more than arrival and departure times.” He hung up.

Quoyle was not glad. A gusting rain fell at a hard angle, rattling the windowpanes, drumming on the roof. The wind bucked and buffeted. It was comfortable leaning his elbow on the desk and rewriting a Los Angeles wreck story Nutbeem had pulled off the
radio. An elderly man stripped naked by barroom toughs, blindfolded and shoved into freeway traffic. The man had just left the hospital after visiting a relative, had gone into a nearby bar for a glass of beer when five men with blue-painted heads seized him. Tert Card said it showed the demented style of life in the States. A favorite story with
Gammy Bird
readers, the lunacy of those from away. Quoyle called back.

“Mr. Shovel, I sort of hate to drop what I'm doing.”

“Tell you, it's Hitler's boat. A pleasure boat built for Hitler. A Dutch barge. You never seen anything like it. The owner's on board. They says the paper's welcome to look her over.”

“My god. Be there in about half an hour.”

Billy Pretty stared at Quoyle. “What's he got, then?” he whispered.

“He says there's a Dutch boat that belonged to Hitler down at the public wharf.”

“Naw!” said Billy, “I'd like to see that. Those old days, boy, we had the Germans prowling up and down this coast, torpedoed ships they did right up there in the straits. The Allies got a submarine, captured a German sub. Took it down to St. John's.

“We had spies. Oh, some clever! This one, a woman, I can see her now in a old duckety-mud coat, used to pedal her squeaky old bike up the coast once a week from Rough Shop Harbor to Killick-Claw, then go back down the ferry. I forget what she gave out for a story why she had to do all that bikin', but come to find out she was a German spy, countin' the boats all up and down, and she'd radio the information out to German subs lurking offshore.”