The Shipping News (38 page)

Nunny Bag Cove was a loop of road crammed with new ranch houses. They could scarcely see them in the mist.

“They had a fire about six years ago,” said Wavey. “The town burned down. Everybody built a new house with the insurance. There was some families didn't have insurance, five or six I guess, the others shared along with them so it all came out to a new house for everybody. Uncle Al and Auntie Evvie didn't need such a big house as the old one, so they chipped in.”

“Wait,” said Quoyle. “They built a smaller house than their insurance claim paid for?”

“Umm,” said Wavey. “He had separate insurance on his boat house. Had it insured for the amount as if there was a new longliner just finished in it.”

“That's enterprising,” said Quoyle.

“Well, you know, there might have been! Better to guess yes than no. How many have that happened to, and the insurance was only for the building?”

Mrs. Yark, thin arms and legs like iron bars, got them all around the kitchen table, poured the children milk-tea in tiny cups painted with animals, gilt rims. Sunshine had a Gloucester Old Spot pig, Herry a Silver Spangle rooster and hen. A curly horned Dorset sheep for Bunny. The table still damp with recent wiping.

“Chuck, chuck, chuck,” said Herry, finger on the rooster.

“They was old when I was little,” said Wavey.

“Be surprised, m'dear, ‘ow old they is. My grandmother ‘ad them. That's a long time ago. They come over from England. Once was twelve of them, but all that's left is the four. The ‘orses and cows are broke, though there's a number of the saucers. Used to ‘ave some little glassen plates, but they's broke, too.” Mrs. Yark's ginger cookies were flying doves with raisin eyes.

Bunny found all the interesting things in the kitchen, a folding bootjack, a tin jelly mold like a castle with pointed towers, a flowered mustache cup with a ceramic bridge at the rim to protect a gentleman's mustache from sopping.

“You're lucky you saved these things from the fire,” said Quoyle. Eating more cookies.

“Ah, well,” Mrs. Yark breathed, and Quoyle saw he'd made a mistake.

Quoyle left the women's territory, followed Alvin Yark out to the shop. Yark was a small man with a paper face, ears the size of half-dollars, eyes like willow leaves. He spoke from lips no more than a crack between the nose and chin.

“So you wants a boat. A motorboat?”

“Just a small boat, yes. I want something to get around the bay—not too big. Something I can handle by myself. I'm not very good at it.”

A cap slewed sideways on his knotty head. He wore a pair of coveralls bisected by a zipper with double tabs, one dangling at his crotch, the other at his breastbone. Under the coveralls he wore a plaid shirt, and over everything a cardigan with more zippers.

“Outboard rodney, I suppose ‘ud do you. Fifteen, sixteen foot. Put a little seven-'orsepower motor on ‘er. Something like that,” he said pointing at a sturdy boat with good lines resting on a pair of sawhorses.

“Yes,” said Quoyle. Knew enough to recognize he was looking at something good.

“Learn yer young ones to row innit when they gits a little stouter.”

They went into the dull gloom of the shop.

“Ah,” said Yark. “I ‘as a one or two to finish up, y'know,” pointing to wooden skeletons and half-planked sides. “Says I might ‘elp Nige Fearn wid ‘is long-liner this winter. But if I gets out in the woods, you know, and finds the timber, it'll go along. Something by spring, see, by the time the ice goes. If I goes in the woods and finds the right sticks you know, spruce, var. See, you must find good uns, your stem, you wants to bring it down with a bit of a ‘ollow to it, sternpost and your knee, and deadwoods a course, and breast'ook. You has to get the right ones. Your timbers, you know.
There's some around ‘ere steams ‘em. I wouldn't set down in a steam timber boat. Weak.”

“I thought you'd have the materials on hand,” said Quoyle.

“No, boy, I doesn't build with dry wood. The boat takes up the water if ‘er's made out of dry wood, you know, and don't give it up again. But you builds with green wood and water will never go in the wood. I never builds with dry wood.”

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, 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.”

“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. “Marty 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
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.”