The Shipping News (50 page)

The Maids in the Meadow thought Quoyle, looking at his
daughters. And as though something dropped in place, he matched Billy's father's verse with his life. The Demon Lover. The Stouthearted Woman. Maids in the Meadow. The Tall and Quiet Woman.

Then Bunny ran at them with her hands cupped. Always an arrow flying to the target. A stiff, perfect bird, as small as a stone in a child's hand. Folded legs.

“A dead bird,” said Wavey. “The poor thing's neck is broken.” For the head lolled. She said nothing about sleep nor heaven. Bunny laid it on a rock, went back to look at it twenty times.

The herrings smoked, the children dodged around, saying Dad, Dad, when are they ready. Dad, said Herry. And put his pie-face up, roaring at his own cleverness.

“Cockadoodle Christ, you're worse than the gulls.” Jack, watching Quoyle shovel herring into a bucket.

“I could eat the boatload.”

“If you wasn't getting out the paper you ought to take up fishing. You're drawn to it. I see that. What's good, you know, you bring a little stove in the boat, frying pan and some salt pork, you can have you the best you ever ate. Why you never see a fisherman take a bag of lunch out. Even if he goes hungry now and then. Nothing made ashore that's as good as what you pull out of the sea. You'll come out with me one time.”

Two weeks later the herring were unaccountably gone and the Gammy Bird took a temporary dive in size while Billy and Quoyle and Dennis helped Jack overhaul his lobster pots, build a few new ones. And Benny Fudge went to Misky Bay to have all his teeth pulled.

“I don't know if I'll be fishing lobster for meself or all of yous.”

“I wish I was going out,” said Billy. “Oh there's money in lobster. But you can't get a license. Only way anyone here could have a license for lobster is if you turned yours over to Dennis, here.”

“I'm ready,” said Dennis.

“Won't be tomorrow,” said Jack. Short and hard. Jealous of
his fishing rights. He was. And wanted to keep his last son ashore.

“Come a nice day we'll have a big lobster boil, eh?” said Billy. “Even if we have to buy them off somebody down at No Name Cove. Too bad there isn't some kind of occasion to celebrate.” Winked at Dennis, rolled his eyes at Quoyle.

“There is,” said Quoyle. “The aunt's coming back this Saturday and we're having a welcome home party at my house. But I doubt there'll be lobster.”

Jack had a pile of stones at the corner of his shack. Anchors for the lobster pots, he said. Slingstones.

38

The Sled Dog Driver's Dream

“A leash
for a large dog of rawhide belt lacing. Taper and skive four thongs, form a a loop with the small end of the longest strand, and seize all strands together. Lay up a
FOUR-STRAND SQUARE SINNET.
Surmount it with a large
BUTTON KNOT. COVER
the seizing with a leather shoestring
TURK'S HEAD.”

THE ASHLEY BOOK OF KNOTS

ALVIN YARK'S sweater zipper rattled as he hooked his worn measure out of the pocket. Time to get to the work. Had got cleaned out the day before with a quart of steeped she-var needles, had moved his bowels and was ready now to move the earth. Marked the keel with his pencil stub for the timber pairs, still uncut from curved planks. The window showed empty road. Humming, singing, he turned to the overhead rack that ran the length of the shop and pulled down wood ribbands, tacked them the length of the frame, from forehook to midship bend to the afterhook timbers. And there was the boat.

“ 'E missed the best part, did Quoyle. Missed seeing ‘er come out of nothing.” Checked the window again. Nothing but April water streaked with white like flashing smiles, like lace tablecloths
snapping open in slow motion. Clots of froth bobbed against the pilings. Beyond the headland, bergy bits, pans and floes, a disintegrating berg like a blue radiator in the restless water.

At last the mud-throwing hump of Quoyle's station wagon moved into Yark's view. He stopped in the doorway, the oxblood sweater caught on a nail. Picked fussily at the wool loop where another would have yanked, said he had to be back in good time. For the aunt's welcome home supper. He and Wavey had spent the morning, he said, making enough fish chowder to sink a tanker and Alvin and Evvie had better come to help put it away.

“I enjoys a bit of a time,” said Yark. “Agnis in or comin' in?”

Quoyle had picked up the aunt in Deer Lake at noon. She looked fit. Full of energy and ideas.

But Quoyle dreamed, thoughts somewhere else. He picked up the wrong tool when Yark pointed.

“Hundred things going on,” he mumbled. The Lifestyles page was on his mind. Mail pouring in. They'd never run another birdhouse plan but what was the cure for homesick blues? Everybody that went away suffered a broken heart. “I'm coming back some day,” they all wrote. But never did. The old life was too small to fit anymore.

Yark half-sang his interminable ditty, “Oh the
Gandy Goose,
it ain't no use, cause every nut and bolt is loose, she'll go to the bottom just like the Bruce, the
Gandy Goose,
and kill a Newfound LANDer,” while he transferred the measurements to the rough boards.

“You'll ‘ave your boat next Saddy. She'll be finished.” Thank God, thought Quoyle. Man Escapes Endless Song. A pale brown spider raced along the top ribband.

“Weather coming on. I see the spiders is lively all day and my knees is full of crackles. Well, let's cut them timbers. ‘Oh it was the
Bruce,
who brought the moose, they lives so good out in the spruce.'”

Quoyle looked at his boat. The timbers were the real stuff of it, he thought, mistaking the fact for the idea. For the boat had existed in Yark's mind for months.

As Yark sawed and shaped, Quoyle leaned the timbers against the wall. Their curves made him think of Wavey, the lyre-shape of hip swelling from waist, taut thighs like Chinese bridges. If he and Wavey married, would Petal be in the bed with them? Or Herold Prowse? He imagined the demon lovers coupling, biting and growling, while he and Wavey crouched against the footboard with their eyes squeezed shut, fingers in their ears.

The twilight drew in, their breaths huffed white as they set and braced the timbers.

“It ain't no use, it ain't no use, I gots to get some tea into my caboose,” sang Yark as they stepped from gloom into green afterglow. Sea and sky like tinted glass. The lighthouse on the point slashed its stroke, house windows flowered pale orange.

“Hear that?” said Yark, stopping on the path. Arm out in warning, fingers splayed.

“What?” Only the sucking draw of the sea below. He wanted to get home.

“The sea. Heard a big one. She's building a swell.” They stood below the amber sky, listening. The tuckamore all black tangle, the cliff a funeral stele.

“There! See that!” Yark gripped Quoyle's wrist, drew his arm out to follow his own, pointing northeast into the bay. Out on the darkling water a ball of blue fire glimmered. The lighthouse flash cut across the bay, revealed nothing, and in the stunned darkness behind it the strange glow rolled, rolled and faded.

“That's a weather light. Seen them many times. Bad weather coming.” Although the trickster sky was clear.

Cars and trucks parked along the road in front of the Burkes' house, and through the window he could see people in the kitchen. He stepped into music. Wavey playing “Joe Lard” on her accordion and Dennis thumping at a guitar. Who was singing? Beety pulled pans out of the oven, shouted a joke. A burst of laughter. Mavis Bangs told Mrs. Buggit about a woman in St. John's who suffered from a caked breast. Ken and his buddy leaned against the wall with their arms folded, watching the others. For they were in a
Toronto of the mind, at a sophisticated party instead of an old kitchen scuff.

“Dad.” Bunny, pulling at Quoyle, his jacket half off, whispering urgently. “I been waiting and waiting for you to come home. Dad, you got to come up to my room and see what Wavey got for us. Come on, Dad. Right now. Please.” On fire about something. He hoped it wasn't crayons. Dreaded more broccoli trees. The refrigerator was covered with them.

Quoyle let himself be dragged through the company, eyes catching Wavey's eyes, catching Wavey's smile, oh, aimed only at him, and upstairs to Bunny's room. On the stairs an image came to him. Was love then like a bag of assorted sweets passed around from which one might choose more than once? Some might sting the tongue, some invoke night perfume. Some had centers as bitter as gall, some blended honey and poison, some were quickly swallowed. And among the common bull's-eyes and peppermints a few rare ones; one or two with deadly needles at the heart, another that brought calm and gentle pleasure. Were his fingers closing on that one?

Herry and Sunshine were lying on the floor. Marty pushed a bowl of water toward a husky puppy. White fur, the tail curled up like a fern. The puppy galloped at Bunny, seized the loop of her shoelace and pulled.

“It's a white dog.” Could hardly say it. Watched her from the corner of his eye.

“She's a sled dog, Dad. Wavey got her for me from her brother who raises sled dogs.”

“Ken? Ken raises sled dogs?” He knew it wasn't Ken, but was groping to understand this. Man Very Surprised to See White Dog in Daughter's Chamber.

“No, the other brother. Oscar. That's got the pet seal. Remember we saw the pet seal, Dad? But Ken drove us over. And Oscar's going to show me how to train her when she gets big enough. And I'm going to race her, Dad. If she wants to. And I'm going to ask Skipper Al if he'll help me make a komatik. That's the sled, Dad. We saw one at Oscar's. I'm going to be a dog-team racer when I grow up.”

“Me too,” said Sunshine.

“That's the most wonderful thing I've ever heard. My dog-team kids. Have you named her yet?”

“Warren,” said Bunny. “Warren the Second.”

“Warren the Second,” said Herry.

Quoyle saw his life might be spent in the company of dynastic dogs named Warren.

“Dad,” whispered Bunny, “Herry's getting a dog too, it's Warren the Second's brother. Tomorrow. But don't tell him. Because it's a secret.”

Quoyle went downstairs to hug the aunt and then Wavey. Because he was so close then, and in bravado, he kissed her. A great true embrace. Her teeth bruised his lip. The accordian between them huffed a crazy chord. A roar and clapping at this public intimacy. As good as an announcement. Wavey's father sat at the table, one hand on his thigh, the other tapping cigarette ash into a saucer. A lopsided smile at Quoyle. A wink of approval rather than complicity. That must be where Wavey got her little winks. But Jack was in the pantry looking out the window at the dark.

“Jack,” called Beety, “what are you fidgeting at in there?” She set out a tall white cake plastered with pink icing. Candy letters spelled “Welcome Agnis.” Quoyle ate two slices and tried for a third but it went to Billy Pretty who came in late with snow in his hair. Stood near the stove. Importantly. Every man in the room looked at him. Though he had said nothing.