The Shipping News (5 page)

5

A Rolling Hitch

“A Rolling Hitch will suffice to tie a broom that has no groove,

provided the surface is not too slick.”

THE ASHLEY BOOK OF KNOTS

ON THE
floor behind the seat Warren groaned. Quoyle steered up the west coast of the Great Northern Peninsula along a highway rutted by transport trucks. The road ran between the loppy waves of the Strait of Belle Isle and mountains like blue melons. Across the strait sullen Labrador. Trucks ground east in caravans, stainless steel cabs beaded with mist. Quoyle almost recognized the louring sky. As though he had dreamed this place once, forgot it later.

The car rolled over fissured land. Tuckamore. Cracked cliffs in volcanic glazes. On a ledge above the sea a murre laid her single egg. Harbors still locked in ice. Tombstone houses jutting from raw granite, the coast black, glinting like lumps of silver ore.

Their
house, the aunt said, crossing her fingers, was out on Quoyle’s Point. The Point, anyway, still on the map. A house [36] empty for forty-four years. She scoffed, said it could not still stand, but inwardly believed something had held, that time had not cheated her of this return. Her voice clacked. Quoyle, listening, drove with his mouth open as though to taste the subarctic air.

On the horizon icebergs like white prisons. The immense blue fabric of the sea, rumpled and creased.

“Look,” said the aunt. “Fishing skiffs.” Small in the distance. Waves bursting against the headlands. Exploding water.

“I remember a fellow lived in a wrecked fishing boat,” the aunt said. “Old Danny Something-or-other. It was hauled up on the shore far enough out of the storm and he fixed it up. Little chimney sticking up, path with a border of stone. Lived there for years until one day when he was sitting out in front mending net and the rotten hull collapsed and killed him.”

The highway shriveled to a two-lane road as they drove east, ran under cliffs, passed spruce forest fronted by signs that said
NO CUTTING
. Quoyle appraised the rare motels they passed with the eye of someone who expected to sleep in one of them.

¯

The aunt circled Quoyle’s Point on the map. On the west side of Omaloor Bay the point thrust into the ocean like a bent thumb. The house, whether now collapsed, vandalized, burned, carried away in pieces, had been there. Once.

The bay showed on the map as a chemist’s pale blue flask into which poured ocean. Ships entered the bay through the neck of the flask. On the eastern shore the settlement of Flour Sack Cove, three miles farther down the town of Killick-Claw, and along the bottom, odds and ends of coves. The aunt rummaged in her black flapjack handbag for a brochure. Read aloud the charms of Killick-Claw, statistics of its government wharf, fish plant, freight terminal, restaurants. Population, two thousand. Potential unlimited.

“Your new job’s in Flour Sack Cove, eh? That’s right across from Quoyle’s Point. Looks about two miles by water. And a long trip by road. Used to be a ferry run from Capsize Cove to Killick Claw every morning and night. But I guess it’s closed down now. If you had a boat and a motor you could do it yourself.”

[37] “How do we get out to Quoyle’s Point?” he asked.

There was a road off the main highway, the aunt said, that showed as a dotted line on the map. Quoyle didn’t like the look of the dotted line roads they passed. Gravel, mud, washboard going nowhere.

They missed the turnoff, drove until they saw gas pumps. A sign.
IGS STORE
. The store in a house. Dark room. Behind the counter they could see a kitchen, teakettle spitting on the stove. Bunny heard television laughter.

Waiting for someone to appear, Quoyle examined bear-paw snowshoes. Walked around, looking at the homemade shelves, open boxes of skinning knives, needles for mending net, cones of line, rubber gloves, potted meats, a pile of adventure videos. Bunny peered through the freezer door at papillose frost crowding the ice cream tubs.

A man, sedge-grass hair sticking out from a cap embroidered with the name of a French bicycle manufacturer, came from the kitchen; chewed something gristly. Trousers a sullen crookedness of wool. The aunt talked. Quoyle modeled a sealskin hat for his children, helped them choose dolls made from clothespins. Inked faces smiled from the heads.

“Can you tell us where the road to Capsize Cove is?”

Unsmiling. Swallowed before answering.

“Be’ind you aways. Like just peasin’ out of the main road. On a right as you go back. Not much in there now.” He looked away. His Adam’s apple a hairy mound in his neck like some strange sexual organ.

Quoyle at a rack of comic books, studied a gangster firing a laser gun at a trussed woman. The gangsters always wore green suits. He paid for the dolls. The man’s fingers dropped cold dimes.

¯

Up and down the highway three times before they spied a ruvid strip tilting away into the sky.

“Aunt, I don’t think I can drive on this. It doesn’t look like it goes anywhere.”

“There’s tire tracks on it,” she said, pointing to cleated tread [38] marks. Quoyle turned onto the sumpy road. Churned mud. The tire marks disappeared. Must have turned around, thought Quoyle, wanting to do the same and try tomorrow. Or had dropped in a bottomless hole.

“When are we gonna get there?” said Bunny, kicking the back of the seat. “I’m tired of going somewhere. I want to be there. I want to put on my bathing suit and play on the beach.”

“Me too.” Both throwing themselves rhythmically against the seat.

“It’s too cold. Only polar bears go swimming now. But you can throw stones in the water. On the map, Aunt, how long is this road?” Hands ached from days of clenching.

She breathed over the map awhile. “From the main road to Capsize Cove is seventeen miles.”

“Seventeen miles of this!”

“And then,” as if he hadn’t spoken, “eleven more to Quoyle’s Point. To the house. Whatever’s left of it. They show this road on the map, but in the old days it wasn’t there. There was a footpath. See, folks didn’t drive, nobody had cars then. Go places in the boat. Nobody had a car or truck. That paved main highway we come up on is all new.” Yet the signature of rock written against the horizon in a heavy hand; unchanged, unchanging.

“Hope we don’t get to Capsize Cove and discover we’ve got an eleven-mile hike in front of us.” The rasp of his nylon sleeve on the wheel.

“We might. Then we’ll just turn around.” Her expression was remote. The bay seemed to be coming out of her mind, a blue hallucination.

Quoyle and the road in combat. Car Disintegrates on Remote Goatpath. Dusk washed in, the car struggled up a grade. They were on the edge of cliffs. Below, Capsize Cove, the abandoned houses askew. Fading light. Ahead, the main track swallowed in distance.

Quoyle pulled onto the shoulder, wondered if anybody had ever gone over the edge, metal jouncing on rocks. The side track down to the ruined cove steep, strewn with boulders. More gully than road.

[39] “Well, we’re not going to make the Point tonight,” he said. “This is as far as I think we should drive until we can get a look at the road in daylight.”

“You don’t want to go back out to the highway, do you?” cried the aunt in her hot voice. So close to the beginning of everything.

“Yeah,” said Bunny. “I want to go to a motel with
TV
and hamburgers and chips that you can eat in bed. And lights that go down, down, down when you turn the knob. And you can turn the television off and on with that thing without getting out of bed.”

“I want fried chicken in the bed,” said Sunshine.

“No,” said Quoyle. “We’re going to stick it out right here. We’ve got a tent in the back and I’m going to set it up beside the car and sleep in it. That’s the plan.” He looked at the aunt. It had been her idea. But she bent over her purse, rummaging for something private. Her old hair flattened and crushed.

“We’ve got air mattresses, we’ve got sleeping bags. We blow up the air mattresses and fold down the backseat and spread them out, put the sleeping bags on them and there you are, two nice comfortable beds. Aunt will have one and you two girls can share the other. I don’t need an air mattress. I’ll put my sleeping bag on the tent floor.” He seemed to be asking questions.

“But I’m so starved,” moaned Bunny. “I hate you, Dad! You’re dumb!” She leaned forward and hit Quoyle on the back of the head.

“
HERE NOW!
” The outraged aunt roared at Bunny. “Take your seat, Miss, and don’t ever let me hear you speak to your father like that again or I’ll blister your bottom for you.” The aunt let the blood boil up around her heart.

Bunny’s face contorted into a tragic mask. “Petal says Dad is dumb.” She hated them all.

“Everybody is dumb about some things,” said Quoyle mildly. He reached back between the seats, his red hand offered to Bunny. To console her for the aunt’s shouting. The dog licked his fingers. There was the familiar feeling that things were going wrong.

¯

[40] “Well, I’m not doing that again,” said the aunt, rotating her head, tipping her chin up. “Sleeping in the car. Feel like my neck is welded. And Bunny sleeps as quiet as an eggbeater.”

They walked around in the roky damp, in a silence. The car glazed with salt. Quoyle squinted at the road. It curved, angled away from shoreline and into fog. What he could see of it looked good. Better than yesterday.

The aunt slapped mosquitoes, knotted a kerchief under her chin. Quoyle longed for bitter coffee or a clear view. Whatever he hoped for never happened. He rolled the damp tent.

Bunny’s eyes opened as he threw in the tent and sleeping bag, but she sank back to sleep when the car started. Seeing blue beads that fell and fell from a string although she held both ends tightly.

The interior of the station wagon smelled of human hair. An arc showed in the fog, beyond it a second arc of faint prismatic colors.

“Fogbow,” said the aunt. How loud the station wagon engine sounded.

Suddenly they were on a good gravel road.

“Look at this,” said Quoyle. “This is nice.” It curled away. They crossed a concrete bridge over a stream the color of beer.

“For pity’s sake,” said the aunt. “It’s a wonderful road. But for what?”

“I don’t know,” said Quoyle, bringing his speed up.

“Got to be some reason. Maybe people come across from Killick-Claw to Capsize Cove by ferry, and then drive out to Quoyle’s Point this way? God knows why. Maybe there’s a provincial park. Maybe there’s a big hotel,” said the aunt. “But how in the world could they make it up from Capsize Cove? That road is all washed out. And Capsize Cove is dead.”

They noticed sedgy grass in the centerline, a damp sink where a culvert had dropped, and, in the silted shoulders, hoofprints the size of cooking pots.

“Nobody’s driven this fancy road in a long time.”

Quoyle stood on the brakes. Warren yelped as she was thrown against the back of the seat. A moose stood broadside, looming; annoyance in its retreat.

[41] A little after eight they swept around a last corner. The road came to an end in an asphalt parking lot beside a concrete building. The wild barrens pressed all around.

Quoyle and the aunt got out. Silence, except for the wind sharpening itself on the corner of the building, the gnawing sea. The aunt pointed at cracks in the walls, a few windows up under the eaves. They tried the doors. Metal, and locked.

“Not a clue,” said the aunt, “whatever it is. Or was.”

“I don’t know what to make of it,” said Quoyle, “but it all stops here. And the wind’s starting up again.”

“Oh, without a doubt this building goes with the road. You know,” said the aunt, “if we can scout up something to boil water in, I’ve got some tea bags in my pocketbook. Let’s have a break and think about this. We can use the girls’ soda cans to drink out of. I can’t believe I forgot to get coffee.”

“I’ve got my camping frying pan with me,” said Quoyle. “Never been used. It was in my sleeping bag. I slept on it all night.”

“Let’s try it,” said the aunt, gathering dead spruce branches festooned with moss, blasty boughs she called them, and the moss was old man’s whiskers. Remembering the names for things. Heaped the boughs in the lee of the building.

Quoyle got the water jug from the car. In fifteen minutes they were drinking out of the soda cans, scalding tea that tasted of smoke and orangeade. The aunt drew the sleeve of her sweater down to protect her hand from the hot metal. Fog shuddered against their faces. The aunt’s trouser cuffs snapped in the wind. Ochre brilliance suffused the tattered fog, disclosed the bay, smothered it.

“Ah!” shouted the aunt pointing into the stirring mist. “
I saw the house
. The old windows. Double chimneys. As it always was. Over there! I’m telling you I saw it!”

Quoyle stared. Saw fog stirring.

“Right over there. The cove and then the house.” The aunt strode away.

Bunny got out of the car, still in her sleeping bag, shuffling along over the asphalt. “Is this it?” she said, staring at the concrete wall. “It’s awful. There’s no windows. Where’s my room going to [42] be? Can I have a soda, too? Dad, there’s smoke coming out of the can and coming out of your mouth, too. How do you do that, Daddy?”