The Shipping News (20 page)

“Get your slicker then and come on.”

“We always heard they shot her. Just didn't show up one week. They said she was caught down at Rough Shop Harbor and executed. Said she dodged her bike through the paths, screaming like a crazy thing, the men after her, run like engines before they run her down.”

Quoyle made a sucking noise with the side of his mouth. He did not believe a word.

There was a hole in the station wagon's floor and through it spurted occasional geysers of dirty rainwater. Quoyle thought enviously of the aunt's pickup. He couldn't afford a new truck. Frightening how fast the insurance money was going. He didn't know where the aunt got it. She'd paid for all the house repairs, put in her share for groceries. He'd paid for the road, the new dock. For the girls' beds, clothes, the motel bill, gas for the station wagon. And the new transmission.

“Wish I'd worn me logans,” shouted Billy Pretty. “Didn't know the bottom half of your car was missin'.”

Quoyle slowed not to splash the graceful, straight-backed woman in the green slicker. God, did it rain every day? The child was with her. Her eyes straight to Quoyle. His to her.

“Who is that? Seems like I see her walking along the road every time I come out.”

“That's Wavey. Wavey Prowse. She's takin' her boy back from the special class at the school. There's a bunch of them goes. She got it started, the special class. He's not right. It was grief caused the boy to be like he is. Wavey was carrying him when Sevenseas Hector went over. Lost her husband. We should of give her a ride, boy.”

“She was going the other way.”

“Wouldn't take a minute to turn round. Rain coming down like stair rods,” said Billy.

Quoyle pulled in at the cemetery entrance, turned, drove back. As the woman and child got in Billy said their names. Wavey Prowse. Herry. The woman apologized for their wetness, sat silent the rest of the way to a small house half a mile beyond the
Gammy Bird.
Didn't look at Quoyle. The yard beyond the small house held a phantasmagoria of painted wooden figures, galloping horses, dogs balanced on wheels, a row of chrome hubcaps on sticks. A zoo of the mind.

“That's some yard,” said Quoyle.

“Dad's stuff,” said Wavey Prowse and slammed the door.

Back along the flooding road again toward Killick-Claw.

“You ought to see the chair he made out of moose antlers,” said Billy. “You set in it, it's comfortable enough, but to the others it looks like you sprouted golden wings.”

“She has very good posture,” said Quoyle. Tried to cancel the stupid remark. “What I mean is, she has a good stride. I mean, tall. She seems tall.” Man Sounds Like Fatuous Fool. In a way he could not explain she seized his attention; because she seemed sprung from wet stones, the stench of fish and tide.

“Maybe she's the tall and quiet woman, boy.”

“What does that mean?”

“A thing me old dad used to say.”

“There she is.” They peered through the streaming windshield. The Botterjacht stood out from every other boat at the wharf, tied up between a sailing yacht whose Australian owners had been there for two weeks, and the cadet training ship. From above, the barge looked like a low tub with strange and gigantic shoehorns on its sides. A crewman in a black slicker bent over something near the cabin door, then walked swiftly aft and disappeared.

“What are those things on the side? Looks like a big beetle with a set of undersize wings.”

“Lee boards. Work like a centerboard. You know. You raise and lower a centerboard in a sailing boat so as to add keel. Some calls it a ‘drop keel.' You got a shoal draft boat, my boy, she has to work to windward, you'll bless your centerboard. Now, with your lee boards, see, you don't loose any stowage space. The things is hung out on the side instead of down in the gut of the boat. A centerboard trunk takes up space.” Billy's worn shape down to the bones, cast Quoyle as a sliding mass.

A light shone in the cabin. Even through the roaring rain they could see the boat was a treasure.

“Oak hull, I guess,” said Billy Pretty. “Look at her! Look at the mast on her! Look at that cabin! Teak decks. Flat and low and wide. Never saw a shape like that on a boat in me life—look at them bluff bows. Look how she points up on the stem like a Eskimo knife. See the carving?” Her name was painted on an elaborately
carved and gilded ribbon of mahogany—
Tough Baby,
Puerta Malacca. They could hear muffled voices.

“I don't know how you names a boat that,” mumbled Billy Pretty, walking up the ramp and jumping on the glistening deck. He bellowed “Ahoy,
Tough Baby.
Visitors! Come aboard?”

A flush-faced man with white hair opened one of the curvedtop double doors. He wore madras trousers with a patent leather belt and matching white shoes. Quoyle looked. Everything streaming. Coiled wet rope, dripping ventilator, sheets of water running over the deck. Near the cabin door a wet pigskin suitcase with a worked rope handle.

“Do I know you?” His eyes were bloodshot.

“From the local paper, sir, the
Gammy
Bird, thought our readers would be interested in your boat, we try to do a little story on the more unusual boats that dock in Killick-Claw, never seen anything like this.” Quoyle said his piece. The boat felt like the plains under his feet. He smiled ingratiatingly, but
Tough Baby
was not a welcoming boat.

“Ah yes. That incredible harbormaster, what's-his-name, Doodles or whatever it is, mumbled something about a visit from
la presse locale.”
The man sighed hugely. Gestured as though throwing away fruit skins. “Well, my darling wife and I are having this sort of totally terrible argument, but I suppose we can do the dog and pony act. I've given lectures on this boat to everybody from Andy Warhol two weeks before that
fatal
operation, to Scotland Yard. She absolutely draws this crowd wherever we go, whether Antibes or Boca Raton. She's absolutely unique.” He stepped out into the rain.

“Traditional Dutch barge yacht design, but
marvelously
luxurious with these incredible details. I think, the finest Botterjacht ever built. When we first saw her she was a
total
wreck. She was moored in some awful Italian port—belonged to the Princess L'Aranciata—we'd taken a villa in Ansedonia next to theirs for the summer and at one point she mentioned that she had this
wreck
of a Dutch yacht that had belonged to Hitler but bored her to tears. Well! We went up to see it and immediately I could see the possibilities—it was utterly clear, clear, clear that here was an extraordinary,
one-of-a-kind
thing”
Rain dripped off the ends of the man's wet hair, his shirt was transparent with it.

“Absolutely flat bottomed so she can go around without
any
damage, you can sail her right up onto shore in storm conditions or for repairs. Incredibly heavy. Almost forty tons of oak. Of
course,
she was designed for the North Sea. Bluff bows. She's absolutely buoyant. You know, my wife
hates
this boat. But I love her.”

Billy Pretty's eyes had fallen on a square of Astroturf which he took for a bit of doormat until he saw cigar dog turds. Stared.

“That's for my wife's little spaniel. Great system. Doggie makes doo-doo on the simulated grass, you throw overboard—see the loop on the corner for the line?—and presto, tow until it's squeaky clean again. Great invention. The design dates back to the fifteenth century. The boat, of course, not the doo-doo rug. They're the boats you see in Rembrandt's marvelous paintings. They were royal barges. Henry the Eighth had one, Elizabeth I had one. A royal barge. She was named
Das Knie
when we saw her—means ‘The Knee,' and I had to get down on one knee to persuade my darling, darling wife to let me buy it—” he paused for Quoyle's laugh. “Had the same name when the princess bought it—absolutely nobody ever changed it since this sordid German industralist had it after the war. My beloved wife thought it should be named after her, but I called her
Tough Baby.
When I saw what her true character was. This boat will be strong a hundred years from now. Built in Haarlem. Nine years in the building. She's utterly utterly indestructible. Just incredibly massive. The frames are seven and an eighth by six inches on eleven-inch centers.”

Billy Pretty whistled and raised his eyebrows. The man's hair plastered against his yellow scalp. Drops hanging from the brims of Billy's and Quoyle's hats like moonstone trim. Quoyle scribbling on his pad, bent over to keep the rain off. Useless.

“The planking—nobody can believe the planking—select grade oak, two and three-sixteenths inches thick with double planking at the bottom. The reason? Because of her shallow home waters, full of sandbars, spits, shifting channels. Unbelievable. The Zuider Zee. Treacherous, treacherous water. You absolutely go aground all the time. The decking isn't flimsy, either. Believe it or not, you
are standing on inch and three-quarters teak from pre-World War II Burma! You couldn't buy the wood that's in this boat anywhere in the world today for any amount of money. It's just completely gone today.” The pitching voice went on and on. Quoyle saw Billy's hands rammed in his pockets.

“You wretched bastard, who are you talking to?” cried a raw high voice. The drenched man kept talking as though he hadn't heard.

“Let's see, there's a crew of four. She's cutter rigged, two thousand square foot of working sail, takes three incredibly strong men to handle the mains'l and they're always getting these sort of hernias and ruptures. Always quitting and jumping ship. It weighs a thousand pounds. The sail, I mean. And she's slow. Slow because she's heavy. But very, very sturdy.” Without a pause he shouted, “I'm talking to the local press about the boat!” Nose wrinkled like a snarling dog.

“Tell them what happened in Hurricane Bob!”

The words poured down with the rain. Quoyle put his sodden notes away, stood with his wet hand over his wet chin. The white-haired man's chest hair showed through the wet silk of his shirt like grey knots. He seemed not to notice the rain. Quoyle saw purple scars on his hands, a ruby the size of a cherry tomato on his ring finger. Could smell the liquor.

“The absolutely marvelous
carving.
The carving is everywhere, these incredible master carvers worked on it for nine years. All the animals known. Zebras, moose, dinosaurs, aurochs, marine iguana, wolverines, we've had internationally known wildlife biologists on board here to identify all the incredible species. And the birds. Utterly, utterly bizarre. It was built for Hitler as I suppose you know, but
he
never set foot on it. There were a thousand delays. Deliberate delays. The extraordinary Dutch Resistance.” Words spattering, drops bouncing off the deck.

“Tell them what happened in Hurricane Bob.”

“I think my
dear
wife is trying to get our attention,” the wet man said. “Just step in the cabin here and take a look at the interior. You'll adore it. As ornate as the carving is outside, they
really
went
wild in there.” He held a door open, sucked in his stomach to let them pass. Quoyle stumbled in thick carpet. A fire burned in a brick fireplace; there was a satinwood mantle inlaid with orchids worked in mother-of-peal, opal, jasper. Quoyle could not take it in, was conscious of patina, a lamp. Everything looked rare. There was something repellent in the room's beauty, but he didn't know what. Conscious of warping sea-damp, corrosive salt. A woman in a food-splotched bathrobe, hair the color of sewage foam, sat on the sofa. Her hands clashed in bracelets, rings. Feet stretched out, blunt purple ankles. Holding a glass cut with the initial M. Cellos sobbed, imparted a sense of drama. Quoyle saw the CD case on the coffee table, “Breakfast in Satin Sheets.” The woman put down the glass. Wet and yellow lips.