The Shipping News (37 page)

“Well, I wondered what happened to you,” said Mavis Bangs, the part in her black hair glowing like a wire in the rhomboid of sunlight. “I thought you might be sick. Or have trouble with the truck. M'dear, I was that worried. Or Dawn said maybe it was the snow, but it melted almost as fast as it come, so we didn't think it was. Anyway, noon I went up to the post office and got your mail.” She pointed at the aunt's table with her eyes. Importantly. She had jumped into the habit of doing small kindnesses for Agnis Hamm. And would get the mail or pour a cup of tea unbidden. Proffer things with invisible trumpets.

“It was the snow,” said the aunt. “You know how snow sticks to a dirt road.” She shoveled at the letters. “Fact of the matter we decided it would be better to look for something closer in for the winter. The house be more of a camp, you know. He doesn't want the children to have to travel all that way on school days. So.” She sighed.

Mrs. Bangs saw it in a flash. “Was you looking for a house for the all of yous? I knows the Burkes been talking about selling their place for good and moving to Florida. They go down every winter. Got friends there now. A bungalow. They live in a Florida bungalow with a verandah. Mrs. Burke, Pansy, says they have got two orange trees and a palm right in the front yard. Picks the oranges right off. Can you believe it? Now that is a place I'd like to see before I die. Florida.”

“I been there,” said Dawn. “You can have it. Give me Montreal. Ooh-la-la. Beauty clothes. All those markets, you never saw food like that in your life, movies, boutiques. You can have Miami. Buncha rich Staties.”

“What's the Burke place, then,” said the aunt offhandedly.

“Well, it's up on the ridge. The road that goes out to Flour Sack Cove, but at this end. Like if you was to go outside and face the hill and start climbing—if you could climb right over the houses,
you know—you'd about come on it. Grey house with blue trim. Very nice kept up. Mrs. Burke is a housekeeper. An old-fashioned kitchen with the daybed and all, but they got conveniences, too. Oil heat. Dishwasher. Washing machine and dryer in the basement. Basement finished off. Nice fresh wallpaper in all the rooms.”

“Umm,” said the aunt. “You think they'd rent?”

“I doubt it. I don't believe they wants to rent. They been asked. I believe they wants to sell.”

“Well, you know, actually my nephew is going to take that English fellow's trailer. Works at the paper. Mr. Nutbeem. He's leaving pretty soon.”

“So you'd want a separate place, then.”

“Ye—es,” said the aunt.

“I believe the Burke place would be
too
much for one person,” said Mrs. Bangs. “Even if you was prepared to buy it. It's got nine rooms. Or ten.”

“I've put quite a bit of money into the old house. It's a shame. Just to use it for a camp. But getting back and forth is a problem. Like they say, what can't be cured must be endured. I've took a room at the Sea Gull for the rest of the week while we work something out. Nephew and the girls are staying with Beety and Dennis. Kind of cramped, but they're making do. Don't want to get caught by the snow. But let's not worry about it right now. What have we got on the schedule for today? The black cushions for the
Arrowhead.”

“Dawn and me's finished them black cushions Friday afternoon. Shipped ‘em this morning.”

The aunt looked at her mail. “You're way ahead of me,” she said. She turned over a postcard and read it. “That's nice,” she said, voice needled with sarcasm. “I thought we'd be seeing the Pakeys on the
Bubble
this week. Now here's their postcard and they say they can't risk coming up here at this time of year. Fair weather sailors, they. No, it's worse. They're having the job done by Yachtcrafter! Those bums.” The aunt threw down the postcard, picked up a small package.

“Who do I know in Macau? It's from Macau.” Tore it open.

“What is this?” she said. A packet of American currency fell on the table. Tied with a pale blue cord. Nothing more.

“That blue . . . ” Mavis Bangs hesitated, put out her hand.

The aunt looked at the blue cord. Untied it and passed it to her. With a significant look. It was not a cord, but a thin strip of pale blue leather.

29

Alvin Yark

“The bight of a rope . . . has two meanings in knotting. First, it may be any central part of a rope, as distinct from the ends and standing part. Second, it is a curve or arc in a rope no narrower than a semicircle. This corresponds to the topographical meaning of the word, a bight being an indentation in a coast so wide that it
may be sailed out of,
on one tack, in any wind.”

THE ASHLEY BOOK OF KNOTS

THE SINGLE advantage of the green house was clear at once. Quoyle, yawning and unshaven in a corner of Beety's kitchen, was combing the snarls out of Sunshine's hair and surrounded by affairs of toast, cocoa, searches for misplaced clothing and homework when Tert Card walked in, poured himself a cup of coffee. Dennis away and gone an hour before. Card looked at Beety, let her see him licking his mouth and winking like a turkey with pinkeye.

He stood then in front of Sunshine and Quoyle, clawing at his groin as though scorched by red-hot underwear. “Quoyle. Just wanted to let you know you should call Diddy Shovel. Something about a ship fire. You'll probably want to go straight along. I put
the camera in your car. See if there's a chance for some pix. I'll tell you, Jack Buggit is some smart. People would rather read about a clogged head on a ship than all the car wrecks in Newfoundland.” Took his time drinking his coffee. Chucked Sunshine under the chin and scratched again before he ambled out.

“I don't like that yukky man,” said Sunshine. Feeling Quoyle's anger through the comb.

“In love with himself,” said Beety. “Always has been. And no competition.”

“Like this,” said Murchie Buggit, hands blurred in demented scratching.

“That's enough,” said Beety. “You look like a dog with bad fleas.”

“So did he.'” And Sunshine and Murchie screamed with laughter until Murchie choked on toast crumbs and Quoyle had to slap his back.

But before he called the harbormaster the phone rang.

“For you,” said Beety.

“Hello?” He expected Diddy Shovel's voice.

“Quoyle,” said Billy Pretty, “you stopped by Alvin Yark's to talk about a boat?”

“No, Billy. I haven't even been thinking about it to tell you the truth. Kind of busy the last few weeks. And I guess I'm leery of boats after what happened.”

“That's why you must go right back to ‘em. Now you been christened. Winter is the finest time to build a boat. Alvin build you something and come ice-out I'll show you the tricks. Since you've been brought up away from the boats and are a danger to yourself.”

Quoyle knew he should feel grateful. But felt stupid. “That's kind of you, Billy. I know I ought to do it.”

“You just go out there to Alvin's place. You know where his shop is? Get Wavey to show you. Alvin's her uncle. Her poor dead mother's oldest brother.”

“Alvin Yark is Wavey's uncle?” He seemed to be treading a spiral, circling in tighter and tighter.

“Oh yes.”

While his hand was on the phone Quoyle dialed Diddy Shovel. What was the fire, was there a story in it? Bunny slouched into the kitchen with her sweater on backwards. Quoyle tried to pantomime a command to reverse the sweater, aroused the Beethoven scowl.

“Young man,” the great voice boomed, “while you're fiddling around the Rome burns. Cargo ship, Rome, six-hundred-foot vessel, Panamanian registered, carrying a load of zinc and lead powder is, let's see, about twenty miles out and on fire at thirteen hundred hours. Two casualties. The captain and an unidentified. Rest of the crew taken off by helicopter. Twenty-one chaps from Myanmar. Do you know where Myanmar is?”

“No.”

“Right where Burma used to be. Helicopter took most of the crew to Misky Bay Hospital to be treated for smoke inhalation. Ship is in tow, destination Killick-Claw. More than that I do not know.”

“Do you know how I can get out to her?”

“Why bother? Wait until they bring her in. Shouldn't be too long.”

Yet by three-thirty the ship still had not entered the narrows. Quoyle called Diddy Shovel again.

“Should be here by five. Understand they've had some trouble. Towing cable parted and they had to rig another.”

Wavey came down the steps pulling at the sleeves of her homemade coat, the color of slushy snow. She got in, glanced at him. A slight smile. Looked away.

Their silence comfortable. Something unfolding. But what? Not love, which wrenched and wounded. Not love, which came only once.

“I've got to go down to the harbor. So we can pick up the kids and I'll bring you and young Herold straight back. I can drop Bunny off at Beety's for an hour or take her with me. They're
towing in a ship that had a fire. Two men dead, including the captain. The others in the hospital. Diddy Shovel says.”

“I tremble to hear it.” And did, in fact, shudder.

The school came in sight. Bunny stood at the bottom of the steps holding a sheet of paper. Quoyle dreaded the things she brought from school, that she showed him with her lip stuck out: bits of pasta glued on construction paper to form a face, pipe cleaners twisted into flowers, crayoned houses with quadrate windows, brown trees with broccoli heads never seen in Newfoundland. School iconography, he thought.

“That's how Miss Grandy says to do it.”

“But Bunny, did you ever see a brown tree?”

“Marty makes her trees brown. And I'm gonna.”

Quoyle to Wavey. “Billy says I must get a boat built over the winter. He says I should go to Alvin Yark.”

A nod at hearing her uncle's name.

“He's a good boat builder,” she said in her low voice. “He'd make you a good one.”

“I thought I would go over on Saturday,” said Quoyle. “And ask. Take the girls. Will you and Herry come with us? Is that a good day?”

“The best,” she said. “And I've got things I've been wanting to bring to Aunt Evvie. We'll have supper with them. Aunt Evvie's some cook.”

Then Quoyle and Bunny were off to the harbor, but the
Rome
had been towed to St. John's by company orders.

“Usually they tell me,” said Diddy Shovel. “A few years back I'd have twisted ‘em like a watch spring, but why bother now?”

On Saturday the fog was as dense as cotton waste, carried a coldness that ate into the bones. The children like a row of hens in the backseat. Wavey a little dressed up, black shoes glittering on the floor mat. Quoyle's eyes burned trying to penetrate the mist. Corduroy trousers painfully tight. He made a thousandth vow to lose weight. Houses at the side of the road were lost, the sea invisible. An hour to go ten miles to the Nunny Bag Cove
turnoff. Cars creeping the other way, fog lights as dull as dirty saucers.