Shipping News_A Novel

by Annie Proulx

  Quoyle didn’t want to think about paper clips. Told Jack about the machine gunner, the random shot on the freeway, the riots.

  “Well known how violent it is in the States. Worst you’ll get here,” said Jack, “is a good punch-up and maybe your car pushed over the cliff.” They worked silently.

  Jack said the cod were small, five or six pounds on average, you rarely got one that went more than fifty nowadays, though in early times men had caught great cod of two hundred pounds. Or more. Overfished mercilessly for twenty years until the stocks neared collapse. Did collapse, said Jack, up at the table, his knife working.

  “Why I don’t stop fishing, see,” he said, deftly ripping up, jerking out the entrails, cigarette in the corner of his mouth, “even if I wanted to, is because I’d never get my licenses for lobster or salmon fishing again. Don’t know why, I loves lobster fishing best. You let your cockadoodle license lapse just one season and it’s gone forever.”

  “Billy said to tell you there’s a rumor Sea Song might be closing three plants next month. Says he hears No Name might be one.”

  “Jesus! You think it can’t get worse, it gets worse! This business about allocating fish quotas as if they was rows of potatoes you could dig. If there’s no fish you can’t allocate them and you can’t catch them; if you don’t catch them, you can’t process them or ship them, you don’t have a living for nobody. Nobody understands their crazy rules no more. Stumble along. They say ‘too many local fishermen for not enough fish.’ Well, where has the fish gone? To the Russians, the French, the Japs, West Germany, East Germany, Poland, Portugal, the UK, Spain, Romania, Bulgaria-or whatever they call them countries nowadays.

  “And even after the limit was set, the inshore was no good. How can the fish come inshore if the trawlers and draggers gets ‘em all fifty, a hundred mile out? And the long-liners gets the rest twenty mile out? What’s left for the inshore fishermen?” He spat in the water. Watching Quoyle’s clumsy work with the knife. “You got the idea. That’s all there is to it. Just keep at it steady.”

  “Those ads, Jack. I’d like to drop the fake ads. We need the news space. Last week we had the sawmill story, story on the new National Historic Park in Misky Bay, demonstration over foreign fishing off the Virgin Rocks, another demonstration against the high electric rates, the shrimp processors’ strike-good, solid local stories-and we had to cramp ‘em in very hard. No pix. I mean, it would be different if it was real ads.”

  “Ar, that was Tert Card’s idea, make up fake ads for big outfits down to St. John’s. Make it look like we’re big, y’know. Punch up the local advertisers a little. Go ahead, pull them ads out if you need the space. See, we didn’t have that much news when we started. And the ads looked good.”

  One by one the cleaned fish went into the grey plastic fish box. Jack hurled the guts and livers into the water.

  “Fishery problem? Fuckin’ terrible problem. They’ve made the inshore fishermen just like migrant farm workers. All we do is harvest the product. Moves from one crop to another, picks what they tells us. Takes what they pays us. We got no control over any of the fishery now. We don’t make the decisions, just does what we’re told where and when we’re told. We lives by rules made somewhere else by sons a bitches don’t know nothin’ about this place.” A hard exhalation rather than a sigh.

  But, Quoyle thought, that’s how it was everywhere. Jack was lucky he’d escaped so long.

  ¯

  Late in February papers came from St. John’s for him to sign as next of kin, papers to put the old cousin away forever. Delusions, senile dementia, schizophrenic personality; prognosis poor. He sat looking at the dotted lines. Could not sign away the rest of the life of an unknown man to whom he’d spoken a single sentence, who had only tied knots against him. He thought he would go down to the city and see the old cousin before he signed anything. Suppose he was wild-eyed, drooling and mad? He expected it. Suppose he was lucid and accusatory? Expected that, too.

  At the last hour he asked Wavey to come along. He said it would be a change of scene. They could go to dinner. A movie. Two movies. But knew he was saying something else.

  “It will be fun.” The word sounded stupid in his mouth. When had he ever had “fun”? Or Wavey, chapped face already set in the lines of middle age, an encroaching dryness about her beyond stove heat and wind? What was it, anyway? Both of them the kind who stood with forced smiles watching other people dance, spin on barstools, throw bowling balls. Having fun. But Quoyle did like movies, the darkness, the outlines of strangers’ hair against the screen, the smell of peanuts and shampoo, popcorn squeaking in teeth. He could fly away from his chin and hulking shape into the white clothes and slender bodies on the screen.

  Wavey said yes. Herry could stay with her father. Yes, yes indeed.

  ¯

  A few torn pieces of early morning cloud the shape and color of salmon fillets. The tender greenish sky hardening as they drove between high snowbanks. A rim of light flooded up, drenched the car. Quoyle’s yellow hands with bronze hairs, holding the wheel, Wavey’s maroon serge suit like cloth of gold. Then it was ordinary daylight, the black and white landscape of ice, snow, rock and sky.

  Quoyle’s romping thoughts left him with nothing to say, nothing to crack the silence swelling between them. Mumbled a stupid question about Alvin Yark’s endless song. But didn’t care. It was just to get started.

  “Sung that long as I can remember. The Gander Goose sank at sea and the Bruce was the one they shipped the moose on. Moose from New Brunswick. I don’t know when, back around the First World War. Newfoundland didn’t have moose until they brought them in.” Nor was it anything to her, but the exchange of voices in the humming car encouraged. She thought of a boy in school who had wept over his lunch of mildewed crackers. She had given him her meat sandwich, cut from a cold moose roast.

  “There’s enough of them now, “said Quoyle, laughing, wanting to seize the chapped hand. It seemed an omen when they saw one of the animals in a frozen wallow beside the highway.

  By noon there were open harbors, and the sight of blue water made them both happy. Blue, after months of ice.

  ¯

  Wavey in the shops on Water Street, exhilarated and startled by the smells of new leather, perfumed magazines, traffic exhaust. She bought a toy cow for Herry, a pair of long underwear for her father. Box of greeting cards for all occasions, on sale. A paring knife with a red handle to replace the stub in the kitchen drawer. A floral-print brassiere in jewel colors. There was lovely Shetland wool that would make a Fair Isle sweater. But it was too expensive. She noticed a monger’s window where, on a bed of ice, a wonderful scene was worked in fish. A skiff made of flounder fillets rode waves of shrimp and blue-black mussels. A whole salmon was a lighthouse, shot out rays of glittering mackerel. All framed by a border of crab claws.

  She had Quoyle’s list, his envelope of money for clothes for Bunny and Sunshine. Tights, corduroy pants, a pullover for Sunshine, socks and panties. What enormous pleasure in shopping for little girls. She added barrettes, socks edged with scallops of lace, two lovely woolly tams, teal and mauve. Careful to guard against the pickpockets that abounded in cities. Ate a roast beef sandwich for lunch and spent the afternoon twacking through rich stores, looking over everything and never spending another cent.

  ¯

  Quoyle shopped, too, circled the shelves of the asylum gift shop wanting to bring something to the old cousin. Who knew what his memories were? Who knew what his life had been? He’d fished. Pulled up whelk pots. Had owned a dog. Walked at night. Tied knots.

  He looked among the wrestling magazines and machine-embroidered sachets, found a sentimental photograph of a poodle in a stamped metal frame. It would have to do. There was no point in wrapping it, he told the woman at the register and put it in his jacket pocket.

  The old cousin sat in a plastic chair with wooden arms. Sat alone near a window. He was very clean and dressed in a white nightgown, a white robe. Paper
slippers on his veiny feet. He stared at a television set in a bracket near the top of the wall, the picture blurred enough to show two mouths, four eyes, an extra rim of cheeks on every face. A bald man talked about diabetes. An explosive blue commercial for antifreeze showing fragments of a hockey game, a spray of ice.

  Quoyle got on a chair and adjusted the controls, lowered the volume. Stood down, sat down. The old cousin looked at him.

  “You come ‘ere, too?”

  “Yes,” said Quoyle. “I came to see you.”

  “Damn long ride, ent it?”

  “Yes,” said Quoyle, “it is. But Wavey Prowse came along for company.” Why tell that to the old cousin?

  “Oh, aye. Lost ‘er ‘usband.”

  “Yes,” said Quoyle. There seemed nothing wrong with the old man’s mind to Quoyle. He looked around for knotted strings, saw none. “Well, what do you think?” he asked cautiously. Could mean anything.

  “Oh! Wunnerful! Wunnerful food! They’s’ot rainbaths out of the ceiling, my son, oh, like white silk, the soap she foams up in your ‘and. You feels like a boy to go ‘mongst the ‘ot waters. They gives you new clothes every day. White as the driven snow. The television. They’s cards and games.”

  “It sounds pleasant,” said Quoyle, thinking, he can’t go back to that reeking sty.

  “No, no. It’s not entirely pleasant. Bloody place is full of loonies. I knows where I is. Still, the creature comforts is so wunnerful I play up to ‘em. They asks me, ‘Who are you?’-I says ‘Joey Smallwood.’ Or, ‘Biggest Crab in the Pot.’ ‘Oh, ‘e’s loony,’ they think. ‘Keep ‘im ‘ere.’ ”

  “Um,” said Quoyle. “There’s a Golden Age home in Killick-Claw. There might be a chance-.” But wasn’t sure if they would take him. Reached in his pocket for the photograph of the poodle, handed it to the old cousin.

  “Brought you a present.”

  The old man held it in his trembling claw, looked. Turned away from Quoyle toward the window, toward the sea, his left hand came up, fingers spread over the eyes.

  “I tied knots ‘gainst you. Raised winds. The sheep is dead. Whiteface can’t get in.”

  Painful. Quoyle wished he’d gotten a box of chocolates. But persevered.

  “Cousin Nolan.” How strange the words sounded. But by uttering them bound himself in some way to this shriveled husk. “Cousin Nolan Quoyle. It’s all in the past. Don’t blame yourself. Can you hold on while I look into the Golden Age home? There’s quite a few from Killick-Claw and No Name Cove there. You know you can’t go back to Capsize Cove.”

  “Never wanted to be there! Wanted to be a pilot. Fly. I was twenty-seven when Lindbergh crossed the Atlantic. You should have seed me then! I was that strong! ‘E was ‘ere in Newfoundland. ‘E took off from ‘ere. They was all ‘ere, St. Brendan, Leif Erikson, John Cabot, Marconi, Lucky Lindy. Great things ‘as ‘appened ‘ere. I always knowed of it. Knowed I was destined to do fine things. But ‘ow to begin? ‘Ow to get away and begin? I went to fishing but they called me Squally Quoyle. See, I was a jinker, carried bad winds with me. I ‘ad no luck. None of the Quoyles ‘ad no luck. ‘Ad to go on me own. In the end I went down in me ‘opes.”

  Quoyle said he would find out things about the Golden Age home in Killick-Claw. Thought, in the meantime he would sign nothing.

  The old cousin looked beyond Quoyle to the doorway.

  “Where’s Agnis? She ent come see me a once.”

  “To tell the truth, I can’t say why,” said Quoyle.

  “Ah, I knows why she don’t want to come by. Shamed! She’s shamed, knowing what I knows. ‘Er was glad enough to be in my ‘ouse though when she were a girl. Come to the old woman with ‘er trouble, begged for ‘elp. Snivel and bawl. Women’s dirty business! I seen ‘er digging up the root. Squinty little Face-and-Eye berry, the devil’s evil eyes watching out from the bushes. Boiled them roots up into a black devil’s tea, give it to ‘er in the kitchen. She was at it all night, screeched a bomb, the bawling so’s I couldn’t get no rest. See ‘er there in the morning, she wouldn’t look up, turned ‘er dishy face to the wall. There was something bloody in the basin.

  “ ‘Well,’ I says, ‘is it over then?’

  “ ‘It is,’ says the old woman. And I goes out to me boat. It was ‘er brother done it, y’see, that clumsy big Guy Quoyle. Was at ‘er from when she was a little maid.”

  Quoyle grimaced, felt his chapped lower lip split. So the aunt had been to the Nightmare Isles as well. His own father! Christ.

  “I’ll come by in the morning,” he mumbled. “If there’s anything you need.” The old man was looking at the photograph of the poodle. But Quoyle, turning from him, thought he saw the mad glint now, remembered Billy’s vile story about the man’s dead wife. The old woman. Assaulting the corpse. Ah, the Quoyles.

  ¯

  In the hotel dining room Quoyle ordered wine. Some obscure Bordeaux, corky and sour. Wavey’s graceful lifting of her glass. But it went straight to their heads and they both talked wildly of what-nothing. He heard her dark voice even when she was silent. Quoyle forgot the old cousin and all he had said; felt wonderful, wonderful. Wavey described the things in the stores, Sunshine’s new cobalt blue sweater that would set off her fiery curls. She was conscious of the new brassiere under her dress and slip. Samples from the perfume counter cast exquisite scents from her wrists every time she raised her fork. They looked at each other over the table. Briefly at first, then with the prolonged and piercing gazes that precede sexual congress. Wineglasses clinked. Butter melted on their knives. Quoyle dropped a shrimp and Wavey laughed. He always dropped shrimp, he said. They both had veal scaloppine. Another bottle of wine.

  After such a dinner the movie was almost too much. But they went. Something about a French recluse who peeped through Venetian blinds and played with a bread knife.

  And at last to bed.

  “Oh,” said Wavey, lying dazed and somewhat bruised in Quoyle’s large arms, “this is the hotel where Herold and I came on our honeymoon.”

  ¯

  In the morning the attendant said the old man could not be seen. Had broken the glass from the poodle picture and stabbed at all who came near. And was tranquilized. No question of a Golden Age home for him.

  37 Slingstones

  “The slingstone hitch… is used in anchoring lobster pots. It

  may be tied either in the bight or in the end. Pull the ends

  strongly, and the turns in the standing part are spilled

  into the loops.”

  THE ASHLEY BOOK OF KNOTS

  WEEKS of savage cold. Quoyle was comfortable enough in his sweater and anorak. The old station wagon sputtered and slugged, at last quit in sight of the Gammy Bird office. He got out, put his shoulder to it, steering with one hand. Got it rolling, jumped in and turned the key, popped the gearshift. The engine caught for a few seconds, then died again as he rolled up behind Billy’s decayed Dodge. Ice in the gas line, he thought. Maybe Billy had some dry gas.

  Billy had phone messages. Two calls from the principal of Bunny’s school. Call back right away. He dialed, heart in his mouth. Let Bunny be all right.

  “Mr. Quoyle. We’ve had some trouble with Bunny this morning. At recess. I’m sorry to say she pushed one of the teachers, Mrs. Lumbull. Pushed her very hard. In fact, Bunny knocked her down. She’s a large and strong child for her age. No, it was not an accident. By all accounts it was deliberate. I don’t need to tell you Mrs. Lumbull is upset and mystified why the child would push her. Bunny will not say why. She’s sitting right across from my desk and refuses to speak. Mr. Quoyle, I think you’d better come down and pick her up. Mrs. Lumbull didn’t even know Bunny. She’s not in her class.”

  “Billy, borrow your truck? Got ice in my line.”

  ¯

  Bunny had been moved to the outer office where she sat with her hat and coat on, arms folded, face crimson and set. Wouldn’t look at Quoyle. Holding back everything.

  The principal with her downy face,
wearing the brown wool suit. Fingernails like the bowls of souvenir spoons. Held a pencil as though interrupted in the act of writing. An authoritarian voice, perfected by practice.

  “Under the circumstances I have no choice but to suspend Bunny from school until she explains her action and apologizes to Mrs. Lumbull. Now, Bunny, this is your last chance. Your father’s here now and I want you to make a clean breast of it. Tell me why you pushed poor Mrs. Lumbull.”

  Nothing. Quoyle saw his child’s face so full of rage and misery she could not speak.

  “Come on,” he said gently, “let’s go get in Billy’s truck.” Nodded to the principal. Who put her pencil on the desk with a hard sound.

  In the truck Bunny bawled.

  “You push that teacher?”

  “Yes!”

  “Why?”

  “She’s the worst one of all!” And would say no more. So Quoyle drove her to Beety’s, thinking here we go again.

  “Mrs. Lumbull, eh?” Beety’s eyebrows up. “Be willing to bet three cookies you had your reasons.”

  “I did,” said Bunny, snorting back tears. Beety pushed Quoyle toward the door. Gave him a little wave.

  He heard the story in the afternoon. From Beety by way of Marty.

  “Mrs. Lumbull is a float teacher, takes classes when the main teacher is sick or at a conference. Today she took the special ed class. Got ‘em all bundled up, outside. Herry Prowse is in that class. Poor Herry hits the cold air and decides he has to go pee. Tries to tell Mrs. Lumbull. Hopping up and down. You know how Herry talks. Not only does she not understand him-or maybe she does-but she makes him stand at attention against the brick wall to cure his fidgeting and every time he tries to tell her his problem she mimics him, pushes him back. Herry’s blubbering away and finally wets his pants and is humiliated. And here comes the avenging angel, Miss Bunny Quoyle, full speed ahead, and rams mean Mrs. Lumbull right behind the knees. The rest is history. If she was mine, Quoyle, I’d give her a medal. But it’s going to be tough straightening this out with the school. The principal don’t want to hear there’s trouble with a teacher. Teachers are hard to get. Even teachers like Mrs. Lumbull. So she’ll try to bull it out.”