by Annie Proulx
“What’s going to happen with the Gammy Bird?” said Benny Fudge, tossing lank black hair. “Will it be put to rest?” His big chance slipping away. Even now he played with a piece of string as if it was yarn.
“No. A paper has a life of its own, an existence beyond earthly owners. We’re going to press tomorrow as usual. Have to work like hell to make it. What time’s the wake, Billy?” Quoyle began to rip up the front page.
Billy reached for his notebook. “Seven. I don’t know if Dennis can build a coffin or if they’ll have to buy one.”
Benny Fudge slipped out the door, in his hand the new laptop computer, on his head a mail-order fedora, his face firmed up with new teeth and ambition.
Thickening mist on the water. Vaporous spirals writhed, the air thickened and filled in, that other world disappeared as if down a funnel leaving only wet rock, the smothered sea and watery air. From a distance the hoarse and muffled call of the foghorn like a bull in a spring meadow bellowing with longing.
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Quoyle was exhausted, keyed up, getting ready for the wake. He squeezed into his black funeral trousers. He’d have to go back to the paper as soon as he could decently leave and finish pasting up Billy’s long piece. They had a fine picture of Jack, ten years younger but looking the same, standing beside his freshly painted skiff. Quoyle had had a big nine-by-twelve print framed for Mrs. Buggit.
Dreaded seeing Jack lying in his parlor in a froth of knotted doilies. Thought of the corpse as wet, as though they could not dry him off, the seawater running from him in streams, dripping loudly on the polished floor and Mrs. Buggit, worried, stooping to mop it up with a white cloth bunched in her hand.
His old tweed jacket was too small as well. In the end he gave up and pulled on the enormous oxblood sweater he wore every day. It could not be helped. But would have to buy a new jacket next day for the funeral. Get it in the morning in Misky Bay when he took the paper in to be printed. Tying his good shoes when Wavey called and said Bunny had something to ask.
Tough little voice. Only the second time he’d talked to her on the phone. She’d never make a living selling insurance.
“Dad, Wavey says I have to ask you. I want to go to the awake for Uncle Jack. Wavey says you have to say if we can. Dad, you are going and Marty and them is going and Herry and Wavey is going and me and Sunshine has to be with the aunt in her shop full of needles and I don’t want to, I want to go to the awake.
“Bunny, it’s ‘the wake,’ not ‘the awake.’ And Marty and Murchie and Winnie are going because Jack was their grandfather. Let me talk to Wavey about this.”
But Wavey thought it was right for them to go.
Quoyle said there had been too much death in the past year.
“But everything dies,” said Wavey. “There is grief and loss in life. They need to understand that. They seem to think death is just sleep.”
Well, said Quoyle, they were children. Children should be protected from knowledge of death. And what about Bunny’s nightmares? Might get worse.
“But, m’dear, if they don’t know what death is how can they understand the deep part of life? The seasons and nature and creation-”
He didn’t want her to get going toward God and religion. As she sometimes did.
“Maybe,” said Wavey, “she has those nightmares because she’s afraid if she sleeps she won’t wake up-like Petal and Warren and her grandparents. Besides, if you look at the departed you’ll never be troubled by the memory. It’s well-known.”
And so Quoyle agreed. And promised not to say that Jack was sleeping. And he would come along and get them all in the station wagon. In about fifteen minutes.
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The verge of the road crowded with cars and trucks. They had to park far back and walk to the house, toward a roar of voices that carried a hundred feet. A line of people filed through the parlor where, among lace whirligigs, Jack’s coffin rested on black-draped sawhorses. They sidled in, edging through the crowd to the parlor. Quoyle held Bunny’s hand, carried Sunshine. Jack like a photograph of himself, waxy in his unfamiliar suit. His eyelids violet. Actually, thought Quoyle, he did look like he was sleeping. Had to jerk Bunny away.
Joined the line sifting into the kitchen where there were cakes and braided breads, the steaming kettle, a row of whiskey bottles and small glasses. The talk rose, it was of Jack. The things he had done or might have done.
Billy Pretty speaking, a glass in his hand. His face gone blood-red with whiskey and the words tumbling out in ecstatic declamation, tossing in the lop of his own talk. “You all know we are only passing by. We only walk over these stones a few times, our boats float a little while and then they have to sink. The water is a dark flower and a fisherman is a bee in the heart of her.”
Dennis in a serge suit with flared cuffs and Beety with her hand on Mrs. Buggit’s trembling shoulder. A collar of heavy lace imprinting the black silk. Dennis rummaged through boxes and drawers, looking for Jack’s lodge pin. Which was missing, had been missing for years. Now it was needed.
Children played outside. Quoyle could see Marty in the yard throwing crusts to hens. But Bunny would not go to her, eeled back into the parlor and took up a station beside the coffin.
“I’ll get her,” said Wavey. For the child’s staring was unnatural. While Dennis showed his mother the pin, found in a cup on the top shelf of the pantry. An enameled wreath and the initial R. She took it, rose and moved slowly toward the parlor. To pin it in Jack’s lapel. The final touch. Leaned over her dead husband. The pin point shook as she tried to pierce the fabric. A respectful silence from the watching mourners. Sudden sobbing from Beety. Wavey tugged Bunny’s hand gently. A fixed gaze on the corpse. She would not come, yanked her hand away.
A cough like an old engine starting up. Mrs. Buggit dropped the pin into the satin, turned and gripped Dennis’s arm. Her throat frozen, eyes like wooden drawer knobs. Wavey seized Bunny away. Dennis it was who shouted.
“Dad’s come back to life!”
And lurched to help his father get his shoulders out of the coffin’s wedge. A roar and screaming. Some stumbled back, some surged forward. Quoyle pushed from the kitchen, saw a knot of arms reaching to help grey Jack back to the present, water dribbling from his mouth with each wrack of his chest. And across the room heard Bunny shout “He woke up!”
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Quoyle drove shaky Dennis to the hospital through the fog, followed the ambulance. They could see Mrs. Buggit’s profile in the howling vehicle. Behind them the whiskey was going fast, there was an immense babble of disbelief and cries of holy miracle. To Quoyle Dennis repeated all that had happened, what he thought, what he felt, what he saw, what the ambulance doctor said as though Quoyle had missed it.
“They says they’s worried about pneumonia! And brain damage! But I’m not!” Dennis, laughing, pounding the car seat, saying follow that ambulance, his hands full of papers that he’d grabbed up somewhere. He talked like a windmill in high-pitched, whirling sentences. Rustling and sorting papers as they drove. Punching Quoyle’s shoulder.
“There he is, struggling to sit up. He’s wedged in pretty good. Gets half up and looks at us. He coughs again. The water fairly squirts out of him. Can’t talk at all. But seems to know where he is. The doctor comes with the rig there says he’ll probably make it, tough as he is. Says it’s kids usually that survives immersion. Adults is rare. But they don’t know Dad. See, it’s the cold of the water shuts down the system and the heart beats very slow. For a while. Doctor says he couldn’t have been in the water long. Says he bets he’ll make it. And Mother! The first thing she says when she could talk, she says, ‘Dennis found your lodge pin, Jack. That’s been missing so long.’ ”
Quoyle saw it on the front page, knocking everything else sky-high. Dennis dropped papers on the floor of the car.
“Slow down, I gots to get these in order.”
“What are they?”
“For Dad to sign. His lobster license. Sign it over to me.
They’s taking some beauties now.”
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Wavey sat with Bunny on the edge of the bed in the Buggit’s spare room, where Quoyle had slept with hot-water bottles.
“Look,” said Wavey. “Do you remember that dead bird you found down by the shore a few weeks ago? When Dad cooked the herring?” For they were all calling him “Dad.”
“Yes.” Bunny’s fingers working at the bedspread.
“That bird was dead, not sleeping. Remember, you looked at it and every time it was the same? Dead. When something is dead it can never wake up. It is not sleeping. Goes for dead people, too.”
“Uncle Jack was dead and he woke up.”
“He wasn’t really dead, then. They made a mistake. Thought he was dead. Wouldn’t be the first time it happened. Happened to a boy when I was in school. Eddie Bunt. They thought he was drowned. He was like in a coma.”
“What is a coma?”
“Well, it’s where you’re unconscious, but you’re not dead and you’re not asleep. Something in your body or head is hurt and the body just waits for a while until it gets good enough to wake up. It’s like when your dad starts the car in the morning and lets it warm up. It’s running, but it’s not going anywhere.”
“Then Petal is in a coma. She’s sleeping, Dad says, and can’t wake up.”
“Bunny, I’m going to tell you something straight. Petal is dead, she is not in a coma. She is not sleeping. Your dad said that so you and Sunshine wouldn’t be too sad. He was trying to be gentle.”
“She could be in a coma. Maybe they made a mistake like Uncle Jack.”
“Oh Bunny, I’m sorry to say it but she is really and truly dead. Like the little bird was dead because its neck was broken. Some hurts are so bad they can’t get better.”
“Was Petal’s neck broken?”
“Yes. Her neck was broken.”
“Dennis’s friend Carl got a broken neck and he’s not dead. He just has to wear a big collar.”
“His neck was only a little bit broken.”
Silence. Bunny picked at the crocheted stars of the bedspread. Wavey saw the questions would come for a long time, that the child was gauging the subtleties and degrees of existence. Downstairs the hubbub and laughing increased. Upstairs, difficult questions. Why was one spared and another lost? Why did one rise and not another? Ah, she could be years and years explaining and never clear up the mysteries. But would try.
“Wavey. Can we go see if the bird’s still there?” Tense little fingers, pulling the crocheted work.
“Yes,” she said. “We’ll go look. But remember we had a bad storm and such a small thing as a dead bird could blow away, or the waves come up and take it. Or maybe a gull or cat claim it for a lunch. Chances are we won’t find it. Come on. We’ll see if Ken will give us a ride. Then we’ll go to my house and I’ll make cocoa.”
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The rock was there, but no bird. A small feather in a tuft of grass. It could have come from any bird. Bunny picked it up.
“It flew away.”
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In the weeks that followed Jack’s resurrection, his slow gain on the pneumonia and voicelessness that followed, he whispered out details of his round trip to the far shore and back.
Decent kind of a day. Not many lobsters but some. On the way in the motor had run bad. Then quit. Flashlight battery dead. Fiddled with the motor in the dark for two hours and couldn’t get it running. Couple of skiffs went past, he shouted for a tow. Didn’t hear him. Later and later. Thought he’d be there all night. Flicked his lighter and looked at his watch. Five to ten. Skipper Tom meowing and hopping around like he had the itch. Then dumped a load of cat crap all over a lobster trap. Jack threw it overboard to rinse it, and that’s all she wrote buddy, he was jerked into the water. Pulled at the cord on his belt attached to his knife. Felt the knot slip, the knife strike him on the side of the head as it fell. Breathed water. Convulsed. Peed and shat and twisted. And as consciousness faded, came to believe vividly that he was in an enormous pickle jar. Waiting for someone to draw him out.
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Quoyle experienced moments in all colors, uttered brilliancies, paid attention to the rich sound of waves counting stones, he laughed and wept, noticed sunsets, heard music in rain, said I do. A row of shining hubcaps on sticks appeared in the front yard of the Burkes’ house. A wedding present from the bride’s father.
For if Jack Buggit could escape from the pickle jar, if a bird with a broken neck could fly away, what else might be possible? Water may be older than light, diamonds crack in hot goat’s blood, mountaintops give off cold fire, forests appear in midocean, it may happen that a crab is caught with the shadow of a hand on its back, that the wind be imprisoned in a bit of knotted string. And it may be that love sometimes occurs without pain or misery.
About E. Annie Proulx
E. Annie Proulx lives in Vermont and Newfoundland, but spends much of each year traveling North America. She has held NEA and Guggenheim Fellowships and residencies at Ucross Foundation in Wyoming. Her short story collection, Heart Songs and Other Stories, appeared in 1988, followed in 1992 by the novel Postcards, which won the 1993 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. The 1993 novel The Shipping News won the Chicago Tribune’s Heartland Award, the Irish Times International Fiction Prize, the National Book Award, and the Pulitzer Prize.
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