The Shipping News Part 17

She sucked in her breath, looked for dog tracks along the edge of the road. And was not sure.

"It's the old man," said Quoyle. "Got to be."

"What old man?"

"Billy Pretty says he's 'fork kin' of the Quoyles. Says he's a rough old boy. Wouldn't leave Capsize Cove in the resettlement. Stayed on alone. Billy thinks he might have his back up a little because we're in the house. I told you this."

"No, you didn't, Nephew. And who in the world might he be?"

"I remember telling you about it."

The aunt wondered cautiously what the name was.

"I don't know. One of the old Quoyles. I can't remember his name. Something Irish."

"I don't believe it. There's none of 'em left. You know, there was Quoyles didn't have a very good name," said the aunt. Head turned away.

"Heard that," said Quoyle. "Heard Omaloor Bay is called after the Quoyles-like Half-Wit Pond or Six Fingers Harbor or Apricot Ear Brook named for certain other unfortunates. Billy told me how they came here from Gaze Island. Supposed to have dragged the house over the ice."

"So they say. Half those stories are a pack of lies. I imagine the Quoyles was as decent as anybody. And I'm sure I don't know who that fellow you're talking about could be."

Quoyle cleaned his hands of paint, called "Who wants to walk along the sh.o.r.e with me and pick Alexanders?"

Suns.h.i.+ne found two wild strawberries. Bunny threw bigger and bigger stones in the waves; the gouts of water ever closer until a splash doused her.

"All right, all right, let's go back to the house. Bunny can change her britches and Suns.h.i.+ne can wash the Alexanders and I will saute the garlic and onions."

But when the sauce was nearly done, discovered there was no [188] linguine, only a package of egg noodles shaped like bows, soft stuff that mounded under the sauce and sent the squid rings sliding to the rims of the plates.

"You've got to plan ahead, Nephew."

Just before dawn again. Something woke him. The bare room rose above him, grey and cool. He listened to hear if Bunny was calling or crying but heard only silence.

A circle sped across the ceiling, disappeared. Flashlight beam.

He got up, went to the seaward window, the husks of flies cracking under his bare feet. Knelt to one side and peered into the dimming night. For a long time he saw nothing. His pupils enlarged in the dark, he saw the sky rinsing with the nacre sheen of approaching light. The sea emerged as a silver negative. Far down in the wiry tuck he saw a spark restlessly twitching, and soon it was gone from his sight.

"We ought to go down there," Quoyle said. "Look the old man up.

"I'm sure I don't want to go ferret out some old fourth cousin with a grudge. We've got along this far very well, and it would be better to leave things alone."

Quoyle wanted to go. "We'd take the girls, they'd soften an ogre's heart."

Or more likely, harden it, thought the aunt.

"Come on, Aunt." He urged.

But she was cool. "I've thought about it, wondering who it could be. There was a crowd of my mother's cousins in Capsize Cove, but they were her age if not older, grown adults with children, grandchildren of their own when I was a teenager. So if it's one of them, must be in the late eighties or nineties, probably senile as well. I'd guess the one on the road was somebody from town, maybe walking or hunting, didn't know we were here."

Quoyle said nothing of the flashlight. But coaxed her a little.

"Come on, we'll take a ride down to where the road branches, [189] and walk in. I'd like to see Capsize Cove. The deserted village. Out with Billy that day on Gaze Island-it was sad. Those empty houses, and standing there and hearing about the old Quoyles."

"I never went out to Gaze Island and can't say I feel like I've missed much. Depressing, those old places. I can't think why the government left the houses standing. They should have burned them all."

Quoyle thought of a thousand settlements afire in the wind, flaming s.h.i.+ngles flying over the rocks to scale, hissing, into the sea.

In the end they did not go.

24.

Berry Picking "The difference between the CLOVE HITCH and TWO HALF HITCHES is exceedingly vague in the minds of many, the reason being that the two have the same knot form; but one is tied around another object, the other around its own standing part."

THE ASHLEY BOOK OF KNOTS.

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SEPTEMBER, month of shortening days and chilling waters. Quoyle took Bunny to the first day of school. New shoes, a plaid skirt and white blouse. Her hands clammy. Afraid, but refused his company and went through the pus.h.i.+ng rowdies by herself. Quoyle watched her stand alone, her head barely moving as she looked for her friend, Marty Buggit.

At three o'clock he was waiting outside.

"How did it go?" Expected to hear what he had felt thirty years before-shunned, miserable.

"It was fun. Look." She showed a piece of paper with large imperfect letters:

BUN.

Y.

[191] "You wrote your name," said Quoyle, relieved. Baffled that she was so different than he.

"Yes." As though she'd always done so. "And the teacher says bring a box of tissues tomorrow because the school can't afford any."

Blunt fogbows in the morning trip around the bay. Humps of color followed squalls, Billy Pretty babbled of lunar halos. Storms blew in and out. Sudden sleet changed to glowing violet rods, collapsed in rain. Two, three days of heat as though blown from a desert. Fibres of light crawling down the bay like luminous eels.

On the headlands and in the bogs berries ripened in billions, wild currants, gooseberries, ground hurts, cranberries, marshberries, partridgeberries, squashberries, late wild strawberries, crawberries, cloudy bakeapples stiff above maroon leaves.

"Let's go berrying this weekend," said the aunt. "Just over a ways was well-known berrying grounds when I was young. We'll make jam, after. Berrying is pleasure to all. Maybe you'll want to bring Wavey Prowse?"

"That's an idea," said Quoyle.

She said she would be glad-as if he'd invited her to a party.

"Ken will bring me across-wants to see your new roof."

Ken looked less at the roof than at Quoyle and his daughters; joked with the aunt. Gave Herry a good-bye touch on the shoulder. "Well, I'm off. Business in Misky Bay, so might's well go around the point. Shall I come along later, then?" Eyes like a thornbush, stabbing everything at once. In a hurry to get it all.

"All right," said Wavey. "Thank you, boy." Her berry pails had rope handles finished in useful knots.

The aunt, the little girls, Quoyle, Wavey and Herry walked overland to the berry grounds beyond the glove factory, their pails [192] and buckets rattling, clatter of stones on the path, Suns.h.i.+ne saying, Carry me. The sun laid topaz wash over barrens. Ultramarine sky. The sea flickered.

Wavey in toast-colored stockings, a skirt with mended seams. Quoyle wore his plaid s.h.i.+rt, rather tight.

"People used to come here for miles with their berry boxes and buckets," said the aunt over her shoulder. "They'd sell the berries, you see, in those days."

"Still do," Wavey said. "Agnis girl, last fall they paid ninety dollars a gallon for bakeapples. My father made a thousand dollars on his berries last year. City people want them. And there's some still makes berry ocky if they can get the partridge berries."

"Berry ocky! There was an awful drink," said the aunt. "We'll see what we get," and looked sidewise at Wavey, taking in the rough hands and cracked shoes, Herry's face like a saucer of skim milk. But a pretty boy, they said, with his father's beauty only a little distorted. As though malleable features had been pressed with a firm hand.

The sea glowed, transparent with light. Wavey and Quoyle picked near each other. Her hard fingers worked through the tufted plants, the finger and thumb gathering two, seven, rolling them back into the cupped palm, then dropping them into the pail, a small sound as the berries fell. Walked on her knees. A bitter, crushed fragrance. Quoyle blew chaff away. A hundred feet away Herry and Suns.h.i.+ne and Bunny, rolling like dogs on the cus.h.i.+ony ground. The aunt roved, her white kerchief shrank to a dot. As the pickers spread out they disappeared briefly in hollows or behind rises. The sea hissed.

The aunt called to Quoyle. "Yoo-hoo. Forgot the lunch basket. Back by the glove factory. You get it, I'll watch the children."

"Come with me," said Quoyle to Wavey. Urgent. She looked away at Herry.

"They're playing. Come on. We'll go along the sh.o.r.e. It will be faster walking on the stones than going through the tuckamore. We'll be back in twenty minutes."

"All right."

And she was away on her strong legs, Quoyle stumbling after, [193] running to catch up. The ocean twitched like a vast cloth spread over snakes.

Quoyle swung the basket, walked along the sh.o.r.e past broken bladder wrack, knot wrack, horn wrack and dead-man's-fingers, green sausageweed and coralweed, mats of dulse and in their thou sands, crushed clumps of bristly bryozoan, long brown rips of kelp, a blackening coastal string looped by the last week's storm. Wavey climbed and sprang along the rocks, kicked through the heaped wrack. Quoyle picking his way more slowly, beer bottles clinking in the basket.

"Look," he said. At the mouth of the bay a double-towered iceberg.

"It's tilting."

Wavey stood on a rock, curled her fingers and raised her fists to her eyes as though they were binoculars. The ice ma.s.s leaned as though to admire its reflection in the waves, leaned until the southern tower was at the angle of a pencil in a writing hand, the northern tower reared over it like a lover. Soundlessly the distant towers came together, plunged under the water. A fountain of displaced water.

Quoyle below the rock. Suddenly he clasped his hands around her ankles. She felt the heat of his hands through her brown stockings, did not move. Prisoner on the rock. Looked down. Quoyle's face was pressed against her legs. She could see white scalp through snarled reddish hair, fingers curved firm around her ankles hiding her shoes except the pointed toes, the leather perforated in an ornate curl like a Victorian mustache, his heavy wrists and beyond them the sweater cuffs, a bit of broken sh.e.l.l caught in the wool, dog's hair on the sleeves. She did not move. There was a sense of a curtain, of a hand on the rope that could pull it open. Quoyle inhaled the scent of cotton stockings, a salt and seaweed female smell that made him reckless. His fingers unfurled, the hands drew back. She felt the absence. Quoyle staring hard at her. "Come down. Come down." He held out his arms. No mistaking what he meant. Transfixed, she hardly breathed. One flicker of movement [194] and he'd be all over her, pulling her clothes up, wrenching the brown stockings and pressing her down on the stones with the sh.o.r.e flies crawling on bare skin, Quoyle, entering her, ramming his great chin into the side of her neck. And afterwards some silent agreement, some sore complicity, betrayal. She burst out.

"Do you know how he died? My husband? Herold Prowse? I'll tell you. He's in the sea. He's down at the bottom. I never come beside the sea without thinking-'Herold's there there.' Old Billy tell you about it, did he?"

She slid down the rock, safe now, protected by grief. Quoyle stood away, hands dangling, looking at her. The words gushed.

"Herold was a roustabout on the Sevenseas Hector Sevenseas Hector. First decent job he ever had. Wonderful money, steady work. Everything coming fine for us. Biggest, safest oil rig in the world. Three weeks off, three weeks on. He was out on it when it went over. The telephone. Early in the morning. January 29, 1981. I was up and dressed, but lay down again because I felt so bad. I was carrying Herry. A lady's voice come on the phone and she says, she says to me, 'Oh Mrs. Prowse. We have to inform you that they are reporting the Sevenseas Hector Sevenseas Hector went over in the storm and the men are considered missing.' Went over in the storm, she said. At first they claimed it was because the storm was so bad. went over in the storm and the men are considered missing.' Went over in the storm, she said. At first they claimed it was because the storm was so bad.

"But there was other oil rigs out there only a dozen miles away and they stayed up. Sevenseas Ajax Sevenseas Ajax and and Deep Blue 12 Deep Blue 12. They didn't have any trouble. Storms like that one comes along every winter. It wasn't a century storm, comes along once every hundred years. Ninety-seven men missing, and not a single body did they ever recover. They saw some of them in a sinking lifeboat, the seas breaking over them and then they was gone.

"It come out little by little. Like a nightmare that gets worse and you can't wake up. The government didn't have any safety rules for these things. The design of the rig was bad. n.o.body on the rig knew who was in charge. Was it the tool pusher or the master? Most of the men on board didn't know nothing about the sea. Geologists and cementers, derrickmen, mud watchers, drillers, welders and fitters, they was after the oil, no attention to the water or weather. Didn't even understand the weather reports that come [195] to them. Didn't know enough to close the deadlights when the seas worked up. The gla.s.s in the ballast room portlight was weak. The control panel shorted out if water got in it. A sea broke the portlight, come in and drenched the control panel. They wasn't properly trained. No operation manuals. So when the panel went out and they tried to adjust the ballast by hand with some little bra.s.s rods they got it all wong, did it backwards, they sent it into a tilt. Just like that iceberg. Over it went. And the lifeboats wasn't any good, and most of the men never made it to the boats because the public address system went out when the control panel failed. The lawyer said it was falling dominoes.

"So, not to hurt your feelings, but that's how it is. I was thinking of it watching that iceberg go down. I think of it every single time I'm at the edge of the water, I look along the sh.o.r.e, half afraid, half hoping that I'll see Herold's drowned body in the seaweed. Though it's years, now."

Quoyle listened. Would he have to bring her to the prairies? And what of Petal's essence riding under his skin like an injected vaccine against the plague of love? What was the point of touching Wavey's dry hand?

They came up the path and onto the barrens, looked toward the pale dot that was the aunt's kerchief, the jumping children like fleas.

Quoyle behind her. Without looking Wavey knew exactly where he was.

Warmth, deep sky, the silence except for their children's far voices. Then, sharply, as a headache can suddenly stop, something yielded, long griefs eased. She turned. Quoyle was so close. She started to say something. Her freckled, rough skin flushed. She fell, or he pulled her down. They rolled over the ma.s.sed cus.h.i.+ons of berry plants, clinging, they rolled, hot arms and legs, berries and leaves, mouths and tears and stupid words.

But when the sea heaved below she heard it, thought of Herold's handsome bones tangled in ghost nets. And shoved Quoyle away. Was up and running toward the aunt, the girls and poor fatherless Herry, the picnic basket b.u.mping against her legs. If Quoyle wanted anything at all he must follow.

[196] Wavey ran to get away, then for the sake of running, and at last because there was nothing else to do. It would look undecided to change her pace, as though she did not know what she wanted. It seemed always that she had to keep on performing pointless acts.

Quoyle lay in the heather and stared after her, watching the folds of her blue skirt erased by the gathering distance. The aunt, the children, Wavey. He pressed his groin against the barrens as if he were in union with the earth. His aroused senses imbued the far scene with enormous importance. The small figures against the vast rock with the sea beyond. All the complex wires of life were stripped out and he could see the structure of life. Nothing but rock and sea, the tiny figures of humans and animals against them for a brief time.

The sharpness of his gaze pierced the past. He saw generations like migrating birds, the bay flecked with ghost sails, the deserted settlements vigorous again, and in the abyss nets spangled with scales. Saw the Quoyles rinsed of evil by the pa.s.sage of time. He imagined the aunt buried and gone, himself old, Wavey stooped with age, his daughters in faraway lives, Herry still delighted by wooden dogs and colored threads, a grizzled Herry who would sleep in a north room at the top of the house or in the little room under the stairs.

A sense of purity renewed, a sense of events in trembling balance flooded him.