The Shipping News Part 4

The aunt was remembering a hundred things. "I was born here," she said. "Born in this house." Other rites had occurred here as well.

"Me too," said Suns.h.i.+ne, blowing at a mosquito on her hand. Bunny slapped at it. Harder than necessary.

"No you weren't. You were born in Mockingburg, New York. There's smoke over there," she said, looking across the bay. "Something's on fire."

"It's chimney smoke from the houses in Killick-Claw. They're cooking their breakfasts over there. Porridge and hotcakes. See the fis.h.i.+ng boat out in the middle of the bay? See it going along?"

"I wanna see it," said Suns.h.i.+ne. "I can't see it. I can't SEE SEE it." it."

"You stop that howling or you'll see your bottom warmed," said the aunt. Face red in the wind.

Quoyle remembered himself crying "I can't see it," to a math teacher who turned away, gave no answers. The fog tore apart, light charged the sea like blue neon.

[44] The wood, hardened by time and corroding weather, clenched the nails fast. They came out crying. He wrenched the latch but could not open the door until he worked the tire iron into the crack and forced it.

Dark except for the blinding rectangle streaming through the open door. Echo of boards dropping on rock. Light shot through gla.s.s in slices, landed on the dusty floors like strips of yellow canvas. The children ran in and out the door, afraid to go into the gloom alone, shrieking as Quoyle, levering boards outside, gave ghostly laughs and moans, "Huu huu huu."

Then inside, the aunt climbing the funneled stairs, Quoyle testing floorboards, saying be careful, be careful. Dust charged the air and they were all sneezing. Cold, must; canted doors on loose hinges. The stair treads concave from a thousand shuffling climbs and descents. Wallpaper poured backwards off the walls. In the attic a featherbed leaking bird down, ticking mapped with stains. The children rushed from room to room. Even when fresh the rooms must have been mean and hopeless.

"That's one more dollar for me!" shrieked Bunny, whirling on gritty floor. But through the windows the cool plain of sea.

Quoyle went back out. The wind as sweet in his nose as spring water in a thirsty mouth. The aunt coughing and half-crying inside.

"There's the table, the blessed table, the old chairs, the stove is here, oh my lord, there's the broom on the wall where it always hung," and she seized the wooden handle. The rotted knot burst, straws shot out of the binding wire and the aunt held a stick. She saw the stovepipe was rusted through, the table on ruined legs, the chairs unfit.

"Needs a good scurrifunging. What mother always said."

Now she roved the rooms, turned over pictures that spit broken gla.s.s. Held up a memorial photograph of a dead woman, eyes half open, wrists bound with strips of white cloth. The wasted body lay on the kitchen table, coffin against the wall.

"Aunt Eltie. She died of TB TB." Held up another of a fat woman grasping a hen.

[45] "Auntie Pinkie. She was so stout she couldn't get down to the chamber pot and had to set it on the bed before she could pee." Square rooms, lofty ceilings. Light dribbled like water through a hundred sparkling holes in the roof, caught on splinters. This bedroom. Where she knew the pattern of cracks on the ceiling better than any other fact in her life. Couldn't bear to look. Downstairs again she touched a paint-s...o...b..red chair, saw the foot k.n.o.bs on the front legs worn to rinds. The floorboards slanted under her feet, wood as bare as skin. A rock smoothed by the sea for doorstop. And three lucky stones strung on a wire to keep the house safe.

Outside, an hour later, Quoyle at his fire, the aunt taking things out of the food box; eggs, a crushed bag of bread, b.u.t.ter, jam. Suns.h.i.+ne crowded against the aunt, her hands following, seizing packets. The child unwrapped the b.u.t.ter, the aunt spread it with a piece of broken wood for a knife, stirred the s.h.i.+vering eggs in the pan. The bread heel for the old dog. Bunny at the landwash casting peckled stones. As each struck, foaming lips closed over it.

They sat beside the fire. The smoky stingo like an offering from some stone altar, the aunt thought, watched the smolder melt into the sky. Bunny and Suns.h.i.+ne leaned against Quoyle. Bunny ate a slice of bread rolled up, the jelly poised at the end like the eye of a toaster oven, watched the smoke gyre.

"Dad. Why does smoke twist around?"

Quoyle tore circles of bread, put pinches of egg atop and said "Here comes a little yellow chicken to the ogre's lair," and made the morsels fly through the air and into Suns.h.i.+ne's mouth. And the children were up and off again, around the house, leaping over the rusted cables that held it to the rock.

"Dad," panted Bunny, clacking two stones together. "Isn't Petal going to live with us any more?"

Quoyle was stunned. He'd explained that Petal was gone, that she was asleep and could never wake up, choking back his own grief, reading aloud from a book the undertaker had supplied, A Child's Introduction to Departure of a Loved One A Child's Introduction to Departure of a Loved One.

"No, Bunny. She's gone to sleep. She's in heaven. Remember, [46] I told you?" For he had protected them from the funeral, had never said the word. Dead.

"And she can't get up again?"

"No. She's sleeping forever and she can never get up."

"You cried, Daddy. You put your head on the refrigerator and cried."

"Yes," said Quoyle.

"But I didn't cry. I thought she would come back. She would let me wear her blue beads."

"No. She can't come back." And Quoyle had given away the blue beads, all the heaps of chains and beads, the armfuls of jewel-colored clothes, the silly velvet cap sewed over with rhinestones, the yellow tights, the fake red fox coat, even the half-empty bottles of Tresor, to the Goodwill store.

"If I was asleep I would wake up," said Bunny, walking away from him and around the house.

She was alone back there, the stunted trees pressing at the foot of the rock. A smell of resin and salt. Behind the house a ledge. A freshet plunged into a hole. The color of the house on this side, away from the sun, was again the bad green. She looked up and the walls swelled out as though they were falling. Turned again and the tuckamore moved like legs under a blanket. There was a strange dog, white, somehow misshapen, with matted fur. The eyes gleamed like wet berries. It stood, staring at her. The black mouth gaped, the teeth seemed packed with stiff hair. Then it was gone like smoke.

She shrieked, stood shrieking, and when Quoyle ran to her, she climbed up on him, bellowing to be saved. And though later he beat through the tuckamore with a stick for half an hour they saw no dog, nor sign. The aunt said in the old days when the mailman drove a team and men hauled firewood with dogs, everyone kept the brutes. Perhaps, she said doubtfully, some wild tribe had descended from those dogs. Warren snuffled without enthusiasm, refused to take a scent.

"Don't go wandering off by yourselves, now. Stay with us." [47] The aunt made a face at Quoyle that meant-what? That the child was nervy.

She looked down the bay, scanned the sh.o.r.eline, the fiords, thousand-foot cliffs over creamy water. The same birds still flew from them like signal flares, razored the air with their cries. Darkening horizon.

The old place of the Quoyles, half ruined, isolated, the walls and doors of it pumiced by stony lives of dead generations. The aunt felt a hot pang. Nothing would drive them out a second time.

6.

Between s.h.i.+ps Oh make 'er fast and stow yer gear, Leave 'er, Johnny, leave 'er!

An' tie 'er up to the bloomin' pier, It's time for we to leave 'er!

OLD SONG.

THE FIRE was dying. Dominoed coals gave off the last heat. Bunny lay plastered against Quoyle under the wing of his jacket. Suns.h.i.+ne squatted on the other side of the fire piling pebbles on top of each other. Quoyle heard her murmuring to them, "Get up there, honey, you want the pancakes?" She could not stack more than four before they fell. was dying. Dominoed coals gave off the last heat. Bunny lay plastered against Quoyle under the wing of his jacket. Suns.h.i.+ne squatted on the other side of the fire piling pebbles on top of each other. Quoyle heard her murmuring to them, "Get up there, honey, you want the pancakes?" She could not stack more than four before they fell.

The aunt ticked off points on her fingers, drew lines on the rock with a burned stick. But they could not live in the house, said Quoyle, perhaps for a long time. They could could live in the house, said the aunt, the words lunging at something, but it would be hard. Ah, even if the house was like new, said Quoyle, he couldn't drive back and forth on that road every day. The first part of the road was G.o.d-awful. live in the house, said the aunt, the words lunging at something, but it would be hard. Ah, even if the house was like new, said Quoyle, he couldn't drive back and forth on that road every day. The first part of the road was G.o.d-awful.

[49] "Get a boat." The aunt, dreamily, as though she meant a schooner for the trade winds. "With a boat you don't need the road."

"What about stormy weather? Winter?" Quoyle heard his own idiotic voice. He did not want a boat, s.h.i.+ed from the thought of water. Ashamed he could not swim, couldn't learn.

"Rare the storm a Newfoundlander couldn't cross the bay in," said the aunt. "In the winter, the snowmobile." Her stick grated on the rock.

"A road still might be better," said Quoyle imagining coffee roaring out of a spigot and into his cup.

"Well, granted we can't live in the house for a while, maybe two or three months," said the aunt, "we can find a place to rent in Killick-Claw where you'll be near your newspaper work until the house is fixed. Let's drive up this afternoon, get a couple of motel rooms and see if we can find a house to rent, line up some carpenters to start on this place. Want a babysitter or a play school for the girls. I've got my own work to do, you know. Locate a work s.p.a.ce, get set up. That wind is coming stronger." The coals fountained sparks.

"What is your work anyway, Aunt? I'm embarra.s.sed to say I don't know. I mean, I never thought to ask." Had blundered into the unlikely journey knowing nothing, breathing grief like a sour gas. Hoped for oxygen soon.

"Understandable under the circ.u.mstances," said the aunt. "Upholstery." Showed her yellow, callused fingers. "I had the tools and fabric crated up and s.h.i.+pped. Should be here next week. You know, we ought to make a list while we're right here of the work to be done on this place. Needs a new roof, chimney repair. Have you got any paper?" She knew he had a boxful.

"Back in the car. I'll go back and get my notebook. Come on, Bunny, sit here. You can keep my place warm."

"See if you can find those crackers on the front seat. I think Bunny would perk up if she had a cracker." The child scowled. There's a sweet expression, thought the aunt. Felt the wind hard off the bay. A roll of cloud on the edge of the sea and the black and white waves like a grim tweed.

[50] "Let's see," said the aunt. She had thrown new wood on the fire and the flames sprang about under the gusting wind. "Window gla.s.s, insulation, tear out the walls, new wallboard, a new door, a storm door, repair the chimneys, stovepipe, new waterline from the spring. Can these children abide an outhouse?" Quoyle hated the thought of their small bottoms clapped onto the roaring seat of a two-holer. Nor did he like the idea for his own hairy rump.

"Upstairs floors need to be replaced, the kitchen floor seems sound enough." In the end Quoyle said it might be cheaper to build a new house somewhere else, the Riviera, maybe. Even with the insurance and what the aunt had, they might not have enough.

"Think we'll manage. But you're right," she said. "We probably should clear a driveway from the mystery parking lot to the house. Maybe the province will do something about the road. We'll probably end up paying. Could be expensive. Lot more expensive than a boat." She stood up, hauled her black coat around and b.u.t.toned it to the neck. "It's getting mighty cold," she said. "Look." Held out her arm. Chips of snow landed in the loft of wool. "We better make tracks," she said. "This is not a good place to get caught in a snowstorm. Well do I know."

"In May?" said Quoyle. "Give me a break, Aunt."

"Any month of the year, my boy. Weather here beyond anything you know."

Quoyle looked out. The bay faded, as though he looked through a piece of cheesecloth. Needles of snow in his face.

"I don't believe it," he said. But it was what he wanted. Storm and peril. Difficult tasks. Exhaustion.

On the way out the wind buffeted the car. Darkness seeped from the overcast, snow grains ticking the winds.h.i.+eld. On the highway there was already a film of snow on the road surface. He turned in at Ig's Store again.

"Getting some coffee," he said to the aunt. "Want some?"

[51] "There's a big building in there and a parking lot."

"Oh yar. Glove fact'ry it was. Closed up years back." The man slid two paper cups with folded ear handles at him.

Shrieking wind. The bitter coffee trembled.

"Weather," the man said to Quoyle balanced in the doorway with his damp cups.

He bent against air. Cracking sky, a mad burst. The sign above the gas pump, a hand-painted circle of sheet metal, tore away, sliced over the store. The man came out, the door jumped from his hand, wrenched. Wind slung Quoyle against the pumps. The aunt's startled face in the car window. Then the gusts bore out of the east, shooting the blizzard at them.

Quoyle pried the door open. He'd dropped the coffee. "Look at it! Look at this," he cried. "We can't drive to Killick-Claw through twenty miles of this."

"Didn't we see a motel on the way up?"

"Yes we did. And it's back in b.l.o.o.d.y Banks." He sc.r.a.ped at the map, his hand spangled with melting snow. "See it? It's thirty-six miles behind us." The car trembled.

"Let's help buddy with his door," said the aunt. "We'll ask him. He'll know some place."

Quoyle got the hammer from under the seat, and they stooped beneath wind. Steadied the door while the man pounded spikes.

He barely looked at them. Things on his mind, Quoyle thought, like whether or not the roof would lift off. But he shouted answers. Tickle Motel. Six miles east. Third time the year the door was off. First time the sign was off. Felt snowly all morning, he bellowed as they pulled onto the highway. Waved them into sideblown snow.

Slick road; visibility nil beyond the hood ornament. All dissolved in spinning particles. The speedometer needle at fifteen and still they skidded and jerked. The aunt leaned this way and that, hand on the dash, fingers widespread, as though by leaning she kept their balance.

"Dad, are we scared?" said Suns.h.i.+ne.

"No, honey. It's an adventure." Didn't want them to grow up timid. The aunt snorted. He glanced in the rearview mirror. [52] Warren's yellow eyes met his. Quoyle winked at the dog. To cheer her up.

The motel's neon sign, TICKLE MOTEL, BAR & RESTAURANT TICKLE MOTEL, BAR & RESTAURANT, flickered as he steered into the parking lot, weaving past trucks and cars, long-distance rigs, busted-spring swampers, 4WD 4WD pickups, snowplows, snowmobiles. The place was jammed. pickups, snowplows, snowmobiles. The place was jammed.

"Only thing left is The Deluxe Room and Bridal Suite," said the clerk, swabbing at his inflamed eyes. "Storm's got everybody in here plus it's darts playoffs night. Brian Mulroney, the prime minister, slept in it last year when he come by here. A big one, two beds and two cots. His bodyguards slept on the cots. A hundred and ten dollars the night." He had them over a barrel. Handed Quoyle an ornate key stamped 999. There was a basket of windup penguins near the cash register and Quoyle bought one for each of the children. Bunny broke the wings off hers before they left the lobby. A wet path on the carpet.

Room 999 was ten feet from the highway, fronted by a plate gla.s.s window. Every set of headlights veered into the parking lot, the glare sliding over the walls of the room like raw eggs in oil.

The inside doork.n.o.b came off in Quoyle's hand, and he worked it back carefully. He would get a screw from the desk clerk and fix it. They looked around the room. One of the beds was a round sofa. The carpet trodden with mud.

"There's no coat closet," said the aunt. "Mr. Mulroney must have slept in his suit." Toilet and shower cramped into a cubby. The sink next to the television set had only one faucet. Where the other had been, a hole. Wires from the television set trailed on the floor. The top of the instrument looked melted, apparently by a campfire.

"Never mind," yawned the aunt, "it's better than sleeping in the car," and looked for a light switch. Got a smoldering purple glow.

Quoyle was the first to take a shower. Discolored water spouted from a broken tile, seeped under the door and into the carpet. The sprinkler system dribbled as long as the cold faucet was open. His [53] clothes slipped off the toilet lid and lay in the flood, for the door hooks were torn away. A Bible on a chain near the toilet, loose pages ready to fall. It was not until the next evening that he discovered he had gone about all day with a page from Leviticus stuck to his back.

The room was hot.

"Take a look at the thermostat," said the aunt. "No wonder." Caved in on the side as though smashed with a war club.

Quoyle picked up the phone, but it was dead.

"At least we can have dinner," said the aunt. "There's a dining room. A decent dinner and a good night's sleep and we'll be ready for anything."

The dining room, crowded with men, was lit by red bulbs that gave them a look of being roasted alive in their chairs. Quoyle thought the coffee filthy, but at other tables they drank it grinning. Waited an hour for their dinner, and Quoyle, sitting with his fractious children, his yawning old aunt and gobs of tartar sauce on both knees, could barely smile. Petal would have kicked the table over and walked out. And she was with him again, Petal, like a persistent song phrase, like a few stubborn lines of verse memorized in childhood. The needle was stuck.

"Thanks," murmured Quoyle to the waitress, swabbing his plate with a bun. Left a two-dollar bill under the saucer.

The rooms on each side of them raged with cras.h.i.+ngs, howling children. Snowplows shook the pictures of Jesus over the beds. The wind screamed in the ill-fitted window frames. As Quoyle pulled the door closed, the k.n.o.b came off in his hand again, and he heard a whang on the other side of the door, the other half of the k.n.o.b dropping.

"Oh boy, this is like a war," said Bunny watching a plywood wall shake. The aunt thought somebody must be kicking with both feet. Turned down the bedcovers, disclosing sheets st.i.tched up from fragments of other, torn, sheets. Warren lapped water out of the toilet.