The Shipping News (13 page)

Now climbed with only one hand, the other clenching the asphalt pieces. At the top of the ladder he had a bad moment. The ladder rose up several rungs above the roof and he had to step off to the side onto the roof, to crawl up with the deep air beneath him.

He crouched awkwardly on the brace, saw that Dennis put the shingles on in tiers that he could reach comfortably, then set the brace in a new position. The tops of the spruces were like stains in the fog below. He could hear the slow pound of the sea. He did nothing for a few minutes. It wasn’t so bad.

Quoyle put his three shingles up behind him on the slant. Took one, slowly butted it to Dennis’s last, taking care to maintain the five-inch reveal. He got a few nails out of the apron, gingerly eased the hammer from under his buttock, got it out of the leather loop. He nailed the shingle. As he pounded the third nail home he heard a sliding sound, saw the two loose shingles he had carried up, slipping down. He stopped them with his hammer. Placed a shingle, nailed it. The third. It was not difficult, only awkward and breathless.

Now Quoyle balanced half a square of shingles on his shoulder, climbed back. It was easier, and he got up the roof without crawling, laid the shingles over the ridge and set to work. He glanced at the sea once or twice, saw the profile of a tanker on the horizon like a water snake floating in ease.

He was on the last row. It was fast now because he could straddle the ridge. The nails sank into the wood.

“Hi, Daddy.”

He heard Bunny’s voice, glanced toward the ground, but the glance stopped high. She stood on one of the rungs above the roof level, straining to put her foot on the roof. She held the hammer with the red-striped neck. Quoyle saw in a tiny vivid window that [107] Bunny was going to put her foot on the roof, was going to step forward onto the edge of the steep pitch as though on a level path, was going to fall, to pinwheel shrieking to the rock.

“I’m going to help you.” Her foot reached for the roof.

“Oh, little child,” breathed Quoyle. “Wait there.” His voice was low but passionately urgent. “Don’t move. Wait there for me. I’m coming to get you. Hold on tight. Don’t come on the roof. Let me get you.” The mesmerizing voice, the father fixing his child in place with his starting eyes, inching down the evil slope on the wrong side of everything, then grasping the child’s arm, her hammer falling away, he saying “Don’t move, don’t move, don’t move,” hearing the painted hammer clatter on the rock below. And Quoyle, safe on the rungs, Bunny pinned between his chest and the ladder.

“You’re squashing me!”

Quoyle went down with trembling legs, one hand on the rungs, his left arm folded around his daughter’s waist. The ladder shook with his shaking. He could not believe she hadn’t fallen, for in two or three seconds he had lived her squalling death over and over, reached out time after time to grip empty air.

12

The Stern Wave

“To prevent slipping, a knot depends on friction, and to

provide friction there must be pressure of some sort. This

pressure and the place within the knot where it occurs is

called the nip. The security of a knot seems to depend solely

on its
nip
.”

THE ASHLEY BOOK OF KNOTS

IT WAS
like mirror writing. The slightest change in reverse sent the trailer on the opposite tack, and Quoyle squinted in the side mirror at reflections of opposition. Again and again it folded like a jackknife blade seeking its bed, and twice it gouged the new dock. He was sick of it when finally the thing went straight back and into the water. A trick to it.

Got out and looked at the trailer. Wheels were in the water, the boat poised. His hand was on the tilt latch when he thought of a securing line. That would be fun, launch the boat and watch it float away.

He managed to attach bow and stern lines, yanked the latch. The boat slid down. He got the winch line loose, scrambled onto the dock and made the boat fast. It was something of a two-man [109] operation. Then back to the trailer, close the latch, wind up the cable. The fifty-dollar boat was in the water.

He got in, remembered the damn motor. Still in the station wagon. Carried it onto the dock, put his foot on the gunwale and fell into the boat. Cursed all vessels from floating logs to supertankers.

Quoyle didn’t see he’d mounted the motor in a position that would force the bow up like the nose of a bird dog. He poured in gas from the red can.

The motor started on the first pull. There was Quoyle sitting in the stern of a boat. His boat. The motor was running, his hand was on the tiller, wedding ring glinting. He moved the gearshift to reverse, as he had seen Dennis do, and gingerly applied a little power. The boat swung in toward the dock at the stern. Jockeyed back and forth until he was beyond the dock. Shifted into forward. The motor gave a low roar and the boat went—too fast—parallel with the shore. He eased back on the throttle and the boat wallowed. Now forward again, and rocks leaped up ahead of him. Instinctively he pushed the tiller toward the shore and the boat curved out onto Omaloor Bay. The water curled. Traveling on a glass arrow.

He worked the tiller, traced curves. Now faster. Quoyle laughed like a dog in the back of a pickup. Why had he feared boats?

There was an offshore breeze and the waves slapped the boat bottom as he sped at them. A sharp turn and he felt the boat skid. Pushed the throttle back. The stern wave roared up behind him and sloshed over the transom, swirled around his ankles and spread out in the boat. He pulled at the throttle again and the boat leapt forward, but sluggishly, and the water on the floor rushed toward the stern, adding its weight to Quoyle’s. He looked for something to bail out the water; nothing. Turned very carefully toward the dock. The boat was vague and unwilling, for the water had altered the trim. Yet he moved forward, not afraid of sinking only two hundred feet from the dock.

As he approached he jerked back on the throttle again, and again the stern wave sloshed over the transom. But close enough [110] to cut the motor and let the boat grind against the dock. He threw his mooring lines over the piles and went up to the house for a coffee can bail.

Back on the water again, he played the throttle delicately, turning with care, wary of the stern wave. There had to be a way to keep the water out when you slowed down.

¯

“Of course there is,” said Nutbeem. “Your transom’s cut too low. What you need is a motor well, a bulkhead as high as the sides of the boat forward of the motor, with self-bailing drains in each corner. Build one in an hour. I’m flabbergasted they registered it the way it is.”

“It’s not registered,” said Quoyle.

“You’d better hop on down to the Coast Guard and do it,” said Nutbeem. “You get caught without a registration, without a motor well, without the proper lights and flotation devices they’ll fine your ass off. I suppose you have an anchor?”

“No,” said Quoyle.

“Oars? Something to bail with? Distress flares? Do you have a safety chain for your motor?”

“No, no,” said Quoyle. “I was just trying it out.”

¯

On a Saturday Dennis and Quoyle hauled the boat out of the water. Bunny on the dock, throwing stones.

“She’s a rough bugger,” said Dennis. “In fact, you might burn her and start over.”

“I can’t afford to. Can’t we put in a motor well? When I tried it out last week it went right along. It was fine until the water came in. I just want to get back and forth across the bay with it.”

“I’ll put in a bulkhead and give you some advice—only take this thing out on quiet days. If it looks rough better get a ride with your aunt or drive your wagon. It isn’t fit, you get in a hard nip.”

Quoyle stared at his boat.

“Look at it,” said Dennis. “It’s just a few planks bunged [111] together. The boy that built it deserves a whack of shot in the backside.”

Quoyle’s hand went up to his chin.

“Dad,” said Bunny, crouched on the pebbles, ramming a stick into the sand. “I want to go in the boat.”

Dennis clicked his tongue as though he’d heard her say a dirty word.

“Talk to Alvin Yark. See if he’d make you something. He makes good boats. I’d make something for you, but he’ll do it quicker and it’ll cost you less. I’ll put a bulkhead in, long as nobody sees me doing it, touching this thing, but you better talk with Alvin. You got to have a boat. That’s certain.”

¯

Bunny ran up to the house, thumb and forefinger pinched together.

“Aunt, the sky is the biggest thing in the world. Guess what’s the littlest?”

“I don’t know, my dear. What?”

“This.” And extended her finger to show a minute grain of sand.

“I want to see.” Sunshine charged up and the particle of sand was lost in a hurricane of breath.

“No, no, no,” said the aunt, seizing Bunny’s balled fist. “There’s more without number. There’s enough sand for everybody.”

13

The Dutch Cringle

“A cringle will make an excellent emergency handle

for a suitcase.”

THE ASHLEY BOOK OF KNOTS

“
BOY
, there’s a sight down here to the wharf. Never the like of it in these waters.” The booming voice rattled out of the wire and into Quoyle’s ear. “With the smell of evil on it. I wouldn’t put to sea in it for all the cod in the world. Better take a look, boy. You’ll never see anything like it again.”

“What is it, Mr. Shovel? The flagship of the Spanish Armada?”

“No, boy. But you bring your pencil and your camera. I think you can write more than arrival and departure times.” He hung up.

Quoyle was not glad. A gusting rain fell at a hard angle, rattling the windowpanes, drumming on the roof. The wind bucked and buffeted. It was comfortable leaning his elbow on the desk and rewriting a Los Angeles wreck story Nutbeem had pulled off the [113] radio. An elderly man stripped naked by barroom toughs, blindfolded and shoved into freeway traffic. The man had just left the hospital after visiting a relative, had gone into a nearby bar for a glass of beer when five men with blue-painted heads seized him. Tert Card said it showed the demented style of life in the States. A favorite story with
Gammy Bird
readers, the lunacy of those from away. Quoyle called back.

“Mr. Shovel, I sort of hate to drop what I’m doing.”

“Tell you, it’s Hitler’s boat. A pleasure boat built for Hitler. A Dutch barge. You never seen anything like it. The owner’s on board. They says the paper’s welcome to look her over.”

“My god. Be there in about half an hour.”

Billy Pretty stared at Quoyle. “What’s he got, then?” he whispered.

“He says there’s a Dutch boat that belonged to Hitler down at the public wharf.”

“Naw!” said Billy, “I’d like to see that. Those old days, boy, we had the Germans prowling up and down this coast, torpedoed ships they did right up there in the straits. The Allies got a submarine, captured a German sub. Took it down to St. John’s.

“We had spies. Oh, some clever! This one, a woman, I can see her now in a old duckety-mud coat, used to pedal her squeaky old bike up the coast once a week from Rough Shop Harbor to Killick-Claw, then go back down the ferry. I forget what she gave out for a story why she had to do all that bikin’, but come to find out she was a German spy, countin’ the boats all up and down, and she’d radio the information out to German subs lurking offshore.”

“Get your slicker then and come on.”

“We always heard they shot her. Just didn’t show up one week. They said she was caught down at Rough Shop Harbor and executed. Said she dodged her bike through the paths, screaming like a crazy thing, the men after her, run like engines before they run her down.”

Quoyle made a sucking noise with the side of his mouth. He did not believe a word.

¯

There was a hole in the station wagon’s floor and through it spurted occasional geysers of dirty rainwater. Quoyle thought enviously of the aunt’s pickup. He couldn’t afford a new truck. Frightening how fast the insurance money was going. He didn’t know where the aunt got it. She’d paid for all the house repairs, put in her share for groceries. He’d paid for the road, the new dock. For the girls’ beds, clothes, the motel bill, gas for the station wagon. And the new transmission.

“Wish I’d worn me logans,” shouted Billy Pretty. “Didn’t know the bottom half of your car was missin’.”

Quoyle slowed not to splash the graceful, straight-backed woman in the green slicker. God, did it rain every day? The child was with her. Her eyes straight to Quoyle. His to her.

“Who is that? Seems like I see her walking along the road every time I come out.”

“That’s Wavey. Wavey Prowse. She’s takin’ her boy back from the special class at the school. There’s a bunch of them goes. She got it started, the special class. He’s not right. It was grief caused the boy to be like he is. Wavey was carrying him when Sevenseas Hector went over. Lost her husband. We should of give her a ride, boy.

“She was going the other way.”

“Wouldn’t take a minute to turn round. Rain coming down like stair rods,” said Billy.

Quoyle pulled in at the cemetery entrance, turned, drove back. As the woman and child got in Billy said their names. Wavey Prowse. Herry. The woman apologized for their wetness, sat silent the rest of the way to a small house half a mile beyond the
Gammy Bird
. Didn’t look at Quoyle. The yard beyond the small house held a phantasmagoria of painted wooden figures, galloping horses, dogs balanced on wheels, a row of chrome hubcaps on sticks. A zoo of the mind.

“That’s some yard,” said Quoyle.

“Dad’s stuff,” said Wavey Prowse and slammed the door.

Back along the flooding road again toward Killick-Claw.

[115] “You ought to see the chair he made out of moose antlers,” said Billy. “You set in it, it’s comfortable enough, but to the others it looks like you sprouted golden wings.”

“She has very good posture,” said Quoyle. Tried to cancel the stupid remark. “What I mean is, she has a good stride. I mean, tall. She seems tall.” Man Sounds Like Fatuous Fool. In a way he could not explain she seized his attention; because she seemed sprung from wet stones, the stench of fish and tide.

“Maybe she’s the tall and quiet woman, boy.”

“What does that mean?”

“A thing me old dad used to say.”

¯

“There she is.” They peered through the streaming windshield. The Botterjacht stood out from every other boat at the wharf, tied up between a sailing yacht whose Australian owners had been there for two weeks, and the cadet training ship. From above, the barge looked like a low tub with strange and gigantic shoehorns on its sides. A crewman in a black slicker bent over something near the cabin door, then walked swiftly aft and disappeared.

“What are those things on the side? Looks like a big beetle with a set of undersize wings.”

“Lee boards. Work like a centerboard. You know. You raise and lower a centerboard in a sailing boat so as to add keel. Some calls it a ‘drop keel.’ You got a shoal draft boat, my boy, she has to work to windward, you’ll bless your centerboard. Now, with your lee boards, see, you don’t loose any stowage space. The things is hung out on the side instead of down in the gut of the boat. A centerboard trunk takes up space.” Billy’s worn shape down to the bones, cast Quoyle as a sliding mass.

A light shone in the cabin. Even through the roaring rain they could see the boat was a treasure.

“Oak hull, I guess,” said Billy Pretty. “Look at her! Look at the mast on her! Look at that cabin! Teak decks. Flat and low and wide. Never saw a shape like that on a boat in me life—look at them bluff bows. Look how she points up on the stem like a Eskimo knife. See the carving?” Her name was painted on an elaborately [116] carved and gilded ribbon of mahogany—
Tough Baby
, Puerta Malacca. They could hear muffled voices.

“I don’t know how you names a boat that,” mumbled Billy Pretty, walking up the ramp and jumping on the glistening deck. He bellowed “Ahoy,
Tough Baby
. Visitors! Come aboard?”

A flush-faced man with white hair opened one of the curved-top double doors. He wore madras trousers with a patent leather belt and matching white shoes. Quoyle looked. Everything streaming. Coiled wet rope, dripping ventilator, sheets of water running over the deck. Near the cabin door a wet pigskin suitcase with a worked rope handle.

“Do I know you?” His eyes were bloodshot.

“From the local paper, sir, the
Gammy Bird
, thought our readers would be interested in your boat, we try to do a little story on the more unusual boats that dock in Killick-Claw, never seen any thing like this.” Quoyle said his piece. The boat felt like the plains under his feet. He smiled ingratiatingly, but
Tough Baby
was not a welcoming boat.

“Ah yes. That incredible harbormaster, what’s-his-name, Doodles or whatever it is, mumbled something about a visit from
la presse locale
.” The man sighed hugely. Gestured as though throwing away fruit skins. “Well, my darling wife and I are having this sort of totally terrible argument, but I suppose we can do the dog and pony act. I’ve given lectures on this boat to everybody from Andy Warhol two weeks before that
fatal
operation, to Scotland Yard. She absolutely draws this crowd wherever we go, whether Antibes or Boca Raton. She’s absolutely unique.” He stepped out into the rain.

“Traditional Dutch barge yacht design, but
marvelously
luxurious with these incredible details. I think, the finest Botterjacht ever built. When we first saw her she was a
total
wreck. She was moored in some awful Italian port—belonged to the Princess L’Aranciata—we’d taken a villa in Ansedonia next to theirs for the summer and at one point she mentioned that she had this wreck of a Dutch yacht that had belonged to Hitler but bored her to tears. Well! We went up to see it and immediately I could see the possibilities—it was utterly clear, clear, clear that here was an [117] extraordinary, one-of-a-kind
thing
.” Rain dripped off the ends of the man’s wet hair, his shirt was transparent with it.

“Absolutely flat bottomed so she can go around without any damage, you can sail her right up onto shore in storm conditions or for repairs. Incredibly heavy. Almost forty tons of oak. Of
course
, she was designed for the North Sea. Bluff bows. She’s absolutely buoyant. You know, my wife
hates
this boat. But I love her.”

Billy Pretty’s eyes had fallen on a square of Astroturf which he took for a bit of doormat until he saw cigar dog turds. Stared.

“That’s for my wife’s little spaniel. Great system. Doggie makes doo-doo on the simulated grass, you throw overboard—see the loop on the corner for the line?—and presto, tow until it’s squeaky clean again. Great invention. The design dates back to the fifteenth century. The boat, of course, not the doo-doo rug. They’re the boats you see in Rembrandt’s marvelous paintings. They were royal barges. Henry the Eighth had one, Elizabeth I had one. A royal barge. She was named
Das Knie
when we saw her—means ‘The Knee,’ and I had to get down on one knee to persuade my darling, darling wife to let me buy it—” he paused for Quoyle’s laugh. “Had the same name when the princess bought it—absolutely nobody ever changed it since this sordid German industralist had it after the war. My beloved wife thought it should be named after her, but I called her
Tough Baby
. When I saw what her true character was. This boat will be strong a hundred years from now. Built in Haarlem. Nine years in the building. She’s utterly utterly indestructible. just incredibly massive. The frames are seven and an eighth by six inches on eleven-inch centers.”

Billy Pretty whistled and raised his eyebrows. The man’s hair plastered against his yellow scalp. Drops hanging from the brims of Billy’s and Quoyle’s hats like moonstone trim. Quoyle scribbling on his pad, bent over to keep the rain off. Useless.

“The planking—nobody can believe the planking—select grade oak, two and three-sixteenths inches thick with double planking at the bottom. The reason? Because of her shallow home waters, full of sandbars, spits, shifting channels. Unbelievable. The Zuider Zee. Treacherous, treacherous water. You absolutely go aground all the time. The decking isn’t flimsy, either. Believe it or not, you [118] are standing on inch and three-quarters teak from pre-World War II Burma! You couldn’t buy the wood that’s in this boat anywhere in the world today for any amount of money. It’s just completely gone today.” The pitching voice went on and on. Quoyle saw Billy’s hands rammed in his pockets.

“You wretched bastard, who are you talking to?” cried a raw high voice. The drenched man kept talking as though he hadn’t heard.

“Let’s see, there’s a crew of four. She’s cutter rigged, two thousand square foot of working sail, takes three incredibly strong men to handle the mains’l and they’re always getting these sort of hernias and ruptures. Always quitting and jumping ship. It weighs a thousand pounds. The sail, I mean. And she’s slow. Slow because she’s heavy. But very, very sturdy.” Without a pause he shouted, “I’m talking to the local press about the boat!” Nose wrinkled like a snarling dog.

“Tell them what happened in Hurricane Bob!”

The words poured down with the rain. Quoyle put his sodden notes away, stood with his wet hand over his wet chin. The white-haired man’s chest hair showed through the wet silk of his shirt like grey knots. He seemed not to notice the rain. Quoyle saw purple scars on his hands, a ruby the size of a cherry tomato on his ring finger. Could smell the liquor.

“The absolutely marvelous
carving
. The carving is everywhere, these incredible master carvers worked on it for nine years. All the animals known. Zebras, moose, dinosaurs, aurochs, marine iguana, wolverines, we’ve had internationally known wildlife biologists on board here to identify all the incredible species. And the birds. Utterly, utterly bizarre. It was built for Hitler as I suppose you know, but
he
never set foot on it. There were a thousand delays. Deliberate delays. The extraordinary Dutch Resistance.” Words spattering, drops bouncing off the deck.