The Shipping News Part 25

It was not what he thought. Yes, children lisped comic or religious poems to thunderous applause. But it was not just schoolchildren. People from the town and the outlying coves came onstage as well. Benny Fudge, the black-haired rager who led the attack on poor Nutbeem's boat-for he was "poor Nutbeem" now-sang "The Moon Shines Bright" in a fruity tenor and finished with two measures of finger snapping and clogging.

"When I was a kid they came around at night and sang outside the door," whispered Dennis. "Old Sparky Fudge, Benny's granddad, you see, had a renowned voice. Lost off the Mummy Banks."

Then Bunny and Marty stood alone on the edge of the stage.

"Hi Bunny!" screamed Sunshine. "Hi Marty!" A ripple of laughter.

"Quiet, now," whispered Quoyle. The child like coiled wire.

Bunny and Marty wore matching red jumpers. Beety had let them sit at the sewing machine and st.i.tch the long side seams. Quoyle could see Bunny's knees trembling. Her hands clenched. They began to sing something Quoyle had heard seeping from behind a door, a haunting little tune in a foreign language which [277] he guessed was an African tongue. How had they learned it? He and Dennis mopped at their eyes and snorted with embarra.s.sment.

"Pretty good," croaked Quoyle.

"Oh, aye," said Dennis in a robber chiefs voice.

Quoyle remembered Nutbeem's tape. Had the children memorized some pagan song of unknown meaning from that tape? He hoped so.

A woman, perhaps seventy, glowing hair in a net like a roll of silver above her forehead came smiling onto the stage. Bunched cheeks over her smile like two hills above the valley. Eyes swimming behind lenses. A child ran out and placed a soccer ball on the floor behind her.

"Oh, this is good," said Dennis, nudging Quoyle. "Auntie Sofier's chicken act."

She stood still a few seconds, long old arms in her jersey, the tweed skirt to the knees. Yellow stockings, and on her feet red slippers. Suddenly one of the legs scratched at the stage, the arms became wings, and, with a crooning and cackling, Auntie Sofier metamorphosed into a peevish hen protecting an egg.

Quoyle laughed until his throat ached. Though he had never found hens amusing.

Then Wavey and Herry. The boy wore a sailor suit, clacked across the stage in tap shoes. Wavey, in her grey, homemade dress sat on a chair, the accordion across her breast like a radiator grill. The few false notes. Wavey said something that only the boy heard. A strained silence. Then, "One, two, three," said Wavey and commenced. The hornpipe rolled into the audience and at once hundreds of right heels bounced against the floor, the boy rattled his way up and down the blank boards. Quoyle clapped, they all clapped and shouted until Herry ran forward and bowed from the waist as his mother had taught him, smiling and smiling through the hinges of his face.

The showstopper was Beety.

The black cane appeared first from behind the curtain and a roar went up in the audience. She came out jauntily. Strutted. Wore dance tights and tunic covered with sequins and gla.s.s bugles, rondels, seed beads, satinas and discs, crow beads, crystal diamonds, [278] cat's-eyes, feather drops and barrels, sputniks and pearls, fluted twists, b.u.mpy-edges and mother-of-pearl teardrops. She had only to breathe to send shimmering prisms at them. A topper that took the light like a boomerang. Leaned on the cane. Twirled the hat on one finger, flipped it in a double somersault and caught it square on her head.

"We all know Billy Pretty's ways," she said, voice charged with tricks and amus.e.m.e.nts, a tone Quoyle'd never heard. He glanced at Dennis who leaned forward, mouth half open, as eager as anyone for her next word.

"Proper thing to save a dollar, eh Billy?"

The audience, laughing, twisted around in their seats to stare at Billy who sat near the back, strangling. The cane twirled.

"Yes, we knows 'is ways. But 'ow many knows the time last winter, February it was, time we 'ad that silver thaw when Billy wanted to 'ave the old grandfather clock in 'is kitchen repaired? It was like this, m'dears." The cane walked around. "Billy called up Leander Mesher."

The audience creaked and twisted in their seats again to look at the grocer whose hobby was repairing antique watches.

"Leander's been known to fix a few watches at 'is kitchen table. The old kind. There may be a few 'ere remember them. You used to wind them up. Every day. S'elp me, it's true! Every day. Life was terrible 'ard in the old days. So! Calls Leander up on the telephone. It was a local call. No charge." She became an uncanny Billy Pretty, hooped over the phone.

" 'Leander,' he says. 'Leander, what would you ask to repair me old grandfather clock that's 'ere in me kitchen the 'undred years past. I winds it up with a key. It is not battery operated.'

" 'Ah,' says Leander. 'Could be about a hundred and ten dollars. The cost comes in getting it 'ere. Pickup and delivery. Got to charge fifty each way. Got to 'ire two strong lads, gas and oil for the truck. Insurance. Air in the tires.'

" 'There's no cost to air in the tires,' says Billy.

" 'Where 'ave you been, Billy? 'Tis called 'inflation.'

"Well, m'dears, Billy thought about it a bit. We knows 'e lives [279] up on the 'ill and Leander's 'ouse is down at the bottom and in between a dozen streets. Billy 'as it all figured out. 'E'll carry the clock down to Leander 'imself. Save fifty dollars. Leander can bring it back. Uphill. After all, it's not that it's all that 'eavy, being mostly an empty s.p.a.ce for the pendulum, but it's awkward. Very awkward." She measured off the dimensions of the grandfather clock, reaching high with the cane to touch the wooden dove that everyone knew topped Billy's clock, widening her arms, stooping and dusting a bit of lint from the carved fruitwood foot. Quoyle twisted around, saw Billy roaring with pleasure at the resurrection of his clock on the stage. Someone in the audience went TICK TOCK TICK TOCK.

" 'E gets a good length of rope, you see, knotted and looped around nicely where 'is arms'll go. And 'oists 'er up on 'is back and out the door! 'Eading for Leander's." Now she was Billy teetering down the steep, icy hill.

" 'Awful slick,' says our Billy." Taking careful little steps.

"Now, down near the bottom of the hill is where Auntie Fizzard lives, ninety years old, isn't that right m'dear?"

And everyone stretched forward to see the elderly lady in the front row who raised thick canes in tremulous salute and drew cheers and clapping.

"Ninety years old, and there she goes, got 'er galoshes on with the little bit of fur around the tops, 'as frosters pounded in the 'eels so's she won't slip, wearing 'er black winter coat and a woolly knitted hat, got a cane in each 'and, and each cane got a red rubber tip on the end. She couldn't fall down if she was pushed. She thinks." Now Beety was Auntie Fizzard, inching along, casting fierce glances to the left and the right, watching for those who push ninety-year-old women.

"Up at the top of the 'ill ..." The audience roared.

"Up at top of the 'ill you might say there was a bit of trouble. First our Billy runs a few little steps to the right and slides, then 'e catches and trips to the left and 'e slips, and 'e goes straight on and 'e skids, and then the 'ill is steeper and the ice glares like water, and 'e's on his way, then over 'e goes, clock-side down and picking up speed like 'e's on a big komatik 'e can't steer.

[280] "Poor Auntie Fizzard 'ears the 'issing noise and she glances up, but 'tis too late, the clock clips 'er and belts 'er into the s...o...b..nk. There's an awful silence. Then Billy gets up and starts to haul 'is precious clock out of the snow, get it on 'is back again. 'E's still got a few steps to take to Leander's souse, you see. Glances over and sees Auntie Fizzard's boots sticking out of the snow. Sees them frisk around a bit, then 'ere comes Auntie Fizzard out of the snow, 'er 'at crooked, one cane buried until spring, black coat with so much snow on it's white.

" 'You! You Billy Pretty!' She blasted 'im." The cane twirled. "Says,"-a long, long pause-"says, 'Why don't you wear a wrist.w.a.tch like everybody else?' "

A tremendous roar from the audience. Young men tossed their watches into the air.

"Ah, she's something, she's something, isn't she?" Dennis pounding Quoyle's back, leaning forward to touch old Mrs. Fizzard's shoulder.

"Not a word of truth in it," she screamed, purple with laughing. "But how she makes you think there was! Oh, she's terrible good!"

And a few days later Quoyle gave Wavey a clear gla.s.s teapot, a silk scarf printed with a design of blueberries. He'd ordered them both through the mail from a museum shop in the States. She gave him a sweater the color of oxblood shoe polish. Had knitted it in the evenings. It was not too small. Their faces close enough for breath to mingle. Yet Quoyle was thinking of the only gift that Petal ever gave him. She had opened dozens of presents from him. A turquoise bracelet, a tropical-fish tank, a vest beaded with Elvis Presley's visage, canary eyes and sequin lips. She opened the last box, glanced at him. Sitting with his hands dangling, watching her.

"Wait a minute," she said and ran into the kitchen. He heard the refrigerator open. She came back with her hands behind her back.

"I didn't have a chance to buy you anything," she said, then [281] held both closed hands toward him. Uncurled her fingers. In each cupped palm a brown egg. He took them. They were cold. He thought it a tender, wonderful thing to do. She had given him something, the eggs, after all, only a symbol, but they had come from her hands as a gift. To him. It didn't matter that he'd bought them himself at the supermarket the day before. He imagined she understood him, that she had to love him to know that it was the outstretched hands, the giving, that mattered.

On Christmas day a hunch of cloud moved in. But the aunt was up from St. Johns, and they had Christmas dinner with Dennis and Beety in Mrs. Buggit's kitchen, people in and out, the fire bursting hot and stories of old-time teak days and mummers and jannies. Jack skulked around the edges pouring hot rum punch. Some distance away they heard sporadic and celebratory shotgun fire.

Dennis's mustache white with frost. He and Quoyle on the Sat.u.r.day morning after Christmas cutting next winter's firewood back in the spruce at the bottom of the bay. Quoyle with the chain saw, for which he had an affinity, Dennis limbing and tr.i.m.m.i.n.g. The blue scarf knitted by Sunshine barely wrapped around Quoyle's neck. At noon they stood over the small fire sucking hot tea.

"Beety says we ought to take a look in at old Nolan there in Capsize Cove. Seeing as we're not that far away. Finish up a little early and run in there. Dad or somebody usually goes over early part of the winter to see if he's got enough wood and food. A little late this year. Beety makes him a cake and some bread. I see his smoke there in the morning, but you can't tell."

"I didn't even think about him," said Quoyle. Guilty.

They went up the bay in a great curve, Dennis shouting stories of drunken snowmobilers who sank forever beneath the ice because they didn't know the routes.

"b.l.o.o.d.y cold," he shouted, squinting at the notch in the sh.o.r.eline. The empty houses of Capsize Cove were in sight like a charcoal drawing on rough paper. A long banking turn onto sh.o.r.e.

[282] Smoke coming out of the metal pipe of the old cousin's shack. The snowmobile's whine throttled back to stuttered idling.

"Leave it running," said Dennis.

Worse than Quoyle remembered. The stink was gagging. The old man too weak or befuddled to get to the outhouse. A skeleton trembled before them. The dog near the stove didn't move. But was alive. Quoyle could not help it. He retched and staggered to the doorway. In the fenced pasture three humps under the snow. Frozen sheep.

"Uncle Nolan," he heard Dennis say. "It's Dennis Buggit, Jack Buggit's boy, from across the bay. My wife's sent you some bread." He drew the bread out of the carrier bag. The sweet, homely perfume of bread. The skeleton was upon it, crushing the loaf into his mouth, a m.u.f.fled howling coming out of the twitching crust.

Dennis came outside, spat. Cleared his throat and spat again.

"Some stinking mess. Poor old b.u.g.g.e.r's starving. Christ in the early morning, what a mess. He'd better go into a home, don't you think? He's off his rocker. Burning the walls of his house, there. You see where he's ripping the boards off? He's your kin, so it's up to you. What to do with him. They take him away, I'll come back over, drown the old dog. Half dead anyway."

"I don't have any idea what to do about him."

"Beety will know who to call up about this. She gives time to that Saving Grace place that helps the women. And the Teenage Mothers. Knows all them groups. Her and Wavey."

"Beety and Wavey?" Quoyle's face flaming with guilt. He should have looked out for the wretched old cousin the first time he saw him. Didn't think.

"That Saving Grace, Beety and Wavey started it. Couple years ago. Councilman lived over near us beat his wife up one winter, pushed her out naked-a.s.s in the snow. She come to Beety. Blue with cold, deaf and blood in her ears. Next day Beety calls up Wavey. Wavey knows how to set up them groups, get something started, after she got the special ed group up. Get the Province's ear, see? Make them pay attention."

"Some women," said Quoyle. But thought, oh you should have [283] seen Petal, you should have seen my lovely girl. A preposterous thought, Petal in Killick-Claw, and not funny. She would have screamed, jumped on the next plane out. Never, never to be seen again.

"My son," said Dennis, "you don't know the half of it," and gunned the snowmobile out onto the wind-scoured bay.

35.

The Day's Work "Day's Work, consists, at least, of the dead reckoning from noon to noon, morning and afternoon time sights for longitude, and a meridian alt.i.tude for lat.i.tude."

THE MARINER'S DICTIONARY

"WANT to talk to you, Quoyle." Jack, shouting down the wire. "Pick you up tomorrer morning. So they know who you are down to Misky Bay." Bristling cough. Hung up before Quoyle could say anything. If he'd had anything to say. to talk to you, Quoyle." Jack, shouting down the wire. "Pick you up tomorrer morning. So they know who you are down to Misky Bay." Bristling cough. Hung up before Quoyle could say anything. If he'd had anything to say.

By January it had always been winter. The sky blended imperceptibly into the neutral-colored ice that covered the ocean, solid near sh.o.r.e, jigsaw floes fifty miles out and heaving on the swells. Snow fell every day, sometimes slow flakes, as if idling between storms. Deepened, deepened; five, eight, eleven feet deep. The roads were channels between m.u.f.fling banks, metal, wood silenced. And every ten days or so, by Quoyle's reckoning, another storm.

Jack's truck heater blasted, yet their breaths iced the side [285] windows. Quoyle sc.r.a.ped with his fingernails to look for the harp seals that began to dot the far ice now like commas and semicolons. Half listening to Jack. Thinking of seals. Wavey's older brother, Oscar, had a pet seal. Devoted to the local scallops. Jack had things on his mind and talked like a rivet gun. The new groundfish fishing season had opened, a maze of allocations and quotas that threw him into reverse.

"Einstein couldn't understand it. They've made a f.u.c.king c.o.c.kadoodle mess out of it, those twits in Ottawa who don't know a lumpfish from their own a.r.s.e." Jack at his medium range of temper.

"It's like this." Combing his hair with his hand so it bristled up. "G.o.dd.a.m.n, you just get something working good and it quits. Seems like I'm always lashing things up with wire."

Quoyle slouched in his enormous maroon anorak. Had remembered the name of Oscar's seal. p.u.s.s.els. What they called the local scallops.

"O.k. Quoyle, Billy wants to stay with the Home Page so you're the new managing editor. You'll do Tert Card's job, put it together, handle the phone, a.s.signments, bills, advertisers, printer. You got to watch the son of a b.i.t.c.h printer. Why I'm taking you down there. If a mistake can be made, he'll make it. Let's see. Want you to keep writing the Shipping News."

Quoyle startled, hand halfway to his chin.

"Like to try Benny Fudge on the court reports and auto wrecks, the s.e.xual abuse stories. Drop the restaurant stuff and the foreign news. Everybody knows all the restaurants and n.o.body cares about what happens somewhere else. Get that off the telly."

The truck climbed the twist of road over the headlands and they came into a zone of perpetual light snow.

"What do you think, get a new slant on the home page? Can call it 'Lifestyles.' See, Billy and me been knocking this 'round for a couple of years. There's two ways of living here now. There's the old way, look out for your family, die where you was born, fish, cut your wood, keep a garden, make do with what you got. Then there's the new way. Work out, have a job, somebody tell you what to do, commute, your brother's in South Africa, your mother's in Regina, buy every G.o.dd.a.m.n c.o.c.kadoodle piece of j.a.panese c.r.a.p you [286] can. Leave home. Go off to look for work. And some has a hard time of it. Quoyle, we all know that Gammy Bird Gammy Bird is famous for its birdhouse plans and good recipes, but that's not enough. Now we got to deal with Crock-Pots and consumer ratings, asphalt driveways, lotteries, fried chicken franchises, Mint Royale coffee at gourmet shops, all that stuff. Advice on getting along in distant cities. Billy thinks there's enough to make the home section a two-page spread. He'll tell you what he's got in mind. You work it out with him." is famous for its birdhouse plans and good recipes, but that's not enough. Now we got to deal with Crock-Pots and consumer ratings, asphalt driveways, lotteries, fried chicken franchises, Mint Royale coffee at gourmet shops, all that stuff. Advice on getting along in distant cities. Billy thinks there's enough to make the home section a two-page spread. He'll tell you what he's got in mind. You work it out with him."

"We could get some who've gone away to write a guest column in the form of a letter once in a while. Letter from Australia, Letter from Sudbury, how it is," said Quoyle.

"Guess I'd read that if I was twenty-one and had to get moving. It'll be a different paper. In more ways than one."

"Nutbeem handled touchy stories very well. I don't know how Benny will be with the s.e.x crime stuff."

"Well, let's just wait and see how the feller does before we sink our graples in him, eh? You live with this, Quoyle?" Coming into the Misky Bay traffic, a circle of unnamed streets and steep one-way hills complicated by mounds of snow.

He nodded. Swore to himself by St. p.u.s.s.el there would never be a typo.

"Come up the stage tonight and I'll tell you the rest of it. O.k., now here's where you makes your turn, see, then you cuts along behind the firehouse. It's the shortcut."

"Well," said Quoyle, sitting where Tert Card had sat, although he had cleared off the desk and torn up the picture of the oil tanker, "what have we got for news this week. Benny, how'd you do with the S.A. and the police court stories?" Pitching his voice low.

Benny Fudge sat with his hands folded tightly on his clean desk as though at an arithmetic lesson. His puffed hair made Quoyle think of Eraserhead.

"I'll tell you. I read about fifty of Nutbeem's stories to see how he handled the abuse cases but I can't string it together the way [287] he did. I tried, because I felt like I owed it to Nutbeem. After the boat. But I couldn't get it rolling. Best I can do."

A charge of incest against a 67-year-old Misky Bay man was dismissed Tuesday when his 14-year-old daughter refused to testify.Dr. Singlo Booty, 71, of Distant Waters has been arrested and charged with nine counts of s.e.xual a.s.sault involving seven patients from May 1978 to July 1991. He will appear in provincial court January 31.

Waited, biting his thumbnail.

Quoyle looked at Billy who moved his eyebrows very slightly. Nutbeem would have squeezed out two heart-wrenching stories.

"The other stuff was excellent. The other court stuff? I've got lovely stuff."

"What might the lovely stuff be?" asked Quoyle.