A Bulgarian stern trawler broke in half, all hands lost. Ships in harbor dragged their anchors and slammed into each other. A bad storm. There was no safe place. ThePolar Grinderhad a time of it. The seas not fit to look at. The captain kept just enough speed to maintain steerage way and keep her heading off wind, hoping to ride it out. Oh, you get Dennis to tell you about it sometime. Make your blood seize up, the punishment that ship took. Smashed the wheelhouse windows. Immense seas. All anybody could think of all night long-could she make it until morning? They got through that terrible night. The only difference daylight brought was that they could see the monstrous waves coming down on them, see the fury of the raging sea.
“A little after daybreak there was a sea, a great towering wall that seemed made out of half the Atlantic, then a tremendous detonation. Dennis said he thought the ship had smashed into an iceberg or something exploded on board. Said he was deaf for a while afterward. But it was the sea she took. ThePolar Grinder ’s steel hull cracked amidships under the weight of that wave, a crack almost an inch wide running from starboard to port.
“Well, there they were, rushing back and forth, mixing concrete and trying to plug up the crack with it, shoring timbers, anything to stop the water, it poured in, filling the hold. They were sloshing around in water up to their waists.”
Sucked in a mouthful of tea.
“The heavy seas and the tons of water pouring in knocked the ship down. She seemed she was about to go and the captain gave the ‘abandon ship.’ If you can imagine those small lifeboats in those seas! They lost twenty-seven men. And two peculiar things happened in the end. First, thePolar Grinder -as you see-didn’t go down. Wallowed along on her side. When he see she was still afloat the captain turned back and reboarded her, and the next day they got a salvage tug out that fastened a tow and finally brought her in.
“And Dennis?”
But the telephone rang and the old man creaked away into his chart room, his voice booming over another wire. Came to the doorway.
“Well, I must cut it short. They’ve seized a Russian side-trawler inside the two-hundred-mile limit fishing without a license and using a trawl with undersize mesh. Second time they’ve caught the same ship and captain. The Coast Guard’s escorting him in. I’ve got a bit of paperwork. Come again next week and we’ll have a drop of tea.”
¯
Quoyle walked along the wharf, craning to get another look at thePolar Grinder , but it was lost in the rain. A man in a pea jacket and plastic sandals gazed at the rubber boots in Cuddy’s Marine Supply window. Wet, red toes. Said something as Quoyle went past. The liquor store, the marine hardware shop. A longliner drifted toward the fish plant, a figure in yellow oilskins leaning on the rail staring into dimpled water the color of motor oil.
At the end of the wharf, packing crates, a smell of garbage. A small boat was hauled up beside the crates, propped against it a crayoned board:For Sale . Quoyle looked at the boat. Rain sluiced over the upturned bottom, pattered on the stones.
“You can have it for a hundred.” A man leaning in a door-frame, hands draining into his pockets. “Me boy built it but he’s gone, now. Won five hundred dollars on the lottery. Took off for the mainland. Where they lives ‘mong the snakes.” He sniggered. “Seek his bloody fuckin’ fortune.”
“Well, I was just looking at it.” But a hundred dollars didn’t seem like very much for a boat. It looked all right. Looked sturdy enough. Painted white and grey. Practically new. Must be something wrong with it. Quoyle thumped the side with his knuckles.
“Tell yer what,” said the man. “Give me fifty, she’s yours.”
“Does it leak?” said Quoyle.
“Nah! Don’t leak. Sound as a sea-ox. Just me boy built it but he’s gone now. Good riddance to him, see? I wants to get it out of me sight. I was gonna burn it up,” he said shrewdly, taking Quoyle’s measure. “So’s not to be troubled by the sight of it. Reminding me of me boy.”
“No, no, don’t burn it,” said Quoyle. “Can’t go wrong for fifty bucks, can I!” He found a fifty and got a scrawled bill of sale on the back of an envelope. The man’s jacket, he saw, was made of some nubby material, ripped, with stains down the side.
“You got a trailer?” The man gestured at the boat, making circles in the air to indicate a rolling motion.
“No. How’ll I get it home without one?”
“You’n rent one down at Cuddy’s if yer don’t mind paying his bloody prices. Or we’s’ll lash it into the bed of yer truck.”
“I don’t have a truck,” said Quoyle. “I’ve got a station wagon.” He never had the right things.
“Why that’s almost as good, long as you doesn’t drive too speedy. She’ll hang down y’know, in the front and the back some.”
“What kind of boat do you call it, anyway?”
“Ah, it’s just a speedboat. Get a motor on her and won’t you have fun dartin’ along the shore!” The man’s manner was lively and enthusiastic now. “Soon’s this scuddy weather goes off.”
In the end Quoyle rented a trailer and he and the man and half a dozen others who splashed up laughing and hitting the man’s shoulder in a way Quoyle ignored, shifted the boat onto the trailer. He headed back to theGammy Bird . Hell, fifty dollars barely bought supper for four. The rain ran across the road in waving sheets. The boat wagged.
Saw her. The tall woman in the green slicker. Marching along the edge of the road as usual, her hood pushed back. A calm, almost handsome face, ruddy hair in braids wound around her head in an old-fashioned cornet. Her hair was wet. She was alone. Looked right at him. They waved simultaneously and Quoyle guessed she must have legs like a marathon runner.
¯
Sauntered into the newsroom and sat at his desk. Only Nutbeem and Tert Card there, Nutbeem half asleep with low atmospheric pressure, his ear against the radio, Card on the phone, at the same time whacking the computer keys. Quoyle was going to say something to Nutbeem, but didn’t. Instead, worked away on the shipping news. Dull enough, he thought.
SHIPS ARRIVED THIS WEEK
Bella (Canadian) from the Fishing Grounds
Farewell (Canadian) from Montreal
Foxfire (Canadian) from Bay Misery
Minatu Maru 54 (Japanese) from the Fishing Grounds
Pescamesca (Portuguese) from the Fishing Grounds
Porto Santo (Panamanian) from the High Seas
Zhok (Russian) from the Fishing Grounds
Ziggurat Zap (U.S.) from the High Seas
And so forth.
At four Quoyle gave the shipping news to Tert Card, whose moist ear lay against the phone receiver, shoulder hunched while he typed. Suffering from the stiff neck again.
Car doors slammed outside, Billy Pretty’s voice seesawed. Nutbeem snapped up alertly.
“There’s Mr. Jack Buggit and Billy Pretty back from the car wreck. Moose collision while you were gone, Quoyle. Two dead. And the moose.”
Saved again, thought Quoyle.
“I hope they got pictures from every angle, enough to carry us through the thin spots,” said Tert Card, typing Quoyle’s shipping news.
Minutes passed and the door stayed closed. Billy’s voice had stopped. Quoyle knew they were looking at his boat. Well, he’d taken the plunge. Smiled, rehearsing a story of how he’d decided on the spur of the moment to buy a boat and get it over, how he almost felt transformed, ready to take on the sea, to seize his heritage.
The door opened. Billy Pretty scuttled in, went straight to his desk without a look at Quoyle. Jack Buggit, hair studded with raindrops, strode halfway across the room, stopped in front of Quoyle’s desk, hissed through a mouthful of smoke, “What the hell you buy that thing for?”
“Why, everybody was after me to buy a boat! It looked as good as any of them. It had a good price. I can get back and forth a lot faster now. It’s a speedboat.”
“It’s a shitboat!” said Jack Buggit. “Best thing you can do is get rid of it some dark night.” He slammed into his glass office and they heard him mumbling, striking matches, opening and shutting desk drawers. Nutbeem and Tert Card went to the door and stared out at Quoyle’s boat.
“What’s wrong with it?” asked Quoyle, throwing out his hands. “What’s wrong with it? Everybody tells me to buy a boat and when I buy one they tell me I shouldn’t have done it.”
“I told you,” said Billy Pretty, “I told you buy a nice little rodney, nice little sixteen-foot rodney with a seven-horsepower engine, nice little hull that holds the water, a good flare on it, not too much hollowing, a little boat that bears good under the bows. You bought a wallowing cockeyed bastard no good for nothing but coasting ten feet from shore when it’s civil. Hull is as humpy as a lop sea, there’s no motor well, the shape is poor, she’ll wallow and throw in water, pitch up and down and rear and sink.”
Nutbeem said nothing, but he looked at Quoyle as though, in unwrapping a beribboned gift, he had discovered nylon socks. Billy Pretty started up again.
“That boat was built by a dumb stookawn of a kid, Reeder Gouch’s kid that run off about a month after he built it. No ability at all. Not only is it no good for nothing, but it makes you cry to look at it. How could anybody build a boat with a stem got a reverse curve in it? I never seen a boat with a stem like that. They don’t make them like that here. Reeder was going to bum it, he said. Too bad he didn’t. I told you, get a nice little rodney, that’s what you want. Or a motor dory. Or a good speedboat. You ought to fill that thing up with stones and launch it to the bottom. Go down to Nunny Bag Cove and talk to those fellers, Uncle Shag Dismal and Alvin Yark and those fellers. Get one of them to build you a nice little craft. They’ll give you something that fits the water, something’s got a bit of harmony between the two ends of the boat.”
Drumroll of rain. Stupid Man Does Wrong Thing Once More.
10 The Voyage of Nutbeem
“Voyage, an outward and homeward passage; although the
passage from one port to another is often referred to in
insurance policies as a voyage.”
THE MARINER’S DICTIONARY
THE AUNT in her woolen coat when Quoyle came into the motel room. Tin profile with a glass eye. A bundle on the floor under the window. Wrapped in a bed sheet, tied with net twine.
“Where are the kids?” said Quoyle. “What’s that?”
“They’re staying over at Dennis and Beety’s house. I thought they’d be better off there, considering. After the experience of this morning. Warren.” She pointed at the bundle. “She died during the day under the bed, just her paws sticking out. All alone. I came in and found her.” She did not cry, nor did her voice skitter. Quoyle patted the black shoulder, felt the pad stiff under his hand. Dog hairs on the sleeve. The aunt hiding deep in her coat somewhere.
“The girls like it at Beety’s. Playing chip-chip and colors with their kids. The Buggits’ve got kids the same ages. Begged for Sunshine and Bunny to stay over. I didn’t think you’d mind. Considering. I told them Warren had to go away. I don’t think they knew what I meant. Sunshine is too little, but Bunny wanted to know exactly when Warren was coming back. I hope you can explain it better.” Voice even as if reciting the alphabet, halfway between groaning and silence.
“Poor old Warren. I’m sorry, Aunt.” And he was sorry. Slouched in the chair, levered the cap from a bottle of beer. Thought of Bunny’s murderous dreams that woke them all, the child sweaty, pupils like Billy’s ink bottle. Hoped she wouldn’t rouse Dennis and Beety in the night.
“What did Dennis say about fixing up the place?” Wearily.
“Well,” said the aunt, hanging her coat away, tugging off her boots, “he thinks if he rouses into it with somebody to help him, he could have it so we could get into it-roof over our heads-in two weeks. Believe it or not. With that in mind I tackled the desk clerk and got us the famous bachelor apartment through that door”-pointing at the side wall-”for the rest of the time we’re here plus this room for what we’re paying for this room alone. Look.” She opened the other door, displayed a single bed and a tiny kitchenette. “You can sleep in there. I’ll stay on in here with the girls. At least there’ll be a little more privacy and a little more room. At least we can fix coffee in the morning, something to eat and not have to test our constitutions downstairs. I’ll pick up some food tomorrow.” Got out her whiskey bottle, poured a little.
“Now, as to what young Dennis is going to do to the house. Says if you’ll help him on the weekends it’ll go right along. It’ll be rough, but we can manage. It can’t be any worse than this place. Fixing up the rest of it will take right on into fall. He thinks we’d want to look into a generator, get a gas stove and couple tanks of propane. He can get hold of a fellow’s got a bulldozer to clear a road from the old glove factory to the dooryard. Can do that tomorrow, he says, if we can afford it. I told him we could because we had to.