Shipping News, The - E. Annie Proulx [104]
“So you wants a boat. A motorboat?”
“Just a small boat, yes. I want something to get around the bay—not too big. Something I can handle by myself. I’m not very good at it.”
A cap slewed sideways on his knotty head. He wore a pair of coveralls bisected by a zipper with double tabs, one dangling at his crotch, the other at his breastbone. Under the coveralls he wore a plaid shirt, and over everything a cardigan with more zippers.
“Outboard rodney, I suppose ‘ud do you. Fifteen, sixteen foot. Put a little seven-‘orsepower motor on ‘er. Something like that,” he said pointing at a sturdy boat with good lines resting on a pair of sawhorses.
“Yes,” said Quoyle. Knew enough to recognize he was looking at something good.
“Learn yer young ones to row innit when they gits a little stouter.”
They went into the dull gloom of the shop.
“Ah,” said Yark. “I ‘as a one or two to finish up, y’know,” pointing to wooden skeletons and half-planked sides. “Says I might ‘elp Nige Feam wid ‘is long-liner this winter. But if I gets out in the woods, you know, and finds the timber, it’ll go along. Something by spring, see, by the time the ice goes. If I goes in the woods and finds the right sticks you know, spruce, var. See, you must find good uns, your stem, you wants to bring it down with a bit of a ‘ollow to it, stempost and your knee, and deadwoods a course, and breast’ook. You has to get the right ones. Your timbers, you know. [237] There’s some around ’ere steams ’em. I wouldn’t set down in a steam timber boat. Weak.”
“I thought you’d have the materials on hand,” said Quoyle.
“No, boy, I doesn’t build with dry wood. The boat takes up the water if ‘er’s made out of dry wood, you know, and don’t give it up again. But you builds with green wood and water will never go in the wood. I never builds with dry wood.”
30
The Sun Clouded Over
QUOYLE and his daughters walked from Beety and Dennis’s house to the Sea Gull Inn where the aunt roosted, damp and ruffled. Sunshine, grasping Quoyle’s hand, slipped again and again. Until he saw it was a game, said, stop that.
The road shone under a moon like a motorcycle headlight. Freezing December fog that coated the world with black ice, the raw cold of the northern coast. Impossible to drive, though earlier he had driven, had made it to Little Despond and back, following up on the oil spill. Closed up. Old Mr. Eye in the hospital with pneumonia. A rim of oil around the cove.
Through the lobby with its smell of chemical potpourri, to the dining room where the aunt waited. Past empty tables. Bunny walked sedately; Sunshine charged at the aunt, tripped, [239] crash-landed and bawled. So the dinner began with tears. Chill air pouring off the window glass.
“Poor thing,” said the aunt, inspecting Sunshine’s red knees. The waitress came across the worn carpet, one of her shoes sighing as she walked.
Quoyle drank a glass of tomato juice that tasted of tin. The aunt swallowed whiskey; glasses of ginger ale. Then turkey soup. In Quoyle’s soup a stringy neck vein floated.
“I have to say, after the first day of peace and quiet, I’ve missed every one of you. Badly.” The aunt’s face redder than usual, blue eyes teary.
Quoyle laughed. “We miss you.” Sleeping in Beety and Dennis’s basement. Did miss the aunt’s easy company, her headlong rush at problems.
“Dad, remember the little red cups with the pictures at Wavey’s auntie’s house?”
“Yes, I do, Bunny. They were cunning little cups.”
“I’m writing a letter to Santa Claus to bring us some just like it. At school we are writing to Santa Claus. And I drew a picture of the cups so he would make the right kind. And blue beads. And Marty wrote the same thing. Dad, Marty makes her esses backwards.”
“I want a boat with a stick and a string,” said Sunshine. “You put the boat in the water and push it with the stick. And it floats away! Then you pull the string and it comes back!” She laughed immoderately.