Shipping News, The - E. Annie Proulx [116]
Quoyle pulled the knotted strings from his pocket, dropped them on the floor. The man darted forward. With stubbed fingers he snatched up the strings, threw them into the stove.
“Them knots’ll never undo now! They’s fixed by fire!”
Quoyle could not shout at him, even for witch-knots in his daughters’ footsteps, even for the white dog that had terrified Bunny. Said, “You don’t need to do this.” Which meant nothing. And he left.
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Back up the gullied road thinking of old Quoyle, his squalid magic of animal parts and twine. No doubt lived by moon phases, marked signs on leaves, saw bloody rain and black snow sweep in on him from the bay, believed geese spent their winters congealed in the swamps of Manitoba. Whose last pathetic defense against imagined enemies was to tie a knot in a bit of string.
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Quoyle ducked into the shop. Alvin Yark in the gloom, smoothing at a curved piece of wood with a spokeshave.
“Good stem, looks like,” droned Yark. “Going along in the woods and I see that spruce tree and says to meself, there’s a nice little stem for Quoyle. Can see it’s got a nice flare to it, make a lean boat, not too lean, you know. Made a boat for Noah Day about ten years ago, stem looked pretty in the tree but too upright, you know, didn’t ‘ave enough flare. So it builds out bluff in the bows. Noah says to me, ‘If I ‘ad another boat I’d sell this one.’ “
Quoyle nodded, put his hand to his chin. Man with Hangover Listens to Boat Builder Project Variables.
“That’s what makes your different boats, you know. Each tree grows a little different so every boat you make, you know, the rake of the stem and the rake of the stern is a little different too, and [266] that makes it so you ‘as different ‘ulls. Each one is different, like men and women, some good, some not so good.” Had heard that in a sermon and taken it for his own. He began to sing in a hoarse, low voice, “Oh the Gandy Goose, it ain’t no use.”
Quoyle there among the ribby timbers, up to his ankles in shavings. Cold. Alvin Yark wore mittens, the zipper of his jacket flashed.
Leaning against the walls were the main timbers.
“Them’s the ones I cut the week before. Don’t cut ‘em all now, you know,” he explained to Quoyle. “I does the three main ones first, the fore’ook, the midship bend, and the after’ook. Got my molds, you know, my father give ‘em to me. ‘E used to measure and cut all his timbers with ‘em, but quite a few of the sir marks is rubbed out, and some was never keyed, so you don’t know what they’s meant to be. So I does the three main ones, you know, and the counter. Then I know where I stands.”
Quoyle’s job was hoisting and lifting. His headache had strengthened. He could feel its shape and color, a gigantic Y that curved from his brain stem over his skull to each eye, in color a reddish-black like grilled meat.
Alvin Yark cut scarf joints, trimmed and smoothed until they fit together like a handclasp. The pieces lay ready. Now they fitted the stem to the keel joint. When Quoyle leaned forward the twin spears of the headache threatened to dislodge his eyes.
“Up the sternpost.” Then the deadwood blocks on top of the inboard seams of the joints.
“Put ‘er together now,” Yark said, driving the four-inch spikes, fastening the bolts. He sang. “Oh it ain’t no use, the Gandy Goose.”
“There’s your backbone. There’s the backbone of your boat. She’s scarfed now. You glance at that, somebody who knows boats, you can see the whole thing right there. But there’s nobody can tell ‘ow she’ll fit the water, handle in the swells and lops until you try ‘er out. Except poor old Uncle Les, Les Budget. Dead now. Would be about a hundred and thirty year old. He was a boat builder along this shore before I saw my first ’ammer and