Shipping News, The - E. Annie Proulx [141]
He was leaning on his fence when Quoyle drove up. Must have heard the station wagon start up half a mile away, for the exhaust system was shot. Quoyle knew he should have walked the distance, needed the exercise, but it was quicker to drive. He’d start walking tomorrow if the weather was good.
Archie leaned, his wooden zoo behind him, held old-fashioned binoculars. A cigarette in his mouth. Years ago the first thing he’d seen through the binoculars had been the Buggit boys out on the grainy ice, copying, jumping from one pan to another. Could see the snot running from their noses. Never a miss for an hour. Then Jesson fell short, clenched the edge of the ice, the other one tried to haul him up. Archie was out there with his boat in a few minutes, saving the boy, yanking him out of the sishy drift. At the time, thought it was lucky he had those binoculars. But later saw it for an omen. No one could stop the hand of fate. Jesson was born to be drowned.
He raised the binoculars now as Quoyle came toward him, scanned the far shore, examined Quoyle’s Point as illustration for what he had to say.
[321] “You know, I believe your ‘ouse is gone. Take a look.” Held out the binoculars.
Quoyle standing on snow-rived rock. Moved the binoculars slowly back and forth. And again.
Archie reeked of cigarettes. His face fissured with thousands of fine lines, black curved hairs growing out of his ears and nostrils. The fingers orange. Couldn’t speak without coughing.
“No, you won’t find ‘er for she’s not there. I looked out for ‘er this morning, but she’s not where she was. Thought you might want to go along down and see if she was just tipped over or sailed away. Was some shocking ‘ard wind we ‘ad. How many years was them cables ‘olding ‘er down?”
Quoyle didn’t know. Since before the aunt’s time, what sixty-four years and many more. Since the old Quoyles dragged the house across the ice.
“She’ll take it hard if it’s gone,” he said. “After all the work.” And even though he knew his secret path was still there, felt as if he’d lost the place where the whiskey jacks flitted through the tunnels among the spruce branches, the place where he jumped down onto the beach. As if he’d lost silence. Now there was only town. The Quoyles on the shift again.
Thanked Archie and shook his hand.
“Good thing I had the binoculars.” Archie drew on his cigarette, wondered what shrouded meaning might be in this.
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Beety said yes, Dennis was cutting wood for his buddy Carl who still couldn’t lift more than a fork, had to wear a collarlike thing around his neck. Yes he had the snowmobile. Though the snow was spotty. Down the highway by the blue marker; Quoyle’d see the truck parked on the side of the road. Not far from where they’d been cutting after Christmas. There was a wood path going in. He’d find it. Sure he would.
Dennis in a fan of raw stumps and Quoyle had to shout above the chain saw’s racketing idle. He said his house was missing. And they were up the road for the track through slumping drifts, past [322] the Capsize Cove turnoff. Gravel showing through. Past the glove factory. Whiskey jacks there, anyway. The smell of resin and exhaust. Trickle of melt water.
The great rock stood naked. Bolts fast in the stone, a loop of cable curled like a hawser. And nothing else. For the house of the Quoyles was gone, lifted by the wind, tumbled down the rock and into the sea in a wake of glass and snow crystals.
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“All our work and money and it’s just away like that? To stand forty years empty, and then go in the flicker of an eyelid! Just when we had it fixed up.” The aunt in her shop, sniveling into a tissue. A silence. “What about the outhouse?”
He could hardly believe what he heard. The house gone and she asked about the crapper.
“I didn’t notice it, Aunt. But I didn’t make a special effort to look, either. The dock is still there. We could build a little camp