Shipping News, The - E. Annie Proulx [144]
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Came out of sleep to hear the phone ringing. Down to the kitchen, stumbling over a dirty shirt he had dropped. Dennis on the wire.
“Don’t like to wake you up but thought you ought to know. Mumma called a few minutes ago. He’s not back yet. Been out since four this morning. He should have been back dinnertime. It’s ten o’clock now. Something’s wrong. I called the Search and Rescue. I’m on my way to Mumma’s now. I felt like something was off all day. We’s braced for the worst.”
“Let me know as soon as you hear anything.” Quoyle shivered in the chilly kitchen. The clock said six minutes past ten. He could not hear the sea.
At midnight Dennis called again, voice hoarse and drained. As though some long struggle had ended badly.
“They found the boat. They found him. He’s drownded. They said efforts to resuscitate failed.” No heartbeat, no breath, lying on the rescue ship’s emergency room table. “Looks like he caught his foot in the slingstone line when he threw a lobster trap over. They’re bringing him and the boat in now. You call Billy? I’m taking Mumma down. She wants to be there when they bring him in.”
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In the morning, breakfastless and shaky from seven cups of coffee, heart and stomach aching, Quoyle went to the wharf on [328] his way to Wavey. There was Jack’s skiff tied up beyond the orange Search and Rescue vessel, trucks and cars and a knot of people looking at the boat of the drowned man.
Wavey fell against him like a cut sapling, tears wetting his shirt. Quoyle backed against the sink in her little kitchen. He said he would drive Herry and Bunny to school to keep balance in their day. Sunshine would stay with Wavey, who, after the brief luxury of Quoyle’s shoulder, was making school lunches. Not to trouble Beety.
A stillness. Mist the depth of a hand on the water, blurred the jumbled shore. Rock ledges like black metal straps held the sea to the land. Quoyle inhaled, cold air rushed up his nose and he was guilty because Jack was dead and here he was, still breathing.
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Paper-faced Billy had every detail, had gone to the wharf the night before, had put his hand on Mrs. Buggit’s arm, touched Dennis’s shoulder and said he was sorry for their trouble. Had seen Jack brought back to the house and carried in. Helped pull Jack’s clothes off, cover him with a sheet. Observed the matching mole below his left nipple that, when balanced by the eye against the right nipple, suggested punctuation ready for an inscription to be written around the torso.
Had seen Mrs. Buggit and her sisters with the basins of water and scissors to prepare Jack for his suit, to shave and tonsure, to [329] clip his nails. An embroidered pillow was ready to put under his head, brought from a trunk, the tissue unfolded. His Voyage Ended. Worked decades before in the north light of the window.
Quoyle and Benny Fudge leaned on their desks, watching Billy who seemed made of translucent fish bones, whose talk pelted them like handfuls of thrown pebbles.
“They found the skiff out by the Pook Rock. Jack never set a lobster trap there in his life. Can’t figure it out, what he was doing there. You know that cat he liked so well, called him Skipper. Skipper Tom. Still on the boat. The Search and Rescue comes up along, shines the searchlight and there’s Skipper Tom, prowling back and forth with his tail lashing as if he knowed Jack needed help and couldn’t work out how to give it. They could see Jack clear as day under the water. The line going overboard. He was upside down, just under the boat. The slingstone line of the lobster trap wrapped around his ankle and yanked him overboard. He couldn’t get loose. It was tangled kind of crazy. His hand was jammed in his pocket. He had to of been feeling for his knife, you know, cut himself free. But there wasn’t a knife there. Could be he dropped it or lost it somehow as he went over and didn’t realize. I don’t know if he carried it loose in his pocket, but when I was fishing my knife was in my right pocket and there was a lanyard