Shipping News, The - E. Annie Proulx [146]
“Bunny, it’s ‘the wake,’ not ‘the awake.’ And Marty and Murchie and Winnie are going because Jack was their grandfather. Let me talk to Wavey about this.”
But Wavey thought it was right for them to go.
Quoyle said there had been too much death in the past year.
“But everything dies,” said Wavey. “There is grief and loss in life. They need to understand that. They seem to think death is just sleep.”
Well, said Quoyle, they were children. Children should be protected from knowledge of death. And what about Bunny’s nightmares? Might get worse.
[332] “But, m’dear, if they don’t know what death is how can they understand the deep part of life? The seasons and nature and creation—”
He didn’t want her to get going toward God and religion. As she sometimes did.
“Maybe,” said Wavey, “she has those nightmares because she’s afraid if she sleeps she won’t wake up—like Petal and Warren and her grandparents. Besides, if you look at the departed you’ll never be troubled by the memory. It’s well-known.”
And so Quoyle agreed. And promised not to say that Jack was sleeping. And he would come along and get them all in the station wagon. In about fifteen minutes.
¯
The verge of the road crowded with cars and trucks. They had to park far back and walk to the house, toward a roar of voices that carried a hundred feet. A line of people filed through the parlor where, among lace whirligigs, Jack’s coffin rested on black-draped sawhorses. They sidled in, edging through the crowd to the parlor. Quoyle held Bunny’s hand, carried Sunshine. Jack like a photograph of himself, waxy in his unfamiliar suit. His eyelids violet. Actually, thought Quoyle, he did look like he was sleeping. Had to jerk Bunny away.
Joined the line sifting into the kitchen where there were cakes and braided breads, the steaming kettle, a row of whiskey bottles and small glasses. The talk rose, it was of Jack. The things he had done or might have done.
Billy Pretty speaking, a glass in his hand. His face gone blood-red with whiskey and the words tumbling out in ecstatic declamation, tossing in the lop of his own talk. “You all know we are only passing by. We only walk over these stones a few times, our boats float a little while and then they have to sink. The water is a dark flower and a fisherman is a bee in the heart of her.”
Dennis in a serge suit with flared cuffs and Beety with her hand on Mrs. Buggit’s trembling shoulder. A collar of heavy lace imprinting the black silk. Dennis rummaged through boxes and [333] drawers, looking for Jack’s lodge pin. Which was missing, had been missing for years. Now it was needed.
Children played outside. Quoyle could see Marty in the yard throwing crusts to hens. But Bunny would not go to her, eeled back into the parlor and took up a station beside the coffin.
“I’ll get her,” said Wavey. For the child’s staring was unnatural. While Dennis showed his mother the pin, found in a cup on the top shelf of the pantry. An enameled wreath and the initial R. She took it, rose and moved slowly toward the parlor. To pin it in Jack’s lapel. The final touch. Leaned over her dead husband. The pin point shook as she tried to pierce the fabric. A respectful silence from the watching mourners. Sudden sobbing from Beety. Wavey tugged Bunny’s hand gently. A fixed gaze on the corpse. She would not come, yanked her hand away.
A cough like an old engine starting up. Mrs. Buggit dropped the pin into the satin, turned and gripped Dennis’s arm. Her throat frozen, eyes like wooden drawer knobs. Wavey seized Bunny away. Dennis it was who shouted.
“Dad’s come back to life!”
And lurched to help his father get his shoulders out of the coffin’s wedge. A roar and screaming. Some stumbled back, some surged forward. Quoyle pushed from the kitchen, saw a knot of arms reaching to help grey Jack back to the present, water dribbling from his mouth with each wrack of his chest. And across the room heard Bunny shout