Shipping News, The - E. Annie Proulx [35]
But Nutbeem wasn’t ready to leave. “So, Quoyle, there I was back in London, starving again. At least I had my tape collection intact. But I knew I had to have a boat. I was in despair. You may think that the equation is ‘boat and water.’ It’s not. It’s ‘money and boat.’ The water is not really necessary. That’s why you see so many boats in backyards. Not having any money I was in despair. I spent an entire year reading books about boats and the sea. I began to hang about boatyards. There was one place where two young chaps were building a rowboat. They seemed to be doing a lot of planing—I’ve always thought planing rather jolly—and it came to me. Just like that. I would build my own boat. And I would sail it across the Atlantic.”
“NUTBEEM!” roared Card.
“Oh go spell ‘pterodactyl,’ ” said Nutbeem, hauling on his jacket and tam-o’-shanter, crashing out the door.
“Christ, he’s forgotten the camera. Quoyle, Jack wants me to remind you about the shipping news. Go down to the harbormaster’s office and copy off the list of ships. You get the name, the date, vessel’s country of origin. They won’t give it to you over the phone. You have to go get it.”
“I was going to go this afternoon,” said Quoyle. “But can do it now. Where’s the harbormaster’s office?”
“Next to Pubby’s Marine Supply on the public wharf. Upstairs.”
Quoyle got up, put on his jacket. At least it wasn’t a wreck, all glass and dripping fluids, and the ambulance guys fumbling inside smashed mouths.
9
The Mooring Hitch
“The merit of the hitch is that, when snugly applied, it will not
slip down the post. Anyone who has found himself at full tide,
after a hard day’s fishing, with his painter fast to a stake
four or five feet below high-water mark, will be inspired to
learn this knot.”
THE ASHLEY BOOK OF KNOTS
HE DODGED through the rattle of lift trucks and winches on Wharf Road. Boats varnished with rain. Down along he saw the black coastal ferry with its red rails taking on cars, and the Labrador hospital ship. At the government dock orange flank of the Search and Rescue cutter. A dragger coming in to the fish plant.
Wharf Road was paved with worn, blue stone carried as ballast from some distant place. A marine stink of oil, fish and dirty water. Beyond the dives and bars a few provisioners. In one window he noticed an immense pyramid of packaged dates of the kind Nutbeem liked—Desert Jujubes—red camels, shooting stars on the label.
The harbormaster’s office was at the top of a gritty wooden stair.
¯
[79] Diddy Shovel, the harbormaster, watched Quoyle’s yellow slicker emerge from the station wagon, watched him drop his notepad on the wet cobbles. Sized him up as strong and clumsy. Shovel had been renowned once for his great physical strength. When he was twenty he started a curious brotherhood called “The Finger Club.” The seven members were all men who could suspend themselves from a beam in Eddy Blunt’s cellar by a single little finger. Powerful men in those days. As he grew older, he complemented, then replaced, his physical strength with a stentorian voice. Was now the only living member of the Finger Club. His thoughts often stopped at that point.
In a minute Quoyle opened the door, looked through the windows twelve feet high, a glass wall into the drizzled slant of harbor, the public docks and piers in the foreground, and beyond, the sullen bay rubbed with thumbs of fog.
A squeaking sound. Wooden swivel chair spun and the terrible face of the harbormaster aimed at Quoyle.
“You ought to see it in a storm, the great clouds rolling off the shoulders of the mountains. Or the sunset like a flock of birds on fire. ‘Tis the most outrageous set of windows in Newfoundland.” A voice as deep as a shout in a cave.
“I believe that,” said Quoyle. Dripping on the floor. Found the coat hook in the corner.
Diddy Shovel’s skin was like asphalt, fissured and cracked, thickened by a lifetime of weather, the scurf of age. Stubble worked through the craquelured surface. His eyelids collapsed in protective