Shipping News, The - E. Annie Proulx [39]
At the end of the wharf, packing crates, a smell of garbage. A small boat was hauled up beside the crates, propped against it a crayoned board: For Sale. Quoyle looked at the boat. Rain sluiced over the upturned bottom, pattered on the stones.
“You can have it for a hundred.” A man leaning in a door-frame, hands draining into his pockets. “Me boy built it but he’s gone, now. Won five hundred dollars on the lottery. Took off for the mainland. Where they lives ‘mong the snakes.” He sniggered. “Seek his bloody fuckin’ fortune.”
“Well, I was just looking at it.” But a hundred dollars didn’t seem like very much for a boat. It looked all right. Looked sturdy enough. Painted white and grey. Practically new. Must be something wrong with it. Quoyle thumped the side with his knuckles.
[86] “Tell yer what,” said the man. “Give me fifty, she’s yours.”
“Does it leak?” said Quoyle.
“Nah! Don’t leak. Sound as a sea-ox. Just me boy built it but he’s gone now. Good riddance to him, see? I wants to get it out of me sight. I was gonna burn it up,” he said shrewdly, taking Quoyle’s measure. “So’s not to be troubled by the sight of it. Reminding me of me boy.”
“No, no, don’t burn it,” said Quoyle. “Can’t go wrong for fifty bucks, can I!” He found a fifty and got a scrawled bill of sale on the back of an envelope. The man’s jacket, he saw, was made of some nubby material, ripped, with stains down the side.
“You got a trailer?” The man gestured at the boat, making circles in the air to indicate a rolling motion.
“No. How’ll I get it home without one?”
“You’n rent one down at Cuddy’s if yer don’t mind paying his bloody prices. Or we’s’ll lash it into the bed of yer truck.”
“I don’t have a truck,” said Quoyle. “I’ve got a station wagon.” He never had the right things.
“Why that’s almost as good, long as you doesn’t drive too speedy. She’ll hang down y’know, in the front and the back some.”
“What kind of boat do you call it, anyway?”
“Ah, it’s just a speedboat. Get a motor on her and won’t you have fun dartin’ along the shore!” The man’s manner was lively and enthusiastic now. “Soon’s this scuddy weather goes off.”
In the end Quoyle rented a trailer and he and the man and half a dozen others who splashed up laughing and hitting the man’s shoulder in a way Quoyle ignored, shifted the boat onto the trailer. He headed back to the Gammy Bird. Hell, fifty dollars barely bought supper for four. The rain ran across the road in waving sheets. The boat wagged.
Saw her. The tall woman in the green slicker. Marching along the edge of the road as usual, her hood pushed back. A calm, almost handsome face, ruddy hair in braids wound around her head in an old-fashioned cornet. Her hair was wet. She was alone. Looked right at him. They waved simultaneously and Quoyle guessed she must have legs like a marathon runner.
¯
[87] Sauntered into the newsroom and sat at his desk. Only Nutbeem and Tert Card there, Nutbeem half asleep with low atmospheric pressure, his ear against the radio, Card on the phone, at the same time whacking the computer keys. Quoyle was going to say something to Nutbeem, but didn’t. Instead, worked away on the shipping news. Dull enough, he thought.
SHIPS ARRIVED THIS WEEK
Bella (Canadian) from the Fishing Grounds
Farewell (Canadian) from Montreal
Foxfire (Canadian) from Bay Misery
Minatu Maru 54 (Japanese) from the Fishing Grounds
Pescamesca (Portuguese) from the Fishing Grounds
Porto Santo (Panamanian) from the High Seas
Zhok (Russian) from the Fishing Grounds
Ziggurat Zap (U.S.) from the High Seas
And so forth.
At four Quoyle gave the shipping news to Tert Card, whose moist ear lay against the phone receiver, shoulder hunched while he typed. Suffering from the stiff neck again.
Car doors slammed outside, Billy Pretty’s voice seesawed. Nutbeem snapped up alertly.
“There’s Mr.