Shipping News, The - E. Annie Proulx [45]
“You were a good girl, Warren,” said the aunt. “A smart girl, no trouble at all. I was sorry they had to pull your teeth but it was that or you know what. Ha-ha. You got a few good bites in, didn’t you? Many good years although denied bones. Sorry I can’t bury you, but we are in a difficult situation here. Too bad you couldn’t wait until we moved out to the house. And too bad Irene never knew you. Would have liked you, I’m pretty sure.” Thought, Irene Warren. How I miss you. Always will.
She snorted into her handkerchief, waited in the gathering darkness, moving back a few steps at a time as the tide advanced, until Warren floated free, moved west along the shore, edging out and out, riding some unseen tidal rip. The sea looked as though it would sound if struck. Warren gliding away. Sailed out of sight, into the setting sun.
Just like in the old westerns.
And down the bay Quoyle heard Nutbeem’s everlasting story, Tert Card’s twilight gathered in his glass of Demerara.
11
A Breastpin of Human Hair
In the nineteenth century jewelers made keepsake ornaments
from the hair of the dead, knotting long single hairs into
arabesqued roses, initials, singing birds, butterflies.
THE AUNT set out for the house on Friday morning. She was driving her new truck, a navy blue pickup with a silver cap, the extra-passenger cab, a CD player and chrome running boards.
“We need it. Got to have a truck here. Got to get back and forth to my shop. You got a boat, I got a truck. They’ve got the road fixed and the dock in. Upstairs rooms done. There’s an outhouse. For now. Water’s connected to the kitchen. Some of that new black plastic waterline. Later on we can put in a bathroom. He’s working on the roof this week. If the weather holds. But it’s good enough. We might as well get out there. Out of this awful motel. I’ll pick up groceries and kerosene lamps. You come out with the girls—and your boat—tomorrow morning.”
[100] Her gestures and expressions swift, hands clenching suddenly as though on the reins of a fiery horse. Wild to get there.
¯
The aunt was alone in the house. Her footsteps clapping through the rooms, the ring of bowl and spoon on the table. Her house now. Water boiled magnificently in the teakettle. Upstairs. Yet climbing the stairs, entering that room, was as if she ventured into a rough landscape pocked with sinks and karst holes, abysses invisible until she pitched headlong.
The box holding the brother’s ashes was on the floor in the corner.
“All right,” she said, and seized it. Carried it down and through and out. A bright day. The sea glazed, ornamented with gulls. Her shadow streamed away from her. She went into the new outhouse and tipped the ashes down the hole. Hoisted her skirts and sat down. The urine splattered. The thought that she, that his own son and grandchildren, would daily void their bodily wastes on his remains a thing that only she would know.
¯
On Saturday morning Quoyle and his daughters came along, suitcases humped in the backseat, the speedboat swaying behind on the rented trailer. He steered over the smoothed road. Starting where the road ended in the parking lot of the glove factory, the bulldozer had scraped a lane through the tuckamore to the house. New gravel crunched under the tires. Clouds, tined and serrated, and ocean the color of juice. The sun broke the clouds like a trout on the line.
“A ladder house,” said Sunshine, seeing the scaffolding.
“Dad, I thought it was going to be a new house,” said Bunny. “That Dennis was making it new. But it’s the same one. It’s ugly, Dad. I hate green houses.” She glared at him. Had he tricked her?
“Dennis fixed up the inside. We can paint the house another color later on. First we have to fix up the holes and weak spots.”
“Red, Dad. Let’s paint it red.”
[101] “Well, the aunt has the say. It’s mostly her house, you know. She might not be crazy about red.”
“Let’s paint her red, too,” said Bunny. Laughed like a hyena.
Quoyle