Shipping News, The - E. Annie Proulx [49]
“You’re squashing me!”
Quoyle went down with trembling legs, one hand on the rungs, his left arm folded around his daughter’s waist. The ladder shook with his shaking. He could not believe she hadn’t fallen, for in two or three seconds he had lived her squalling death over and over, reached out time after time to grip empty air.
12
The Stern Wave
“To prevent slipping, a knot depends on friction, and to
provide friction there must be pressure of some sort. This
pressure and the place within the knot where it occurs is
called the nip. The security of a knot seems to depend solely
on its nip.”
THE ASHLEY BOOK OF KNOTS
IT WAS like mirror writing. The slightest change in reverse sent the trailer on the opposite tack, and Quoyle squinted in the side mirror at reflections of opposition. Again and again it folded like a jackknife blade seeking its bed, and twice it gouged the new dock. He was sick of it when finally the thing went straight back and into the water. A trick to it.
Got out and looked at the trailer. Wheels were in the water, the boat poised. His hand was on the tilt latch when he thought of a securing line. That would be fun, launch the boat and watch it float away.
He managed to attach bow and stern lines, yanked the latch. The boat slid down. He got the winch line loose, scrambled onto the dock and made the boat fast. It was something of a two-man [109] operation. Then back to the trailer, close the latch, wind up the cable. The fifty-dollar boat was in the water.
He got in, remembered the damn motor. Still in the station wagon. Carried it onto the dock, put his foot on the gunwale and fell into the boat. Cursed all vessels from floating logs to supertankers.
Quoyle didn’t see he’d mounted the motor in a position that would force the bow up like the nose of a bird dog. He poured in gas from the red can.
The motor started on the first pull. There was Quoyle sitting in the stern of a boat. His boat. The motor was running, his hand was on the tiller, wedding ring glinting. He moved the gearshift to reverse, as he had seen Dennis do, and gingerly applied a little power. The boat swung in toward the dock at the stern. Jockeyed back and forth until he was beyond the dock. Shifted into forward. The motor gave a low roar and the boat went—too fast—parallel with the shore. He eased back on the throttle and the boat wallowed. Now forward again, and rocks leaped up ahead of him. Instinctively he pushed the tiller toward the shore and the boat curved out onto Omaloor Bay. The water curled. Traveling on a glass arrow.
He worked the tiller, traced curves. Now faster. Quoyle laughed like a dog in the back of a pickup. Why had he feared boats?
There was an offshore breeze and the waves slapped the boat bottom as he sped at them. A sharp turn and he felt the boat skid. Pushed the throttle back. The stern wave roared up behind him and sloshed over the transom, swirled around his ankles and spread out in the boat. He pulled at the throttle again and the boat leapt forward, but sluggishly, and the water on the floor rushed toward the stern, adding its weight to Quoyle’s. He looked for something to bail out the water; nothing. Turned very carefully toward the dock. The boat was vague and unwilling, for the water had altered the trim. Yet he moved forward, not afraid of sinking only two hundred feet from the dock.
As he approached he jerked back on the throttle again, and again the stern wave sloshed over the transom. But close enough [110] to cut the motor and let the boat grind