Shipping News, The - E. Annie Proulx [54]
“Bayonet, tell them what happened in Hurricane Bob.” She ordered the man, did not look at Quoyle or Billy Pretty.
“Her beam is sixteen foot eleven,” said the white-haired man taking a glass marked with a J from the mantle. The ice cubes were nearly melted but he drank from it anyway. “There’s the Hoogarsjacht, and the Boeierjacht—”
“There’s the hockeyjacht and the schnockyjacht and the malarkeyjacht,” said the woman. “There’s the poppycock and the stockyblock. If you don’t tell them what happened in Hurricane Bob, then I will.”
The man drank. The hems of his trousers dripped.
Billy Pretty coaxed the woman, lest she draw blood. “Now, m’dear, just tell us what happened in Hurricane Bob. We’re anxious to hear it.”
The woman’s mouth opened but no sound came out. Fixed the man with her stare. He sighed, spoke in a weary singsong.
“Oh. Kay. Keep happiness in the fucking family. We were moored at White Crow Harbor north of Bar Harbor. That’s in Maine you know, in the United States. Way up the coast from Portland. Actually there are two Portlands, but the other is on the West Coast. Oregon. Down below British Columbia. Well, Tough Baby sort of slipped her moorings at the height of this incredible storm. The sea absolutely went mad. You’ve seen how Tough Baby [120] is built. Utterly massive. Utterly heavy. Utterly built for punishment. Well! She smashed seventeen boats to matchsticks. Seventeen.”
The woman leaned her head back and cawed.
“Didn’t stop there. You’ve seen she’s flat bottomed. Built to go aground. After she absolutely made kindling out of White Crow’s finest afloat, the waves kept shoving her on the beach. Like some incredible battering ram. In she’d come. Wham!”
“Wham!” said the woman. The bathrobe gaped. Quoyle saw bruises on the flesh above her knees.
“Out she’d float. She got among the beach houses. These were not your butchers’ and bakers’ beach houses, no, these were some of the most beautiful houses on the coast designed by internationally known architects.”
“That’s right. That’s right!” Urged him, a dog through a flaming hoop.
“Pounded twelve beach houses, the docks and boathouses, into rubble, absolute rubble. In she’d come. Wham!”
“Wham!”
“Out she’d go. Pulverized them. Brought them down. Wilkie Fritz-Change was trying to sleep in the guest room of one of those houses—he’d been ambassador to some little eastern European hot spot and was recuperating from a breakdown at Jack and Daphne Gershom’s beach house—and he barely escaped with his life. He said later he thought they were firing cannon at him. And the most extraordinary thing was that the only damage she sustained in this completely mad and uncontrollable rampage was a cracked lee board. Not a dent, not a scratch on her.”
The woman, mouth full, shut her eyes, nodded her head. But was bored, now. Tired of these people.
Quoyle imagined the heavy vessel hurling itself onto its neighbors, pounding houses and docks. He cleared his throat.
“What brings you to Killick-Claw? A holiday voyage?”
The white-haired man eager to go on. “Holiday? Up here? On the most utterly desolate and miserable coast in the world? Wild horses couldn’t drag me. I’d rather cruise the roaring forties off Tierra del Fuego in a garbage scow. No, we’re being reupholstered, [121] aren’t we?” A deadly sarcasm whittled his voice to a point. “Silver here, my darling wife, insists on the services of a particular yacht upholsterer. Among thousands. Lived