Shipping News, The - E. Annie Proulx [63]
“After Jesson, he started the paper, right?”
“About right. But you know, Dad don’t really run Gammy Bird, Tert Card does. The paper is there, you know, and he started it, he decides more or less what goes in it. But he’ll phone in, make up some story about being sick, then go out fishing. Everybody knows what he’s doing.”
“Oh, he runs it,” said Quoyle. “Tert Card dances his tune, I think.”
“Eat your apricots, Bunny,” said Beety, gathering empty saucers.
But Bunny whispered to Quoyle, “Apricots look like little teeny-weeny behinds, Dad. Little fairies’ bottoms. I don’t want to eat them.” And sniveled.
While Dennis talked, a short, wrinkled man came to the doorway, leaned against the frame. He looked like a piece of driftwood, but for his mauve face. Wore a shirt spattered with hibiscus flowers the size of pancakes. Beety gave him a mug of tea, slathered marg on bread which the old man swallowed in one go.
“Alfred!” said Dennis. “Skipper Alfred, come on and sit down. This here is Quoyle, works at the paper. Comes back with Agnis Hamm to the old house on Quoyle’s point.”
“Yis,” said the old man. “I remembers the Quoyles and their trouble. They was a savage pack. In the olden days they say Quoyles nailed a man to a tree by ‘is ears, cut off ‘is nose for the scent of blood to draw the nippers and flies that devoured ‘im alive. Gone now, except for the odd man, Nolan, down along Capsize Cove. I never thought a one of the others would come back, and here there’s four of them, though one’s a Hamm and the other three never set foot on the island of Newfoundland. But the one I come to see is the carpenter maid.”
[140] Dennis pointed at Bunny.
“So, you’re the maid was goin’ to put on the roof with your little hammer.”
“I was going to help Daddy,” whispered Bunny.
“Right enough. ‘Tis very few that helps their fathers nowadays, lad or maid. So I’ve brought you a bit of encouragement, like.” He handed Bunny a small brass square, the marks worn but still visible.
“You are thinking to yourself ‘what is that thing?’ Well, ‘tis a simple matter. Help you make straight lines and straight cuts. With this and a saw and a hammer and some nails and a bit of timber you can make a hundred little things. I had it when I was your age and I made a box with a lid first thing, six pieces and two bits of leather for the hinges. Wasn’t I a proud thing?”
“What do you say, Bunny?” hissed Quoyle.
“I want to make a box with a lid and two bits of hinges.”
Everyone laughed except Quoyle, watching Bunny, who flushed red with mortification.
“Then,” said Quoyle, “we’ll say thank-you Skipper Alfred for the fine square and get off to home if there’s going to be time for after-dinner carpentry.” Had she heard what he said about the man nailed to a tree?
And in the car, made Bunny put the square flat on the floor in case of a catastrophic ditch in the road.
17
The Shipping News
“Ship’s Cousin, a favored person aboard ship …”
THE MARINER’S DICTIONARY
PHOTOGRAPHS of the Botterjacht on his desk. Dark, but good enough to print, good enough to show the vessel’s menacing strength. Quoyle propped one up in front of him and rolled a sheet of paper into the typewriter. He had it now.
KILLER YACHT AT KILLICK-CLAW
A powerful craft built fifty years ago for Hitler arrived in Killick-Claw harbor this week. Hitler never set foot on the luxury Botterjacht, Tough Baby, but something of his evil power seems built into the yacht. The current owners, Silver and Bayonet Melville of Long Island, described the vessel’s recent rampage among the pleasure boats and exclusive beach cottages of White Crow [142] Harbor, Maine during Hurricane Bob. “She smashed seventeen boats to matchsticks, pounded twelve beach houses and docks into absolute rubble,” said Melville.
The words fell out as fast as he could type. He had a sense of writing well. The Melvilles’ pride in the boat’s destructiveness shone out of the piece. He dropped the finished story on Tert Card’s desk at eleven. Card counting waves, fidgeting through wishes.
“This goes with the