Shipping News, The - E. Annie Proulx [68]
The conversation dragged, Dawn saying the bare floors and hard windows were “striking.” Sunshine heaped grimy bears and [152] metal cars in her lap, it’s a bear, it’s a car, as though the visitor came from a country where there were no toys.
At last the aunt thumped the fragrant pastry in front of Quoyle. “Go ahead and dish it up, Nephew.”
She lit the candles, the flames invisible in the cylinder of sunlight that fell across the table, but the smell of wax reminding them, brought the dish of peas and pearl onions, the salad.
“Let me help,” said Dawn, half up, her skirt caught under the chair leg. But there was nothing she could do. Her voice echoed in the hard room.
Quoyle pierced the crust with an aluminum implement. Bunny stuck her fork into the candle flame.
“Don’t do that,” said the aunt dangerously. A section of lobster pie rose from the steaming dish, slid onto Dawn’s plate.
“Oh, is it lobster?” said Dawn.
“Yes, indeed.” The aunt. “Lobster pie, sweet as a nut.”
Dawn made her voice very warm, addressed the aunt. “I’ll just have salad, Agnis. I don’t care for lobster. Since I was a girl. We had to take lobster sandwiches to school. We’d throw them in the ditch. Crab, too. Like big spiders!” Tried a laugh.
Bunny looked at the crust and orange meat on her plate. Quoyle braced himself for screeching but it did not come. Bunny chewed ostentatiously, said “I love red spider meat.”
Dawn to Quoyle. Confiding. Everything she said overwrought. Pretending an interest.
“It’s so awful what those people did to Agnis.” Didn’t actually care.
“What people?” said Quoyle, his hand at his chin.
“The people in the Hitler boat. The way they just sneaked out.”
“What’s this?” said Quoyle, looking at the aunt.
“Well, looks like I got stiffed,” she said, flames of rage sweeping into her hair roots. “We installed the banquettes on the yacht, all chairs but two done and delivered, all that. And they’re gone. The yacht’s gone. Pulled out after dark.”
“Can’t you track them through the yacht registry? That boat’s one of a kind.”
[153] “I thought I’d wait a little,” said the aunt. “Wait to hear. Maybe there was a reason they had to leave in a hurry. Sickness. Or business. They’re involved in the oil business. Or she is. She’s the one with the money. Or she remembered a hair appointment in New York. That’s how they are. Why I didn’t say anything to you.”
“Didn’t you do some work for them back in the States? That would show their address?”
“Yes, a few years ago I upholstered the sofas. But those papers are still back on Long Island. In storage.”
“I thought you were having everything sent up here,” said Quoyle, noticing again the emptiness of rooms, the lack of the furniture she said was being shipped. Two months now.
Dawn noticed his lips were slippery with butter from the lobster pie.
“It takes time,” said the aunt. “Rome wasn’t built in a day.”
Outside the wind was up and humming in the cables. Bunny at the window.
“Who wants to play cards,” said the aunt. Chafing her hands and squinting like a stage villain card shark.
“Know how to play All-Fours?” said Dawn.
“Girl,” said the aunt, “you know it.”
Glanced at the cupboard where she kept her whiskey bottle. Could bite the top off.
19
Good-bye, Buddy
“The Russian Escape. A prisoner is ... secured to his
guard ... In his efforts to escape he rubs his hands together
until the heels of his hands pinch a bight of the rope. It is then
an easy matter to roll the bight down as far as the roots of the
fingers, where it can be grasped with the finger tips of one hand
and slipped over the backs of the fingers of the other hand.
The prisoner then pulls away and the ... rope slips over the back
of his hand and under the handcuff lashing.”
THE ASHLEY BOOK OF KNOTS
SOMETIMES Tert Card blew everybody out of the place. It was a hot, windless noon hour like a slot between two warring weather systems. They squeezed into Billy’s truck, off to the Fisherman’s Chance in Killick-Claw for fish and chips, escaped and away from Tert Card who scratched