Shipping News, The - E. Annie Proulx [78]
The suitcase was black with seawater. Expensive looking but with a rope handle. There was something about it. He tried the latches but it was locked. The fog came on them, thick, blotting out everything. Even Billy in the back of the boat was faded and insubstantial. Directionless, no horizon nor sky.
“By God, Quoyle, you’re a wracker! You’re a real Quoyle with your gaff, there.”
“It’s locked. We’ll have to pick it open when we get back.”
“That might take a little while,” said Billy. “We’ll have to smell our way in. We’re not out of the rocks yet. We’ll just marl along until we gets clear of them.”
Quoyle strained his eyes until they stung and saw nothing. Uneasiness came over him, that crawling dread of things unseen. The ghastly unknown tinctured by thoughts of pirate Quoyles. Ancestors whose filthy blood ran in his veins, who murdered the shipwrecked, drowned their unwanted brats, fought and howled, beards braided in spikes with burning candles jammed into their hair. Pointed sticks, hardened in the fire.
A rock loomed on the starboard bow, a great tower in twisting vapor.
“Ah, just right. ‘Tis the Home Rock. Now we’re on a straight run. We’ll smell Killick-Claw’s smoke pretty soon and sniff along in.”
[175] “Billy, we saw the Home Rock on the way to the island. It was just a low rock barely a foot out of the water. This thing is enormous. It can’t be the same rock.”
“Yes, it is. She sticks up a little more now because tide’s going out, and she’s in the fog. It’s fog-loom makes it look big to you. It’s an optical illusion, is the old fog-loom. Makes a dory look like an oil tanker.”
The boat muttered through the blind white. Quoyle clenched the gunwales and despaired. Billy said he could smell the chimneys of Killick-Claw, fifteen miles across the water, and something else, something rotten and foul.
“I don’t like that stink. Like a whale washed up on a beach the third week of hot weather. It seems to get stronger as we go. Maybe there is a dead whale floating along in the fog. You listen for the bell buoy that marks the Ram and the Lamb. We could easy miss the entrance in this fog.”
After nearly an hour Billy said he heard the rut of the shore, the waves breaking on stone, and then a pair of needle-shaped rocks rose in the gloom of fog and encroaching night.
“Whoa,” said Billy Pretty. “That’s the Knitting Pins. We’re east of Killick-Claw by a bit. But not far from Desperate Cove. What do y’think, put in there and wait until the fog lifts before heading back up the coast? Oh, there used to be a good little restaurant in Desperate Cove. Let’s see now if I can remember how to get in. I never come in here by water since I was a boy.”
“For God’s sake, Billy, this water is full of rocks.” Another foaming mass of black reared from the fog. But Billy knew his way by a rhyme pulled from the old days when poor men sailed by memory, without charts, compass or lights.
When the Knitting Pins you is abreast,
Desperate Cove bears due west.
Behind the Pins you must steer
‘Til The Old Man’s Shoe does appear.
The tickle lies just past the toe,
It’s narrow, you must slowly go.
[176] The old man brought the boat around behind the Knitting Pins and felt his way along current and sucking tide.
“There’s a dozen tricks to find your way—listen for the rut of the shore, call out and hear the echo off the cliffs, feel the run of current beneath you—or smell the different flavors of the coves. Me dad could name a hundred miles of coast by the taste of air.”
A hump of rock, the sound of licking water, then a slow putter along a breaking ridge of rock. In amazement Quoyle heard a car door slam, heard the engine start and the vehicle drive away. He could see nothing. But in a minute a glow on a stagehead showed and Billy brought the boat up, climbed out and slipped a mooring line over a bollard.
“That stink,” he said, “is coming from the suitcase.”
“It’s probably the leather,” said Quoyle. “Starting to rot. How far to the restaurant? I don’t want to leave