The Shipping News

Quoyle was on the floor with his daughters, building a bridge over the road, a town, a city crowded with block cars and roaring engines. Patiently rebuilding bridges that fell as trucks caromed.

“Dad, make a castle. Make a castle in the road.” He would do anything they told him.

“On the bus on the way back to Long Island I worked it all out, how I could start up my own little business. I sketched out the sign-Hamm’s Yacht Upholstery-with a full-rigged sailing ship under the letters. I intended to rent a storefront down by the wharf at Mussle Harbor. I made a list of the equipment I needed-an industrial-grade sewing machine, button press, pair of padded trestles, taking-down tools-tack lifters and ripping chisels, rebuilding tools-hide strainers, webbing stretchers. I told myself to start small, just get the leather I needed for each job so’s I wouldn’t tie up a lot of money in leathers.”

The castle rose, towers and flying buttresses, one of the aunt’s bobby pins with a bit of yarn for a pe

“So home I get, all excited, just pour this out fast as I could talk, Warren sitting there at the kitchen table nodding. I noticed the weight loss, looked sort of grey like how you get with a bad headache or when you’re really sick. So I said ‘Don’t you feel good?’ Warren, poor soul! All knotted up. Then just burst out with it. ‘Cancer. All through me. Four to six months. Didn’t want to worry you while you were taking your course.’ ”

The aunt got up, scraping her chair, went to the door to get a breath free from the moral stench of wax.

“Turned out, it was over in three months. First thing I did when I pulled myself together was get that puppy and name her.” Didn’t explain the need to say part of Irene Warren’s name fifty times a day, to invoke the happiness that had been. “She didn’t get bad tempered until after she was grown. And then it was only strangers. And after a while I rented the storefront space and started in on yacht upholstery. Warren-my Warren-never saw the shop.”

Quoyle lay on his back on the floor, blocks piled on his chest, rising and falling as he breathed.

“That’s boats,” said Sunshine. “Dad is the water and these are my ferryboats. Dad, you are the water.”

“I feel like it,” said Quoyle. Bu

“Anyway, I’ve been working at it for the past thirteen years. And when your father and mother went, though I never knew your mother, I thought it was a good time to come back to the old place. Or risk never seeing it again. I suppose I’m getting old now, though I don’t feel it. You shouldn’t get down on their level, you know.” Meaning Quoyle on the floor, covered with blocks. “They’ll never respect you.”

“Aunt,” said Quoyle, his mind floating somewhere between the boats under his chin and the yacht upholstery business. “The woman in your shop. What did you say she studied at university?” He had always played with his children. The first embarrassed pleasure of stacking blocks with Bu

“Dawn, you mean? Mrs. Bangs never set foot in a grade school, much less university. Pharology. Science of lighthouses and signal lights. Dawn knows elevations and candlepower, stuff about flashes and blinks and buoys. Bore you silly with it. And you know, she talks about it all day long because it’s slipping out of her head. Use it or lose it. And she’s losing it. Says so herself. But there’s no jobs for her, although the shipping traffic is so heavy you can almost lie awake at night and hear it tearing over the ocean. Why, are you interested in Dawn?” The aunt slid her fingers, feeling the waxy surface.

“No,” said Quoyle. “I don’t even know her. Wondered, that’s all.”

A fly crawled on the table, stopped to wipe its mouth with its front legs, then limped on, the hind legs more like skids than moving limbs. The aunt snapped her rag.

“Why don’t you come by the shop some day next week? Meet Dawn and Mavis. We can have a bite at Skipper Willie’s.”

“That’s a good idea,” said Quoyle. Glanced at Bu

“What are you looking at, Bu

“When I grow up,” said Bu

“Is that right?” said Quoyle, feigning amazement.

Tuesday, and Quoyle couldn’t get started on the piece. He shoved the page of rain-smeared notes on the Botterjacht under his pile of papers. He was used to reporting resolutions, votes, minutes, bylaws, agendas, statements embroidered with political ornament. Couldn’t describe the varnished wood of Tough Baby. How put down on paper the Melvilles’ savageness? Bu

Before he started the station wagon the tall woman, Wavey, came to mind. He looked down the road both ways to see if she was walking. Sometimes she went to the school at noon. He thought, maybe, to help in the lunchroom. Didn’t see her. But as he came up over the rise and in sight of Jack’s house, there she was, striding along and swinging a canvas bag. He pulled up, glad she was alone, that he was, too.

It was books: she worked in the school library twice a week, she said. Her voice somewhat hoarse. She sat straight, feet neatly side by side. They looked at each other’s hands, proving the eye’s affinity for the ring finger; both saw gold. Knew at least one thing about each other.

Silence, the sea unfolding in pieces. A skiff and bobbing dory, men leaning to reset a cod trap. Quoyle glanced, saw her pale mouth, neck, eyes somewhere between green glass and earth color. Rough hands. Not so young; heading for forty. But that sense of harmony with something, what, the time or place. He didn’t know but felt it. She turned her head, caught him looking. Eyes flicked away again. But both were pleased.

“I have a daughter starting first grade this fall. Bu

“I heard that.” Her voice so quiet. As if she was talking to herself.

At the school driveway she got halfway out the door, murmured something Quoyle did not catch, then strode away. Maybe it was thank-you. Maybe it was stop by and have a cup of tea some day. Her hands swung. She stopped for a moment, took a white, crumpled tissue from her coat pocket, blew her nose. Still Quoyle sat there. Watched her run up the school steps and in through the door. What was wrong with him?

Just to see the way she walked, a tall woman who walked miles. And Petal had never walked if she could ride. Or lie down.