The Shipping News

32 The Hairy Devil

“To untangle a snarl, loosen all jams or knots and open a hole

through the mass at the point where the longest end leaves the

snarl. Then proceed to roll or wind the end out through the

center exactly as a stocking is rolled. Keep the snarl open and

loose at all times and do not pull on the end; permit it to

unfold itself.”

THE ASHLEY BOOK OF KNOTS

DURING the night a warm fluke, a tongue of balmy air, licked out from the mainland and tempered the crawling ice margins. The November snow decayed. On Friday afternoon Tert Card, wild with false spring, cut up at the office, played practical jokes, answered the phone in a falsetto and went to the washroom again and again. They smelled the rum on his breath. Nutbeem’s own excitement showed in high voice notes. His departure combined with a waxing moon.

“Going to get Bu

In Beety’s kitchen he drank a cup of tea quickly.

“Beety, it’s Nutbeem’s party tonight. I’m going out early to help him set things up and look over the trailer. God, you make the best bread.” Wolfing it down.

“Well, maybe I won’t be making it no more if Allie Marvel gets her bakery shop going this spring. Bread keeps you tied down to the house and there’s things I’d like to do.” She whispered, “If De

“Dad,” said Bu

“Not this one, you don’t. This is a men’s party. It would not be fun for you.”

“Hey, Quoyle,” said De

“Well, I will,” said Quoyle, who was sleeping on a cot in the basement workshop until they could move into Nutbeem’s trailer. “Because I’ve got a long day tomorrow. Since the roads are clear. Got to get some things that are still out at the house on the point in the morning, then help Alvin with the boat.”

“If the girls have got spare mittens out there,” said Beety, “bring them back. Show your dad, Sunshine, what happened to your mitts.” The little girl brought a stiff, charred thing.

“She brought in a few junks of wood and her old mitten stuck to a splinter. She didn’t notice and De

Sunshine ran to Quoyle, put her mouth to his ear and sent a loud, tickling message in.

“Dad, Beety is showing me how to knit. I am knitting a Christmas present for you. It’s very hard.”

“Good lord,” said Quoyle, astonished. “And you’re only four years old.”

“It’s kind of a trick, Dad, because it’s just a long, long, fat string and it turns into a scarf. But I can’t show it to you.”

“Are you telling a certain secret?” asked Beety.

“Yes,” said Sunshine, beaming.

“See you later,” said Quoyle.

“See you!” called De

It took Quoyle and Nutbeem an hour and a half to get to the trailer. They made long stops at the liquor authority loading boxes of beer and rum into the station wagon until the rear end sagged, stacking the backseat with plastic-wrapped party platters of sliced ham, turkey, cold cuts and red-eyed olives from the town’s only supermarket, then on to the fish processing plant for a tub of ice which Nutbeem somehow lashed on top. Early darkness. A few more weeks until the winter solstice.

“Isn’t this is too much?” said Quoyle. “Too much everything.”

“You’re forgetting the contributors and advertisers, and those two discriminating food critics, Be

“Actually, fried bologna isn’t bad,” said Quoyle.

“You have gone native.”

They drove to the south end, over a one-lane bridge to a trailer behind a cluster of houses. Faded pastel pink with a stenciled frieze of girls with umbrellas, a low picket fence. Nutbeem’s scabby bicycle leaned near the steps.

“The Goodlads live in the proper houses,” said Nutbeem. “Fishermen. Lambie and John and his mother in the green house, the two younger sons, Ray in the white and red house and Sammy in the blue. The oldest son is a fisheries biologist in St. John’s. This is his trailer. He came up once last summer, but left after two days. On his way to New Zealand to study some kind of exotic Southern Hemisphere crab.” Nutbeem himself was drawn to crabs in a culinary sense, although a surfeit gave him hives on his forearms.

“Come in,” he said and opened the door.

Just another trailer, thought Quoyle, with its synthetic carpet, cubbyhole bedrooms, living room like a sixties photograph except for four enormous brown speakers ranged in the corners like bodyguards, kitchen the size of a cupboard with miniature refrigerator and stove, a sink barely big enough for both of Quoyle’s hands. The bathroom had one oddity. Quoyle looked in, saw a yellow spray hose coiled on the mat like a hunting horn, and in the shower cubicle, half a plastic barrel.

“What’s this, then?” he asked Nutbeem.

“I longed for a bath-I still do, you know. This is my compromise. They ship molasses in these barrels. So I cut it in half with a saw, you see, and stuck it in here. I can crouch down in it. It’s not awfully satisfactory, but better than the cold plastic curtain twining about one’s torso.”

Back in the living room Nutbeem said “Wait until you hear this,” and switched on a tower of sound components. Red and green ru

Quoyle rammed the beer bottles into the tub of ice, helped Nutbeem push the table against the wall. The taut plastic over the party platters vibrated visibly.

“When the first guests pull up,” shouted Nutbeem, “we’ll rip the plastic off.”

They looked vainly through the cupboards for a bowl large enough to hold thirty bags of potato chips.

“What about your barrel in the shower?” screamed Quoyle. “Just for tonight. It’s big enough.”

“Right! And have a beer! Nutbeem’s good-bye party has officially begun!” And as Quoyle poured potato chips into the soap-scummed barrel, Nutbeem sent a ululating call into the night.

Through the picture window framed in salmon-pink curtains, they saw a line of headlights approaching the narrow bridge. The beer in Quoyle’s bottle trembled in the batter of sound. Nutbeem was saying something, impossible to know what.

Tert Card was the first one through the door, and his stumble carried him against the table with the party platters. He was clenching a rum bottle, wore a linen touring cap that transformed the shape of his head to that of a giant albino ant. He plucked at the plastic wrap, seized a handful of ham and pushed it into his mouth. A crowd of men came in, shouting and swaying, and as though at a ham and cheese eating contest, snatched up the food from the party platters. Crammed potato chips as though stuffing birds for the oven.