The Shipping News

“Those ads, Jack. I’d like to drop the fake ads. We need the news space. Last week we had the sawmill story, story on the new National Historic Park in Misky Bay, demonstration over foreign fishing off the Virgin Rocks, another demonstration against the high electric rates, the shrimp processors’ strike-good, solid local stories-and we had to cramp ‘em in very hard. No pix. I mean, it would be different if it was real ads.”

“Ar, that was Tert Card’s idea, make up fake ads for big outfits down to St. John’s. Make it look like we’re big, y’know. Punch up the local advertisers a little. Go ahead, pull them ads out if you need the space. See, we didn’t have that much news when we started. And the ads looked good.”

One by one the cleaned fish went into the grey plastic fish box. Jack hurled the guts and livers into the water.

“Fishery problem? Fuckin’ terrible problem. They’ve made the inshore fishermen just like migrant farm workers. All we do is harvest the product. Moves from one crop to another, picks what they tells us. Takes what they pays us. We got no control over any of the fishery now. We don’t make the decisions, just does what we’re told where and when we’re told. We lives by rules made somewhere else by sons a bitches don’t know nothin’ about this place.” A hard exhalation rather than a sigh.

But, Quoyle thought, that’s how it was everywhere. Jack was lucky he’d escaped so long.

Late in February papers came from St. John’s for him to sign as next of kin, papers to put the old cousin away forever. Delusions, senile dementia, schizophrenic personality; prognosis poor. He sat looking at the dotted lines. Could not sign away the rest of the life of an unknown man to whom he’d spoken a single sentence, who had only tied knots against him. He thought he would go down to the city and see the old cousin before he signed anything. Suppose he was wild-eyed, drooling and mad? He expected it. Suppose he was lucid and accusatory? Expected that, too.

At the last hour he asked Wavey to come along. He said it would be a change of scene. They could go to di

“It will be fun.” The word sounded stupid in his mouth. When had he ever had “fun”? Or Wavey, chapped face already set in the lines of middle age, an encroaching dryness about her beyond stove heat and wind? What was it, anyway? Both of them the kind who stood with forced smiles watching other people dance, spin on barstools, throw bowling balls. Having fun. But Quoyle did like movies, the darkness, the outlines of strangers’ hair against the screen, the smell of peanuts and shampoo, popcorn squeaking in teeth. He could fly away from his chin and hulking shape into the white clothes and slender bodies on the screen.

Wavey said yes. Herry could stay with her father. Yes, yes indeed.

A few torn pieces of early morning cloud the shape and color of salmon fillets. The tender greenish sky hardening as they drove between high snowbanks. A rim of light flooded up, drenched the car. Quoyle’s yellow hands with bronze hairs, holding the wheel, Wavey’s maroon serge suit like cloth of gold. Then it was ordinary daylight, the black and white landscape of ice, snow, rock and sky.

Quoyle’s romping thoughts left him with nothing to say, nothing to crack the silence swelling between them. Mumbled a stupid question about Alvin Yark’s endless song. But didn’t care. It was just to get started.

“Sung that long as I can remember. The Gander Goose sank at sea and the Bruce was the one they shipped the moose on. Moose from New Brunswick. I don’t know when, back around the First World War. Newfoundland didn’t have moose until they brought them in.” Nor was it anything to her, but the exchange of voices in the humming car encouraged. She thought of a boy in school who had wept over his lunch of mildewed crackers. She had given him her meat sandwich, cut from a cold moose roast.

“There’s enough of them now, “said Quoyle, laughing, wanting to seize the chapped hand. It seemed an omen when they saw one of the animals in a frozen wallow beside the highway.

By noon there were open harbors, and the sight of blue water made them both happy. Blue, after months of ice.

Wavey in the shops on Water Street, exhilarated and startled by the smells of new leather, perfumed magazines, traffic exhaust. She bought a toy cow for Herry, a pair of long underwear for her father. Box of greeting cards for all occasions, on sale. A paring knife with a red handle to replace the stub in the kitchen drawer. A floral-print brassiere in jewel colors. There was lovely Shetland wool that would make a Fair Isle sweater. But it was too expensive. She noticed a monger’s window where, on a bed of ice, a wonderful scene was worked in fish. A skiff made of flounder fillets rode waves of shrimp and blue-black mussels. A whole salmon was a lighthouse, shot out rays of glittering mackerel. All framed by a border of crab claws.

She had Quoyle’s list, his envelope of money for clothes for Bu

Quoyle shopped, too, circled the shelves of the asylum gift shop wanting to bring something to the old cousin. Who knew what his memories were? Who knew what his life had been? He’d fished. Pulled up whelk pots. Had owned a dog. Walked at night. Tied knots.

He looked among the wrestling magazines and machine-embroidered sachets, found a sentimental photograph of a poodle in a stamped metal frame. It would have to do. There was no point in wrapping it, he told the woman at the register and put it in his jacket pocket.

The old cousin sat in a plastic chair with wooden arms. Sat alone near a window. He was very clean and dressed in a white nightgown, a white robe. Paper slippers on his veiny feet. He stared at a television set in a bracket near the top of the wall, the picture blurred enough to show two mouths, four eyes, an extra rim of cheeks on every face. A bald man talked about diabetes. An explosive blue commercial for antifreeze showing fragments of a hockey game, a spray of ice.

Quoyle got on a chair and adjusted the controls, lowered the volume. Stood down, sat down. The old cousin looked at him.

“You come ‘ere, too?”

“Yes,” said Quoyle. “I came to see you.”

“Damn long ride, ent it?”

“Yes,” said Quoyle, “it is. But Wavey Prowse came along for company.” Why tell that to the old cousin?

“Oh, aye. Lost ‘er ‘usband.”

“Yes,” said Quoyle. There seemed nothing wrong with the old man’s mind to Quoyle. He looked around for knotted strings, saw none. “Well, what do you think?” he asked cautiously. Could mean anything.

“Oh! Wu

“It sounds pleasant,” said Quoyle, thinking, he can’t go back to that reeking sty.

“No, no. It’s not entirely pleasant. Bloody place is full of loonies. I knows where I is. Still, the creature comforts is so wu