The Shipping News

Quoyle tried to make a joke about it. “If you could write like you knit.” Be

“More than knitting. Be

“In a different way,” said Be

His writing was not that bad, either, said Quoyle, mollifying. Billy nodded, still on the subject of knitters and busy hands.

“Jack knits a little still, not like he used to of course. He was a good knitter. But he never had the grip on it Be

Quoyle thought of Partridge. He’d call him up that night. Tell him. What? That he could gut a cod while he talked about advertising space and printing costs? That he was wondering if love came in other colors than the basic black of none and the red heat of obsession?

“This driver used to barrel right across Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, had his arms sticking through the steering wheel, knitting away like a machine. Had a proper gansey knit by the time he got to Montreal, sell it for good money as a Newf fisherman’s authentic handicraft.”

“Might as well,” said Be

“No. But I can tell you about the time buddy was ripping along down the Trans-Canada knitting about as fast as the truck was going when this Mountie spies him. Starts to chase after him, doing a hundred and forty km per. Finally gets alongside, signs the transport feller to stop, but he’s so deep in his knitting he never notices.”

One of Billy’s jokes. Quoyle smiled faintly.

“Mountie flashes his light, finally has to shout out the window, ‘Pull over! Pull over!’ So the great transport knitter looks at the Mountie, shakes his head a bit and says, ‘Why no sir, ‘tis a cardigan.’ ”

Be

At the end of the seal hunt Jack switched to herring. He had his herring trap.

That was what Quoyle loved best, it seemed, sitting on the stony shore out of the wind behind a rock, holding the grill of silvery herring over coals. These cold picnics on the lip of the sea. Wavey made a table from a piece of driftwood and a few stones. Herry trailed rubbery seaweed. The sun warmed a grassy bit of sheep pasture where Bu

“Wavey!” Sunshine’s shrill voice. “Wavey, did you bring marshmallows?”

“Yes, maid. The little ones.”

The Maids in the Meadow thought Quoyle, looking at his daughters. And as though something dropped in place, he matched Billy’s father’s verse with his life. The Demon Lover. The Stouthearted Woman. Maids in the Meadow. The Tall and Quiet Woman.

Then Bu

“A dead bird,” said Wavey. “The poor thing’s neck is broken.” For the head lolled. She said nothing about sleep nor heaven. Bu

The herrings smoked, the children dodged around, saying Dad, Dad, when are they ready. Dad, said Herry. And put his pie-face up, roaring at his own cleverness.

“Cockadoodle Christ, you’re worse than the gulls.” Jack, watching Quoyle shovel herring into a bucket.

“I could eat the boatload.”

“If you wasn’t getting out the paper you ought to take up fishing. You’re drawn to it. I see that. What’s good, you know, you bring a little stove in the boat, frying pan and some salt pork, you can have you the best you ever ate. Why you never see a fisherman take a bag of lunch out. Even if he goes hungry now and then. Nothing made ashore that’s as good as what you pull out of the sea. You’ll come out with me one time.”

Two weeks later the herring were unaccountably gone and the Gammy Bird took a temporary dive in size while Billy and Quoyle and De

“I don’t know if I’ll be fishing lobster for meself or all of yous.”

“I wish I was going out,” said Billy. “Oh there’s money in lobster. But you can’t get a license. Only way anyone here could have a license for lobster is if you turned yours over to De

“I’m ready,” said De

“Won’t be tomorrow,” said Jack. Short and hard. Jealous of his fishing rights. He was. And wanted to keep his last son ashore.

“Come a nice day we’ll have a big lobster boil, eh?” said Billy. “Even if we have to buy them off somebody down at No Name Cove. Too bad there isn’t some kind of occasion to celebrate.” Winked at De

“There is,” said Quoyle. “The aunt’s coming back this Saturday and we’re having a welcome home party at my house. But I doubt there’ll be lobster.”

Jack had a pile of stones at the corner of his shack. Anchors for the lobster pots, he said. Slingstones.

38 The Sled Dog Driver’s Dream

“A leash for a large dog of rawhide belt lacing. Taper and skive

four thongs, form a loop with the small end of the longest

strand, and seize all strands together. Lay up a FOUR- STRAND

SQUARE SINNET. Surmount it with a large BUTTON KNOT.

Cover the seizing with a leather shoestring TURK’S HEAD.”

THE ASHLEY BOOK OF KNOTS

ALVIN YARK’S sweater zipper rattled as he hooked his worn measure out of the pocket. Time to get to the work. Had got cleaned out the day before with a quart of steeped she-var needles, had moved his bowels and was ready now to move the earth. Marked the keel with his pencil stub for the timber pairs, still uncut from curved planks. The window showed empty road. Humming, singing, he turned to the overhead rack that ran the length of the shop and pulled down wood ribbands, tacked them the length of the frame, from forehook to midship bend to the afterhook timbers. And there was the boat.

“ ‘E missed the best part, did Quoyle. Missed seeing ‘er come out of nothing.” Checked the window again. Nothing but April water streaked with white like flashing smiles, like lace tablecloths snapping open in slow motion. Clots of froth bobbed against the pilings. Beyond the headland, bergy bits, pans and floes, a disintegrating berg like a blue radiator in the restless water.

At last the mud-throwing hump of Quoyle’s station wagon moved into Yark’s view. He stopped in the doorway, the oxblood sweater caught on a nail. Picked fussily at the wool loop where another would have yanked, said he had to be back in good time. For the aunt’s welcome home supper. He and Wavey had spent the morning, he said, making enough fish chowder to sink a tanker and Alvin and Evvie had better come to help put it away.

“I enjoys a bit of a time,” said Yark. “Agnis in or comin’ in?”

Quoyle had picked up the aunt in Deer Lake at noon. She looked fit. Full of energy and ideas.

But Quoyle dreamed, thoughts somewhere else. He picked up the wrong tool when Yark pointed.

“Hundred things going on,” he mumbled. The Lifestyles page was on his mind. Mail pouring in. They’d never run another birdhouse plan but what was the cure for homesick blues? Everybody that went away suffered a broken heart. “I’m coming back some day,” they all wrote. But never did. The old life was too small to fit anymore.