The Shipping News

Quoyle imagined Jack’s clothes rippling underwater like silk, his moonstone face and throat and hands glimmering under the sea.

“Amen,” said Be

“How’s Mrs. Buggit taking it?” Thinking of the woman in the perpetual freeze of sorrow, afloat on the rise and fall of tatted billows.

“Surprising calm. She said she’s been expecting it since the first week they was married and Jack was thought lost out on the ice. Sealing. She’s been through the agony now three times over. There’s one relief that’s helping her bear up. See, they recovered the body. She can bury Jack. They’ve took him up home to lay him out. Jack will be the first Buggit in a long time to be buried in the earth. It’s a comfort for her to have the body.”

Stones crowded in close company in the Killick-Claw cemetery, for someone lost at sea did not need six feet of space.

“They’re laying him out now. The wake is tonight and the burial service tomorrow, Quoyle. You do bring Wavey to poor Jack’s house at seven tonight. De

“Yes,” said Quoyle. “I will. And we’ll run a special edition this week dedicated to Jack. Billy, we’ll want a front-page obit. From the heart. Who better than you? Talk to everybody. I wonder if there’s any pictures of him. I’ll see if Beety knows. Be

“What’s going to happen with the Gammy Bird?” said Be

“No. A paper has a life of its own, an existence beyond earthly owners. We’re going to press tomorrow as usual. Have to work like hell to make it. What time’s the wake, Billy?” Quoyle began to rip up the front page.

Billy reached for his notebook. “Seven. I don’t know if De

Be

Thickening mist on the water. Vaporous spirals writhed, the air thickened and filled in, that other world disappeared as if down a fu

Quoyle was exhausted, keyed up, getting ready for the wake. He squeezed into his black funeral trousers. He’d have to go back to the paper as soon as he could decently leave and finish pasting up Billy’s long piece. They had a fine picture of Jack, ten years younger but looking the same, standing beside his freshly painted skiff. Quoyle had had a big nine-by-twelve print framed for Mrs. Buggit.

Dreaded seeing Jack lying in his parlor in a froth of knotted doilies. Thought of the corpse as wet, as though they could not dry him off, the seawater ru

His old tweed jacket was too small as well. In the end he gave up and pulled on the enormous oxblood sweater he wore every day. It could not be helped. But would have to buy a new jacket next day for the funeral. Get it in the morning in Misky Bay when he took the paper in to be printed. Tying his good shoes when Wavey called and said Bu

Tough little voice. Only the second time he’d talked to her on the phone. She’d never make a living selling insurance.

“Dad, Wavey says I have to ask you. I want to go to the awake for Uncle Jack. Wavey says you have to say if we can. Dad, you are going and Marty and them is going and Herry and Wavey is going and me and Sunshine has to be with the aunt in her shop full of needles and I don’t want to, I want to go to the awake.

“Bu

But Wavey thought it was right for them to go.

Quoyle said there had been too much death in the past year.

“But everything dies,” said Wavey. “There is grief and loss in life. They need to understand that. They seem to think death is just sleep.”

Well, said Quoyle, they were children. Children should be protected from knowledge of death. And what about Bu

“But, m’dear, if they don’t know what death is how can they understand the deep part of life? The seasons and nature and creation-”

He didn’t want her to get going toward God and religion. As she sometimes did.

“Maybe,” said Wavey, “she has those nightmares because she’s afraid if she sleeps she won’t wake up-like Petal and Warren and her grandparents. Besides, if you look at the departed you’ll never be troubled by the memory. It’s well-known.”

And so Quoyle agreed. And promised not to say that Jack was sleeping. And he would come along and get them all in the station wagon. In about fifteen minutes.

The verge of the road crowded with cars and trucks. They had to park far back and walk to the house, toward a roar of voices that carried a hundred feet. A line of people filed through the parlor where, among lace whirligigs, Jack’s coffin rested on black-draped sawhorses. They sidled in, edging through the crowd to the parlor. Quoyle held Bu

Joined the line sifting into the kitchen where there were cakes and braided breads, the steaming kettle, a row of whiskey bottles and small glasses. The talk rose, it was of Jack. The things he had done or might have done.

Billy Pretty speaking, a glass in his hand. His face gone blood-red with whiskey and the words tumbling out in ecstatic declamation, tossing in the lop of his own talk. “You all know we are only passing by. We only walk over these stones a few times, our boats float a little while and then they have to sink. The water is a dark flower and a fisherman is a bee in the heart of her.”

De

Children played outside. Quoyle could see Marty in the yard throwing crusts to hens. But Bu

“I’ll get her,” said Wavey. For the child’s staring was u

A cough like an old engine starting up. Mrs. Buggit dropped the pin into the satin, turned and gripped De