“Ships tried for safe harbors, distress signals all over the North Atlantic from the Maritimes to Europe. Chemical tanker lost its bridge and the captain went with it. A cargo ship loaded with iron ore went down and all the crew with it. A Bulgarian stern trawler broke in half, all hands lost. Ships in harbor dragged their anchors and slammed into each other. A bad storm. There was no safe place. The Polar Grinder had a time of it. The seas not fit to look at. The captain kept just enough speed to maintain steerage way and keep her heading off wind, hoping to ride it out. Oh, you get Dennis to tell you about it sometime. Make your blood seize up, the punishment that ship took. Smashed the wheelhouse windows. Immense seas. All anybody could think of all night long-could she make it until morning? They got through that terrible night. The only difference daylight brought was that they could see the monstrous waves coming down on them, see the fury of the raging sea.
“A little after daybreak there was a sea, a great towering wall that seemed made out of half the Atlantic, then a tremendous detonation. Dennis said he thought the ship had smashed into an iceberg or something exploded on board. Said he was deaf for a while afterward. But it was the sea she took. The Polar Grinder’s steel hull cracked amidships under the weight of that wave, a crack almost an inch wide running from starboard to port.
“Well, there they were, rushing back and forth, mixing concrete and trying to plug up the crack with it, shoring timbers, anything to stop the water, it poured in, filling the hold. They were sloshing around in water up to their waists.”
Sucked in a mouthful of tea.
“The heavy seas and the tons of water pouring in knocked the ship down. She seemed she was about to go and the captain gave the ‘abandon ship.’ If you can imagine those small lifeboats in those seas! They lost twenty-seven men. And two peculiar things happened in the end. First, the Polar Grinder-as you see-didn’t go down. Wallowed along on her side. When he see she was still afloat the captain turned back and reboarded her, and the next day they got a salvage tug out that fastened a tow and finally brought her in.
“And Dennis?”
But the telephone rang and the old man creaked away into his chart room, his voice booming over another wire. Came to the doorway.
“Well, I must cut it short. They’ve seized a Russian side-trawler inside the two-hundred-mile limit fishing without a license and using a trawl with undersize mesh. Second time they’ve caught the same ship and captain. The Coast Guard’s escorting him in. I’ve got a bit of paperwork. Come again next week and we’ll have a drop of tea.”
Quoyle walked along the wharf, craning to get another look at the Polar Grinder, but it was lost in the rain. A man in a pea jacket and plastic sandals gazed at the rubber boots in Cuddy’s Marine Supply window. Wet, red toes. Said something as Quoyle went past. The liquor store, the marine hardware shop. A longliner drifted toward the fish plant, a figure in yellow oilskins leaning on the rail staring into dimpled water the color of motor oil.
At the end of the wharf, packing crates, a smell of garbage. A small boat was hauled up beside the crates, propped against it a crayoned board: For Sale. Quoyle looked at the boat. Rain sluiced over the upturned bottom, pattered on the stones.
“You can have it for a hundred.” A man leaning in a door-frame, hands draining into his pockets. “Me boy built it but he’s gone, now. Won five hundred dollars on the lottery. Took off for the mainland. Where they lives ‘mong the snakes.” He sniggered. “Seek his bloody fuckin’ fortune.”
“Well, I was just looking at it.” But a hundred dollars didn’t seem like very much for a boat. It looked all right. Looked sturdy enough. Painted white and grey. Practically new. Must be something wrong with it. Quoyle thumped the side with his knuckles.
“Tell yer what,” said the man. “Give me fifty, she’s yours.”
“Does it leak?” said Quoyle.
“Nah! Don’t leak. Sound as a sea-ox. Just me boy built it but he’s gone now. Good riddance to him, see? I wants to get it out of me sight. I was gonna burn it up,” he said shrewdly, taking Quoyle’s measure. “So’s not to be troubled by the sight of it. Reminding me of me boy.”
“No, no, don’t burn it,” said Quoyle. “Can’t go wrong for fifty bucks, can I!” He found a fifty and got a scrawled bill of sale on the back of an envelope. The man’s jacket, he saw, was made of some nubby material, ripped, with stains down the side.
“You got a trailer?” The man gestured at the boat, making circles in the air to indicate a rolling motion.
“No. How’ll I get it home without one?”
“You’n rent one down at Cuddy’s if yer don’t mind paying his bloody prices. Or we’s’ll lash it into the bed of yer truck.”
“I don’t have a truck,” said Quoyle. “I’ve got a station wagon.” He never had the right things.
“Why that’s almost as good, long as you doesn’t drive too speedy. She’ll hang down y’know, in the front and the back some.”
“What kind of boat do you call it, anyway?”
“Ah, it’s just a speedboat. Get a motor on her and won’t you have fun dartin’ along the shore!” The man’s manner was lively and enthusiastic now. “Soon’s this scuddy weather goes off.”
In the end Quoyle rented a trailer and he and the man and half a dozen others who splashed up laughing and hitting the man’s shoulder in a way Quoyle ignored, shifted the boat onto the trailer. He headed back to the Gammy Bird. Hell, fifty dollars barely bought supper for four. The rain ran across the road in waving sheets. The boat wagged.
Saw her. The tall woman in the green slicker. Marching along the edge of the road as usual, her hood pushed back. A calm, almost handsome face, ruddy hair in braids wound around her head in an old-fashioned cornet. Her hair was wet. She was alone. Looked right at him. They waved simultaneously and Quoyle guessed she must have legs like a marathon runner.
Sauntered into the newsroom and sat at his desk. Only Nutbeem and Tert Card there, Nutbeem half asleep with low atmospheric pressure, his ear against the radio, Card on the phone, at the same time whacking the computer keys. Quoyle was going to say something to Nutbeem, but didn’t. Instead, worked away on the shipping news. Dull enough, he thought.
SHIPS ARRIVED THIS WEEK
Bella (Canadian) from the Fishing Grounds
Farewell (Canadian) from Montreal
Foxfire (Canadian) from Bay Misery
Minatu Maru 54 (Japanese) from the Fishing Grounds
Pescamesca (Portuguese) from the Fishing Grounds
Porto Santo (Panamanian) from the High Seas
Zhok (Russian) from the Fishing Grounds
Ziggurat Zap (U.S.) from the High Seas
And so forth.
At four Quoyle gave the shipping news to Tert Card, whose moist ear lay against the phone receiver, shoulder hunched while he typed. Suffering from the stiff neck again.
Car doors slammed outside, Billy Pretty’s voice seesawed. Nutbeem snapped up alertly.
“There’s Mr. Jack Buggit and Billy Pretty back from the car wreck. Moose collision while you were gone, Quoyle. Two dead. And the moose.”
Saved again, thought Quoyle.
“I hope they got pictures from every angle, enough to carry us through the thin spots,” said Tert Card, typing Quoyle’s shipping news.
Minutes passed and the door stayed closed. Billy’s voice had stopped. Quoyle knew they were looking at his boat. Well, he’d taken the plunge. Smiled, rehearsing a story of how he’d decided on the spur of the moment to buy a boat and get it over, how he almost felt transformed, ready to take on the sea, to seize his heritage.