“Saw her out there. Heard she had some trouble.”
“Fire in the engine room. Cause unknown. Diddy Shovel says that five years ago she wouldn’t have put in here for mutiny or famine. But now there’s the repair dock, the suppliers, the truck terminal. So they’re coming in. Plans to enlarge the dockyard. He says they’re talking about a shipyard.”
“Ar, it wasn’t always like this,” said Billy Pretty. “Killick-Claw used to be a couple of rickety fish stages and twenty houses. The big harbor, up until after World War II, was at the same damn place we been talking about-Misky Bay. Ar, she was a hot place-them big warships in there, tankers, freighters, troop carriers, everything. After the war, boy, she laid right down flat on the deck. And Killick-Claw come up and give her a kick overboard. Go ahead, ask me what happened.”
“What happened?”
“Ammunition. During the war Misky Bay was a ammunition-loading port. They dropped so goddamn many tons of the stuff overboard that nobody dare let down an anchor to this day in Misky Bay. The ammunition and the cables. There is a snarl of telephone and telegraph cables down at the bottom of that harbor would make you think a army of cats with a thousand balls of wool been scrabbling and hoovering around.
“Fact, that’s probably when poor old Misky Bay started downhill, when the blast was put on her. You know, that’d be a good head for my towel rack story, ‘Misky Bay Curse Still Wrecking Lives.’ ” The sun obliterated, a chop on the water, stiff breeze.
“Look at that.” Billy, pointing at a tug towing a burned hulk. “Don’t know what they think they’re going to do with that. That must be your story from Perdition Cove. What happened, Quoyle?”
The stink of char came to them.
“Got it here,” fishing in his pocket. “Course it’s still rough.” But he’d spent two days talking to relatives, eyewitnesses, the Coast Guard, electricians, and the propane gas dealer in Misky Bay. Read it aloud.
GOOD-BYE, BUDDY
Nobody in Perdition Cove will ever forget Tuesday morning. Many were still asleep when the first streak of sunlight painted the stern of the long-liner Buddy.
Owner Sam Nolly stepped aboard, a new light bulb in his hand. He intended to replace a burned-out light. Before the streak of sunlight reached the wheelhouse Sam Nolly was dead and the Buddy was a raft of smoking toothpicks floating in the harbor.
The powerful blast shattered nearly every window in Perdition Cove and was heard as far away as Misky Bay. The crew of a fishing boat off Final Point reported seeing a ball of fire roll across the water followed by a dense black cloud.
Investigators blamed the explosion on leaking propane gas that accumulated forward overnight and ignited when Sam Nolly screwed in the fresh bulb.
The long-liner was less than two weeks old. It was launched on Sam and Helen (Bodder) Nolly’s wedding day.
“A shame,” said Billy.
“Not bad,” said Nutbeem. “Jack will like it. Blood, Boats and Blowups.” Looked at his watch. They got up. A paper blew away, rolled along the wharf and into the water.
Billy squinted. “Saturday morning,” he said to Quoyle. Eyes like a blue crack of sky. Back to Tert Card, the cramped office. Overhead the cloud masses had merged, taken the form of fine-grained scrolls like tide marks on the sand.
After Billy and Nutbeem went in Quoyle lingered, stood in the cracked road a minute. The long horizon, the lunging, clotted sea like a swinging door opening, closing, opening.
20 Gaze Island
“The Pirate and the Jolly Boat.
A pirate, having more prisoners than he has room for,
tows one boatload astern.
All knives are taken away, and the boat made fast with
the bight of a doubled line. The after end of the line is ring
hitched to a stern ringbolt. CLOVE HITCHES are put around
each thwart, and the line is rove through the bow ringbolt and
brought to deck. They are told to escape if they can.
How do they escape?”
THE ASHLEY BOOK OF KNOTS
QUOYLE in Billy Pretty’s skiff. The old man hopped aboard nimbly, set a plastic bag under the seat and yanked the rope. The engine started-waaah-like a trumpet. A blare of wake spilled out behind them. Billy plunged around in a plywood box, dug out a tan plastic contraption, propped it in a corner, sat down and leaned back.
“Ah. ‘Tis me Back Buddy-gives the spinal column support and comfort.”
There was nothing to say. Haze on the horizon. The sky a sheet of pearl, and through it filtered a diffuse yellow. The wind filled Quoyle’s mouth, parted and snapped his hair.
“There’s the Ram and the Lamb,” said Billy, pointing at two rocks just beyond the narrows. The water swilled over them.
“I like it,” said Quoyle, “that the rocks have names. There’s one down off Quoyle’s Point-”
“Oh, ay, the Comb.”
“That’s it, a jagged rock with points sticking up.”
“Twelve points onto that rock. Or used to be. Was named after the old style of brimstone matches. They used to come in combs, all one piece along the bottom, twelve to a comb. You’d break one off. Sulfur stink. They called them stinkers-a comb of stinkers. Quoyle’s Point got quite a few known sunkers and rocks. There’s the Tea Buns, a whole plateful of little scrapers half a fathom under the water, off to the north of the Comb. Right out the end of the point there’s the Komatik-Dog. You come on it just right it looks for all the world like a big sled dog settin’ on the water, his head up, looking around. They used to say he was waiting for a wreck, that’d he’d come to life and swim out and swallow up the poor drowning people.”
Bunny, thought Quoyle, never let her see that one.
Billy pulled his cap down against the glare. “You get together with old Nolan yet?”
“No, I think I saw him one morning out alone in an old motor dory.”
“That’s him. A strange one, he. Does everything the old way. Won’t take unemployment. A good fisherman but lives very poor. Keeps to himself. I doubt he can read or write. He’s one of your crowd, some kind of fork kin from the old days. You ought to go down to his wee house for a visit.”
“I didn’t think we had any relatives still living here. The aunt says they’re all gone.”
“She’s wrong on this one. Nolan is still very much among the quick, and I hear he’s got it worked up in his head that the house belongs to him.”
“What house? Our house? The aunt’s house on the point?”
“That’s the one.”
“This is a fine time to hear about it,” muttered Quoyle. “Nobody’s said a word to us. He could have come by, you know.”
“That’s not his way. You want to watch him. He’s the old style of Quoyle, stealthy in the night. They say there’s a smell that comes off him like rot and cold clay. They say he slept with his wife when she was dead and you smell the desecration coming off him. No woman would have him again. Not a one.”
“Jesus.” Quoyle shuddered. “What do you mean, ‘old style of Quoyle.’ I don’t know the stories.”
“Better you don’t. Omaloor Bay is called after Quoyles. Loonies. They was wild and inbred, half-wits and murderers. Half of them was low-minded. You should have heard Jack on the phone when he got your letter to come to the Gammy Bird. Called up all your references. Man with a bird’s name. Told Jack you was as good as gold, didn’t rave nor murder.”
“Partridge,” said Quoyle.
“We was on pins and needles waiting to see what come in the door. Thought you was going to be a big, wild booger. Big enough, anyway. But you know, the Quoyles only been on the Point there a hundred years or so. Went there in the 1880s or 1890s, dragging that green house miles and miles across the ice, fifty men, a crowd of Quoyles and their cunny kin pulling on the ropes. Dragged it on big runners, spruce poles made into runners. Like a big sled.”