The Shipping News by Annie Proulx Read Free Book Online

her black flapjack handbag for a brochure. Read aloud the charms of Killick-Claw, statistics of its government wharf, fish plant, freight terminal, restaurants. Population, two thousand. Potential unlimited.
    “Your new job’s in Flour Sack Cove, eh? That’s right across from Quoyle’s Point. Looks about two miles by water. And a long trip by road. Used to be a ferry run from Capsize Cove to Killick Claw every morning and night. But I guess it’s closed down now. If you had a boat and a motor you could do it yourself.”
    [37] “How do we get out to Quoyle’s Point?” he asked.
    There was a road off the main highway, the aunt said, that showed as a dotted line on the map. Quoyle didn’t like the look of the dotted line roads they passed. Gravel, mud, washboard going nowhere.
    They missed the turnoff, drove until they saw gas pumps. A sign. IGS STORE . The store in a house. Dark room. Behind the counter they could see a kitchen, teakettle spitting on the stove. Bunny heard television laughter.
    Waiting for someone to appear, Quoyle examined bear-paw snowshoes. Walked around, looking at the homemade shelves, open boxes of skinning knives, needles for mending net, cones of line, rubber gloves, potted meats, a pile of adventure videos. Bunny peered through the freezer door at papillose frost crowding the ice cream tubs.
    A man, sedge-grass hair sticking out from a cap embroidered with the name of a French bicycle manufacturer, came from the kitchen; chewed something gristly. Trousers a sullen crookedness of wool. The aunt talked. Quoyle modeled a sealskin hat for his children, helped them choose dolls made from clothespins. Inked faces smiled from the heads.
    “Can you tell us where the road to Capsize Cove is?”
    Unsmiling. Swallowed before answering.
    “Be’ind you aways. Like just peasin’ out of the main road. On a right as you go back. Not much in there now.” He looked away. His Adam’s apple a hairy mound in his neck like some strange sexual organ.
    Quoyle at a rack of comic books, studied a gangster firing a laser gun at a trussed woman. The gangsters always wore green suits. He paid for the dolls. The man’s fingers dropped cold dimes.

    ¯

    Up and down the highway three times before they spied a ruvid strip tilting away into the sky.
    “Aunt, I don’t think I can drive on this. It doesn’t look like it goes anywhere.”
    “There’s tire tracks on it,” she said, pointing to cleated tread [38] marks. Quoyle turned onto the sumpy road. Churned mud. The tire marks disappeared. Must have turned around, thought Quoyle, wanting to do the same and try tomorrow. Or had dropped in a bottomless hole.
    “When are we gonna get there?” said Bunny, kicking the back of the seat. “I’m tired of going somewhere. I want to be there. I want to put on my bathing suit and play on the beach.”
    “Me too.” Both throwing themselves rhythmically against the seat.
    “It’s too cold. Only polar bears go swimming now. But you can throw stones in the water. On the map, Aunt, how long is this road?” Hands ached from days of clenching.
    She breathed over the map awhile. “From the main road to Capsize Cove is seventeen miles.”
    “Seventeen miles of this!”
    “And then,” as if he hadn’t spoken, “eleven more to Quoyle’s Point. To the house. Whatever’s left of it. They show this road on the map, but in the old days it wasn’t there. There was a footpath. See, folks didn’t drive, nobody had cars then. Go places in the boat. Nobody had a car or truck. That paved main highway we come up on is all new.” Yet the signature of rock written against the horizon in a heavy hand; unchanged, unchanging.
    “Hope we don’t get to Capsize Cove and discover we’ve got an eleven-mile hike in front of us.” The rasp of his nylon sleeve on the wheel.
    “We might. Then we’ll just turn around.” Her expression was remote. The bay seemed to be coming out of her mind, a blue hallucination.
    Quoyle and the road