The Shipping News by Annie Proulx Read Free Book Online Page B

Maybe there’s a provincial park. Maybe there’s a big hotel,” said the aunt. “But how in the world could they make it up from Capsize Cove? That road is all washed out. And Capsize Cove is dead.”
    They noticed sedgy grass in the centerline, a damp sink where a culvert had dropped, and, in the silted shoulders, hoofprints the size of cooking pots.
    “Nobody’s driven this fancy road in a long time.”
    Quoyle stood on the brakes. Warren yelped as she was thrown against the back of the seat. A moose stood broadside, looming; annoyance in its retreat.
    [41] A little after eight they swept around a last corner. The road came to an end in an asphalt parking lot beside a concrete building. The wild barrens pressed all around.
    Quoyle and the aunt got out. Silence, except for the wind sharpening itself on the corner of the building, the gnawing sea. The aunt pointed at cracks in the walls, a few windows up under the eaves. They tried the doors. Metal, and locked.
    “Not a clue,” said the aunt, “whatever it is. Or was.”
    “I don’t know what to make of it,” said Quoyle, “but it all stops here. And the wind’s starting up again.”
    “Oh, without a doubt this building goes with the road. You know,” said the aunt, “if we can scout up something to boil water in, I’ve got some tea bags in my pocketbook. Let’s have a break and think about this. We can use the girls’ soda cans to drink out of. I can’t believe I forgot to get coffee.”
    “I’ve got my camping frying pan with me,” said Quoyle. “Never been used. It was in my sleeping bag. I slept on it all night.”
    “Let’s try it,” said the aunt, gathering dead spruce branches festooned with moss, blasty boughs she called them, and the moss was old man’s whiskers. Remembering the names for things. Heaped the boughs in the lee of the building.
    Quoyle got the water jug from the car. In fifteen minutes they were drinking out of the soda cans, scalding tea that tasted of smoke and orangeade. The aunt drew the sleeve of her sweater down to protect her hand from the hot metal. Fog shuddered against their faces. The aunt’s trouser cuffs snapped in the wind. Ochre brilliance suffused the tattered fog, disclosed the bay, smothered it.
    “Ah!” shouted the aunt pointing into the stirring mist. “ I saw the house . The old windows. Double chimneys. As it always was. Over there! I’m telling you I saw it!”
    Quoyle stared. Saw fog stirring.
    “Right over there. The cove and then the house.” The aunt strode away.
    Bunny got out of the car, still in her sleeping bag, shuffling along over the asphalt. “Is this it?” she said, staring at the concrete wall. “It’s awful. There’s no windows. Where’s my room going to [42] be? Can I have a soda, too? Dad, there’s smoke coming out of the can and coming out of your mouth, too. How do you do that, Daddy?”

    ¯

    Half an hour later they struggled together toward the house, the aunt with Sunshine on her shoulders, Quoyle with Bunny, the dog limping behind. The wind got under the fog, drove it up. Glimpses of the ruffled bay. The aunt pointing, arm like that of the shooting gallery figure with the cigar in its metal hand. In the bay they saw a scallop dragger halfway to the narrows, a wake like the hem of a slip showing behind it.
    Bunny sat on Quoyle’s shoulders, hands clutched under his chin as he stumped through the tuckamore. The house was the green of grass stain, tilted in fog. She endured her father’s hands on her knees, the smell of his same old hair, his rumbles that she weighed a ton, that she choked him. The house rocked with his strides through a pitching ocean of dwarf birch. That color of green made her sick.
    “Be good now,” he said, loosing her fingers. Six years separated her from him, and every day was widening water between her outward-bound boat and the shore that was her father. “Almost there, almost there,” Quoyle panted, pitying horses.
    He set her on the