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

The immense blue fabric of the sea, rumpled and creased.
    â€œLook,” said the aunt. “Fishing skiffs.” Small in the distance. Waves bursting against the headlands. Exploding water.
    â€œI remember a fellow lived in a wrecked fishing boat,” the aunt said. “Old Danny Something-or-other. It was hauled up on the shore far enough out of the storm and he fixed it up. Little chimney sticking up, path with a border of stone. Lived there for years until one day when he was sitting out in front mending net and the rotten hull collapsed and killed him.”
    The highway shriveled to a two-lane road as they drove east, ran under cliffs, passed spruce forest fronted by signs that said NO CUTTING . Quoyle appraised the rare motels they passed with the eye of someone who expected to sleep in one of them.

    The aunt circled Quoyle’s Point on the map. On the west side of Omaloor Bay the point thrust into the ocean like a bent thumb. The house, whether now collapsed, vandalized, burned, carried away in pieces, had been there. Once.
    The bay showed on the map as a chemist’s pale blue flask into which poured ocean. Ships entered the bay through the neck of the flask. On the eastern shore the settlement of Flour Sack Cove, three miles farther down the town of Killick-Claw, and along the bottom, odds and ends of coves. The aunt rummaged in 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.
    â€œYour 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.”
    â€œHow 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.
    â€œCan you tell us where the road to Capsize Cove is?”
    Unsmiling. Swallowed before answering.
    â€œBe’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.
    â€œAunt, I don’t think I can drive on this. It doesn’t look like it goes anywhere.”
    â€œThere’s tire tracks on it,” she said, pointing to cleated treadmarks. Quoyle turned onto the sumpy road. Churned mud. The tire marks disappeared. Must have