A three-year-old girl in No Name Cove had never learned to walk. But could learn, did learn. Rescuing lost children, showing them ways to grasp life. She squeezed her hands together, showing him that anyone alive could clench possibilities.
What else, he thought, could kindle this heat.
She asked Quoyle for a ride to the library. Friday and Tuesday afternoons the only time it was open. “See, Ken takes me when he can, but he’s fishing now. And I miss my books. I’m the reader. And I read to Herry, just read and read to him. And get for Dad. What he likes. Mountain climbing, hard travels, going down to the Labrador.”
Quoyle got ready Friday morning, put on his good shirt. Cleaned his shoes. Didn’t want to be excited. For God’s sake, giving someone a ride to the library. But he was.
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The library was a renovated old house. Square rooms, the wallpaper painted over in strong pistachio, melon. Homemade shelves around the walls, painted tables.
“There’s a children’s room,” said Wavey. “Your girls might like to have a few books. Sunshine and Bunny.” She said their names tentatively. Her hair combed and plaited; a grey dress with a lace collar. Herry already at the bookshelves, pulling at spines, opening covers into flying fancies.
Quoyle felt fourteen feet wide, a clumsy poisoned pig, and every way he turned his sweater caught on some projecting book. He tumbled humorous essayists, murderers, riders of the purple sage, sermonizing doctors, caught them in midair or not at all. Stupid Quoyle, blushing, in a tiny library on a northern coast. But got into the travel section and found the Erics Newby and Hansen, found Redmond O’Hanlon and Wilfrid Thesiger. Got an armful.
They went back by way of Beety’s kitchen to get his girls. Who didn’t know Wavey.
A ceremonious introduction. “And that’s Herry Prowse. And this is Wavey. Herry’s mother.” Wavey turned around and shook their hands. And Herry shook everyone’s hand, Quoyle’s, his mother’s, both hands at once. His fingers, palms, as hot as a dog’s paws.
“How do you do,” said Wavey. “Oh how do you do, my dears?”
Pulled up in front of Wavey’s house to the promise of tea and cakes. Sunshine and Bunny fighting in the station wagon to see the yard next door, menagerie of painted dogs and roosters, silver geese and spotted cats, a wooden man in checked trousers grasping the hand of a wooden woman. A wind vane that was a yellow dory.
Then Bunny eyed the plywood dog with its bottle-cap collar. Mouth open, fangs within the lips, the nose sniffing the wind.
“Dad.” She gripped Quoyle’s collar. “There’s a white dog.” Whimpered. Quoyle heard her suck in her breath. “A white dog.” And caught the subtle tone, the repetition of the awful words, “white dog.” Then he guessed something. Bunny was inducing a thrill-working herself up. Girl Fears White Dog, Relatives Marvelously Upset.
“Bunny, it’s only a wooden dog. It’s wood and paint, not real.” But she didn’t want to let go of it. Rattled her teeth and whined.
“I guess we’ll come for tea another time,” said Quoyle to Wavey. And to Bunny he gave a stem look. Nearly angry.
“Daddy,” said Sunshine, “where’s their father? Herry and Wavey?”
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On the weekend Quoyle and the aunt patched and painted. Dennis started the studding in the kitchen. Sawdust on everything, boards, two-by-fours stacked on the floor. The aunt scraping another cupboard to bare wood.
Quoyle chopped at his secret path to the shore. Read his books. Played with his daughters. Saw briefly, once, Petal’s vanished face in Sunshine’s look. Pain he thought blunted erupted hot. As though the woman herself had suddenly appeared and disappeared. Of course she had, in a genetic way. He called Sunshine to him, wanted to take her up and press his face against her neck to prolong the quick illusion, but did not. Shook her hand instead, said “How do you do, and how do you do, and how do you do again?” Invoking Wavey, that tall woman. Made himself laugh with the child.
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One Saturday morning Quoyle went in his boat down to No Name Cove for lobsters. Left Bunny raging on the pier.
“I want to come!”
“I’ll give you a ride when I come back.”
Put up with the No Name witticisms over his boat. It was an infamous craft that they said would drown him one time. On the way back he skirted a small iceberg drifting down the bay. Curious about the thing, a lean piece of ice riddled with arches and caves. But as big as a bingo hall.
“More than four hundred icebergs have grounded this year so far,” he told the aunt. He couldn’t get over them. Had never dreamed icebergs would be in his life. “I don’t know where they went ashore, but that’s what they say. There was a bulletin on it yesterday.”
“Did you get the lobsters?”
“Got them from Lud Young. He kept shoving extras in the basket like they were lifesavers. Tried to pay for them but he wouldn’t take it.”
“Season will be over pretty soon, we might as well eat ‘em while we can get ‘em. If he wants to give lobster to you, take them. I remember the Youngs from the old days. Hair hanging down in their eyes. You know, the thing that’s best,” said the aunt, “is the fish here. Wait until the snow crab comes in. Sweetest meat in the world. Now, how do we want to do these lobsters?”
“Boiled.”
“Yes, well. We haven’t had a nice lobster chowder for a while. And there’s advantages to that.” She looked toward the other room where Bunny was hammering. “We won’t have to hear that screeching about ‘red spiders’ and fix her a bowl of cereal. Or I could boil them and pull out all the meat and make lobster rolls. Or how about crêpes rolled up with the meat in a cream sauce inside?”
Quoyle’s mouth was watering. It was the aunt’s old trick, to reel out the names of succulent dishes, then retreat to the simplest dish. Not Partridge’s style.
“Lobster salad is nice, too, but maybe a little light for supper. You know, there’s a way Warren and I used to have it at The Fair Weather Inn on Long Island. The tail meat soaked in saki then cooked with bamboo shoots and water chestnuts and piled into the shells and baked. There was a hot sauce that was out of this world. I can’t get any of those things here. Of course, if we had some shrimp and crabmeat and scallops I could make stuffed lobster tails-same idea, but with white wine and Parmesan cheese. If I could get white wine and Parmesan.”
“I bought cheese. Not Parmesan. It’s just cheese. Cheddar.”
“Well that settles it. Lobster pie.