The Shipping News   ::   Proulx E. Annie

Besides, if you look at the departed you’ll never be troubled by the memory. It’s well-known.”

And so Quoyle agreed. And promised not to say that Jack was sleeping. And he would come along and get them all in the station wagon. In about fifteen minutes.

¯



The verge of the road crowded with cars and trucks. They had to park far back and walk to the house, toward a roar of voices that carried a hundred feet. A line of people filed through the parlor where, among lace whirligigs, Jack’s coffin rested on black-draped sawhorses. They sidled in, edging through the crowd to the parlor. Quoyle held Bunny’s hand, carried Sunshine. Jack like a photograph of himself, waxy in his unfamiliar suit. His eyelids violet. Actually, thought Quoyle, he did look like he was sleeping. Had to jerk Bunny away.

Joined the line sifting into the kitchen where there were cakes and braided breads, the steaming kettle, a row of whiskey bottles and small glasses. The talk rose, it was of Jack. The things he had done or might have done.

Billy Pretty speaking, a glass in his hand. His face gone blood-red with whiskey and the words tumbling out in ecstatic declamation, tossing in the lop of his own talk. “You all know we are only passing by. We only walk over these stones a few times, our boats float a little while and then they have to sink. The water is a dark flower and a fisherman is a bee in the heart of her.”

Dennis in a serge suit with flared cuffs and Beety with her hand on Mrs. Buggit’s trembling shoulder. A collar of heavy lace imprinting the black silk. Dennis rummaged through boxes and drawers, looking for Jack’s lodge pin. Which was missing, had been missing for years. Now it was needed.

Children played outside. Quoyle could see Marty in the yard throwing crusts to hens. But Bunny would not go to her, eeled back into the parlor and took up a station beside the coffin.

“I’ll get her,” said Wavey. For the child’s staring was unnatural. While Dennis showed his mother the pin, found in a cup on the top shelf of the pantry. An enameled wreath and the initial R. She took it, rose and moved slowly toward the parlor. To pin it in Jack’s lapel. The final touch. Leaned over her dead husband. The pin point shook as she tried to pierce the fabric. A respectful silence from the watching mourners. Sudden sobbing from Beety. Wavey tugged Bunny’s hand gently. A fixed gaze on the corpse. She would not come, yanked her hand away.

A cough like an old engine starting up. Mrs. Buggit dropped the pin into the satin, turned and gripped Dennis’s arm. Her throat frozen, eyes like wooden drawer knobs. Wavey seized Bunny away. Dennis it was who shouted.

“Dad’s come back to life!”

And lurched to help his father get his shoulders out of the coffin’s wedge. A roar and screaming. Some stumbled back, some surged forward. Quoyle pushed from the kitchen, saw a knot of arms reaching to help grey Jack back to the present, water dribbling from his mouth with each wrack of his chest. And across the room heard Bunny shout “He woke up!”

¯



Quoyle drove shaky Dennis to the hospital through the fog, followed the ambulance. They could see Mrs. Buggit’s profile in the howling vehicle. Behind them the whiskey was going fast, there was an immense babble of disbelief and cries of holy miracle. To Quoyle Dennis repeated all that had happened, what he thought, what he felt, what he saw, what the ambulance doctor said as though Quoyle had missed it.

“They says they’s worried about pneumonia! And brain damage! But I’m not!” Dennis, laughing, pounding the car seat, saying follow that ambulance, his hands full of papers that he’d grabbed up somewhere. He talked like a windmill in high-pitched, whirling sentences. Rustling and sorting papers as they drove. Punching Quoyle’s shoulder.

“There he is, struggling to sit up. He’s wedged in pretty good. Gets half up and looks at us. He coughs again. The water fairly squirts out of him. Can’t talk at all. But seems to know where he is. The doctor comes with the rig there says he’ll probably make it, tough as he is. Says it’s kids usually that survives immersion. Adults is rare. But they don’t know Dad. See, it’s the cold of the water shuts down the system and the heart beats very slow. For a while. Doctor says he couldn’t have been in the water long. Says he bets he’ll make it. And Mother! The first thing she says when she could talk, she says, ‘Dennis found your lodge pin, Jack. That’s been missing so long.’ ”

Quoyle saw it on the front page, knocking everything else sky-high. Dennis dropped papers on the floor of the car.

“Slow down, I gots to get these in order.”

“What are they?”

“For Dad to sign. His lobster license. Sign it over to me. They’s taking some beauties now.”

¯



Wavey sat with Bunny on the edge of the bed in the Buggit’s spare room, where Quoyle had slept with hot-water bottles.

“Look,” said Wavey. “Do you remember that dead bird you found down by the shore a few weeks ago? When Dad cooked the herring?” For they were all calling him “Dad.”

“Yes.” Bunny’s fingers working at the bedspread.

“That bird was dead, not sleeping. Remember, you looked at it and every time it was the same? Dead. When something is dead it can never wake up. It is not sleeping. Goes for dead people, too.”

“Uncle Jack was dead and he woke up.”

“He wasn’t really dead, then. They made a mistake. Thought he was dead. Wouldn’t be the first time it happened. Happened to a boy when I was in school. Eddie Bunt. They thought he was drowned. He was like in a coma.”

“What is a coma?”

“Well, it’s where you’re unconscious, but you’re not dead and you’re not asleep. Something in your body or head is hurt and the body just waits for a while until it gets good enough to wake up. It’s like when your dad starts the car in the morning and lets it warm up. It’s running, but it’s not going anywhere.”

“Then Petal is in a coma. She’s sleeping, Dad says, and can’t wake up.”

“Bunny, I’m going to tell you something straight. Petal is dead, she is not in a coma. She is not sleeping. Your dad said that so you and Sunshine wouldn’t be too sad. He was trying to be gentle.”

“She could be in a coma. Maybe they made a mistake like Uncle Jack.”

“Oh Bunny, I’m sorry to say it but she is really and truly dead. Like the little bird was dead because its neck was broken. Some hurts are so bad they can’t get better.”

“Was Petal’s neck broken?”

“Yes. Her neck was broken.