The Shipping News by Annie Proulx

ground. She ran with Sunshine up and down the curve of rock. The house threw their voices back at them, hollow and unfamiliar.
    The gaunt building stood on rock. The distinctive feature was a window flanked by two smaller ones, as an adult might stand with protective arms around children’s shoulders. Fan lights over the door. Quoyle noticed half the panes were gone. Paint flaked from wood. Holes in the roof. The bay rolled and rolled.
    “Miracle it’s standing. That roofline is as straight as a ruler,” the aunt said. Trembling.
    “Let’s see how it is inside,” said Quoyle. “For all we know the floors have fallen into the cellar.”
    The aunt laughed. “Not likely,” she shouted joyfully. “There isn’t any cellar.” The house was lashed with cable to iron rings set [43] in the rock. Streaks of rust, notched footholds in the stone like steps, crevices deep enough to hide a child. The cables bristled with broken wires.
    “Top of the rock not quite level,” the aunt said, her sentences flying out like ribbons on a pole. “Before my time, but they said it rocked in storms like a big rocking chair, back and forth. Made the women sick, afraid, so they lashed it down and it doesn’t move an inch but the wind singing through those cables makes a noise you don’t forget. Oh, do I remember it in the winter storms. Like a moaning.” For the house was garlanded with wind. “That’s one reason I was glad when we moved over to Capsize Cove. There was a store at Capsize and that was a big thing. But then we shifted down the coast to Catspaw, and a year later we were off to the States.” Told herself to calm down.
    Rusted twenty-penny nails; planks over the ground-floor windows. Quoyle hooked his fingers under the window planks and heaved. Like pulling on the edge of the world.
    “There’s a hammer in the car,” he said. “Under the seat. Maybe a pry bar. I’ll go back and get them. And the food. We can make a picnic breakfast.”
    The aunt was remembering a hundred things. “I was born here,” she said. “Born in this house.” Other rites had occurred here as well.
    “Me too,” said Sunshine, blowing at a mosquito on her hand. Bunny slapped at it. Harder than necessary.
    “No you weren’t. You were born in Mockingburg, New York. There’s smoke over there,” she said, looking across the bay. “Something’s on fire.”
    “It’s chimney smoke from the houses in Killick-Claw. They’re cooking their breakfasts over there. Porridge and hotcakes. See the fishing boat out in the middle of the bay? See it going along?”
    “I wanna see it,” said Sunshine. “I can’t see it. I can’t SEE it.”
    “You stop that howling or you’ll see your bottom warmed,” said the aunt. Face red in the wind.
    Quoyle remembered himself crying “I can’t see it,” to a math teacher who turned away, gave no answers. The fog tore apart, light charged the sea like blue neon.

    ¯

    [44] The wood, hardened by time and corroding weather, clenched the nails fast. They came out crying. He wrenched the latch but could not open the door until he worked the tire iron into the crack and forced it.
    Dark except for the blinding rectangle streaming through the open door. Echo of boards dropping on rock. Light shot through glass in slices, landed on the dusty floors like strips of yellow canvas. The children ran in and out the door, afraid to go into the gloom alone, shrieking as Quoyle, levering boards outside, gave ghostly laughs and moans, “Huu huu huu.”
    Then inside, the aunt climbing the funneled stairs, Quoyle testing floorboards, saying be careful, be careful. Dust charged the air and they were all sneezing. Cold, must; canted doors on loose hinges. The stair treads concave from a thousand shuffling climbs and descents. Wallpaper poured backwards off the walls. In the attic a featherbed leaking bird down, ticking mapped with stains. The children rushed from room to room. Even when fresh the rooms must have been mean