The Shipping News by Annie Proulx Page B

here,” she said. “Born in this house.” Other rites had occurred here as well.
    â€œMe too,” said Sunshine, blowing at a mosquito on her hand. Bunny slapped at it. Harder than necessary.
    â€œNo 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.”
    â€œIt’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?”
    â€œI wanna see it,” said Sunshine. “I can’t see it. I can’t SEE it.”
    â€œYou 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.

    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 and hopeless.
    â€œThat’s one more dollar for me!” shrieked Bunny, whirling on gritty floor. But through the windows the cool plain of sea.
    Quoyle went back out. The wind as sweet in his nose as spring water in a thirsty mouth. The aunt coughing and half-crying inside.
    â€œThere’s the table, the blessed table, the old chairs, the stove is here, oh my lord, there’s the broom on the wall where it always hung,” and she seized the wooden handle. The rotted knot burst, straws shot out of the binding wire and the aunt held a stick. She saw the stovepipe was rusted through, the table on ruined legs, the chairs unfit.
    â€œNeeds a good scurrifunging. What mother always said.”
    Now she roved the rooms, turned over pictures that spit broken glass. Held up a memorial photograph of a dead woman, eyes half open, wrists bound with strips of white cloth. The wasted body lay on the kitchen table, coffin against the wall.
    â€œAunt Eltie. She died of TB.” Held up another of a fat woman grasping a hen.
    â€œAuntie Pinkie. She was so stout she couldn’t get down to the chamber pot and had to set it on the bed before she could pee.”
    Square rooms, lofty ceilings. Light dribbled like water through a hundred sparkling holes in the roof, caught on splinters. This bedroom. Where she knew the pattern of cracks on the ceiling better than any other fact in her life. Couldn’t bear to look. Downstairs again she touched a paint-slobbered chair, saw the foot knobs on the front legs worn to rinds. The floorboards slanted under her feet, wood as bare as skin. A rock smoothed by the sea for doorstop. And three lucky stones strung on a wire to keep the house safe.

    Outside, an hour later, Quoyle at his fire, the aunt taking things out of the food box; eggs, a crushed bag of bread, butter, jam. Sunshine crowded against the aunt, her hands following, seizing packets. The child unwrapped the butter,