The Shipbuilder of Bellfairie Page 12

  “Okay. Sunday it is. We’ll come by Saturday afternoon, and get her to the dock so ya got a early start. I ain’t gonna lie, it’s gonna cost ya.”

  “Yes, all right.”

  “I should stop by. See what it is we’re dealing with.”

  “All right.”

  “You don’t gotta be there. Jesus. It’s been a hell of a long time since we had a launch.”

  In spite of its proximity to the sea, ship building was not a part of the local economy. Most Bellfairians had neither the money nor leisure necessary for such an endeavor. Quark had only one memory of a boat launch when he was quite young. Had the dead girl ever experienced a party? It made him feel sad to think she had not. He wondered if this sorrow redeemed him. Deep in rumination, he realized Riddle had asked a question.

  “I’m afraid I did not hear you.”

  “Her name. What’s her name?”

  “Oh. Phoebe.”

  “Fuck it is. I ain’t gonna have nothing to do with that. You can’t name her after a dead girl. She’ll go down for sure. Jesus Christ Quark, you ain’t changed at all, have you?”

  He had changed quite a bit, however. He knew he didn’t have to stand there and be insulted, for instance, the way he believed he had to when he was a boy. “I’m afraid there has been a misunderstanding. I thought you were enquiring about the girl’s name. The ship does not yet have a name.”

  “Yah? Well, you better get ‘er one. A nameless ship is a coffin.”

  “Yes, all right.”

  “Might wanna sleep on her a few nights, you know? Some say that’s the best way to get to know her.”

  “Hmmmmm.” Quark hoped to convey interest without outright lying. Why would he abandon his comfortable bed for hard wood on a cold night?

  “Don’t worry about making a big fancy feast or nothin.”

  “I appreciate that, I—”

  “Me and my boys are perfectly happy with a good ol’ fish boil or a pig roast. Nothing fancy.”

  “Yes. Well. All right.”

  After hanging up, Quark wondered if he was actually expected to feed his old tormentor. It seemed like more than he could do. A cruel joke. Would Thayer have sacrificed so much on Quark’s behalf?

  Determined to make all the arrangements in one fortunate hour Quark searched again through the phone book, finally locating the number for Sushi’s, but got a recording saying it had been disconnected, which he found upsetting until he remembered it wasn’t really Sushi’s any longer, though that was the name on the sign and what everyone called it. Even if he could find the correct number, Quark realized, it probably wasn’t the best time to call. Everyone who worked there seemed so upset about the girl. He wondered if she had been nicer to them than she had been to him.

  His hope of settling all his business in one fortunate hour—or day—dashed, Quark decided to use his good spirits to help him cross more tasks off his to-do list. It was irritating how much useless stuff Thayer had saved, stashed in closets, cupboards and drawers, junk Quark had no attachment to until confronted with the choice between bin for saving or bin for resale. He found a small roll of flowered wallpaper tucked in a back corner of the bedroom closet, which he guessed belonged to his grandmother or mother. The print was pretty. Tiny yellow blossoms with white centers on a pale blue background. What would his life have been like if he’d lived in a home of walls camouflaged with flowers, rather than the weathered boards of a doomed ship? There was barely enough of it to cover a book, Quark thought, remembering how he’d folded paper bags for his school texts when he was young and, just like that, he smelled the waxy scent of crayons, as if he’d fallen through time and space the way the Old Man had—trapped between life and death—though Quark was just trapped. He tossed the wallpaper in the bin for resale.

  He did not need stubby pencils, rolls of string, old plastic bags, or sheets of wrinkled aluminum foil. He did keep the small piece of scrimshaw however, a whale’s tooth delicately engraved with roses twined around its circumference. He wondered who had carved it. A man of the sea, that was certain, yet someone with whom he shared some affinity.

  It was a shock to find the mask of the horned beast that used to terrorize him every Christmas, the old tradition preserved in Bellfairie even as surrounding counties were visited by a kindly Santa Claus. Of course, Quark knew there was no such creature. He had forgotten about it for decades, he thought, standing in the closet, holding its monstrous face in his hands.

  How he used to tremble, spying over the edge of his blanket as the thing shuffled into the dark room to hang a stocking from the bedpost; not daring to move until he heard the back door slam shut then rushing to his window to watch the beast—hunched beneath its cape and the tattered sack it carried over its shoulder—stop in the yard to face the house, its paw raised. For years, Quark ducked, and scampered back to bed, shivering in cold excitement, measuring terror against anticipation until the latter won out, only then raiding his stocking filled with peppermint sticks, gingerbread men, acorns, chocolate swans, an apple, once a small knife and, later, bones.

  Eventually the time came when he no longer cowered at the creature paused beneath the winter moon and, when it waved, Quark raised his own hand in response, surprised that the terrifying thing lifted one bent knee high, and then the other, in a little beastly dance.

  Quark stared at the mask with the unoccupied holes for eyes, feeling the same sense of dislocation he’d felt all those years ago, trying to understand the correlation between beast, and dancer.

  What would have happened to me, Quark wondered, if not for the Old Man who had given the last decades of his life to raise a child not his own?

  Quark set the mask in the bin for saving, moving the small roll of wallpaper to cover the eye sockets along with some rope from those long afternoons of knot-tying lessons. He was not blind to the folly of his choice, but tried to be kind to himself. After all, he was in mourning, doing the best he could with the greatest loss of his life. What was it everyone kept saying? Grief is a ship without a captain? Yes, that was right.

  He didn’t generally enjoy cooking, and mostly considered it a necessary task best performed with efficiency: a can of beans, rice or yams, toast smeared with peanut butter, but that evening Quark diced six russet potatoes tossed in oil until they glistened, and the salt and pepper stuck, then spread them across the least objectionable looking pan to roast beside tofu cut in slabs and seasoned.

  After dinner he sat in the old chair with the library book he’d set aside for far too long, reading with great sympathy for the poor, nameless creature until his eyes drooped and—though he revived himself to continue—became heavy again.

  He dressed in the Old Man’s flannel pajamas which were too small, though Quark appreciated that the material was soft against his dry skin. Brushing his teeth, he caught his reflection in the mirror, his long arms stuck out from the sleeves like the creature who had pilloried Frankenstein’s wardrobe, so unloved no one had bothered to clothe him, or even give him a name. He rinsed the toothbrush, placed it on the medicine cabinet shelf and turned off the light, his lips pursed, returned to the childhood pursuit of whistling, though only able to produce a small sound like a leak, abruptly abandoned as he stepped out of the bathroom into a room of floating color.

  He knew immediately what it was. How could he have ever forgotten the bloom of the Aurora borealis? It couldn’t have happened often, but he thought it happened more than once, watching the show with the Old Man then pretending to fall asleep so he could savor the sensation of being held close to Thayer’s beating heart as he carried Quark back into the house, up the stairs to tuck into bed.

  He laced on his shoes, pulled the blanket into a ball beneath his arm, grabbed the limp feather pillow, hurrying, worried it would be over before he got outside.

  It wasn’t. He climbed the ship’s ladder beneath arcs of green and pink, so cold when he lay down he didn’t think he’d stay long. Soon enough, mesmerized by the streamers and ri
ppled curtains of light, he found himself thrusting his arm up, as though to pluck lights from the sky. This was his father’s country. Not the one who raised him, but the one who named him; overhead all that time. My sky, Quark thought. Not sea, but sky.

  Bellfairians said the Aurora borealis was the spirits of the dead so far removed from human form all that remained was luminescence. Quark knew the color was not benevolence, merely a collision of electrically charged particles, and yet, when he heard the noise, felt like that boy again, the one who believed in a world beyond the material. They said sometimes you could hear the lights. He never had, not before that night when the crackling sound—like the first sparks of a campfire—grew into applause. Was it true? Was it possible all those years when he’d felt so alone, they had been there, watching over him, rooting for him, and waiting for his return?

  21

  Quark couldn’t remember when he’d slept so well. He lay, staring at the clouds. He could have been anywhere; even the sea with her reported charms intact though, just thinking about it made him feel a little nauseous right there, in the landlocked safety of the ship.

  “Time to steer my own passage,” he whispered, in case anyone was listening. The words did not bring the relief he expected. Yes, he was eager to be rid of the Old Man, but that didn’t mean he wanted to be alone. He had not expected that the promise of freedom would leave him feeling so unmoored.

  Maybe he was doing it all wrong. Perhaps he should have a traditional funeral, bury Thayer and order a headstone engraved with a loving phrase.

  Yet, as soon as the notion was formed, Quark rejected it. How angry the Old Man would be if anchored to the ground for all eternity. Just the thought of such a betrayal incited a violent shiver.

  Quark decided to have a box built. Not a casket, but a ditty box, the kind sailors made to carry small things that were precious to them. Inside of it he would place mementos of Thayer’s life: a knotted rope, a whiskey tumbler or coffee mug, a sprinkling of the shards of glass he’d found in an old pickle jar on the kitchen counter beside a note scratched in pencil. “In case you need it.” He could bury the box, and visit the Old Man without fear of retribution. Quark knew others considered cemeteries bleak, but he fondly recalled playing amongst the tombstones, the sense he’d enjoyed then of the sky as both vast and close. The more he thought about it, the more he liked the idea.

  He went inside to prepare his coffee, which he drank in the comfort of the old chair, watching the morning light change from diaphanous to bright. Perhaps he would not sell the house, after all. He couldn’t stay, of course. He had obligations and a life for himself away from there, but for the first time it occurred to him that Bellfairie might be a place he’d like to return to. Maybe it had been a child’s logic to believe good and bad memories must be sorted, as though one contaminated the other. Maybe he could live with both.

  Since he had errands to do anyway, he decided to stop at Sushi’s. Killing two birds with one stone, he thought then winced. Why did such phrases persist? Why wasn’t there a saying like “plucking two flowers with one hand” or “calling two birds with a single song?” He shook his head at the inscrutable cruelty of the world, only drawn to stop when he heard someone whisper his name which, upon further consideration, he decided had merely been his stomach growling.

  Won’t be long now, Quark thought as he walked into town, his hat tilted jauntily on his head, once more in pursuit of whistling, his lips fixed in the shape of a kiss, undeterred by the stares of others who—he assumed—were fascinated by his good spirits, the way he had always been enchanted by signs of happiness in others.

  He noticed the usual group of teenage boys congregated in front of “Fran’s Bait and Floral.” They had taunted Quark with the old nickname for weeks, but he would no longer be shamed. Whether they knew it or not, the moniker was a compliment. What could be more admirable than to be called a creator? Thinking about their folly caused Quark to chuckle as he passed them and the glaring boys said nothing, though their silence, and the way they turned in eerie unison, reminded him of requiem sharks.

  “I’ll become a shark,” the Old Man used to say. “When my time comes, throw me overboard. Why are you making that face? Shows what you know. We are not Barbarians, wasting our dead by putting them in the ground. When I go, take me home.”

  “Not long now,” Quark whispered to the Old Man, wherever he might be, lodged in the past or hovering overhead. “Soon you will go to your watery grave.”

  Unfortunately, the harmless rejoinder landed on Mrs. Neller’s ancient ears. Not usually disposed to acute hearing, something in that day—the course of wind, or the wicked remains of some spirit—caused her to catch every syllable Quark muttered as he passed on the narrow sidewalk. She brought her hands, still clutching the bouquet of baby’s breath she’d purchased for the dead girl, over her heart. Later, she reported that when he tipped his ridiculous hat in her direction she felt as though she was being mocked by death, himself.

  Quark continued, arms swinging and lips pursed until he encountered the weeping girls huddled in front of Sushi’s, which struck him as problematic. His chief concern was not with the location of their grief, but the delicate matter of making his way to the door. When they saw him, however, they broke apart as if gunshot. He was still pondering their confusing behavior as he stepped into the diner. Had it been his ineffective whistling that disturbed them? Did they think he was drinking again, like the Old Man, never able to fully recover sobriety?

  Quark quickly found a seat at the counter, picked up a menu, and peeked over the ketchup-stained rim to observe. Dory passed by several times without comment before pausing long enough to pour his coffee, the pot held at a listless tilt she didn’t appear aware of until, just as he thought to warn against a spill, she righted it and continued on her shuffling way, returning shortly after to slide a plate against the menu until he set it aside. Pleased to discover his usual number five, which he had no memory of ordering, Quark tried to convince himself the sauce was not bitter, the oysters not gritty, the waffle not undercooked, but it was all a lie.

  When Dory placed the tab beside his plate—for an order of eggs with potatoes and toast—it took Quark several minutes to get her attention. He explained the problem, but she appeared to be staring into the deep as he segued into an inquiry about catering options.

  “You having a party?”

  “Yes, yes,” he said, nodding vigorously. Who knows, he thought, maybe this would be just the first of many such celebratory occasions.

  “When? When is this party?”

  “You’re invited, of course. Saturday. Saturday evening.”

  Dory suddenly possessed the same cold eyes within an immobile countenance that signified a violent change in Thayer’s temper, though when she spoke her voice was so soft Quark had to tilt his head to hear. She scolded him for being callous and clueless, which confused him so thoroughly he began to suspect she was right. When she called him hulking, he sat back. What did his posture have to do with anything?

  “Don’t you ever think about anyone but yourself? What would ever possess you to throw a party on the same day as Phoebe’s funeral? Are you nuts or just stupid, anyway?”

  Quark slammed his hands on the counter, so hard his palms burned. He observed, as if outside himself and not in any way responsible, Dory’s eyes widen as she stepped back, but he could not stop.

  “I am not stupid! I am not stupid! I am not stupid!”

  He became dimly aware of children with faces buried into protective sleeves and tucked against parental chests, forks stopped mid-air, salt shakers held like lanterns against a storm, everyone paused. He wished to be equally paralyzed, yet found himself tapping his chest, stuck in replay. “I am not stupid. I am not stupid. I am not stupid,” until his voice lost vigor, and Chef, who had come out of the kitchen with a meat cleaver, gently ushered him towards the exit.

  Aware he was being watched, Quark whispered, “I cannot leave. I have not yet p
aid my bill.”

  “We’ll put it on your tab. You can take care of it next time.”

  “I also have to make arrangements for Saturday evening. Nothing extravagant. Some fish, some potatoes. Coleslaw might be nice.”

  “You having a party?”

  He stared into Chef’s dark eyes, like two currants in a hot cross bun, Quark thought, and felt ashamed for the meanness of his mind. “It is not a party. It is a funeral. For my…for Thayer. Will you please tell her?”

  “What’s that?”

  “Will you explain to Dory? It’s not a party.”

  Chef nodded then guided Quark out the door where he stood alone and embarrassed, replaying everything until he arrived at the point of his distress and, once again, tapped his chest. Turning to go back to explain, he almost stumbled into Henry Yarly. The elderly man stepped nimbly aside as was later reported by several patrons who observed the exchange through the large window while they drank their coffee and buttered their biscuits.

  “I am very sorry,” Quark said. “I did not notice your approach.”

  “That’s all right, son. Nothing to be upset about. I’m surprised to see you. Heard you’d left a while ago.”

  Quark, who did not enjoy small talk, even on a good day, would have liked to tip his hat and go on his way but didn’t want to be unkind to Yarly who had been a friend to the Old Man.

  “I want to thank you. For everything you did for…for Thayer.”

  “You don’t have to thank me, son. I enjoyed his company. I’m going to miss him and his stories. No one could tell one like he could, I suppose I don’t have to say. No one could make me laugh like him! Now, you just take it easy. Don’t get worked up. It’s just the natural course. You remember what he said about your name?”

  Quark didn’t think it was necessary to respond, but Yarly waited as if the question were sincere.