The Shipping News: Chapter 37: Slingstones Summary & Analysis

One cold, late-winter day, Quoyle arrives at the Gammy Bird office to learn that the school principal called. Bunny is in trouble; at recess, she shoved a teacher to the ground. The principal threatens to suspend Bunny until she explains her actions and apologizes. Bunny refuses. Quoyle takes her to Beety’s and soon enough, Beety has learned the whole story. The teacher was acting as a substitute in Herry’s class and when he asked to go inside at recess—he needed to pee—she couldn’t or wouldn’t understand. She made him stand against the wall as punishment for fidgeting. When he wet his pants, Bunny came in like an “avenging angel”. When Quoyle tells Agnis, she’s so enraged that she flies up from St. John’s to help him set things straight with the school.

The next time Quoyle, Wavey, Bunny, Sunshine, and Herry drive out to the Yarks’ house, Wavey gives Bunny a silent thank you with a meaningful glance and a pressed hand. Wavey and Evvie work on a hooked rug in the house while Alvin and Quoyle work on the boat. Alvin wants to know when Quoyle and Wavey will get married. Quoyle hesitates. He doesn’t think he loves Wavey because their relationship feels so different than his one with Petal. He associates love with suffering. But he doesn’t tell Alvin that. Instead, he brings up Herold. Alvin sets the record straight. Herold was a terrible womanizer who treated Wavey badly. It wasn’t all bad when he died.  

In March, Jack goes seal hunting, an ancient livelihood endangered by public outrage after pictures of clubbed and bloody seals were splashed across newspapers worldwide by environmental activists. It’s still an art that Jack relishes, despite the danger of trusting one’s life to unstable ice floes. He catches a seal and expertly processes it right on the ice.

Ken goes sealing too, so Wavey shows up in Quoyle’s kitchen one night with a gift of seal-flipper pie. She doesn’t stay to eat it. But then later, after Bunny and Sunshine are in bed, she unexpectedly reappears, intent on spending the night with Quoyle. A few days later, he tells her about Petal’s cruelty and her boyfriends. Wavey tells Quoyle about Herold. They were both wounded by spouses who treated them like garbage and made them feel that they never deserved any better. But now, they are both realizing that that’s not true.

When he’s not working on his stories, Benny Fudge sits at his desk in the Gammy Bird office and knits up a storm. This surprises Quoyle, but Billy explains that many Newfoundland men knit. It’s a sibling skill to net-mending. Then, Billy tells Quoyle a protracted and painfully bad joke about a Newfoundland truck driver who allegedly stuck his arms through the steering wheel and knit while driving.

After seal season, Jack starts fishing for herring. Quoyle loves herring. One day, while he’s grilling some for a picnic with Wavey, Bunny, Sunshine, and Herry—who has started to call Quoyle “Dad” just like his daughters do—Bunny finds a dead bird. She shows it to Wavey, who simply says it’s dead—not asleep, not in heaven—and sets it aside on a rock. 

When the herring disappear, Jack starts overhauling his lobster pots. Dennis, Billy and Quoyle help. Billy wishes he could go lobster fishing, but it’s impossible to get a license any longer. Dennis wants to go, too, but Jack is intent on keeping him safe ashore. Soon, Agnis will be back from St. John’s and Quoyle thinks they can have a lobster boil to celebrate. In the corner of Jack’s fishing shack, Quoyle notices a pile of stones. Slingstones, Jack says, for anchoring the pots.