The Shipping News (26 page)

SOMETIMES Tert Card blew everybody out of the place. It was a hot, windless noon hour like a slot between two warring weather systems. They squeezed into Billy's truck, off to the Fisherman's Chance in Killick-Claw for fish and chips, escaped and away from Tert Card who scratched with both hands. Who had the itch in his armpits.

They sat on the public wharf eating out of Styrofoam boxes, stunned by the heat. Quoyle breathed through his mouth, squinted against dazzle. Although Billy Pretty warned, pointed to the northeast horizon at violet clouds pulled from a point as a silk scarf is pulled from a wedding ring. In the southwest they saw rival billows in fantastic patterns, as though a paper marbler had worked through
them with his combs making French curls, cascades and winged nonpareil fountains.

“This week I've the most sexual abuse stories I've ever had,” said Nutbeem. “Jack ought to be happy. Seven of them. The usual yaffle of disgusting old dads having it on with their kiddies, one more priest feeling up the choirboys, a nice neighborly uncle over in Stribbins Cove who gives the girls rides to Sunday School and buys them sweets if they pull down their knickers for him. One was a bit unusual—gives you a glimpse into the darker side of the Newfoundland character. This lad was a bouncer at a bar down in Misky Bay, tried to throw out some drunk. But the drunk went to his truck, got a tomcod from the ice chest in the back, into the bar again, overpowered the bouncer, ripped his trousers stem to stern and sexually assaulted him with the tomcod.” Nutbeem did not laugh.

“What's a tomcod?” asked Quoyle.

Billy leaned against a piling, yawned. “Small one, boy. Small cod. You got your tomcod, your salt cod, your rounders . . . Any way you want to call it, it's fish.”

Gazed at the advancing clouds. Tendrils snaking into open blue.

“ ‘Tis a strange time, strange weather. Remember we had a yellow day on Monday—the sky cast was an ugly yellow like a jar of old piss. Then yesterday, blue mist and blasting fog. Cap it off, my sister's youngest boy called up from St. John's, said there was a fall of frozen ducks on Water Street, eight or ten of them, feathers all on, eyes closed like they was dreaming, froze hard as polar cap ice. When that happens, look out, boys. Like the story I got yesterday over the phone. Same place as Nutbeem's tomcod, Misky Bay. Oh, Misky Bay is going through some kind of band of astral influence. Wouldn't be surprised to hear if they hadn't had a fall of frozen ducks down there, too.”

“Give us the story,” said Nutbeem, coughing into his pipe.

“Not much of a story, but it shows the feeling that's took hold of Misky Bay. I wouldn't go down there—as I get it from the Mounties a mother of three children went at her grandmother with
a metal towel rack, laced her up something shocking, then set fire to the house. They got ‘em out, but the poor old lady was bloody as a skinned seal and burned all up and down. And, in the kitchen, the fire volunteers finds a treasure trove. In a bucket under the sink is three hundred dollars worth of religious jewelry shoplifted from Woolworth's over the past year. Each says the other done it.”

“I didn't get any car wrecks this week.” Quoyle, still thinking of the one in his mind. A breeze ruffled the bay, died.

“Of course,” said Nutbeem, “never rains but it floods the cellar. I've got these tremendously nasty sexual assaults, but I've also got my best foreign news story—the Lesbian Vampire Trial's over. Just heard it on the shortwave this morning.”

“Good,” said Quoyle. “Maybe Jack will give up the car wreck for that. Any pictures?”

“They're rather difficult to get on the older radios,” said Nutbeem. “And I think it's unlikely Jack will give up the car wreck spot to an Australian story. That's a standing order: a car wreck and pix on page one. You'll have to use an old one out of Tert's file unless somebody smashes up between now and five o'clock. You got the shipping news and a boat piece, anyway. Right?” Nutbeem, who touched down and flew away.

“Right.” Quoyle licked ketchup off the box lid, screwed his napkin into a knot. “The boat that blew up in Perdition Cove Tuesday morning.”

Billy stretched and yawned, his withered neck taut again for a few seconds. “I can feel the season changing,” he said. “Drawing in. This weather change coming means the end of hot weather. Time I got out to Gaze Island and worked on me poor old father's grave. Put it off last year and the year before.” Some sadness straining the words. Billy seemed stored in an envelope; the flap sometimes lifted, his flattened self sliding onto the table.

“What hot weather?” said Quoyle. “This is the first day I can think of over forty degrees Fahrenheit. The rain is always ready to turn into snow. And where's Gaze Island?”

“Don't know where Gaze Island is?” Billy laughed a little. His stabbing blue-eyed look. “Fifteen miles northeast of the narrows. Bunch of whales went aground there once—some calls it Whale
Island, but it is Gaze Island to me. Though it had other names in the beginning. A beauty place. A place of local interest, Quoyle.” Teasing.

“Like to see it,” said Quoyle who had found his tub of coleslaw. “I've never been on an island.”

“Don't be stun, boy. You're on one now, just look at a map. You can come out with me. You ought to know about Gaze Island, you ought. Proper thing. Saturday morning. If the weather's decent I'll go out Saturday.”

“If I can,” said Quoyle. “If the aunt doesn't have major things planned for me.” Kept gazing out at the bay. As-if waiting for a certain ship. “There was a newsprint carrier hove to out in the bay yesterday. I was going to write about it.” The sunlight fading as the clouds came on.

“Saw her out there. Heard she had some trouble.”

“Fire in the engine room. Cause unknown. Diddy Shovel says that five years ago she wouldn't have put in here for mutiny or famine. But now there's the repair dock, the suppliers, the truck terminal. So they're coming in. Plans to enlarge the dockyard. He says they're talking about a shipyard.”

“Ar, it wasn't always like this,” said Billy Pretty. “Killick-Claw used to be a couple of rickety fish stages and twenty houses. The big harbor, up until after World War II, was at the same damn place we been talking about—Misky Bay. Ar, she was a hot place— them big warships in there, tankers, freighters, troop carriers, everything. After the war, boy, she laid right down flat on the deck. And Killick-Claw come up and give her a kick overboard. Go ahead, ask me what happened.”

“What happened?”

“Ammunition. During the war Misky Bay was a ammunitionloading port. They dropped so goddamn many tons of the stuff overboard that nobody dare let down an anchor to this day in Misky Bay. The ammunition and the cables. There is a snarl of telephone and telegraph cables down at the bottom of that harbor would make you think a army of cats with a thousand balls of wool been scrabbling and hoovering around.

“Fact, that's probably when poor old Misky Bay started down
hill, when the blast was put on her. You know, that'd be a good head for my towel rack story, ‘Misky Bay Curse Still Wrecking Lives.'” The sun obliterated, a chop on the water, stiff breeze.

“Look at that.” Billy, pointing at a tug towing a burned hulk. “Don't know what they think they're going to do with that. That must be your story from Perdition Cove. What happened, Quoyle?”

The stink of char came to them.

“Got it here,” fishing in his pocket. “Course it's still rough.” But he'd spent two days talking to relatives, eyewitnesses, the Coast Guard, electricians, and the propane gas dealer in Misky Bay. Read it aloud.

GOOD-BYE, BUDDY

Nobody in Perdition Cove will ever forget Tuesday morning. Many were still asleep when the first streak of sunlight painted the stem of the long-liner Buddy.

Owner Sam Nolly stepped aboard, a new light bulb in his hand. He intended to replace a burned-out light. Before the streak of sunlight reached the wheelhouse Sam Nolly was dead and the
Buddy
was a raft of smoking toothpicks floating in the harbor.

The powerful blast shattered nearly every window in Perdition Cove and was heard as far away as Misky Bay. The crew of a fishing boat off Final Point reported seeing a ball of fire roll across the water followed by a dense black cloud.

Investigators blamed the explosion on leaking propane gas that accumulated forward overnight and ignited when Sam Nolly screwed in the fresh bulb.

The long-liner was less than two weeks old. It was launched on Sam and Helen (Bodder) Nolly's wedding day.

“A shame,” said Billy.

“Not bad,” said Nutbeem. “Jack will like it. Blood, Boats and Blowups.” Looked at his watch. They got up. A paper blew away, rolled along the wharf and into the water.

Billy squinted. “Saturday morning,” he said to Quoyle. Eyes
like a blue crack of sky. Back to Tert Card, the cramped office. Overhead the cloud masses had merged, taken the form of finegrained scrolls like tide marks on the sand.

After Billy and Nutbeem went in Quoyle lingered, stood in the cracked road a minute. The long horizon, the lunging, clotted sea like a swinging door opening, closing, opening.

20

Gaze Island

“The Pirate and the Jolly Boat.

A pirate, having more prisoners than he has room for, tows one boatload astern.

All knives are taken away, and the boat made fast with the bight of a doubled line. The after end of the line is ring hitched to a stern ringbolt,
CLOVE HITCHES
are put around each thwart, and the line is rove through the bow ringbolt and brought to deck. They are told to escape if they can. How do they excape?”

THE ASHLEY BOOK OF KNOTS

QUOYLE in Billy Pretty's skiff. The old man hopped aboard nimbly, set a plastic bag under the seat and yanked the rope. The engine started—
waaah
—like a trumpet. A blare of wake spilled out behind them. Billy plunged around in a plywood box, dug out a tan plastic contraption, propped it in a corner, sat down and leaned back.

“Ah. Tis me Back Buddy—gives the spinal column support and comfort.”

There was nothing to say. Haze on the horizon. The sky a sheet of pearl, and through it filtered a diffuse yellow. The wind filled Quoyle's mouth, parted and snapped his hair.

“There's the Ram and the Lamb,” said Billy, pointing at two rocks just beyond the narrows. The water swilled over them.

“I like it,” said Quoyle, “that the rocks have names. There's one down off Quoyle's Point—”

“Oh, ay, the Comb.”

“That's it, a jagged rock with points sticking up.”

“Twelve points onto that rock. Or used to be. Was named after the old style of brimstone matches. They used to come in combs, all one piece along the bottom, twelve to a comb. You'd break one off. Sulfur stink. They called them stinkers—a comb of stinkers. Quoyle's Point got quite a few known sunkers and rocks. There's the Tea Buns, a whole plateful of little scrapers half a fathom under the water, off to the north of the Comb. Right out the end of the point there's the Komatik-Dog. You come on it just right it looks for all the world like a big sled dog settin' on the water, his head up, looking around. They used to say he was waiting for a wreck, that'd he'd come to life and swim out and swallow up the poor drowning people.”

Bunny, thought Quoyle, never let her see that one.

Billy pulled his cap down against the glare. “You get together with old Nolan yet?”

“No, I think I saw him one morning out alone in an old motor dory.”

“That's him. A strange one, he. Does everything the old way. Won't take unemployment. A good fisherman but lives very poor. Keeps to himself. I doubt he can read or write. He's one of your crowd, some kind of fork kin from the old days. You ought to go down to his wee house for a visit.”

“I didn't think we had any relatives still living here. The aunt says they're all gone.”

“She's wrong on this one. Nolan is still very much among the quick, and I hear he's got it worked up in his head that the house belongs to him.”

“What house? Our house? The aunt's house on the point?”

“That's the one.”

“This is a fine time to hear about it,” muttered Quoyle. “Nobody's said a word to us. He could have come by, you know.”

“That's not his way. You want to watch him. He's the old
style of Quoyle, stealthy in the night. They say there's a smell that comes off him like rot and cold clay. They say he slept with his wife when she was dead and you smell the desecration coming off him. No woman would have him again. Not a one.”

“Jesus.” Quoyle shuddered. “What do you mean, ‘old style of Quoyle.' I don't know the stories.”

“Better you don't. Omaloor Bay is called after Quoyles. Loonies. They was wild and inbred, half-wits and murderers. Half of them was low-minded. You should have heard Jack on the phone when he got your letter to come to the
Gammy Bird.
Called up all your references. Man with a bird's name. Told Jack you was as good as gold, didn't rave nor murder.”