The Shipping News (7 page)

“I like a storm, but this is more than enough,” said the aunt, her hair down over one ear from collision with the chandelier, “and if I ever get out of this motel I will lead a good life, go to church regularly, bake bread twice a week and never let the dirty dishes stand. I’ll never go out with my legs bare, so help me, just let me get out of here. I forgot what it’s like, but it comes back to me now.”

In the night it turned to rain, the wind came from the south, warm and with a smell of creamy milk.

7

The Gammy Bird

The common eider is called “gammy bird” in Newfoundland

for its habit of gathering in flocks for sociable quacking sessions.

The name is related to the days of sail, when two ships falling

in with each other at sea would back their yards and shout the

news. The ship to windward would back her main yards and

the one to leeward her foreyards for close maneuvering.

This was
gamming
.

A WOMAN
in a rain slicker, holding the hand of a child, was walking on the verge of the road. As Quoyle’s station wagon came abreast she stared at the wet car. The stranger. He lifted his hand a few inches but she had already dropped her gaze. The child’s flat face. Red boots. And he was past.

The road to Flour Sack Cove shot uphill from Killick-Claw, over the height of land, then plunged toward houses, a few hauled-up boats. Fish flakes, scaffolds of peeled spruce from the old days of making salt cod. He passed a house painted white and red. The door dead center. A straggle of docks and fishermen’s storage sheds. Humped rocks spread with veils of net.

No doubt about the newspaper office. There was a weathered teak panel nailed above the door.
THE GAMMY BIRD
over a painting [57] of a quacking eider duck. Parked in front of the building were two trucks, a rusted, late-model Dodge and an older but gleaming Toyota.

From inside, shouting. The door snapped inward. A man jumped past, got in the Toyota. The tail pipe vibrated. The engine choked a little and fell silent as though embarrassed. The man looked at Quoyle. Got out of the truck and came at him with his hand. Acne scars corrugated the cheeks.

“As you see,” he said, “sometimes you can’t get away. I’m Tert Card, the bloody so-called managing editor, copy editor, rewrite man, mechanicals, ad makeup department, mail and distribution chief, snow shoveler. And you are either a big advertiser come to take out a four-page spread to proclaim the values of your warehouse of left-footed Japanese boots, or you are the breathlessly awaited Mr. Quoyle. Which is it?” His voice querulous in complaint. For the devil had long ago taken a shine to Tert Card, filled him like a cream horn with itch and irritation. His middle initial was X. Face like cottage cheese clawed with a fork.

“Quoyle.”

“Come in then, Quoyle, and meet the band of brigands, the worst of them damn Nutbeem and his strangling hands. Himself, Mr. Jack Buggit, is up at the house having charms said over his scrawny chest to clear out a wonderful accumulation of phlegm which he’s been hawking for a week.” Could have been declaiming from a stage.

“This’s the so-called newsroom,” sneered Card. “And there’s Billy Pretty,” pointing, as though to a landmark. “He’s an old fish dog.” Billy Pretty small, late in his seventh decade. Sitting at a table, the wall behind him covered with oilcloth the color of insect wings. His face: wood engraved with fanned lines. Blue eyes in tilted eye cases, heavy lids. His cheek pillows pushed up by a thin, slanting smile, a fine channel like a scar from nose to upper lip. Bushy eyebrows, a roach of hair the color of an antique watch.

His table swayed when he leaned on it, was covered with a church bazaar display. Quoyle saw baskets, wooden butterflies, babies’ booties in dime-store nylon.

“Billy Pretty, does the Home News page. He’s got hundreds [58] of correspondents. He gets treasures in the mail, as you see. There’s a stream of people after him, sending him things.”

“Ar,” said Billy Pretty. “Remember the omaloor that brought me some decorated turr’s eggs? Hand painted with scenic views. Bust in the night all over the desk. A stink in here for a year afterward.” Wiped his fingers on his diamond-pattern gansey, mended in the elbows and spotted with white nobs of glue and paper specks. “ ‘Omaloor?’ As in Omaloor Bay?”

“Oh yes. An omaloor—big, stun, clumsy, witless, simpleminded type of a fellow. There used to be crowds of them on the other side of the bay,” he gestured toward Quoyle’s Point, “so they named it after them.” Winked at Quoyle. Who wondered if he should smile. Did smile.

Near the window a man listened to a radio. His buttery hair swept behind ears. Eyes pinched close, a mustache. A packet of imported dates on his desk. He stood up to shake Quoyle’s hand. Gangled. Plaid bow tie and ratty pullover. The British accent strained through his splayed nose.

“Nutbeem,” he said. “Nutbeem of the Arctic.” Threw Quoyle a half-salute, imitation of a character in some yellowed war movie.

“That’s B. Beaufield Nutbeem,” said Tert Card, “miserable ugly Brit cast away on the inhospitable Newfoundland shore a year ago and still here. Among other things, imagines he’s the foreign news chief. Steals every story off the radio and rewrites it in his plummy style.”

“Which bloody misbegotten Card takes the liberty of recasting in his own insane tongue. As the bloody bog-rat’s just done.”

Nutbeem’s news came from a shortwave radio that buzzed as though wracked by migraine. When the airwaves were clear it had a tenor hum, but snarled when auroral static crackled. Nutbeem lay across his desk, his ear close to the receiver, gleaning the waves, the yowling foreign voices, twisting the stories around to suit his mood of the day. The volume button was gone, and he turned it up or down by inserting the tip of a table knife in the metal slot and twisting. His corner smelled of radios—dust, heat, metal, wood, electricity, time.

“Only to save you from accusations of plagiarism, me old son.”

[59] Nutbeem laughed bitterly. “I see you’ve regained your composure, you Newf dung beetle.” He leaned at Quoyle. “Yes. Incredible protection from plagiarism. Every sentence so richly freighted with typographical errors that the original authors would not recognize their own stories. Let me give you some examples.” He fished in file folders, pulled out a ragged sheet.

“I’ll read you one of his gibberish gems, just to open your eyes. The first version is what I wrote, the second is the way it appeared in the paper. Item: ‘Burmese sawmill owners and the Rangoon Development Corporation met in Tokyo Tuesday to consider a joint approach to marketing tropical hardwoods, both locally and for export.’ Here’s what Card did with it. ‘Burnoosed sawbill awnings and the Ranger Development Competition met Wednesday near Tokyo to mark up topical hairwood.’ ” Sat back in his squeaking chair. Let the pages fall into the wastebasket.

Tert Card scratched his head and looked at his fingernails. “After all, it’s only a stolen fiction in the first place,” he said.

“You think it amusing now, Quoyle, you smile,” said Nutbeem, “although you try to smile behind your hand, but wait until he works his damage on you. I read these samples to you so you know what lies ahead. ‘Plywood’ will become ‘playwool,’ ‘fisherman’ will become ‘figbun,’ ‘Hibernia’ become ‘hernia.’ This is the man to whom Jack Buggit entrusts our prose. No doubt you are asking yourself ‘Why?’ as I have many dark and sleepless nights. Jack says Card’s typos give humor to the paper. He says they’re better than a crossword puzzle.”

The corner at the end of the room fenced with a particleboard partition.

“That’s Jack’s office,” said Card. “And there’s
your
little corner, Quoyle.” Card waved his arm grandly. A desk, half a filing cabinet, the sawed-off top covered with a square of plywood, a 1983 Ontario telephone book, a swivel chair with one arm. A lamp of the kind found in hotel lobbies in the 1930s stood beside the desk, thick red cord like a rat’s tail, plug as large as a baseball.

“What should I do?” said Quoyle. “What does Mr. Buggit want me to do?”

“Ah, nobody but himself can say. He wants you to sit tight [60] and wait until he’s back. He’ll tell you what he wants. You just come in every morning and himself’ll show up one fine day and divulge all. Look through back issues. Acquaint yourself with
Gammy Bird
. Drive around and learn all four of our roads.” Card turned away, labored over the computer.

“I’s got to be out and about,” said Billy Pretty. “Interview with a feller makes juju-bracelets out of lobster feelers for export to Haiti. Borrer your truck, Card? Mine’s got the bad emission valve. Waiting for a part.”

“You’re always waiting for parts for that scow. Anyway, mine’s not starting too good today. She dies just any old place.”

Billy turned to Nutbeem.

“I rode the bike today. I suppose you can take the bike.”

“Rather walk than snap me legs off on that rind of a bike.” He cleared his throat and glanced at Quoyle. But Quoyle looked away out the window. He was too new to get into this.

“Ah, well. I’ll hoof it. It’s not more than eighteen miles each way.”

In a minute they heard him outside, cursing as he mounted the jangling bicycle.

Half an hour later Tert Card left, started his truck, drove smoothly away.

“Off to get soused,” said Nutbeem pleasantly. “Off to get his lottery ticket and then get soused. Observe that the truck starts when he wants it to.”

Quoyle smiled, his hand went to his chin.

¯

He spent the rest of the day, the rest of the week, leafing through the old phone book and reading back issues of the
Gammy Bird
.

The paper was a forty-four-page tab printed on a thin paper. Six columns, headlines modest, 36-point was a screamer, some stout but unfamiliar sans serif type. A very small news hole and a staggering number of ads.

He had never seen so many ads. They went down both sides of the pages like descending stairs and the news was squeezed into [61] the vase-shaped space between. Crude ads with a few lines of type dead center. Don’t Pay Anything Until January! No Down Payment! No Interest! As though these exhortations were freshly coined phrases for vinyl siding, rubber stamps, life insurance, folk music festivals, bank services, rope ladders, cargo nets, marine hardware, ship’s laundry services, davits, rock band entertainment at the Snowball Lounge, clocks, firewood, tax return services, floor jacks, cut flowers, truck mufflers, tombstones, boilers, brass tacks, curling irons, jogging pants, snowmobiles, Party Night at Seal Flipper Lounge with Arthur the Accordion Ace, used snowmobiles, fried chicken, a smelting derby, T-shirts, oil rig maintenance, gas barbecue grills, wieners, flights to Goose Bay, Chinese restaurant specials, dry bulk transport services, a glass of wine with the pork chop special at the Norse Sunset Lounge, retraining program for fishermen,
VCR
repairs, heavy equipment operator training, tires, rifles, love seats, frozen corn, jelly powder, dancing at Uncle Demmy’s Bar, kerosene lanterns, hull repairs, hatches, tea bags, beer, lumber planing, magnetic brooms, hearing aids.

He figured the ad space.
Gammy Bird
had to be making money. And somebody was one hell of a salesman.

Quoyle asked Nutbeem. “Mr. Buggit do the ads?”

“No. Tert Card. Part of the managing editor’s job. Believe it or not.” Tittered behind his mustache. “And they’re not as good as they look.”

Quoyle turned the pages. Winced at the wrecked car photos on the front page. Sexual abuse stories—three or four in every issue. Polar bears on ice floes. The shipping news looked simple—just a list of vessels in port. Or leaving.

“Hungry Men,” a restaurant review by Benny Fudge and Adonis Collard running under two smudged photographs. Fudge’s face seemed made of leftover flesh squeezed roughly together. Collard wore a cap that covered his eyes. Quoyle shuddered as he read.

Trying to decide where to munch up some fast food? You could do worse than try Grudge’s Cod Hop. The interior is booths with a big window in front. Watch the trucks on the highway! We did. We ordered the Fish Strip Basket which contained three [62] fried fish Strips, coleslaw and a generous helping of fried chips for $5.70. The beverage was separate. The Fish Strip Basket was supposed to include Dinner Roll, but instead we got Slice of Bread. The fish Strips were very crispy and good. There is a choice of packet of lemon juice or Tartar Sauce. We both had the Tartar Sauce. There is counter service too.

Billy Pretty’s work, “The Home Page,” a conglomeration of poems, photographs of babies, write-away-for hooked rug patterns. Always a boxed feature—how to make birdhouses of tin cans, axe sheaths of cardboard, bacon turners from old kitchen forks. Recipes for Damper Devils, Fried Bawks, Dogberry Wine and Peas and Melts.

But the one everybody must read first, thought Quoyle, was “Scruncheons,” a jet of near-libelous gossip. The author knitted police court news, excerpts of letters from relatives away, rude winks about rough lads who might be going away for “an Irish vacation.” It beat any gossip column Quoyle had ever read. The byline was junior Sugg.

Well, we see the postman has landed in jail for 45 days for throwing the mail in Killick-Claw Harbour. He said he had too much mail to deliver and if people wanted it they could get it themselves. Guess it helps if you can swim. Poor Mrs. Tudge was hit by a tourist driving a luxury sedan last Tuesday. She is in hospital, not getting on too good. We hear the tourist’s car isn’t too good, either. And the Mounties are looking into the cause of an early morning fire that burned down the Pinhole Seafood fish plant on Shebeen Island; they might ask a certain fellow in a certain cove on the island what he thinks about it. A snowmobile mishap has taken the life of 78-year-old Rick Puff. Mr. Puff was on his way home from what Mrs. Puff called “a screech-in and a carouse” when his machine fell through the ice. Mr. Puff was a well-known accordion player who was filmed by a crew from the university. In the 1970s he served four years for sexual assault on his daughters. Bet they aren’t crying either. Good news! We heard Kevin Mercy’s dog “Biter” was lost in an [63] avalanche on Chinese Hill last week. And what’s this we read in the overseas papers about kidnappers mailing the left ear of a Sicilian businessman they are holding hostage to his family? The way the foreigners live makes you wonder!