The Shipping News by Annie Proulx Page B

die.

    Tert Card in a red shirt and white necktie, on the phone: Billy Pretty on the other line. Billy laughing, choking out dark sentences Quoyle couldn’t understand, almost another language. Drumming rain, the bay stippled. The gas heater howled in the corner.
    Quoyle looked at Nutbeem. “Is a guy named Dennis Buggit related to Jack? A carpenter? The aunt’s talking to him about fixing up the old house. We’ve got to do something. We can’t stay in that damn motel much longer. And the road out to the Point is lousy and there’s nothing for rent in Killick-Claw. I don’t know what we’re going to do. I’ll move back to the States before I buy a boat.”
    Nutbeem dragged his jaw down, raised both hands in mock horror. “Don’t like boats? Can be rather amusing, you know. Practical for a place that’s all coast and cove and little road. That’s how I ended up here, you know, because of my boat. Borogove. I call her that because she’s mimsy, a bit.” Nutbeem’s transitory talk. Theatrical speeches like a stump-jumper’s spiel, urgent at the time, but forgotten by morning and the speaker on the way to another place.
    Quoyle’s notebook propped on his tea mug, a half-finished paragraph on a truck accident in the manual typewriter. Everyone else had a computer.
    â€œYou’ll get one when I give you one,” Jack Buggit had said. But not meanly.
    â€œDennis is Jack’s youngest son,” said Tert Card, who heard everything, leaning toward them, his foul breath spouting across the room. “He don’t get along with the old man. Used to be theapple of the old man’s eye, especially after they lost poor Jesson, but not now. You never know, Jack might take it wrong if Dennis works for you. Then again, he might not.” The phone trilled like a toy whistle.
    â€œThat’s him now,” said Card, who always knew, and picked it up.
    â€œGammy Bird! Yut, o.k. Got you, Skipper.” Hung up, swiveled his chair, looked at the marred sea. Laughed. “Billy! What do you think. He’s up at the house with double earache. Says ‘You won’t see me until tomorrow or next day.’”
    â€œI thought it would be cracked ribs this time,” said Nutbeem. “Earache is good. We haven’t had that one yet.” The phone rang.
    â€œGammy Birdl Yut, o.k., o.k. What’s your number? Hold on. Nutbeem, Marcus’s Irving station down in Four Hands Cove is on fire. You take it?”
    â€œWhy don’t you get a boat, Quoyle?” Billy Pretty shouted from his corner. He had two laundry baskets on his desk, one of molded plastic, the other of hand-woven stems.
    Quoyle pretended he had not heard. But couldn’t avoid Nutbeem at the next desk who pushed his radio away, looked excitedly at Quoyle. His face creased, his fingers tapped a beat, remnant of his time in Bahia mesmerized by afoxés and bloco afros, the music of drums and metal cones, spangled thumb cymbals, the stuttering repique. Nutbeem influenced by the lunar cycle. Had a touch of werewolf. At full moon he burst, talked himself dry, took exercise in the form of dancing and fighting at the Starlight Lounge, then slowly fell back to contemplation.
    Before Bahia, Nutbeem said, he had hung around Recife, working for a rum-poached ex- London Times man who put out a fourpager in a mixture of languages.
    â€œThat’s where I got my first idea of owning a boat,” said Nutbeem, choosing a date from the packet on his desk. “It was living on the coast, I think, seeing boats and water every day. Seeing the jangadas —these extraordinary little fishing boats, just a platform of half a dozen skinny logs—something like balsa—pinned together with wooden dowels and lashed with fiber. Wind driven, steered with an oar. The world was all knots and lashings once—flex and give, that was the way it went before the brute force of nails