The Shipping News

“All right. Hundreds of doctors are billing Health Insurance Plan for removing unwanted facial hair from women patients. A Ministry of Health official is quoted as saying ‘This thing is hot.’ Probably means the electrolysis machine. Millions and millions of dollars for millions and millions of electrolysis treatments.”

Card sniggered. He was all grease spots and hunger. Fingernails like sugar scoops.

“Thought you’d have a giggle over that,” said Nutbeem.

Quoyle was astonished to hear Billy Pretty bellow. “You may laugh, Card, but it’s a rotten, bitter thing for a woman to see the shadow of a mustache creeping across her face. You’d be sympathetic now, wouldn’t you, if it was men having breast fat removed?” He stared at Card’s pointed breasts. A silence hanging for a few seconds, then Tert Card’s wet laugh, Billy’s snigger. It was only a joke. Quoyle still couldn’t recognize a joke when he heard one.

“Ah,” said Card, snorting into a tissue, spreading it open in the light of the window. “My sister had the problem, only it was hair on her arms. The old woman had other ways to go at it. We had Skipper Small, was a charmer. He’d write down on a little piece of paper, throw it in the fire, watch it burn until just a pelm laid over the coals, all white and wizzled. He’d take a stick, poke it in and break up the pelm, the bits would fly off to the chimney. ‘There,’ he’d say, ‘there goes your affliction.’ ”

“Did it fix your sister’s arms?”

“Oh yes, boy. Her arms come smooth as silk, they did, it was a pleasure to be squeezed by ‘em. So they all said. I hope that’s not the extent of your foreign news, Nutbeem, hair removal in Ontario.”

“Well, there’s the cholera epidemic in Peru. Argentina and Paraguay now refuse to play soccer in Peru. Fourteen thousand cases have been reported in the last six weeks.”

“Good. We’ll run that story next to the one on unknown insects biting employees in the Social Service office in Misky Bay after a recent influx of Peruvian immigrants.” He looked at Quoyle. “Have you got a wreck, buddy?”

“Um,” said Quoyle. Giving nothing to Tert Card.

“Well, then, what is it, where is it and did you get pictures?”

“The ship collision on Strain Bag. Then I shot a couple of frames of a vehicle fire-unexplained causes. Truck was parked in front of the funeral home and just burst into flames while the family was inside. Looked like a roasting pan on fire.”

“That’s a very good tip, Quoyle. If we ever get hard up for pictues we can get a roasting pan, fill it up with oil and set it on fire. Jiggle the camera a little when we take snaps. Who’ll ever know?”

“Something in Misky Bay. Apparently a grudge between twin brothers, Boyle and Doyle Cats.”

“I know them,” said Billy Pretty. “One of them drives a taxi.”

“Right. Boyle drives the taxi. There’d been some trouble the night before. Something to do with a drug deal, they think. On Wednesday afternoon Boyle picks up a passenger at the fish plant, makes a U-turn, and is ambushed by a masked man on a late-model blue Yamaha snowmobile with the word PSYCHOPATH painted on the cowling. His brother Doyle is alleged to own such a snowmobile. The snowmobile rider fires a shotgun at the taxi and speeds away, the taxi’s windshield is blown out, the vehicle swerves and ends up on the loading ramp of the fish plant. Minor cuts and lacerations. The snowmobile got away.”

“Is there snow down there?”

“No.”

“I’m going to remember this place for many things,” said Nutbeem. “But most of all for the inventive violence and this tearing-off-of-clothes-in-court business. Seems to be a Newfoundland specialty. Here’s a fairly simple arson-some chap set his boat on fire-maybe you’ve got this one too, Quoyle-possibly for the insurance, and he’s been sitting in the pokey for a few days. This morning they go to bring him into court and he did the regular.”

“Tore off his clothes,” droned through the room.

“I can do something with that,” said Billy, tapping on the keys.

“Tert,” said Nutbeem. “That sister of yours. Is she the one you told us that swallowed the sea wolf?”

“Sea wolf? You stun mope, she swallowed a water wolf. A sea wolf is a submarine. Come down in the dark and took up a dipper of water and swallowed it. When she was a kid. Said she felt something go down. Soon after that she commenced to eat like a horse. Eat and eat. Oh, the old woman knew right away. ‘You’ve swallowed a water wolf,’ she said. Nutbeem, I got your S.A. stories ru

“You ought to see my notebook. It’s an epidemic.” Nutbeem turned to the file cabinets behind him. The khaki metal rang as he wrenched a drawer open. “All this since I’ve been here. What are you going to do when I’m off, then?”

“Jack’s problem. Among others,” said Tert Card with a mouthful of satisfaction. “You still leaving Tuesday?”

“Yes, I’ll be heading out of the lashing snow sailing on my way to the Caribbean, down through the islands looking for adventure and love.”

“It’s late to be leaving. Storm and ice could fasten you in here overnight. The ice is formed up in some places. A dangerous time of year for a sailboat. You probably won’t make it. It’ll be your corpse they find in the ovens next.” Tert Card, picking his teeth with the corner of an envelope. The paper jammed and tore, wedged between the yellow incisors.

“That’s how it goes here. There’s a general emptying out in the late fall. Away they all go to the south,” said Billy Pretty. “There’s few of us has stuck it out all the years, never been away in winter except when at sea. And Quoyle is the only one I ever see come here to settle. I’m just wondering about him. I suppose he’ll be next.”

“Obviously staying,” said Quoyle. “Alvin Yark’s building a boat for me. Bu

“I can’t see you in Nutbeem’s trailer. You looked that place over yet?” Tert Card smiling at some secret.

“He’s seeing it Friday. Quoyle’s going to help me set up for the party. Getting everything to drink you can think of from screech to ginger beer to champagne.”

“Champagne! That’s what I enjoy,” said Tert Card. “With a ripe peach floating in it.”

“Go on. That’s something you read. There’s never been a ripe peach in Newfoundland.”

“I have it when I go down to Florida. I have Mai-tais, Jamaica glows, beachcombers, banana daiquiris, piña coladas-my god, sitting around in your bathing suit on the balcony drinking those things. Baking hot.”

“I doubt a man can bring up two little girls on his own,” said Billy Pretty. “I doubt it can be done without some savage talk and nervous breakdowns all around.”

Quoyle showed he didn’t hear him.