Shipping News, The - E. Annie Proulx [107]
“I wouldn’t go down there. I wouldn’t set foot on one of they planes.” Billy Pretty scratching notes, looking up from his weltering desk, red-rimmed eyes, face like a pricked pastry. “I hope you got all kinds of wrecks Quoyle, because I got not much—couple more unknown bodies and two naked men in court. Here’s a boyyo nabbed creeping out of a window loaded down with a sewing machine, the microwave, a shortwave radio, a color television, and the old missus and skipper sleeping away up in their bedroom, all sweet dreams, never woke up. The police patrol saw him hung up on a nail in the windowsill. So down to the Killick-Claw lockup he goes. In the middle of the night he commences to bawl and hoot, tears off all his clothes. They said he was mental. Sent him over to Waterford [245] for observation. It’s bloody spreading! Here’s another. A young lad, father’s a fisherman down to Port aux Priseurs, hit it rich in shrimps so he buys the boy a horse. Builds a barn and buys the boy a horse. Boy wanted a horse. ‘All the advantages I never had, blahblah.’ Didn’t know anything about horses. Put it out in the barn. After a week or so lad gets tired of it and forgets about it. Finally the horse starves to death. They give the kid some kind of dressingdown and fines the dad a thousand dollars. He’s got it, y’know, but what d’you think he does? Stands there in the court in front of the judge. Tears off all his clothes. So they sent him over to Waterford too.
“Now, over here we got missing persons and unidentified bodies, and none of them match up. Man from Chaw Cove went out hunting. All they found was his mittens. Down here in Puddickton missus finds a cold wet corpus floating under the skipper’s dock. Total stranger, and not the feller from Chaw Cove. Not a stitch on him. Makes you wonder if he hadn’t been in court recently. The worst one is this dog case. Another shrimp fisherman in Port aux Priseurs. This feller bought some fancy mainland dogs, a couple of pit bulls, couple of rottweilers, couple of Doberman pinschers, kept ‘em all out in this big run. Now they can’t find the man. Seems he went out to the dog pen and didn’t come back. Family’s all sitting around watching television. After a couple of hours somebody says ‘Where’s old dad, then?’ They shine a light out at the dog pen, holler yoo-hoo. There’s blood all over the snow and some of dad’s clothes in a poor condition. So, even though he is missing, they think they know where he is.”
Tert Card mooning against the window, staring south. “They ought to give up on the animals in Port aux Priseurs. They don’t have the touch. Stick to cars and drugs. Quoyle, you got some kind of a wreck to brighten the front page?”
Nutbeem raised his head, unfolded his arms. “Seeing it’s my last week, of course the foreign news is plummy. First, the Canadian Minister of Health has his knickers in a twist over hair removal.”
“There are some of us, Nutbeem, who do not think of Canada as a foreign power,” said Card.
“Leave him be,” said Billy Pretty. “Go on with it, boy.”
[246] “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