Shipping News, The - E. Annie Proulx [111]
“When the first guests pull up,” shouted Nutbeem, “we’ll rip the plastic off.”
They looked vainly through the cupboards for a bowl large enough to hold thirty bags of potato chips.
“What about your barrel in the shower?” screamed Quoyle. “Just for tonight. It’s big enough.”
“Right! And have a beer! Nutbeem’s good-bye party has officially begun!” And as Quoyle poured potato chips into the soap-scummed barrel, Nutbeem sent a ululating call into the night.
Through the picture window framed in salmon-pink curtains, they saw a line of headlights approaching the narrow bridge. The beer in Quoyle’s bottle trembled in the batter of sound. Nutbeem was saying something, impossible to know what.
Tert Card was the first one through the door, and his stumble [254] carried him against the table with the party platters. He was clenching a rum bottle, wore a linen touring cap that transformed the shape of his head to that of a giant albino ant. He plucked at the plastic wrap, seized a handful of ham and pushed it into his mouth. A crowd of men came in, shouting and swaying, and as though at a ham and cheese eating contest, snatched up the food from the party platters. Crammed potato chips as though stuffing birds for the oven.
The trailer shook on its cinder-block foundation. All at once the room was so packed that bottles had to be passed from hand to hand overhead.
Tert Card was beside him. “There’s something I want to tell you,” he shouted, raised a squat tumbler with a nicked rim to Quoyle. But before he spoke, disappeared.
Quoyle began to enjoy himself in a savage, lost way, the knots of fatherhood loosened for the night, thoughts of Petal and Wavey quenched. He had only been to two or three parties in his adult life, and never to one where all the guests were men. Ordinary parties, he thought, were subtle games of sexual and social badminton; this was something very different. There was a mood of rough excitement that had more in common, he thought, with a parking-lot fight behind a waterfront bar than a jolly good-bye to Nutbeem. A rank smell of tobacco, rum and dirty hair. Tert Card’s touring cap rose and fell in front of him again as though he were doing knee bends. He mopped at his eyebrows with his forearm.
“Everybody asks me about the hairy devil,” screamed Tert Card. “But I’ll tell you.”
Quoyle could barely catch the words of the interminable monologue. “When my father was young up in Labrador ... Used to call him Skit Card because he was left-handed. Said there was a feeling like he was near a HOLE under the snow. Walk careful or ... slip straight down SPINNING ... He walked careful ... spooky. One day he gets his buddy Alphonse ... They get to the camp ... Alphonse says ... ‘NO GOOD, I’m going back.’ Father persuades him ... ‘STAY until daybreak’ ... laid down. In the morning Alphonse was GONE. His tracks ... straight ahead. Then nothing ... tracks disappeared, snow untouched.”
[255] A man with a meaty face the size and shape of a sixteen-pound ham squeezed in front of Quoyle. Although he shouted his voice was distant.
“Hello, Quoyle. Adonis Collard. Write the food column. Wanted to say hello. Don’t get up to Killick-Claw much. Down in Misky Bay, you know. For the restaurants.” The crowd surged and Quoyle was carried near the beer tub. Nutbeem’s sound system was sending out tremendously low snoring and sawing sounds. Then, Tert Card again, a ham slice protruding from his mouth.
“Father got a POLE. Poked around where tracks ended. All of a sudden a sound like a CORK being pulled ... a deep blue well going down ... polished steel CYLINDER. He throws in the stick. Whistled like a sled runner.”
Someone pushed between them and Quoyle tried to work toward the front door, working his elbows like oars. But Card was in front of him again.
“All of a sudden something BEHIND him. A HAIRY DEVIL jumped down the hole like a HOCKEY puck ... RED EYES. Says to me father ... ‘BE BACK for you ... after I washes me POTS AND PANS.’ Father ... ran forty miles.”
“My