Shipping News, The - E. Annie Proulx [128]
[292] “Why I don’t stop fishing, see,” he said, deftly ripping up, jerking out the entrails, cigarette in the corner of his mouth, “even if I wanted to, is because I’d never get my licenses for lobster or salmon fishing again. Don’t know why, I loves lobster fishing best. You let your cockadoodle license lapse just one season and it’s gone forever.”
“Billy said to tell you there’s a rumor Sea Song might be closing three plants next month. Says he hears No Name might be one.”
“Jesus! You think it can’t get worse, it gets worse! This business about allocating fish quotas as if they was rows of potatoes you could dig. If there’s no fish you can’t allocate them and you can’t catch them; if you don’t catch them, you can’t process them or ship them, you don’t have a living for nobody. Nobody understands their crazy rules no more. Stumble along. They say ‘too many local fishermen for not enough fish.’ Well, where has the fish gone? To the Russians, the French, the Japs, West Germany, East Germany, Poland, Portugal, the UK, Spain, Romania, Bulgaria—or whatever they call them countries nowadays.
“And even after the limit was set, the inshore was no good. How can the fish come inshore if the trawlers and draggers gets ‘em all fifty, a hundred mile out? And the long-liners gets the rest twenty mile out? What’s left for the inshore fishermen?” He spat in the water. Watching Quoyle’s clumsy work with the knife. “You got the idea. That’s all there is to it. Just keep at it steady.”
“Those ads, Jack. I’d like to drop the fake ads. We need the news space. Last week we had the sawmill story, story on the new National Historic Park in Misky Bay, demonstration over foreign fishing off the Virgin Rocks, another demonstration against the high electric rates, the shrimp processors’ strike—good, solid local stories—and we had to cramp ‘em in very hard. No pix. I mean, it would be different if it was real ads.”
“Ar, that was Tert Card’s idea, make up fake ads for big outfits down to St. John’s. Make it look like we’re big, y’know. Punch up the local advertisers a little. Go ahead, pull them ads out if you need the space. See, we didn’t have that much news when we started. And the ads looked good.”
[293] One by one the cleaned fish went into the grey plastic fish box. Jack hurled the guts and livers into the water.
“Fishery problem? Fuckin’ terrible problem. They’ve made the inshore fishermen just like migrant farm workers. All we do is harvest the product. Moves from one crop to another, picks what they tells us. Takes what they pays us. We got no control over any of the fishery now. We don’t make the decisions, just does what we’re told where and when we’re told. We lives by rules made somewhere else by sons a bitches don’t know nothin’ about this place.” A hard exhalation rather than a sigh.
But, Quoyle thought, that’s how it was everywhere. Jack was lucky he’d escaped so long.
¯
Late in February papers came from St. John’s for him to sign as next of kin, papers to put the old cousin away forever. Delusions, senile dementia, schizophrenic personality; prognosis poor. He sat looking at the dotted lines. Could not sign away the rest of the life of an unknown man to whom he’d spoken a single sentence, who had only tied knots against him. He thought he would go down to the city and see the old cousin before he signed anything. Suppose he was wild-eyed, drooling and mad? He expected it. Suppose he was lucid and accusatory? Expected that, too.
At the last hour he asked Wavey to come along. He said it would be a change of scene. They could go to dinner. A movie. Two movies. But knew he was saying something else.
“It will be fun.” The word sounded stupid in his mouth. When had he ever had “fun”? Or Wavey, chapped face already set in the lines of middle age, an encroaching dryness about her beyond stove heat and wind? What was it, anyway? Both of them the kind who stood with forced smiles watching other people dance, spin on barstools, throw bowling balls. Having fun. But Quoyle