Shipping News, The - E. Annie Proulx [34]
“Gammy Bird! 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?”
“Why 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 four-pager in a mixture of languages.
“That’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— [76] flex and give, that was the way it went before the brute force of nails and screws. Tells you something, eh? From a distance the fishermen look like they’re standing on the water. In fact, they are. The water washes right over the platform. Over their feet.” He was up and pacing, raising his chin to the ceiling.
Billy kicked in. “That’s how the old komatiks, the sleds, was made. There wasn’t a nail in them. All lashed with sinew and rawhide.”
Nutbeem ignored the interruption. “I liked the way the boats looked, but I didn’t do anything about it. After a blowup with the feculent Times bloater—lying there on his waterbed playing the paper comb and drinking black rum—I flew up to Houston, Texas—don’t ask me why—and bought a touring bike. A bicycle, not a motorcycle. And I pedaled it to Los Angeles. The most terrible trip in the world. I mean Apsley Cherry-Garrard with Scott at the pole didn’t have a clue. I endured sandstorms, terrifying and lethal heat, thirst, freezing winds, trucks that tried to kill me, mechanical breakdowns, a Blue Norther, torrential downpours and floods, wolves, ranchers in single-engine planes dropping flour bombs. And Quoyle, the only thing that kept me going through all this was the thought of a little boat, a silent, sweet sailboat slipping through the cool water. It grew on me. I swore if I ever got off that fucking bicycle seat which was, by that time, welded into the crack of me arse, if ever I got pried off the thing I’d take to the sea and never leave her.”
The phone rang again.
“Gammy Bird! Yut. Yut, Jack, he’s here. No, Nutbeem’s just gone to cover a fire. Marcus’s Irving station. Four Hands Cove. I dunno. They just give me a number. Yut. O.k. Soon’s he comes in. Quoyle, it’s Jack again. For you.”
“What stories you done this week?” Voice bullets shooting out of the receiver and into his ear.
“Uh. The truck wreck. I just finished that.”
“What wreck was that?”
“A semi lost it on the curve coming down into Desolation and rolled. Loaded with new skimobiles. Half of them fell in the water [77] and every boat in the harbor started hauling them out with grapnels. Driver jumped. Nobody hurt.”
“Don’t forget the shipping news.” The phone went dead.
“NUTBEEM! You better get on that fire before it’s out and you can’t get any nice pictures of leaping flames. And take the camera. It’s helpful when you have to take pictures.” Scratchy sarcasm.
“Why don’t you get a nice little rodney?” said Billy Pretty. “Oh now’s the time to pick up a beauty. You could jig for guffies on the weekend, get your picture