Shipping News, The - E. Annie Proulx [87]
A sense of purity renewed, a sense of events in trembling balance flooded him.
Everything, everything seemed encrusted with portent.
25
Oil
“If there is a vibration from the outside that tilts all your
pictures askew, hang them from a single wire which passes
through both screw eyes and makes fast to two picture hooks.”
THE ASHLEY BOOK OF KNOTS
THE BAY crawled with whitecaps like maggots seething in a broad wound. A rough morning. Quoyle jumped down the steps. He would drive. But walked first down to the dock to look at the water. The boat charged against the tire bumpers. The waves pouring onshore had a thick look to them, a kind of moody rage. Looked at his watch. If he stepped on it there was enough time for a cup of tea and a plate of toast at the Bawk’s Nest. Clean up the oil piece then down to Misky Bay to the marine archives. Check boats in the harbor. Supposed to be a schooner there from the West Coast.
Sat at the counter dunking toast into the mug. A folded slice at a time into his maw.
“Quoyle! Quoyle, come back here.” Billy Pretty and Tert Card [198] were in a booth at the back, plates and cups spread over the Formica table, Tert Card’s cigarette ends stubbed out in his saucer.
“Well, look what the cat dragged in,” said Card, giving off whiffs of irritation as strong as after-shave lotion. He was suffering from canker sores in his mouth although he wore knot charms against them. They came with winter. They came when he accidentally bit the inside of his mouth while chewing a bit of boiled pork. He had pulled down his lip that morning and peered into the mirror, revolted by the white rims of three sores like infected punctures. Daubed on a clot of baking soda. No pickles, no black coffee for a few days. And now leaned over a cup of milky tea.
Quoyle ordered more toast. Double grape jelly. Wondered if he should get fried potatoes.
“All we need’s Nutbeem and we won’t have to go to work.” Billy minced his egg into fish hash.
“Like I say, the hope of this place,” Tert Card, digging at wax in his ear with the nail of his little finger, “is oil. When they discovered the McGonigle field in 1980 I bought stock, indeed I did. A golden flood is ahead when she starts producing. The petrodollars. Oh, my boy, when the ship comes in I’ll be away to Florida.”
“The McGonigle?” asked Quoyle.
“Can’t believe you’re ignorant that they discovered the largest oil reserve in Canada right off our shores, out under the Grand Banks, billions and billions of barrels of oil. That’s the McGonigle oil field. We’re all going to be rich. Jobs all over the place, dividends for stockholders, manufacturing, housing and supplies. The biggest development project in the country. It’s to be golden days.”
In the booth in front of them a scrawny man with a mustache like a bar code glanced over his shoulder at Card. Quoyle thought he might be one of the supervisors at the fish plant. He was eating oatmeal with a side dish of bologna.
Billy Pretty snorted. “The only ones getting the jobs and the economic benefits is down to St. John’s, I thank you. You watch, by the time they’re ready to start pumping the oil out, they’ll have the nuclear fusion worked out, make all the clean electricity anybody could ever want out of plain water. Newfoundland will be spiked again.”
[199] Quoyle passed a triangle of toast spread with plenty of grape jelly to Billy. How frail the old man looked, he thought, in close quarters with rumpy Tert Card.
“No, boy, they’ll never get that fusion going. It’s oil. Newfoundland is going to be the richest place in the world. It’s a new era. We’ll be rolling in money.”
Billy Pretty turned to Quoyle. “This is the oil hysteria you’re hearing.” Then back to Tert