Shipping News, The - E. Annie Proulx [88]
“That’s right,” said the fish plant supervisor, his oatmeal eaten, the bologna swallowed, puffing the first cigarette and ready to expand. “Look how they burned down the old lighthouse right here in Killick-Claw. Look how they smashed up Fisheries office.”
“And,” said Billy, swiveling to include his ally, “alcoholism, moral degradation of the lowest kind. Divorce and cruelty and abandoned children moping along the roadside. Pollution! The sea bottom strewn with clits of wires and barrels and broken metal that’ll tear up any trawl. And to come? Terrible oil spills will kill off the few midget cod that’s left, destroy the fishery entirely, scum the landwash with a black stinking ooze, ruin boats and harbors. The shipping lanes will be clogged with the oil tankers and supply boats.” Trembled a dribble of tea into his cup.
“He’s away and gone,” mocked Tert Card, examining the black knob of wax on his nail. “He’s seen the Nile.”
Billy Pretty cast his eyes at Quoyle and the fish plant man, opened his mouth to say what he had to say.
Beside him Tert Card swayed, pantomimed playing a violin.
“I’ll have an order of fried potatoes and bologna,” said Quoyle to the waitress. Billy sucked in a breath.
“I seen the cod and caplin go from millions of tons taken to two or three bucketsful. Seen fishing go from seasonal, inshore, small boats to the deep water year-round factory ships and draggers. Now the fish is all gone and the forests is cut down. Ruined and [200] wrecked! No wonder there’s ghosts here. It’s the dead pried out of their ground by bulldozers!”
The fish plant man got a word in. “They used to say ‘A man’s set up in life if he’s got a pig, a punt and a potato patch.’ What do they say now? Every man for himself.”
“That’s right,” said Billy. “It’s chasing the money and buying plastic speedboats and snowmobiles and funny dogs from the mainland. It’s hanging around the bars, it’s murders and stealing. It’s tearing off your clothes and pretending you’re loony. It used to be a happy life here. See, it was joyful. It was a joyful life. You wouldn’t know what I’m speaking of, Tert Card, you with your terrible need to go to Florida. Why waste my breath.” Held the teapot over his cup but nothing came out.
Tert Card’s mouth had been waiting a chance. He spoke to all, included the sweating waitress, the cook whose head showed in the order window. “If it was them days now, Mr. Pretty, you’d be dead. You forget the Chinese flu you got a few winters back, in the hospital with it. I seen you in that bed grey as a dead cod, I thought, well, he’s had it. But they give you antibiotics and oxygen and all and you live to bite the hand that saved you. Nobody, nobody in their right mind would go back to them hard, hard times. People was only kind because life was so dirty you couldn’t afford to have any enemies. It was all swim or all sink. A situation that makes people very sweet.” Sucking air over his teeth.
The cook called from the kitchen, “I say let the fishery go. Let the oilmen have the free hand. Can’t do no worse and might do better.” Laughed to show it was a joke. If necessary.
“You better not let some of your customers hear you say that or you will be wallpaper paste.” The fish plant man got up, went for a toothpick.
“I’ll say it to anybody!” Tert Card bellowed. “Oil is strong and fish is weak. There’s no contest. The whole world needs oil. There is big money in oil. There’s too many men fishing and not enough fish. That’s what it comes down to. Now let’s get down to the newsroom and put the bloody paper together. Quoyle, you got your boat story?” Shouting still. A full head of steam up.
“Go ahead,” said Billy Pretty who had read it, who had listened [201] to Quoyle on the phone talking oil for a week, seen him come