In the night it turned to rain, the wind came from the south, warm and with a smell of creamy milk.
7 The Gammy Bird
The common eider is called “gammy bird” in Newfoundland
for its habit of gathering in flocks for sociable quacking sessions.
The name is related to the days of sail, when two ships falling
in with each other at sea would back their yards and shout the
news. The ship to windward would back her main yards and
the one to leeward her foreyards for close maneuvering.
This was gamming.
A WOMAN in a rain slicker, holding the hand of a child, was walking on the verge of the road. As Quoyle’s station wagon came abreast she stared at the wet car. The stranger. He lifted his hand a few inches but she had already dropped her gaze. The child’s flat face. Red boots. And he was past.
The road to Flour Sack Cove shot uphill from Killick-Claw, over the height of land, then plunged toward houses, a few hauled-up boats. Fish flakes, scaffolds of peeled spruce from the old days of making salt cod. He passed a house painted white and red. The door dead center. A straggle of docks and fishermen’s storage sheds. Humped rocks spread with veils of net.
No doubt about the newspaper office. There was a weathered teak panel nailed above the door. THE GAMMY BIRD over a painting of a quacking eider duck. Parked in front of the building were two trucks, a rusted, late-model Dodge and an older but gleaming Toyota.
From inside, shouting. The door snapped inward. A man jumped past, got in the Toyota. The tail pipe vibrated. The engine choked a little and fell silent as though embarrassed. The man looked at Quoyle. Got out of the truck and came at him with his hand. Acne scars corrugated the cheeks.
“As you see,” he said, “sometimes you can’t get away. I’m Tert Card, the bloody so-called managing editor, copy editor, rewrite man, mechanicals, ad makeup department, mail and distribution chief, snow shoveler. And you are either a big advertiser come to take out a four-page spread to proclaim the values of your warehouse of left-footed Japanese boots, or you are the breathlessly awaited Mr. Quoyle. Which is it?” His voice querulous in complaint. For the devil had long ago taken a shine to Tert Card, filled him like a cream horn with itch and irritation. His middle initial was X. Face like cottage cheese clawed with a fork.
“Quoyle.”
“Come in then, Quoyle, and meet the band of brigands, the worst of them damn Nutbeem and his strangling hands. Himself, Mr. Jack Buggit, is up at the house having charms said over his scrawny chest to clear out a wonderful accumulation of phlegm which he’s been hawking for a week.” Could have been declaiming from a stage.
“This’s the so-called newsroom,” sneered Card. “And there’s Billy Pretty,” pointing, as though to a landmark. “He’s an old fish dog.” Billy Pretty small, late in his seventh decade. Sitting at a table, the wall behind him covered with oilcloth the color of insect wings. His face: wood engraved with fanned lines. Blue eyes in tilted eye cases, heavy lids. His cheek pillows pushed up by a thin, slanting smile, a fine channel like a scar from nose to upper lip. Bushy eyebrows, a roach of hair the color of an antique watch.
His table swayed when he leaned on it, was covered with a church bazaar display. Quoyle saw baskets, wooden butterflies, babies’ booties in dime-store nylon.
“Billy Pretty, does the Home News page. He’s got hundreds of correspondents. He gets treasures in the mail, as you see. There’s a stream of people after him, sending him things.”
“Ar,” said Billy Pretty. “Remember the omaloor that brought me some decorated turr’s eggs? Hand painted with scenic views. Bust in the night all over the desk. A stink in here for a year afterward.” Wiped his fingers on his diamond-pattern gansey, mended in the elbows and spotted with white nobs of glue and paper specks. “ ‘Omaloor?’ As in Omaloor Bay?”
“Oh yes. An omaloor-big, stun, clumsy, witless, simpleminded type of a fellow. There used to be crowds of them on the other side of the bay,” he gestured toward Quoyle’s Point, “so they named it after them.” Winked at Quoyle. Who wondered if he should smile. Did smile.
Near the window a man listened to a radio. His buttery hair swept behind ears. Eyes pinched close, a mustache. A packet of imported dates on his desk. He stood up to shake Quoyle’s hand. Gangled. Plaid bow tie and ratty pullover. The British accent strained through his splayed nose.
“Nutbeem,” he said. “Nutbeem of the Arctic.” Threw Quoyle a half-salute, imitation of a character in some yellowed war movie.
“That’s B. Beaufield Nutbeem,” said Tert Card, “miserable ugly Brit cast away on the inhospitable Newfoundland shore a year ago and still here. Among other things, imagines he’s the foreign news chief. Steals every story off the radio and rewrites it in his plummy style.”
“Which bloody misbegotten Card takes the liberty of recasting in his own insane tongue. As the bloody bog-rat’s just done.”
Nutbeem’s news came from a shortwave radio that buzzed as though wracked by migraine. When the airwaves were clear it had a tenor hum, but snarled when auroral static crackled. Nutbeem lay across his desk, his ear close to the receiver, gleaning the waves, the yowling foreign voices, twisting the stories around to suit his mood of the day. The volume button was gone, and he turned it up or down by inserting the tip of a table knife in the metal slot and twisting. His corner smelled of radios-dust, heat, metal, wood, electricity, time.
“Only to save you from accusations of plagiarism, me old son.”
Nutbeem laughed bitterly. “I see you’ve regained your composure, you Newf dung beetle.” He leaned at Quoyle. “Yes. Incredible protection from plagiarism. Every sentence so richly freighted with typographical errors that the original authors would not recognize their own stories. Let me give you some examples.” He fished in file folders, pulled out a ragged sheet.
“I’ll read you one of his gibberish gems, just to open your eyes. The first version is what I wrote, the second is the way it appeared in the paper. Item: ‘Burmese sawmill owners and the Rangoon Development Corporation met in Tokyo Tuesday to consider a joint approach to marketing tropical hardwoods, both locally and for export.’ Here’s what Card did with it. ‘Burnoosed sawbill awnings and the Ranger Development Competition met Wednesday near Tokyo to mark up topical hairwood.’ ” Sat back in his squeaking chair. Let the pages fall into the wastebasket.
Tert Card scratched his head and looked at his fingernails. “After all, it’s only a stolen fiction in the first place,” he said.
“You think it amusing now, Quoyle, you smile,” said Nutbeem, “although you try to smile behind your hand, but wait until he works his damage on you. I read these samples to you so you know what lies ahead. ‘Plywood’ will become ‘playwool,’ ‘fisherman’ will become ‘figbun,’ ‘ Hibernia ’ become ‘hernia.’ This is the man to whom Jack Buggit entrusts our prose. No doubt you are asking yourself ‘Why?’ as I have many dark and sleepless nights. Jack says Card’s typos give humor to the paper. He says they’re better than a crossword puzzle.”
The corner at the end of the room fenced with a particleboard partition.
“That’s Jack’s office,” said Card. “And there’s your little corner, Quoyle.” Card waved his arm grandly. A desk, half a filing cabinet, the sawed-off top covered with a square of plywood, a 1983 Ontario telephone book, a swivel chair with one arm. A lamp of the kind found in hotel lobbies in the 1930s stood beside the desk, thick red cord like a rat’s tail, plug as large as a baseball.