“What should I do?” said Quoyle. “What does Mr. Buggit want me to do?”
“Ah, nobody but himself can say. He wants you to sit tight and wait until he’s back. He’ll tell you what he wants. You just come in every morning and himself’ll show up one fine day and divulge all. Look through back issues. Acquaint yourself with Gammy Bird. Drive around and learn all four of our roads.” Card turned away, labored over the computer.
“I’s got to be out and about,” said Billy Pretty. “Interview with a feller makes juju-bracelets out of lobster feelers for export to Haiti. Borrer your truck, Card? Mine’s got the bad emission valve. Waiting for a part.”
“You’re always waiting for parts for that scow. Anyway, mine’s not starting too good today. She dies just any old place.”
Billy turned to Nutbeem.
“I rode the bike today. I suppose you can take the bike.”
“Rather walk than snap me legs off on that rind of a bike.” He cleared his throat and glanced at Quoyle. But Quoyle looked away out the window. He was too new to get into this.
“Ah, well. I’ll hoof it. It’s not more than eighteen miles each way.”
In a minute they heard him outside, cursing as he mounted the jangling bicycle.
Half an hour later Tert Card left, started his truck, drove smoothly away.
“Off to get soused,” said Nutbeem pleasantly. “Off to get his lottery ticket and then get soused. Observe that the truck starts when he wants it to.”
Quoyle smiled, his hand went to his chin.
He spent the rest of the day, the rest of the week, leafing through the old phone book and reading back issues of the Gammy Bird.
The paper was a forty-four-page tab printed on a thin paper. Six columns, headlines modest, 36-point was a screamer, some stout but unfamiliar sans serif type. A very small news hole and a staggering number of ads.
He had never seen so many ads. They went down both sides of the pages like descending stairs and the news was squeezed into the vase-shaped space between. Crude ads with a few lines of type dead center. Don’t Pay Anything Until January! No Down Payment! No Interest! As though these exhortations were freshly coined phrases for vinyl siding, rubber stamps, life insurance, folk music festivals, bank services, rope ladders, cargo nets, marine hardware, ship’s laundry services, davits, rock band entertainment at the Snowball Lounge, clocks, firewood, tax return services, floor jacks, cut flowers, truck mufflers, tombstones, boilers, brass tacks, curling irons, jogging pants, snowmobiles, Party Night at Seal Flipper Lounge with Arthur the Accordion Ace, used snowmobiles, fried chicken, a smelting derby, T-shirts, oil rig maintenance, gas barbecue grills, wieners, flights to Goose Bay, Chinese restaurant specials, dry bulk transport services, a glass of wine with the pork chop special at the Norse Sunset Lounge, retraining program for fishermen, VCR repairs, heavy equipment operator training, tires, rifles, love seats, frozen corn, jelly powder, dancing at Uncle Demmy’s Bar, kerosene lanterns, hull repairs, hatches, tea bags, beer, lumber planing, magnetic brooms, hearing aids.
He figured the ad space. Gammy Bird had to be making money. And somebody was one hell of a salesman.
Quoyle asked Nutbeem. “Mr. Buggit do the ads?”
“No. Tert Card. Part of the managing editor’s job. Believe it or not.” Tittered behind his mustache. “And they’re not as good as they look.”
Quoyle turned the pages. Winced at the wrecked car photos on the front page. Sexual abuse stories-three or four in every issue. Polar bears on ice floes. The shipping news looked simple-just a list of vessels in port. Or leaving.
“Hungry Men,” a restaurant review by Benny Fudge and Adonis Collard running under two smudged photographs. Fudge’s face seemed made of leftover flesh squeezed roughly together. Collard wore a cap that covered his eyes. Quoyle shuddered as he read.
Trying to decide where to munch up some fast food? You could do worse than try Grudge’s Cod Hop. The interior is booths with a big window in front. Watch the trucks on the highway! We did. We ordered the Fish Strip Basket which contained three fried fish Strips, coleslaw and a generous helping of fried chips for $5.70. The beverage was separate. The Fish Strip Basket was supposed to include Dinner Roll, but instead we got Slice of Bread. The fish Strips were very crispy and good. There is a choice of packet of lemon juice or Tartar Sauce. We both had the Tartar Sauce. There is counter service too.
Billy Pretty’s work, “The Home Page,” a conglomeration of poems, photographs of babies, write-away-for hooked rug patterns. Always a boxed feature-how to make birdhouses of tin cans, axe sheaths of cardboard, bacon turners from old kitchen forks. Recipes for Damper Devils, Fried Bawks, Dogberry Wine and Peas and Melts.
But the one everybody must read first, thought Quoyle, was “Scruncheons,” a jet of near-libelous gossip. The author knitted police court news, excerpts of letters from relatives away, rude winks about rough lads who might be going away for “an Irish vacation.” It beat any gossip column Quoyle had ever read. The byline was junior Sugg.
Well, we see the postman has landed in jail for 45 days for throwing the mail in Killick-Claw Harbour. He said he had too much mail to deliver and if people wanted it they could get it themselves. Guess it helps if you can swim. Poor Mrs. Tudge was hit by a tourist driving a luxury sedan last Tuesday. She is in hospital, not getting on too good. We hear the tourist’s car isn’t too good, either. And the Mounties are looking into the cause of an early morning fire that burned down the Pinhole Seafood fish plant on Shebeen Island; they might ask a certain fellow in a certain cove on the island what he thinks about it. A snowmobile mishap has taken the life of 78-year-old Rick Puff. Mr. Puff was on his way home from what Mrs. Puff called “a screech-in and a carouse” when his machine fell through the ice. Mr. Puff was a well-known accordion player who was filmed by a crew from the university. In the 1970s he served four years for sexual assault on his daughters. Bet they aren’t crying either. Good news! We heard Kevin Mercy’s dog “Biter” was lost in an avalanche on Chinese Hill last week. And what’s this we read in the overseas papers about kidnappers mailing the left ear of a Sicilian businessman they are holding hostage to his family? The way the foreigners live makes you wonder!
The editorial page played streams of invective across the provincial political scene like a fire hose. Harangues, pitted with epithets. Gammy Bird was a hard bite. Looked life right in its shifty, bloodshot eye. A tough little paper. Gave Quoyle an uneasy feeling, the feeling of standing on a playground watching others play games whose rules he didn’t know. Nothing like the Record. He didn’t know how to write this stuff.
On his second Monday morning the door to Jack Buggit’s office gaped. Inside, Buggit himself, a cigarette behind his ear, leaning back in a wooden chair and saying “hmm” on the telephone. He waved Quoyle in to him with two hoops of his right hand.
Quoyle in a chair with a splintered front edge that bit into his thighs. Hand to his chin. From beyond the partition he could hear the mutter of Nutbeem’s radios, the flicking of computer keys, old Billy Pretty scratching out notes with a nibbed pen he dipped in a bottle.
Jack Buggit was an unlikely looking newspaper editor. A small man with a red forehead, somewhere, Quoyle thought, between forty-five and ninety-five. A stubbled chin, slack neck. Jaggled hair frowsting down. Fingers ochre from chain-smoking. He wore scale-spattered coveralls and his feet on the desk were in rubber boots with red soles.
“Oh yar!” he said in a startlingly loud voice. “Oh yar,” and hung up. Lit a cigarette.