The Shipping News

25 Oil

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 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.”

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 Card. “What you’ll have is the international oil companies skimming the cream off the pot. How much is going to trickle down to the outports? It’s outsiders will get the gold. There’s drugs and crime here now, and prostitutes waggling their red behinds, and it’s only started. Vandalism, stealing and smashing.”

“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 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 to Quoyle on the phone talking oil for a week, seen him come back from the Cape Despond spill covered with oil, his notes a greasy wad because he’d plunged in beside the rescuers of ruined seabirds. “You give him that story and we’ll watch Tert Card the Oil King expire of a paroxysm. You’d think he had a million dollars worth of oil stock. Ha, he’s got two shares of Mobil. Two!” Snakey thrust of his head.

“It’s on my desk,” said Quoyle.

“I won’t forget this, Billy Pretty,” said Card, spots the size of coasters burning on his cheeks.

The short parade to Flour Sack Cove, take-out coffee slopping down dashboards, steering wheels gritty with doughnut sugar. Ten minutes later Quoyle handed Card his column, said nothing, watched his eyes zag back and forth. Staff Awaits Paroxysm.

NOBODY HANGS A PICTURE OF AN OIL TANKER

There is a 1904 photograph on the wall of the Killick-Claw Public Library. It shows eight schooners in Omaloor Bay heading out to the fishing grounds, their sails spread like white wings. They are beautiful beyond compare. It took great skill and sea knowledge to sail them.

Today the most common sight on the marine horizon is the low black profile of an oil tanker. Oil, in crude and refined forms, is-bar none-the number one commodity in international trade.

Another common sight is black oil scum along miles of landwash, like the shoreline along Cape Despond this week. Hundreds of people watched Monday morning as 14,000 metric tons of crude washed onshore from a ruptured tank of the Golden Goose. Thousands of seabirds and fish struggled in the oil, fishing boats and nets were fouled. “This is the end of this place,” said Jack Eye, 87, of Little Despond, who, as a young man, was a dory fisherman with the schooner fleet.

Our world runs on oil. More than 3,000 tankers prowl the world’s seas. Among them are the largest moving objects ever made by man, the Very Large Crude Carriers, or VLCCs, up to 400 meters in length and over 200,000 deadweight tons. Many of these ships are single hull vessels. Some are old and corroded, structurally weak. One thing is sure. There will be more oil spills, and some will be horrendous.

Nobody hangs a picture of an oil tanker on their wall.

Tert Card read it, laid it on the corner of his desk and looked at Quoyle.

“You too,” he said. “You bloody fucking too.”

When the newsroom was empty that evening he stood by the window, addressed an absent Quoyle.

“Keep your bloody American pinko Greenpeace liberalism out of it. Who the hell are you to say this? Oh yes, Mr. Quoyle’s bloody precious column! It’s against our whole effort of development and economic progress.”

And he rewrote the piece, pasted it up with bold fingers, went out and got drunk. To quell the pain of the irksome canker sores. How could they know he swallowed glassful after glassful to comprehend a harsh and private beauty?

A day or two later Tert Card brought in a framed picture from a shipping company’s wall calendar. He hung it behind his desk. The gargantuan Quiet Eye nosed through a sunset into Placentia Bay. LARGEST OIL TANKER IN THE WORLD. The first time the door slammed it went askew.

Quoyle thought it was funny until noon when Card came back from the printer with the ink-smelling bundles of Gammy Bird. Took a copy, turned to see how his Shipping News story came out. His column had been condensed to a caption accompanying the same calendar page photo that hung on Tert Card’s wall.

PICTURE OF AN OIL TANKER

More than 3,000 tankers proudly ride the world’s seas. These giant tankers, even the biggest, take advantage of Newfoundland’s deep-water ports and refineries. Oil and Newfoundland go together like ham and eggs, and like ham and eggs they’ll nourish us all in the coming years.

Let’s all hang a picture of an oil tanker on our wall.

Quoyle felt the blood drain out of his head; he went dizzy.

“What have you done!” he shouted at Tert Card, voice an axe.

“Straightened it out, that’s all. We don’t want to hear that Greenpeace shit.” Tert Card whinnied. Feeling good. His cheap face thrust out.

“You cut the guts out of this piece! You made it into rotten cheap propaganda for the oil industry. You made me look like a mouthpiece for tanker interests.” He pressed Card into his corner.

“I told you,” said Nutbeem. “I told you, Quoyle, to watch out, he’ll cobble your work.”

Quoyle was incensed, some well of anger like a dome of oil beneath innocuous sand, tapped and gushing.

“This is a column,” bellowed Quoyle. “You can’t change somebody’s column, for Christ’s sake, because you don’t like it! Jack asked me to write a column about boats and shipping. That means my opinion and description as I see it. This”-he shook the paper against the slab cheeks-“isn’t what I wrote, isn’t my opinion, isn’t what I see.”

“As long as I’m the managing editor,” said Tert Card, rattling like pebbles in a can, “I’ve the right to change anything I don’t think fit to run in the Gammy Bird. And if you don’t think so, I advise you to check it out with Jack Buggit.” Ducked under Quoyle’s raised arms.

And ran for the door.

“Don’t think I don’t know you’re all against me.” The thick candle that was Tert Card gone somewhere else with his sputtering light.

“You’re a surprise, Quoyle,” said Billy Pretty. “I didn’t believe you had that much steam in your boiler. You blew him out of the water.”

“You know how it is, now,” said Nutbeem. “I tried to tell you on the first day.”

“You watch, though. By tomorrow he’ll be back afloat on an even keel. Tert Card snaps right back for all he’s a vitrid bugger.”

“I’m surprised myself,” said Quoyle. “I’m going to call Jack,” he said, “and get this straightened out. Either I’m writing a column or I’m not.”

“Word of advice, Quoyle. Don’t call Jack. He is out fishing, as I assume you know. He don’t like Gammy Bird business to come into his home, neither. You just leave it alone and let me drop around to the stage tonight or tomorrow night. The crab approach is best with Jack.”

“Gammy Bird. Tert Card speaking. Oh, yar, Jack.” Tert Card held the phone receiver against his sweatered chest, looked at Quoyle. The morning light unkind.

“Wants to talk to you.” His tone indicated bad taste or madness on Jack’s part.

“Hello.” Braced for abuse.

“Quoyle. Jack Buggit here. You write your column. If you put your foot in a dog’s mess we’ll say it’s because you was brought up in the States. Tert will keep his hands off it. Put him back on.”

Quoyle held the phone up and motioned to Card. They could hear Jack squawk. Slowly Tert Card turned his back to the room, faced the window, the sea. As the minutes went by he shifted from foot to foot, sat on the edge of his desk, foraged in ears and nostrils. He rocked, switched the phone from one side of his head to the other. At last the phone went quiet and he hung up.

“All right,” he said blandly, though the red cheeks flamed, “Jack thinks he wants to try running Quoyle’s columns as they come. For now, anyway. So we’ll just go along with that. We’ll go along with that. But he’s got an idea on the car wreck feature. You know there are weeks when we don’t have any good wrecks and have to go into the files. Well, Jack wants to include boat wrecks. He says at the fisherman’s meeting they said there was more than three hundred dangerous boat accidents and vessel losses last year. Quoyle, he wants you to write up boat wrecks and get some photos, same as you do the car wrecks. There’s enough so we’ll always have a fresh disaster.”

“There’s no doubt about that,” said Quoyle, looking at Tert Card.