Billy seemed stored in an envelope; the flap sometimes lifted, his flattened self sliding onto the table.
“What hot weather?” said Quoyle. “This is the first day I can think of over forty degrees Fahrenheit. The rain is always ready to turn into snow. And where’s Gaze Island?”
“Don’t know where Gaze Island is?” Billy laughed a little. His stabbing blue-eyed look. “Fifteen miles northeast of the narrows. Bunch of whales went aground there once-some calls it Whale Island, but it is Gaze Island to me. Though it had other names in the beginning. A beauty place. A place of local interest, Quoyle.” Teasing.
“Like to see it,” said Quoyle who had found his tub of coleslaw. “I’ve never been on an island.”
“Don’t be stun, boy. You’re on one now, just look at a map. You can come out with me. You ought to know about Gaze Island, you ought. Proper thing. Saturday morning. If the weather’s decent I’ll go out Saturday.”
“If I can,” said Quoyle. “If the aunt doesn’t have major things planned for me.” Kept gazing out at the bay. As if waiting for a certain ship. “There was a newsprint carrier hove to out in the bay yesterday. I was going to write about it.” The sunlight fading as the clouds came on.
“Saw her out there. Heard she had some trouble.”
“Fire in the engine room. Cause unknown. Diddy Shovel says that five years ago she wouldn’t have put in here for mutiny or famine. But now there’s the repair dock, the suppliers, the truck terminal. So they’re coming in. Plans to enlarge the dockyard. He says they’re talking about a shipyard.”
“Ar, it wasn’t always like this,” said Billy Pretty. “Killick-Claw used to be a couple of rickety fish stages and twenty houses. The big harbor, up until after World War II, was at the same damn place we been talking about-Misky Bay. Ar, she was a hot place-them big warships in there, tankers, freighters, troop carriers, everything. After the war, boy, she laid right down flat on the deck. And Killick-Claw come up and give her a kick overboard. Go ahead, ask me what happened.”
“What happened?”
“Ammunition. During the war Misky Bay was a ammunition-loading port. They dropped so goddamn many tons of the stuff overboard that nobody dare let down an anchor to this day in Misky Bay. The ammunition and the cables. There is a snarl of telephone and telegraph cables down at the bottom of that harbor would make you think a army of cats with a thousand balls of wool been scrabbling and hoovering around.
“Fact, that’s probably when poor old Misky Bay started downhill, when the blast was put on her. You know, that’d be a good head for my towel rack story, ‘Misky Bay Curse Still Wrecking Lives.’ ” The sun obliterated, a chop on the water, stiff breeze.
“Look at that.” Billy, pointing at a tug towing a burned hulk. “Don’t know what they think they’re going to do with that. That must be your story from Perdition Cove. What happened, Quoyle?”
The stink of char came to them.
“Got it here,” fishing in his pocket. “Course it’s still rough.” But he’d spent two days talking to relatives, eyewitnesses, the Coast Guard, electricians, and the propane gas dealer in Misky Bay. Read it aloud.
GOOD-BYE, BUDDY
Nobody in Perdition Cove will ever forget Tuesday morning. Many were still asleep when the first streak of sunlight painted the stern of the long-linerBuddy .
Owner Sam Nolly stepped aboard, a new light bulb in his hand. He intended to replace a burned-out light. Before the streak of sunlight reached the wheelhouse Sam Nolly was dead and theBuddywas a raft of smoking toothpicks floating in the harbor.
The powerful blast shattered nearly every window in Perdition Cove and was heard as far away as Misky Bay. The crew of a fishing boat off Final Point reported seeing a ball of fire roll across the water followed by a dense black cloud.
Investigators blamed the explosion on leaking propane gas that accumulated forward overnight and ignited when Sam Nolly screwed in the fresh bulb.
The long-liner was less than two weeks old. It was launched on Sam and Helen (Bodder) Nolly’s wedding day.
“A shame,” said Billy.
“Not bad,” said Nutbeem. “Jack will like it. Blood, Boats and Blowups.” Looked at his watch. They got up. A paper blew away, rolled along the wharf and into the water.
Billy squinted. “Saturday morning,” he said to Quoyle. Eyes like a blue crack of sky. Back to Tert Card, the cramped office. Overhead the cloud masses had merged, taken the form of fine-grained scrolls like tide marks on the sand.
After Billy and Nutbeem went in Quoyle lingered, stood in the cracked road a minute. The long horizon, the lunging, clotted sea like a swinging door opening, closing, opening.
20 Gaze Island
“The Pirate and the Jolly Boat.
A pirate, having more prisoners than he has room for,
tows one boatload astern.
All knives are taken away, and the boat made fast with
the bight of a doubled line. The after end of the line is ring
hitched to a stern ringbolt. CLOVE HITCHES are put around
each thwart, and the line is rove through the bow ringbolt and
brought to deck. They are told to escape if they can.
How do they escape?”
THE ASHLEY BOOK OF KNOTS
QUOYLE in Billy Pretty’s skiff. The old man hopped aboard nimbly, set a plastic bag under the seat and yanked the rope. The engine started- waaah -like a trumpet. A blare of wake spilled out behind them. Billy plunged around in a plywood box, dug out a tan plastic contraption, propped it in a corner, sat down and leaned back.
“Ah. ‘Tis me Back Buddy-gives the spinal column support and comfort.”
There was nothing to say. Haze on the horizon. The sky a sheet of pearl, and through it filtered a diffuse yellow. The wind filled Quoyle’s mouth, parted and snapped his hair.
“There’s the Ram and the Lamb,” said Billy, pointing at two rocks just beyond the narrows. The water swilled over them.
“I like it,” said Quoyle, “that the rocks have names. There’s one down off Quoyle’s Point-”
“Oh, ay, the Comb.”
“That’s it, a jagged rock with points sticking up.”
“Twelve points onto that rock. Or used to be. Was named after the old style of brimstone matches. They used to come in combs, all one piece along the bottom, twelve to a comb. You’d break one off. Sulfur stink. They called them stinkers-a comb of stinkers. Quoyle’s Point got quite a few known sunkers and rocks. There’s the Tea Buns, a whole plateful of little scrapers half a fathom under the water, off to the north of the Comb.