Free The Shipping News by Annie Proulx

but this is more than enough,” said the aunt, her hair down over one ear from collision with the chandelier, “and if I ever get out of this motel I will lead a good life, go to church regularly, bake bread twice a week and never let the dirty dishes stand. I’ll never go out with my legs bare, so help me, just let me get out of here. I forgot what it’s like, but it comes back to me now.”
    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 [57] 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 [58] of correspondents. He gets treasures in the mail, as you see. There’s a stream of people