The Shipping News   ::   Proulx E. Annie

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Al Catalog, face like a stubbled bun, slick mouth, ticked the back of his fingernail down the assignment list. His glance darted away from the back of Quoyle’s chin, hammer on a nail.

“O.k., planning board meeting’s a good one for you to start with. Down at the elemennary school. Whyn’t you take that tonight? Sit in the little chairs. Write down everything you hear, type it up. Five hunnerd max. Take a recorder, you want. Show me the piece in the AM. Lemme see it before you give it on to that black son of a bitch on the copy desk.” Partridge was the black son of a bitch.

Quoyle at the back of the meeting, writing on his pad. Went home, typed and retyped all night at the kitchen table. In the morning, eyes circled by rings, nerved on coffee, he went to the newsroom. Waited for Al Catalog.

Ed Punch, always the first through the door, slid into his office like an eel into the rock. The AM parade started. Feature-page man swinging a bag of coconut doughnuts; tall Chinese woman with varnished hair; elderly circulation man with arms like hawsers; two women from layout; photo editor, yesterday’s shirt all underarm stains. Quoyle at his desk pinching his chin, his head down, pretending to correct his article. It was eleven pages long.

At ten o’clock, Partridge. Red suspenders and a linen shirt. He nodded and patted his way across the newsroom, stuck his head in Punch’s crevice, winked at Quoyle, settled into the copy desk slot in front of his terminal.

Partridge knew a thousand things, that wet ropes held greater weight, why a hard-boiled egg spun more readily than a raw. Eyes half closed, head tipped back in a light trance, he could cite baseball statistics as the ancients unreeled The Iliad . He reshaped banal prose, scraped the mold off Jimmy Breslin imitations. “Where are the reporters of yesteryear?” he muttered, “the nail-biting, acerbic, alcoholic nighthawk bastards who truly knew how to write?”

Quoyle brought over his copy. “Al isn’t in yet,” he said, squaring up the pages, “so I thought I’d give it to you.”

His friend did not smile. Was on the job. Read for a few seconds, lifted his face to the fluorescent light. “Edna was in she’d shred this. Al saw it he’d tell Punch to get rid of you. You got to rewrite this. Here, sit down. Show you what’s wrong. They say reporters can be made out of anything. You’ll be a test case.”

It was what Quoyle had expected.

“Your lead,” said Partridge. “Christ!” He read aloud in a high-pitched singsong.

Last night the Pine Eye Planning Commission voted by a large margin to revise earlier recommendations for amendments to the municipal zoning code that would increase the minimum plot size of residential properties in all but downtown areas to seven acres.

“It’s like reading cement. Too long. Way, way, way too long. Confused. No human interest. No quotes. Stale.” His pencil roved among Quoyle’s sentences, stirring and shifting. “Short words. Short sentences. Break it up. Look at this, look at this. Here’s your angle down here. That’s news. Move it up.”

He wrenched the words around. Quoyle leaned close, stared, fidgeted, understood nothing.

“O.k., try this.

Pine Eye Planning Commission member Janice Foxley resigned during an angry late-night Tuesday meeting. “I’m not going to sit here and watch the poor people of this town get sold down the river,” Foxley said.

A few minutes before Foxley’s resignation the commission approved a new zoning law by a vote of 9 to 1. The new law limits minimum residential property sizes to seven acres.

“Not very snappy, no style, and still too long,” said Partridge, “but going in the right direction. Get the idea? Get the sense of what’s news? What you want in the lead? Here, see what you can do. Put some spin on it.”

Partridge’s fire never brought him to a boil. After six months of copy desk fixes Quoyle didn’t recognize news, had no aptitude for detail. He was afraid of all but twelve or fifteen verbs. Had a fatal flair for the false passive. “Governor Murchie was handed a bouquet by first grader Kimberley Plud,” he wrote and Edna, the crusty rewrite woman, stood up and bellowed at Quoyle. “You lobotomized moron. How the hell can you hand a governor?” Quoyle another sample of the semi-illiterates who practiced journalism nowadays. Line them up against the wall!

Quoyle sat through meetings scribbling on pads. It seemed he was part of something. Edna’s roars, Partridge’s picking did not hurt him. He had come up under the savage brother, the father’s relentless criticism. Thrilled at the sight of his byline. Irregular hours encouraged him to imagine that he was master of his own time. Home after midnight from a debate on the wording of a minor municipal bylaw on bottle recycling, he felt he was a pin in the hinge of power. Saw the commonplaces of life as newspaper headlines. Man Walks Across Parking Lot at Moderate Pace. Women Talk of Rain. Phone Rings in Empty Room.

Partridge labored to improve him. “What don’t happen is also news, Quoyle.”

“I see.” Pretending to understand. Hands in pockets.

“This story on the County Mutual Aid Transportation meeting? A month ago they were ready to start van service in four towns if Bugle Hollow came in. You say here that they met last night, then, way down at the end you mention sort of as a minor detail, that Bugle Hollow decided not to join. You know how many old people, no cars, people can’t afford a car or a second car, commuters, been waiting for that goddamn van to pull up? Now it’s not going to happen. News, Quoyle, news. Better get your mojo working.” A minute later added in a different voice that he was doing Greek-style marinated fish and red peppers on skewers Friday night and did Quoyle want to come over?

He did, but wondered what a mojo actually was.

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In late spring Ed Punch called Quoyle into his office, said he was fired. He looked out of his ruined face past Quoyle’s ear. “It’s more of a layoff. If it picks up later on…”

Quoyle got a part-time job driving a cab.

Partridge knew why. Talked Quoyle into putting on a huge apron, gave him a spoon and a jar. “His kids home from college. They got your job. Nothing to cry over. That’s right, spread that mustard on the meat, let it work in.”

In August, snipping dill into a Russian beef stew with pickles, Partridge said, “Punch wants you back. Says you’re interested, come in Monday morning.”

Punch played reluctant. Made a show of taking Quoyle back as a special favor. Temporary.

The truth was Punch had noticed that Quoyle, who spoke little himself, inspired talkers.