Tell

by Frances Itani

  When he saw that he would be forced to divert up a rise toward the road that led back to town, he took the opposite fork and kept the lights of town behind him. He left the bay and continued to walk until he neared the outbuildings of a farm. He did not want to be seen; he needed to be alone. He approached an abandoned barn that had a perilous tilt. The roof sagged in the middle like an old swayback. He found a place where he could squeeze between loose boards, and ducked into a half-upright room. The space was dark. It smelled of old manure, of dust, of stored apples and packed earth and sweet, rotting hay.

  He was cold, safe, out of the wind. He stayed there with no sense of time passing. He looked toward the outline of the owner’s farmhouse not far off. Someone lit a lamp while he was watching and he saw movement across a lower window, probably the kitchen. A woman. He tried to remember who had moved into this place after he’d left for the war. Someone who was a friend of Tress’s aunt Maggie. He couldn’t think of the woman’s name at first. Tress had spoken about her. Something with a Z. Zeta or Zelda, something like that. Zel, an unusual name. Yes, that was it. He could hear Tress’s voice.

  Zel was a widow who moved here from the next county after her husband died. She started up a rooming house beyond the town’s edge.

  The lamp moved past the window again, and a flicker of memory reminded him of a time and place when it had not been safe to show a light. The widow’s house was newly wired for electricity—he could see the wires—but clearly, lamps were used as well. There were occasional blackouts in his own house, and he and Tress kept a supply of candles and a few kerosene lamps. No one got rid of their lamps.

  He tried to recall more of what Tress had said about Zel. Because of his own long silences since coming home, Tress had sometimes fallen into the habit of talking on and on, telling him about people, connecting him back to the daily activities of the town. At times, he heard every nuance of her voice and vividly pictured the scene or person she was describing. At other times, he heard her voice as if it were searching him out from far off, a voice without individual words.

  The widow who moved into the place bought the house from a travelling salesman. The salesman never pretended to like farming, and he allowed the barn to fall into disrepair in the span of a few years. He built a smaller detached building beside the house, a workroom of sorts, where he stored his supplies. When the town began to shrink because of industries closing one after another, the salesman moved to Toronto.

  From the sagging barn where he now stood, Kenan could see the outline of the separate workroom in the shadows. The house itself appeared to be in good shape. He did recall the man, though they’d never exchanged more than a “Good day” before the war. The man had spent weeks on the road, travelling from town to town, around the time Kenan and Tress married. What Kenan remembered most was the auto. The salesman had bought a Model T a year or two before the war, and Kenan would have given anything to get behind the wheel. He’d been shown by a friend how to drive when he was overseas, training in England. But he never forgot the Model T. The auto, of course, would have left town with the salesman.

  According to Tress, Zel began to take in boarders shortly after the salesman moved out and she moved in. She needed the income and wanted the company. Boarders were allowed free use of the kitchen, because Zel provided only breakfast and an occasional Sunday supper. The house wasn’t far from the centre of town, but Kenan knew that no woman would walk home through the woods and path the way he had just done. Women would stick to the road, where they’d pass other houses, another farm.

  He stood for a long time, his face turned in the direction of the light in Zel’s kitchen. A far-off but comforting light. A second light went on in one of the upstairs rooms, probably the room of a boarder. Tress had told him that an elderly couple now lived there, and a new schoolteacher. A handyman from town came out a couple of times a month to chop wood and look after the maintenance of the place. The wood had to be stacked behind the house under a lean-to; it wasn’t in the half-rotted building Kenan stood in now. From here he couldn’t see what was on the other side of the rooming house at all.

  He relaxed, leaned against the boards of the old barn and closed his good eye. His right hand made a sign, a word. A finger to his lips and back to his chest. Tell, it seemed to be saying, but the word was directed at himself. It was his private communication: Tell.

  WHEN HE LEFT THE BARN, HE WAS CAREFUL TO AVOID being seen, even in the dark. He had no trouble retracing his steps down the slope, through the thin woods, along both paths, close to the inlet and the bay, and finally back to the short strip of boardwalk in front of his house. He slipped around to the side door. The bulges were still on the line, which meant that Tress hadn’t returned. She would untangle the clothes later, carry them inside. They would be cold and stiff; each would stand upright—another sign of winter—as if a spirit person dwelled inside. Kenan was sometimes spooked by this. He didn’t like to be in the kitchen when Tress batted at the half-frozen clothes, laughing aloud when they slumped in front of her while their phantom shapes collapsed.

  While Kenan had been out—he had no idea how long—the wind had lowered its edge. He sensed a new quiet when he entered from outside. He slipped into his house, flicked on a light and bolted the door behind him.

  Chapter Two

  AM HAD BEEN WATCHING. FROM THE CLOCK tower above the third-floor apartment in the post office building he had seen first the movement and then the man. He recognized the figure from the moment young Kenan rounded the narrow house and placed a foot on the boardwalk. Am followed his progress, the ease with which he stepped down, the lack of hesitation when he chose the dirt path. He saw him stumble and recover, saw him fight the bitter wind. He watched him disappear beyond the trees on the far side of the inlet, heading east toward the outskirts of town, where there was a low rise and, after that, a few farms.

  Am nodded. The figure was hooded, blurred from this far off, but the long-legged stride could not be mistaken for anyone else’s. Am had watched the boy grow up in the town alongside his own nieces and nephews. They’d played together, walked to school together, built a fort under the old pier, which they had believed to be their secret. During those early years, Am had always thought of Kenan as the spindly orphan lad with the curly hair. Raised by the man known as Oak, who owned a welding shop and walked so slowly he might have been wading through water. Everyone addressed him by the single word, Oak, as if he possessed no Christian name. The man had adopted the boy as a baby, and assumed responsibility, but he didn’t seem to know exactly what to do with him. And yet, he had surprised the town. He’d fed Kenan, kept him clean, sent him to school—he’d raised him.

  So. The boy was finally out in the open. First time since he’d come home from the war. Am still thought of him as a boy. Kenan was in his mid-twenties compared to Am’s fiftieth birthday coming up. Because Am was related—his niece Tress had married Kenan just before the war—he was one of the few permitted to visit after the boy had returned home.

  Kenan had never objected to Am’s presence. During the early months, Kenan hadn’t spoken at all. The two men sat in the glassed-in back veranda, often on a Sunday afternoon, side by side in wicker chairs that were arranged to face the bay. The silence was not uncomfortable. When Am spoke, it was to talk about boats on the water, who owned which, who drifted over from Napanee, who was out for a Sunday excursion, who had caught the biggest walleye or bullhead that week, who was unlucky enough to be bailing water from a leaky flat-bottomed boat. One day he pointed out a father and son who fished for mudpout, skinned and sold the fish from door to door out the back of their tumbledown auto, and then drove to farms to barter there, too, if there were any fish left to sell after they’d been through the streets of town.

  In response, Kenan nodded. Later, when he’d begun to speak again—haltingly, at first—he’d offered shorthand news of what he’d been reading from the orderly pile of papers and magazines stacked beside his veranda chair. Tre
ss brought home the Toronto and Ottawa papers from her father’s hotel, as well as magazines and the local paper, the Deseronto Post. Kenan still had a good eye, he told Am; he could read. He had a good arm and hand; he could write. With his good eye, he also read The Veteran. Men who’d returned from overseas were banding together in different parts of the country, and Kenan was interested in what they wanted from the politicians. In his opinion, there were too many organizations starting up. He had joined the Great War Veterans’ Association because he believed they would help, now that just about all the boys were home. And hadn’t they found work for him? Easy work he could do at home, but work nonetheless. Edwards Drugstore in town had been searching for someone to look after the account books, and Kenan was suggested for the job.

  Am knew that the lad was good with figures, and that he could keep the books up to date, no problem. The owner of the drugstore, Hal Edwards, had told Am that Kenan’s work was more than satisfactory. He’d also told Am that after the first time he looked into Kenan’s scarred face, he no longer flinched when they were face to face. Edwards, never without a pencil tucked behind his ear, delivered the paperwork to Kenan at the end of every week, on a Saturday. Sometimes, if Tress was working on a Saturday, she picked up the ledgers on the way home and saved Edwards the trouble. Kenan worked at the books Monday and Tuesday, and got them back to Edwards on Wednesday—with Tress delivering.

  Am had known the Edwards family for close to twenty years. He knew, too, that Kenan had worked for the drugstore after school when he was sixteen or seventeen, delivering necessities to people around town. After that, he’d begun to work at the bank, being trained as a teller, but the work had been cut short when he joined up and left for the war.

  A few months earlier, Kenan had received a one-time payment for his war service: six months’ gratuity. He also had a small pension, and now, he had the books from the drugstore to keep. The money earned would not support Kenan and Tress for the rest of their lives, but the work would do for the time being.

  Kenan did not want pity and he did not speak about the war or his part in it. Nor did Am ever ask. When he visited the boy, they talked of the present but with some topics unmentioned. Neither spoke about Kenan’s prospects for the future. Neither spoke about the fact that Kenan did not leave the house.

  But this evening, everything had changed. Am was certain it was Kenan who had battled the wind at the end of the street as he emerged from the side of his house and walked away from the town with his quick stride.

  Am nodded to himself again, and held a hand over his abdomen as he stepped away from the clock. Last Sunday afternoon, at the end of his visit with Kenan, he’d surprised himself and told the lad about the pain he’d been having in his gut. He’d blurted it out, the tale springing from his lips.

  He had been suffering from pain since early fall. He had not told Mags that he’d gone to see the town doctor, or that Dr. Clark had examined him and said, “Am, you and I both know you’re as strong as a bull. Are you certain there isn’t something else bothering you? Have you told Maggie about this?”

  Am said he planned to tell her soon.

  But he had not, because he knew Mags would question him. She would want to make up one of her home remedies. No bottled goods from Edwards Drugstore for her. She would want Am to drink hot milk and pepper. Or something she’d mixed with turpentine or concocted from bitter apples, or melted lard mixed with camphor gum—something that would certainly make him want to throw up.

  Everyone in town knew that Mags had a remedy for everything, even for growing back eyebrows that had fallen out. Problem was, she’d have to find someone who had no eyebrows so she could try out her concoction. She’d also been threatening to come up with something that would cause rapid growth of hair on the back of Am’s head—where, once again, Grew the barber had chopped too much during the last haircut. But Am was loyal to Grew, whether the barber drank excessively or not. And if Grew did drink too much, he had good reason.

  In the end, it was Kenan, not Mags, whom Am had told about the pain. After returning home from visiting that Sunday, Am wondered why he’d spilled out his concerns to the younger man. Not that Kenan would say anything, not at all. It was left to Am to tell Mags himself. He had decided that he would, the very next day. But after making the decision, he woke in the morning and lay quietly in his bed as if pain had never been part of his life. He’d slept so soundly, he was cheerfully surprised at being filled with his old energies. Cautious, he tested his strength at the edge of the bed. Made no sudden movement. Placed his feet on the floor and commanded his body to stand. The memory of pain settled into his past like a forgotten, used-up day. He dressed himself and began his routine, working on the floors below, caring for the building that housed him and Maggie on the third floor, the post office at ground level, the busy customs house in between.

  Two days after that, the pain came back, and now he still hadn’t told Mags. What would he say if he were to tell her? That he withstood the discomfort as he went about his work on the floors below and up in the clock tower, muttering all the while? In the end, he shared the knowledge only with Kenan, whom he told at the Sunday visit, moments before pushing himself up from the chair and saying goodbye.

  DESERONTO POST, NOVEMBER 1919

  Local Items

  Farmers have been much incensed at the condition of the boundary road, and the heavy rainfall surely has not helped. Our friends from surrounding areas frequently have to make wide detours to get to our town at all to conduct their business.

  It has been rumoured that a poet and songwriter who shall remain unnamed but who recently lived in our midst will return at the end of the year, for the sole purpose of giving a recitation of a new work as part of the New Year’s Eve concert to be held at Naylor’s Theatre.

  Speaking of the upcoming concert, rehearsals taking place at Naylor’s are becoming downright secretive. What is in store for us this year? Readers, be assured that I’ll be present in my front-row seat, ready to report in the Post the delights that await, especially those under the direction of the talented Lukas Sebastian, the music director, who has recently moved here from faraway Europe, and who promises a splendid programme. Meanwhile, providing few clues to inform us, the singers, musicians and thespians in town quietly prepare.

  Public Library

  All residents of Deseronto over 12 years of age are entitled to the privileges of library and reading room, on complying with regulations.

  Twin Torturers! Lumbago and Rheumatism Are Made Harmless by Dodd’s Kidney Pills.

  Chapter Three

  MAGGIE O’NEILL STOOD INSIDE THE TOWER, where giant hands on the four surrounding clocks pointed to twelve minutes before six. She had been wakened early in the morning by a singing voice, she was certain. In the apartment below the clock tower, Am was still in bed, sleeping or not sleeping. At this moment, Maggie couldn’t muster the effort to care.

  She looked through the peering-out space scraped at eye level between IIII and V on the front-facing clock, and watched the moon drop from the sky. A flat-bottomed glow thinned to become a domed handle. The handle became a wisp. Finally, the last trace was swallowed by an ocean of darkness, though the nearest ocean was a thousand miles from this tiny Ontario town.

  Light from the new day began to spread itself over shingles and chimneys, drifting through narrow alleys that wound in and out of a puddled Main Street below. Maggie glanced up at the hands of the clock and took a final look out. Dark woods, which only moments before had shrouded the edges of town, were separating into particular tree shapes. Black waters of the bay lay to the south, wharves and piers directly ahead. A ragged shoreline curved east and west. She sensed the grey-brown tempo of late fall.

  She pulled back, away from the clock. “The sun will rise of its own accord with no help from me,” she said to no one but herself. She gathered the folds of her dressing gown around her hips and realized that in her head, she’d been going through the lines of a gy
psy song she would soon be singing to an audience larger than herself.

  Who give their all, a simple note,

  At peep of dawn or parting day

  But fortunes here I come to tell.

  Her solo. One of them. She could not think of her upcoming performance without wondering if she would freeze in front of the audience. Forget the lines, the notes. Or worse.

  She made her way around the massive bell that hung from the central beam in the tower; she tugged at her dressing gown again to prevent it from tangling, and stepped onto the wooden platform. When she was steady, she lowered herself onto the rungs of a ladder that poked up through the opening in the tower floor and was flush to the back wall of her parlour below. She left the trap door open. Am would be going up later; this was the day he oiled cogs and gears and checked the horizontal rods that jutted into the centre of the tower and controlled the hands on the faces of each clock.

  Maggie made no sound as she placed her fingers against the door of a tall cupboard that stretched from floor to ceiling in the back corner of the room. Knowing the weight of all that was above it, she thought of the mahogany cupboard as a repository of woes. Cleverly disguised behind its door were long pendulum cables that hung from the clock above. The cables extended through the tower floor and were suspended over a three-foot bed of sand that filled the bottom of the cupboard. From the parlour, no one could possibly know that sand lay behind and below the closed cupboard door. Maggie had had more than one nightmare about the cables crashing down, or the giant bell falling and bringing the tower with it. Now, despite her thoughts of calamity, the music for the gypsy song played in her head again, and she had to consider how remote from a gypsy’s life was her own. She, who had been nowhere, had grown up on her parents’ farm and then, along with Am, owned a farm after marriage. After selling the farm, she and Am had spent the past twenty years in this same small town. Any trips she took were to nearby Belleville and back, or to Toronto to shop once in a blue moon, or across the lake to Oswego, New York, for a visit to her sister, Nola. That was the extent of her wandering gypsy life. Safe, and not far at all.