Telling Time

by Austin Wright

  The memory had no origin, it was simply there in the restored silence of the road while the taillights of the other car vanished from the mirror. The memory resisted explanation, or I resisted it, until the persistence of that image forced me to ask: Why was the thump on the right not the left, and why did the sight of the flying dog print on my mind a skier jumping through the light of the car on this flat road without snow? While the car continuing to advance left the dog behind, questions blotted themselves out, hiding the answers: what did I see? did the dog escape? what did I hit?

  Now read this: under no circumstances should this be written without providing a full explanation of the circumstances. Question and answer: Why didn’t you stop?

  Imperative reasons of utmost force, forgotten now since it was five years ago, but they were urgent, both before and after the dog appeared. Against this preoccupation, the dog was an irritating distraction. Besides, I did stop. I would have stopped.

  I drove on but it was so quiet and so dark I felt as if I had stopped. Looking into the mirror utterly dark, nothing to see, and no sound, thinking it was all my imagination, asking what evidence there was. I did slow down.

  Don’t make false excuses. What was I thinking as I drove on? I was trying to determine what had happened. I had faced the possibility of hitting the dog or the other car, but I had seen nothing. I assumed the blow I felt was the impact of the dog, and the confusion as to right and left was the shock of the car bumping in and out of the ditch. The only evidence was the momentary flash of a ski-suited body flying through the lights. It was only through questioning that image, that mirage, asking how such an image could have entered my head. I had to review the memory of what I remembered, and there was no way to check it against the truth since the only source of truth was the memory that needed to be checked. Whether it really was a flying figure I had seen and not a pedestrian standing by the road, the possibility that it was simply my inflamed imagination reacting to the urgent compulsion to go on. I had to work through and eliminate the hallucinatory and wishful possibilities before I could face clearly the question of what happened. By the time this had settled in my mind, the car had traveled several hundred yards.

  So I was slow to react. When I realized what I had done, why didn’t I go back? Don’t say I realized what I had done. I considered the possibility, which was only a possibility then. Don’t say I didn’t go back, for I did. I decided to go back almost as soon as I understood the possibility. I did not stop and turn around, which would have been dangerous on this dark road. It would also have been an admission of guilt before a question of guilt had been raised. I looked for a turn off, expecting to go around the block and return to the spot. Only it wasn’t a block. It was a distance to the first turn off. I took that road to the right with the intention of turning right at each successive intersection until I was back where I started. It took longer than I expected, winding roads by private estates and wooded country and horse farm fences and stone walls.

  But I did get back in a few minutes. Why didn’t I stop then? You must understand how short the moment of choice actually was during which I could have changed the course of events. I came back to the site driven by humane feelings, expecting to see the dog I had killed, hoping it was dead and not in an agony I could not relieve. I came back to the original road and drove slowly watching the wash of light from my headlights on the right shoulder. I did not know exactly where the spot was, for I had noticed no distinguishing landmarks (as I discovered in the daytime a few days later when I returned to the site and could not find it). I thought I had passed it, which would mean there had been no accident, and it was only then I saw the dog again. The dog standing at the side of the road, on his feet, tail up, sniffing at something. As I approached the dog looked at me, again the two points of reflected light, and turned back to whatever it was sniffing in the grass.

  My great relief to see the dog unhurt.

  It was more complicated than that. I knew what I was afraid of had happened. Don’t say that. I knew no such thing. I considered it a possibility. I slowed down but did not stop.

  You must understand: I saw nothing but the dog. I did not see what the dog was sniffing. To this day I can only assume what was lying in the ditch out of the range of my sight or lights. I assume that, but the truth as I remember it is that I saw nothing but the dog. So I drove on. I thought I was free. Relieved thinking the dog had escaped and the skier was imaginary. I drove on.

  If that’s what I thought, why did I go around that so-called block yet another time? There was a moment of freedom when I could have stopped and chose not to. When I drew abreast of the dog and had the opportunity to look, get out of the car if need be and see what was there. But I was too preoccupied with relief over the dog’s escape, and the opportunity vanished after I passed the spot and the car recovered its will. But I was troubled by what my imagination had invented. I realized I could simply not have seen what was in the ditch or out of range of the headlights. At the same time I was thinking what was happening now might be as important as that other important thing which had interfered with my attention. So I decided to turn around and go back but that another set of headlights appeared in the rear mirror, which made stopping awkward. I came to the road where I had turned off, and I turned again and found myself making the square through the countryside a second time.

  It brought me back to the site a third time. Driving fast this time, hurrying, thinking as I drove with what seemed now like a cleared head. I was asking why anyone should expect me to return, and I saw one good reason: to render assistance. Save a life. The reason to return was to give help. I drove back with the clear intention of stopping where the dog was, where I would do what I could. I could even make a trip to the hospital if necessary. Or if that was medically undesirable, to hail other cars. And take the consequences.

  When I got back to the straight section of road on which the accident had occurred, I saw lights where the dog had been. Headlights on the left, which were stopped, and taillights on the right. At least two sets of taillights. Someone else had found the accident and stopped, and other cars had stopped. I (admit) was afraid.

  Why was I afraid? I thought the people in the cars would know when they saw me because of returning to the spot, a clear indication of guilt.

  How would they know I had been there before? They couldn’t. It was this realization that enabled me to suppress the impulse to flee. I returned to my plan: to stop and offer help, which would be a good thing to do and easier with all these other people helping too.

  If that was my plan why again didn’t I stop?

  I slowed down, expecting to stop, but the man waved a flashlight at me. I thought I was being arrested, but the man was only waving me by. Impatiently, imperiously, refusing to let me stop. Go by, it’s not your business, we have enough already, don’t block the road.

  So I went on. I decided to obey authority. I could have stopped even so, but with all those people gathered there, my addition would have been superfluous, that’s what the flashlight told. I thought, she’s being taken care of now, removing the only rational excuse to stop. To stop merely to confess something would not be rational, it would benefit no one. So I obeyed the man with the flashlight and went on home, where I had to face the other problem, whatever it was, that was obstructing my vision that night.

  I have never told this to anyone. What good would it do? I found a small item in the paper, naming her: Maud Merlin, a jogger, found by a passing motorist. No mention of a dog. I never told, thinking of the unnecessary distress it would cause to people who knew me. What good would it do? How selfish to comfort my conscience by an act that would help no one but me and might even do harm.

  I was already sixty-two years old. Fully formed, not much room for growth. I’d like to think I have changed and would do differently now. That five years added to the original sixty-two could separate me from the man who panicked on a road at night, leaving a victim to die. I suppose that’s t
oo much to ask.

  Throw this out. Think before you do, but throw it out.

  Puzzled and disturbed, Philip put the manuscript away. He went back to his room, where Beatrice had turned out the light. He groped his way to bed and waited for the noise in his head to subside, allowing him to hear Beatrice asleep. From the town came a flash of music and a short laugh, then a bell struck the time followed by the bare clink of a buoy. In the rectangle of the window he saw trees shaped like laughing horseheads in the sky and a giraffe and a shape he could not decipher until he recognized the executioner’s two-bladed axe. He wanted sleep to kill his thoughts but sleep was laggard tonight. The corpse of his father dropped off its stand. It fell spinning through the planetary night and shrunk by distance and rot it disappeared. That left only the dog sniffing in the ditch. As he fell asleep Philip’s dreams stuck on the question of what the dog had found and during the night he concocted a thousand theories, none of which he remembered later.

  PART NINE

  FRIDAY (2)

  LUCY WESTERLY: To Thomas

  Today it ends. I’ll meet you at two. They’ll bury you and not see each other again. I missed you at the showing and it was no fun. This is the fourth day. Soon it will be a year and I’ll say, Thomas has been dead a year.

  I’ll write you less often. I’ll think more about our early days and less about what you became, which is too bad because I liked you better nearer the end. I’ll remember my disappointment in you when I grew up and discovered you weren’t as special as I thought. Your famous virtues, but you weren’t adventurous. In spite of which I chose you a second time. Remember that. It wasn’t just his refusal to make the same sacrifice he asked of me. I chose because I could trust you which is what mattered in the end. When you turned into a success with everybody looking up to you and criticizing you behind your back, I killed my resentment and took your side. I’m glad how it came out. I’m reconciled, Thomas, if you are. I just want you to know.

  Tomorrow night I’ll be alone. My children will invite me for visits. Fussy Philip and cool sweet Beatrice. Gloomy Henry and anxious Melanie. Wild but cautious Patty without her William (I’ll miss him looking at me behind her back). No George, nor your favorite Ann gone to London. I’ll be all right. I’ll check out the Island widows and have widows for company. You’ve been good. You have a right to die and I won’t complain.

  PHILIP WESTERLY: Anticipating a memoir

  This morning with time free before the funeral, I took old McKarron Balsam and Aunt Edna around the Island along with Betty and Nancy stuffed in the corners. Aunt Edna half blind in the front confusing what island or cape this is, mangling proverbs, a worm in time spoils the broth. Balsam stiff in back looking straight ahead, children peeking at his liver spots.

  With old McKarron and old Edna hearing nothing out we go past the notorious Truro house with the deputy on guard sleeping in the car parked in front. Past the junior high school and road above the outer harbor looking down on moored fishing boats in the coves and across to the jetty where Patty went yesterday in the rain. Today the sun’s like English moors, the golf course with motorized carts and flags on the greens, before the road swings to the ocean side. There’s rich light blue with tints of rose into the horizon, some fog out there, and a ship trying to bring itself into view unless it’s my eye trying to create a ship into view. Shingled cottages, dunes, surf, birds yelling around the point.

  Sick of reading.

  The Island belongs to him. Everything on it, the low hill with the water tower, the dunes and plateau to the south, the inland lake, the reeds and scrubby woods and rockpile, was created for me when he took me out to see the countryside on our first visit, only six years ago. Which I didn’t appreciate until this stunned knowledge that he was dead.

  Can he survive this?

  Edna said, Never could understand why Thomas wanted to come back to this godforsaken place. McKarron Balsam said nothing the whole trip. Maybe he was dead.

  Island is father, an equation. I’ll need to decide what difference that makes to this, or this to that.

  When I was a child I was in love with Debora Mason, but I forgot why, so I reconstructed her out of images, trying to recreate the feeling I had lost. When I told my father, he laughed, but not unsympathetically. Don’t try to vomit memory, he said.

  Let it bubble, you remember a person best when you don’t look straight at her.

  I need to decide. Is it possible to separate the father from the man in the writing? Would censoring work? Or is he already destroyed?

  Keep this out of the memoir.

  THOMAS WESTERLY (handwritten): As read by Philip

  An unlabeled file he had noticed before without understanding. Some few inconspicuous sheets crumpled and smoothed again, no beginning or end. Each paragraph crossed out by a line down the page.

  the flashing lights ahead, cars stopped, the police already there. As I approached, I intended to stop, but they waved me by, my presence only an interference. I could not see the results of the accident as I passed. But it should be obvious to you from this that I came upon it only after it had happened and could not have

  To Lucy: Something I need to tell you in case it comes up. But maybe you can advise me on whether I should do anything about it. This happened when I was coming home (illegible). I was on a road in the northern suburbs, I’m not sure exactly where, I had given a lift to someone at the party and was on my way home, a dark road on which I may have had this accident, although I’m not sure if there really was an accident. It was a dog ahead in the middle of the road and another car in the opposite direction I may have hit the dog I wasn’t sure as I was passing the other car and the glare of headlights. I went on, but I was distressed about the dog, distressed enough to go back and found my way by country roads to the site, at which point flashing lights and a police car as if there had been an accident. I thought the police car had stopped because of the dog, but then No, the dog was No, then I saw the dog, if it was the same dog, standing by the side of the road So I hadn’t hit the dog with other cars stopped where the police lights The point is, the police, the flashing lights implied They waved me by, wouldn’t let me stop, and I couldn’t see what had happened, but since then, this is it, yes, I have been racked by concerns as to what happened along the road and whether I had anything to do with it when I thought I hit the dog

  To Lucy: Something in the paper this morning, which I have just seen, requires I tell you this which I This morning in the paper I’ve just seen There’s an item in this morning’s paper which Last night when Night before last when I was coming home from the office party I need to tell you, on the road in

  I truly thought I had hit a dog. There was every reason to believe it was a dog I had hit, only a dog

  To Gene: May I confide in you a certain trouble which I don’t think I can confide in Lucy? I was at a Christmas staff party, after which I took Elaine home, she without her car that night and because it was a kindness, nothing other than that, not after all these years. Well, the point is this: I received word that there had been an accident at home. Nothing specific, only that Lucy had called to say there had been an accident and would I please be informed so I could go home as quickly as Well, the point is this: this message went directly to Elaine’s house, that is, she called the party but after we had left and then she called Elaine who answered the phone and received the message—even though no one at the party knew I had taken Elaine it was Lucy’s guess Lucy’s assumption, that is, a The point is this: when Elaine took the call she failed to tell Lucy I was there. There was no reason for her to do this, I mean what reason could she feeling uncertain about Lucy, I guess she decided it would be more discreet to deny of course I only happened to be there for a moment, I was not staying, I had just delivered her to her house when the phone rang, and she answered it and thought mistakenly that it would be discreet to say she didn’t know where I was, and then Lucy told her there was an accident at The point is, this is how I got the new
s about an accident at home. Well naturally, I was alarmed and hastened to my car and drove home fast as I could. Now when I got home, I was of course, desperate to know what the accident there was Lucy calmly reading in the living room. I contained myself just barely, that is, prevented myself from asking what the accident realized fortunately in the nick of time that if I asked she would know where I had been, which would have seemed extremely suspicious to Lucy considering Elaine’s denial acted as if I had not heard anything while Lucy calmly went on reading and I hung up my coat and went to the refrigerator and settled down in my chair, still with no word about either accident, and in fact there’s been no word since. From which I conclude there was no accident (at home) and this was a ruse on Lucy’s part to make sure this was no repetition of last year’s relieved I guess that I did not react That’s beside the point The point is while I was hurrying home, riven by anxiety about (we’re living alone here now with only Darwin for company, the kids have all long since gone), I myself had a kind of accident It’s this I need your very wise and totally confidential advice