Telling Time

by Austin Wright

  To the Board: Ladies and gentlemen, I need to inform you of an unfortunate accident which may have some impact upon your deliberations concerning my candidacy for I hope of course that No You will I trust recognize that what happened has little connection No no no Simply! I need to inform you that as soon as I have finished this letter I will be turning No I need to explain to you why I have turned myself over to the No I need to explain to you the content of a meeting I shall shortly be having with the concerning an accident to which I was a possible witness. It appears that a certain pedestrian or jogger was accidentally killed by a hit and run driver three nights ago on a lonely road in the northern It so happened that on that same evening at approximately the same time I was driving near there and happened to see No

  LUCY WESTERLY: To Thomas

  We made this date forty-seven years ago. The only unknown was who would be in the coffin. It looks like you won.

  Between Philip and Henry while the organist plays. We tried to make it nice for you. See how many people came, some from far away. The flowers, the music, the old-fashioned minister. This is the moment to celebrate ends. You and me. Patty and William. Henry and Melanie, on the way. George, Ann, who did not come. With tents in the yard, grandchildren. I saw Greta going into the tent with Charlie in the rain. Beatrice said they are not related, being only stepbrother and stepsister. Times have changed and I kept my feelings to myself.

  Remember our worry about that sort of thing? How remote and forgotten it was, how foolish it now seems, if I didn’t make it up myself. I’ll never worry again as long as I live.

  Will we talk again? Your muteness is an obstacle if it persists, which I’ve been led to believe it will. Your old aunt is senile. Philip cries. But he’s not the crying I’ve heard in the house every day. I can’t figure who. I’ve eliminated everybody and still hear it.

  I’m not concentrating. People talk, the words pass through me. Abel Jeffcoat. Patty stands up to say something; Philip does not speak, nor Henry, nor I. McKarron Balsam gives a sleepy tribute. Jerome Dawson, the usual. William makes an odd philosophical speech, I’m not following. I hear the distractions. People sniffling. Coughing. I’ve noticed police sirens for the last fifteen minutes, outside in the wilderness where we live.

  PHILIP WESTERLY: Anticipating a memoir

  The funeral at two. The bright day, the wooden church, white in the sun. Cars on the grass, the hair of women, people in the doors. Down the aisle with my mother to sit in front. The coffin now closed waits in front of the middle aisle. Inside unchanged, the hands folded, the expression on the verge of a joke.

  All of us contributed to the ceremony. Music my father liked as remembered by my mother, now played by an organist named Juliana Flower: funereal Chopin and Beethoven, mournful Tchaikovsky, transcriptions of Debussy and Samuel Barber’s Kennedy strings. The music has a strong flower smell. Non-religious except for the local minister Jerome Dawson who sits beside the pulpit in his robes.

  The ceremony began with Dawson reading a short prayer. Next Abel Jeffcoat on Thomas as Ordinary Joe. Original poem, “To My Grandfather,” by Larry Realm. Original poem, “Verses on My Neighbor’s Passing,” by Ezra George. Memories by Patty and Melanie. Official tribute by Dr. McKarron Balsam, aged colleague, with suspense as to whether he will live long enough to complete his speech. Dawson gave a sermon not to my taste and William gave a speech which people considered cynical and inappropriate.

  While the hymns sang the words ran on. Threatened by things I would rather not think, I tried to control them. Neat and skeptical sentences. I read: If the present is no more definite than it is, how can the past be more so? The usual way to deform the past is to make things coherent. Everything falsifies in the gloss of coherence. See how the past lies as it recedes, whittled and revised by your coherence-mad mind. A mere automobile accident… Ellipsis there, a lump of distraction which will require me to look back how this paper ended.

  I wanted to speak, unbearably, but to him, not them. Just one question, that’s all I ask. Can’t I have one question? What would it be?

  Save him, save him. This is his moment, then he’ll be gone, how unbearably sad that is. Slowly slowly but always perceptibly he will be destroyed by the chemistry of dripping time. And the slow erosive action of my own killing mind. That which I alone know, that I wish I didn’t. Ask him if it’s true. Ask him tonight, or tomorrow, when he returns to visit in your dreams, ask him then.

  New era. Ways to put it.

  Panama Suez Cape Horn Straits of Gibraltar

  In the straits though the land on either side is not close (haze fields and pastures on one side, pale bluffs on the other), the water is full of eddies as the wind fights the tide, but soon the first undulations of the new sea penetrate and lift you on a different rhythm seasick and as you look back and see the dark clouds over the old sea, already it’s impossible to distinguish from the agitated straits themselves.

  We are now in the act of creating history, as distinct from being created by history, which is our usual condition, and after this moment has passed, will be the condition to which we shall return, controlled by whatever we have created in this moment.

  At the signal from Dawson, sons and grandsons of the deceased stepped from the first two rows to the coffin where we lined up grasping the bars to divide the weight. On the right myself, then Henry, William, David. On the left Charles, Larry and Gerald Realm, Tommy Key. Down the aisle and out to the hearse. Then the ceremony at the cemetery. The old woman in the wheelchair in back, I never did get a look at her.

  What I am I owe to him. He said the eye would be a good specialty if you don’t think it tedious. The eye draws light into a single point so as to build a replica of the world in your head. It projects you into the world sending messages to other eyes, telling them who you are with flashes from your intelligent brain. It dilates your anger, smiles your pleasure, weeps your grief. Just one caution. Take care you are not blinded by looking so long at the eye instead of through it.

  CARL WESTERLY: Not to be written down under any circumstances

  All these people talking about how great my brother was, I can’t believe it.

  That old bumblehead, forget his name, can’t read, correcting himself, losing his place. Thomas Westerly more than a dedicated scientist. Vocation avocation, all one to him. Fruit of civilization (Jesus) entrepreneur of Mind (gag) negotiating Mind managing Mind (blah) cultivating Mind of us all.

  What will they say about me?

  Carl Westerly, Human Being. What is a balanced human being? Mind and body as in all created armadillos lions hares because without body where’s mind? So though Carl Westerly was a humane scholar (as distinct from a mere scientist, most of whom are as ignorant and uncultivated as any philistine outside their fields) he was prouder of the healthful balance in his life. Golf, fishing, tennis into his sixties. Lover of good things, cars, wines, women (appreciative, I mean, of their virtues and beauty while faithful of course to his wife). Worked when he worked, played when he played.

  Bumblehead has an overbite, his teeth tangle his mustache. Thomas no narrow specialist bridged not only science and the humanities but intellect and action recognizing his responsibility to lead the academy as dean provost president giving broadly of himself.

  Carl Westerly no flashy showboat gave his life to the biography of Fisk Purser (the great American writer, equal to Ambrose Bierce, in a class with Hamlin Garland) which when complete will be a model for biographers to share the shelf with Ellmann on Joyce, Edel on James. Devotion to the life of one man. A true surrender of the self. What a profound dissolution of ego in altruism that is.

  Overbite’s generalizations need concrete examples if they are to convince. Thomas’s abilities, how easily he worked, how naturally everything came to him.

  Carl Westerly’s scholarly patience, his hours in the library (on a regular schedule never too long to be unhealthy), scrupulous in detail. Not the facile superficiality that passes for study today. />
  Stumbling along losing his place: Thomas the writer, the grace of his language, writing as writing beyond the necessities of its message.

  All his life Carl Westerly valued substance over style. His inborn hatred of public relations replacing thought, fools posing as intellectuals.

  Now he’s citing students. What a bright enthusiastic teacher when he had the chance (There’s the rub. How much teaching did Thomas do from his presidential chair?) interest in students as people, keeping in touch, letters he wrote.

  Carl Westerly taught by example, building his project a little at a time. No flashy lectures. Stuck to business.

  A grandson speaks, what’s his name, who cares? Thomas’s good sense. His contempt for bullshit. Bullshit? This guy thinks he knows bullshit?

  Tortoise and hare, Carl Westerly knows the difference between quickness and intelligence developed by steady work. Kept in place by proper attention to body needs.

  Now the daughter-in-law, simpering and full of goo. His shy dry wit. His tact, making it impossible to quarrel. His perception, surprising even family members who have known him all their lives. Not long enough, kids. Only a brother knows the brutality, thick-headed stupidity and gross arrogance of a brother.

  Qualities are relative. Carl Westerly came from a family of sensitive, intelligent people. Credit for wit and humor belongs to their father, and for empathy and tact to their mother who taught them to see themselves in every baby animal. They did not develop these qualities on their own.

  A blustery neighbor, blowhard at a glance. The scrupulous honesty of Thomas Westerly, almost disgusting (meant to be a joke? Some joke.) with anecdotes. Couldn’t last in the presidency because of his disdain for begging.

  Carl Westerly was unfailingly decent and honest. This was a family virtue, not the private property of one individual.

  The daughter, smart-ass since she was a toddling brat. Thomas’s scorn for cheap belief, creationism astrology cultism. Contempt for fads, his deep regard for reason and the advance of truth.

  Unlike most academics, Carl Westerly kept up with pop culture and the younger generation. Don’t forget, Fisk Purser was a popular writer in his day, who attacked elitism, and Carl Westerly attacked the same through him. This elegant well-researched scholarly edition of Purser with notes will be another gesture against academic showboats and snobs everywhere.

  Thomas the loving father, gentle uncle, loyal and devoted husband, grandfather, impossible not to love.

  Carl Westerly’s wife and children will vouch for him.

  If I had to speak here, what would I say? All my life he got the honors, the attention, the privileges, the respect.

  MELANIE CAIRO: To Dr. Parch

  If you could discover why this Truro wakes him from apathy like an electric shock. At the funeral he sat like a dummy following the others, looking where they looked without eyes, sitting through the music and the prayers and the poems and the speeches with his face dead. He wouldn’t make a speech himself, so I willed myself to overcome shyness and speak in his place. I owed it to Thomas, or someone did, and if he wouldn’t, someone representing him would have to, which could only be me.

  However, when the sound of the police siren broke into the silence behind Mr. Dawson’s voice, that siren speaking of event and crisis going on as they always do outside this quiet space where for a moment we were facing the question of questions, at that moment his head turned like a dog catching a scent, his body shifted, his face alive and irritated as if we were idiots for not running out to see. If you could make sense of that.

  Again at the burial on the hill overlooking the dunes the siren sounded, a police car or ambulance or fire engine full speed along the shore road. He heard it and looked around trying to see and even wandered off while the minister was speaking just before the coffin was lowered, itchy like a boy wanting to pee.

  RUPERT NEWTON: As read by Henry

  The Island’s celebrated Sam Truro case ended at 2:53 today in a bloody tragedy. Four people were killed, including Truro and both members of his family, whom he had been holding prisoner in his house. This was the ninth day since he had barricaded himself in and announced that he was holding them hostage.

  The first break in the long stalemated situation came shortly before two. The house was being watched by Arnold Starbell, a deputy stationed since noon in a parked car across the street. “I heard a shout from the window like `I’m coming out,’ ” Starbell said. The shout was repeated four times before Starbell realized what it was, proof according to Starbell of Truro’s desire to be noticed. Thereupon the front door was flung open and there emerged in succession, blinking in the sunlight, Truro’s eight year old son Roger, his wife, Mr. Angel Vertebrate, who had been brought into the case on Tuesday as “negotiator” but was captured by Truro, and, holding a rifle and a pistol trained on the others, Truro himself.

  Marching single file, the trio of prisoners went around the side of the house to the garage, where they got into Truro’s car, while Truro shouted at Deputy Starbell, “No tricks now.” At the car, it was Vertebrate in the driver’s seat, Truro beside him in front and the woman and child in the back. A moment later the car backed out of the garage and sped off down the North Point Road.

  The police were notified by Starbell’s radio when the group first came out of the house. One police car was dispatched to pursue them, and another went across Harrison Lane to the Shore Road to cut them off if they went that far. The first car came within sight of them just beyond North Lighthouse. When it came into view, the Truro car increased its speed and a chase down the Shore Road ensued at 100 m.p.h.

  The car that had crossed on Harrison Lane was notified by radio and a roadblock was set up on Shore Road. This was in the middle of the long straightaway by the house of Mr. Danner Fritz, between a stretch of dunes along the beach and the marshy lagoon inland. After coming into the straightaway the speeding Truro car screeched to a stop just short of the roadblock. While Truro stuck his head out the window and shouted something unintelligible, the car, driven by Vertebrate, turned around to face the direction from which it had come. Meanwhile the pursuing police car appeared on the straightaway. As Truro’s car started up again, it looked as if the two cars must either pass at high speed or collide head-on.

  The Truro car had hardly started, however, before it veered and plunged into a ditch by the marshes. Officer McHale at the roadblock thinks he heard a shot in the car before it went off the road and believes that Truro shot the driver, Vertebrate. Whatever the case, when the car stopped in the ditch, the woman and child emerged from the back seat. As the police ran along the road above, Truro crawled out of the front. He appeared to be injured, unable to get to his feet. It was discovered in autopsy afterward that he had suffered a broken leg. When he saw the police officers running with their guns drawn, he raised his rifle and fired at them. The shot went astray, but it provoked a volley of police fire in return, in which not only Truro but his wife and son, who were standing near him at the time, were struck with bullets.

  After a short interval, the officers descended the slope. All three members of the Truro family had been killed by the gunfire, probably instantly, and Angel Vertebrate, still in the driver’s seat, was also dead of at least one bullet wound through his head.

  Sheriff Haines responded to questions about the police action. When asked what Truro was trying to gain by emerging from the house, Haines said no one knew. No message had been sent, no demand had been made. When asked what Truro had asked in exchange for releasing his prisoners, Haines replied as he had daily for the last five or six days: nothing since the arrival of Angel Vertebrate, and no one knew what he wanted.

  When asked why the police decided to pursue Truro, Haines expressed surprise at the question and said they just wanted to keep an eye on them, since he was holding those people hostage. “Strictly speaking, it’s a kidnapping case,” Haines said. “It’s our duty not to let them get away.” When asked where they could go since they
were confined to the Island, Haines said, “They might have had a boat in a cove.”

  According to Haines, Truro probably shot Vertebrate while the latter was driving and this was what made the car go off the road. He said they could determine in a day or so whether the bullet in Vertebrate’s head came from Truro’s gun or a police gun. He had no theory as to why Truro shot him.

  When asked why the police killed Truro, Haines replied, “Because he was shooting at our guys.” When asked why Truro’s wife and son were also killed, he said, “That’s the too bad part of it, the tragedy. The innocent bystanders caught in a hail of bullets.” Haines denies that the marksmanship of the police officers left anything to be desired. He insisted the innocent victims were simply in the way, between Truro and the police officers with whom he was exchanging fire. When asked about a report that the victims had already run around to the other side of the car and appeared to be seeking rescue by the police, Haines warned against rumors and insisted the police never shoot anybody unless they have to.

  Reminded that it was for the sake of the woman and child that Truro had been guarded and pursued, Haines repeated, “That’s the tragedy part of it.”

  MELANIE CAIRO: To Dr. Saunders

  As I’ll also tell Dr. Parch, I’m afraid most that he’ll commit suicide. When he gets home, or a week later or a month. I expect it all the time. Dr. Parch will ask why I think it, and I’ll say it’s only what I feel when I try to imagine what it must be like inside that face of his. And now that Truro has blown up himself and his hostages together I should think he’d kill himself at the first opportunity, for what else is left to him in life?

  That’s how Dr. Parch and I will talk, but you’ll ask why I care. My reasons. I’ll say what reasons had Sam Truro to blow everybody up? What can you expect, a man who reduced the world to Sam Truro, if Truro goes and does a thing like that? Studying Truro for his own attitude and behavior, look at the answer he gets. You’ll ask how do I know what Truro means to him, and I’ll say you don’t have to know to know, he’s stuck in it like his life depended. What can you expect when what your life depends on blows up like that?