once whitish and pinkish and in the dimming light oddly elusive, changeable: a dusting of snow, the imprint of a tiny hand.
The others, too, had fallen silent. It was odd, as if they were expecting her to make a speech, or lead them towards some other, more interesting activity. Someone, a girl, laughed sharply, perhaps in embarrassment. The mad tattoo on the oil drum had stopped.
Down the shore, the Lincoln gunned into life. As Joe turned in the water to watch, the girl walked calmly towards it, her white tennis shoes lifting and falling on the packed sand.
It was late when they got back to town and gently raining. They came down West, past the crouched, jammed-together houses of the millworkers. Beyond, the Atta and its valley made an unfathomed darkness, stretching for miles into a countryside that was a misery to think of: wet woods and mud and huddling animals. Sandy sat next to him, her hand with his school ring resting on his thigh. It was how she always rode, but something had changed. There was a sense of distance, disjunction, a sadness that seemed to flow from some irrevocable and inexpressible failure. At the same time, a new idea was beginning to course through him, with an excitement that made him blow suddenly through his teeth.
“You okay?” Her voice small.
“Fine. How about you?”
“I’m fine.” She did not sound fine. Expansively — and to forestall any serious talk — he swept his arm around her shoulder, gave her a squeeze. The black road shone like a pelt.
Stopping in front of her house, he watched as she got out and went up the drive. When she turned on the porch to wave, he had already started to pull away. As he swung east onto Water, the whitewashed, foreshortened facade of his own house flashed and dropped behind as, with deepening anticipation, he accelerated through the rain-sweetened air. The Biscayne charged up the long hill past King’s Park and Central School and the railway station, flying over the hump of the bridge into the North End. For a moment, as if a spotlight had found him, questioning his right to exist, he was aware of the condition of the car: of the rust eating its way around the fenders, of its old car smell, the dust on the dash. His shirt prickled at his back, another flaw: it was a hand-me-down from his father.
The rain had stopped. He prowled the streets in a hush of tires, passing under ancient trees where solitary street lights burned in nests of wet, shining leaves. Across vast lawns, the big houses peered darkly from their porches. Every object — those paired Muskoka chairs, glazed with rain — seemed about to disclose some secret. He turned onto Robert and the McVeys’ house reared up among its maples: a neo-Georgian place with banks of shuttered windows and a wide front door. All the lights were out, save one on the secondfloor, glowing between slitted drapes. Slowing as much as he dared, he glanced up the drive and saw the Lincoln nested in shadow, its big, low-slung body alive and, it seemed to him, ambiguous, its properties only to be guessed at.
5
MOST MORNINGS , Alf walked to work. And most mornings, when he reached the corner of West and Water, he glanced left to see Pete striding off the footbridge from Lions Park, lunch pail swinging. Pete lived on the other side of the park, in a small clapboard bungalow he had built with Alf’s help in the early Fifties, under the wooded flank of Lookout Hill. Pete worked in Bannerman’s dyehouse, which explained why his hands and arms were often stained with streaks of Persian red or navy blue, and why even his clothes sometimes looked (Alf thought) as if he’d been painting a barn with a shovel. He wore a baseball cap, tilted well back off his narrow forehead.
This morning they met as usual. Pete’s thin face lit up as he saw Alf, his eyebrows rising in humorous acknowledgment as though the two of them shared an ongoing joke they need not explain.
They fell in together, striding at a good clip
The others, too, had fallen silent. It was odd, as if they were expecting her to make a speech, or lead them towards some other, more interesting activity. Someone, a girl, laughed sharply, perhaps in embarrassment. The mad tattoo on the oil drum had stopped.
Down the shore, the Lincoln gunned into life. As Joe turned in the water to watch, the girl walked calmly towards it, her white tennis shoes lifting and falling on the packed sand.
It was late when they got back to town and gently raining. They came down West, past the crouched, jammed-together houses of the millworkers. Beyond, the Atta and its valley made an unfathomed darkness, stretching for miles into a countryside that was a misery to think of: wet woods and mud and huddling animals. Sandy sat next to him, her hand with his school ring resting on his thigh. It was how she always rode, but something had changed. There was a sense of distance, disjunction, a sadness that seemed to flow from some irrevocable and inexpressible failure. At the same time, a new idea was beginning to course through him, with an excitement that made him blow suddenly through his teeth.
“You okay?” Her voice small.
“Fine. How about you?”
“I’m fine.” She did not sound fine. Expansively — and to forestall any serious talk — he swept his arm around her shoulder, gave her a squeeze. The black road shone like a pelt.
Stopping in front of her house, he watched as she got out and went up the drive. When she turned on the porch to wave, he had already started to pull away. As he swung east onto Water, the whitewashed, foreshortened facade of his own house flashed and dropped behind as, with deepening anticipation, he accelerated through the rain-sweetened air. The Biscayne charged up the long hill past King’s Park and Central School and the railway station, flying over the hump of the bridge into the North End. For a moment, as if a spotlight had found him, questioning his right to exist, he was aware of the condition of the car: of the rust eating its way around the fenders, of its old car smell, the dust on the dash. His shirt prickled at his back, another flaw: it was a hand-me-down from his father.
The rain had stopped. He prowled the streets in a hush of tires, passing under ancient trees where solitary street lights burned in nests of wet, shining leaves. Across vast lawns, the big houses peered darkly from their porches. Every object — those paired Muskoka chairs, glazed with rain — seemed about to disclose some secret. He turned onto Robert and the McVeys’ house reared up among its maples: a neo-Georgian place with banks of shuttered windows and a wide front door. All the lights were out, save one on the secondfloor, glowing between slitted drapes. Slowing as much as he dared, he glanced up the drive and saw the Lincoln nested in shadow, its big, low-slung body alive and, it seemed to him, ambiguous, its properties only to be guessed at.
5
MOST MORNINGS , Alf walked to work. And most mornings, when he reached the corner of West and Water, he glanced left to see Pete striding off the footbridge from Lions Park, lunch pail swinging. Pete lived on the other side of the park, in a small clapboard bungalow he had built with Alf’s help in the early Fifties, under the wooded flank of Lookout Hill. Pete worked in Bannerman’s dyehouse, which explained why his hands and arms were often stained with streaks of Persian red or navy blue, and why even his clothes sometimes looked (Alf thought) as if he’d been painting a barn with a shovel. He wore a baseball cap, tilted well back off his narrow forehead.
This morning they met as usual. Pete’s thin face lit up as he saw Alf, his eyebrows rising in humorous acknowledgment as though the two of them shared an ongoing joke they need not explain.
They fell in together, striding at a good clip
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