The Age of Cities

by Brett Josef Grubisic

  Epi[logue] I Ap[ril] [19]65

  Winston lifted the squat clock that faced him from the right front corner of his desk. Winding it marked the final half hour of his working day. He also checked to see if windows were locked, made certain that no student had burrowed himself in a cubbyhole, and swept the room for leftover items that would become discards in the cardboard Lost and Found box he stored in the broom closet. Over the course of the afternoon, Winston had already picked up a white barrette, two notebooks, and a tube of lipstick. They would likely never be claimed.

  He heard the library door close with a gentle click. That sound prompted his momentary frown; he foresaw having to tell this student that he’d have just five minutes before needing to leave for the day. It was an odd time for a student to show up; he should be attending some class or another. Perhaps a teacher had sent him to the library as a punishment. It was Winston’s considered opinion that such a drastic measure came nowhere close to its target of correction.

  A plain-looking girl with hair as black as Grendel’s approached him. She held a notebook close to her bosom.

  “Mr. Wilson, I’m flunking History. Can you help me?” Winston liked the gap between her front teeth.

  “You have me at a disadvantage, young lady. What is your name, pray tell?”

  “Em.”

  “Em?”

  “Oh, Emily Sanderson.”

  “Pleased to meet you, Miss Sanderson. I don’t recall having seen you in here before.” He raised his eyebrows in mild castigation: Small wonder you’re failing.

  She stood in front of his desk, eyes cast downward.

  “Now then, how can I be of assistance?”

  “I figure that if I can do real, um, really well on the final assignment … it’s worth a quarter of our final grade, you see.” Winston guessed that she arrived by bus every morning from one of the outlying farms.

  “Alright. What have you done so far?”

  “You know that we have to write about Valley history, right?”

  “Yes.” He did know this topic well, Delilah Pierce’s perennial final assignment, and kept folders of clippings about towns and events in the Valley in the filing cabinet next to his desk.

  “Well, I thought I would do something about women in business in the early years of River Bend City. My gran says the Bend used to be run by women.”

  “She does, does she? That’s a grand idea. But it’s already fairly late in the day, Miss Sanderson. Spend a few minutes jotting down your ideas tonight and let’s meet tomorrow. Will you have the spare time?”

  Winston stood for a moment at the threshold of Mrs. Pierce’s classroom. In her yellow dress printed with daisies, she gesticulated toward the blackboard explaining—he could hear her plain as day—the Treaties of Versailles to a small body of detainees. The instant he crowded into the edge of her vision, she turned and gave him a smile and quick wave. She returned to the after-hours remedial lecture in a beat.

  He heard her skittering gait as he approached his west exit. Already guessing the urgent message she planned to deliver, he stopped and waited with a grin.

  “Don’t forget that you’re hosting the Curriculum Committee tonight.” Her bright colouration and uneasy flutter reminded Winston of a canary.

  She rested her left hand over her bosom, winded from the exertion.

  “Of course, Delilah. I’m not so old that I’ve become that forgetful. Just this morning Mother was fretting about what kind of baking she ought to serve to our little group.”

  “I’m sorry, Winston. Force of habit. Too many absent-minded students over the years, I suppose. See you at six o’clock on the dot. Shall I bring anything?”

  “Your quick wit should suffice, Delilah.” Turning to the door, he adjusted his hat and pushed.

  Along his route toward Wilson Manor, Winston observed the density of the heavy grey clouds and could see that yet another deluge of rain was imminent—the proper question would be “How much?” he decided resignedly, not “When?” He felt tired, under the grip of that dull weather. If he lived elsewhere, he wondered, some country with sunshine year round, would he be a more sanguine man? Not himself only, but the general population in the water-soaked Valley? Everyone here had an intimate kinship with the rainy weather blues.

  And he was aware that these blues were no caprice of his. Alberta had told Winston that scientific surveys had proven that people in northern climates have a measurably greater proneness to doldrums, ruefulness, and even suicide. Maybe the life of Riley could not be found so far north. In fact, when he’d encountered the phrase dolce far niente in a novel about early Christian Rome it seemed felicitous, but also as exotic and beautiful as an Aegean siren—and as remote: the kind of lassitude one could achieve here for a only a few days in summer.

  He couldn’t remember if the crucial factor in the Nordic low mood phenomenon was abundant snowfall or lack of available light. Alberta had not mentioned rain, he was certain of that. Maybe the sheets of falling water led to a special kind of melancholic disposition and ought to be taken into account. He’d ask Cameron McKay, who kept track of that scientific sort of thing. He’d know something. At least they weren’t stuck along some granite fjord in Norway. Or captive in desolate Alaska.

  The Manor’s front yard was full of green budding promise—for which, he grudgingly admitted, rain should be paid respect. In a matter of weeks, the shrubs and trees would be fully in leaf; day by day, the dark clusters on Alberta’s white lilac trees grew plump. Their bursting forth always seemed like nature’s official announcement that grey winter and its cold rains had retreated for the next half of the year.

  In the front hallway he yelled out, “Hello, Mother,” and checked for mail in the candy dish that had rested on the desk in the living room for as long as he could remember. No mail in hand, he headed toward the kitchen.

  Alberta was scrubbing her nails under the tap. A comedy program was blaring from the radio.

  She held up her dripping hands and wiggled her fingers in greeting. “It’s damp out there. The dirt is chock full of worms, though. Wonderful.”

  Now that Winston was home, Alberta would begin with her tea preparations. She dried her hands and shuffled toward the pantry door.

  While she boiled water and warmed the teapot, Winston walked to his room. He sat at the edge of his bed and removed his shoes and socks. The mismatched socks and mildly distended foot no longer drew his attention with any regular frequency. It grew on you and became part of the landscape, he’d concluded, no differently than moss on the eaves of a house. That adjustment of perspective made sense, like some purposeful vestige of the survival instinct: there was a brief time of adaptation and it transformed naturally into the way it’s always been. Otherwise, the worry and anxiety would be a debilitating handicap. Forward movement and achievement of biological goals were what compelled our species, he thought. Sulking over mortality and our feeble, ever-woundable flesh was not. He wondered if the war veterans with missing limbs had similar experiences. Surely some conditions were less easy to overlook.

  A passing glance at the foot now pushed up shards of memories about his black-browed specialist pressing his thumbs into the spongy skin, and, regrettably, Dickie and Errol Flynn. The scenes flashed vividly. Though he had success in keeping those few hours of his past at bay, there were moments when they flew up like furies. All he desired was that they fade away as steadily as pencil sketches. After all, he’d decided that his sense of adventure had been misguided, like that of those Bend high school students last year whose drunken inspiration to “walk the tightrope” across a narrow iron beam on the bridge had resulted in gales of tears after three young bodies had washed up miles downstream. Likewise, his participation in the incident in the city had been a grievous error.

  His lapse of judgment could be overlooked—and that was something those students could never claim. With the exception of the occasional insistence of memory, the entire episode stayed securely buried. And normally th
ere was no thumping heart under the floorboards that drove him to distraction. Why should there be? Winston knew he must learn from Pandora and Eve’s fatal choices: he understood that giving into that peculiar temptation would catapult disastrous changes into his peaceful world. Why bother with it, then? Unlike his mother, he had a curiosity that was easily satisfied.

  He slid on his slippers and stood up. Looking in the mirror, he saw what was always there at this hour of the weekday: a trim and well-groomed man with a full head of hair in a woollen cardigan about to share a pot of tea and a plate of biscuits with his mother.

  In the kitchen, Alberta was talking back to the radio announcer. She turned off the radio as he sat at the table, pausing to breathe in the humid kitchen’s comforting smoky scent.

  “I stopped in and talked with Mr. Bryson today. He gave me a few new brochures.” She pushed them across the table. Her excitement about their long-deferred bus tour to Nevada had grown visible as the date loomed closer. Winston looked at the tiny, inviting pictures—a cactus-shaped swimming pool, a young couple holding fancy cocktails, a stage of sequined performers, and a golden room the size of a warehouse filled with gamblers swathed in shimmering Hollywood glamour. High Rollers! exclaimed the cover of another pamphlet. Winston reached down when he felt Grendel butt up against his calf.

  His picture of the craggy, sun-blasted state—so tidy, pristine, and rectilinear on the map—was now overrun with frantic gamblers in man-made oases and cigarette-smoking crooners speeding through their rote-smooth patter night after night. The incongruity of the elements perplexed him. Atomic bomb test explosions and carrion birds crowded their way into his vision. He thought of the heavy grey clouds outside and scientists measuring the deleterious effects of winter weather on one’s humour.

  Standing at the table, Alberta was reading a brochure. “It will be such marvelous fun,” she said.

  “You’re right, Mother, it will.”

  Winston watched the crows gathering on the clothesline. They were silent for the moment, but he knew that soon enough they’d begin to caw.

  Epi[logue] II Ap[ril] [19]65

  Winston grabbed the squat clock that stared at him from the right front corner of his desk. As he turned its key, he wondered how many times he’d completed his working day with this ritual. And the others—he always checked to see if windows were locked, made certain that no student had borrowed himself in a cubbyhole, and swept the room for leftover items that would lay forgotten in the cardboard Lost and Found box he stored in the broom closet. Over the course of the day, Winston had already found a white barrette, two notebooks—each inscribed with teenaged proclamations of True Love—and a tube of lipstick. Dust would be their true love soon enough.

  He heard the door close with a gentle click. The sound prompted an instantaneous frown. It irked him that it would be necessary to tell this student that he’d have just five minutes before he must leave for the day. It was an unusual time for a student to appear; he should be attending some class or another. What fool would show up so late? A delinquent, no doubt, sent to this hallowed hall of learning as some fruitless punishment.

  A plain-looking girl with hair as black as Grendel’s approached him. She held a notebook close to her bosom.

  “Mr. Wilson, I’m flunking History. Can you help me?”

  “You have me at a disadvantage, young lady. What is your name, pray tell?”

  “Em.”

  “Em?”

  “Oh, Emily Sanderson.”

  “Pleased to meet you, Miss Sanderson. I don’t recall having seen you in here before.” He raised his eyebrows. “Perhaps that may account for your less than stellar grade in History.”

  She stood in front of his desk, eyes cast downward.

  “Now then, what are your requirements?”

  “I figure that if I can do real, um, really well on the final assignment … it’s worth a quarter of our final grade, you see.” Winston guessed she arrived by bus from one of the outlying farms. He admired her pluck for staying in school. Her father must be laying down the law by now, letting her know—in ways both subtle and blatant—that the farm was her rightful place and that her labour was needed there full-time. Her desire for a better life was not what mattered, she’d be told. It was the rerum natura for a farm girl, her father would say in so many words.

  “Alright. What have you done so far?”

  “You know that we have to write about Valley history, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, I thought I would do something about women in business in the early years of River Bend City. My gran says the Bend used to be run by women.”

  “She does, does she? Yes, I hear a small band of Amazons settled on the riverbank decades before Father Pourguet. Look, it’s already fairly late in the day, Miss Sanderson.” He tapped the top of the clock with his index finger. “Spend a few minute jotting down your ideas—specific ones, not so vague—and come in with them tomorrow. Alright?”

  Wandering through the library for the day’s final inspection, Winston imagined Alberta as one of the lost descendants of Queen Hippolyta, bent over in her garden wearing the fabled golden girdle.

  “Mr. Wilson? Oh, Mr. Wilson?”

  Winston turned when he heard the fluty trill of Mrs. Pierce. She was leaning her torso into the hallway as though her dedication physically tethered her to the classroom.

  “I’m done for the day, Delilah. Is there something I can help you with?”

  “Oh. It’s nothing. I saw you and thought you had absentmindedly forgotten to say goodbye.” Her wheedling tone set his teeth on edge. It was all he could do to be pleasant. She veered between nun and spinster and neither hue in her personality held any appeal. Her coy romantic overtures were going nowhere fast, as Johnny would say.

  “Yes, that must be it. I was … well, yes, my head was in the clouds. See you tomorrow, I suppose.”

  “Unless the Russians have their way. Talk to you soon!” Despite the gloomy insinuation, she waved like a schoolgirl. He pictured her writing True Love on her grade booklet.

  Along his route toward Wilson Manor, Winston could not help but notice the density of the heavy grey clouds. There was no magic in predicting that another deluge of rain was imminent; he decided resignedly that “How much?” would be a more illuminating question than “When?” His thoughts drifted from the weather’s pushiness to the invisible rays, pulses, and beams overhead. Even as he took each step, he knew, there were men living in polar isolation hundreds of miles to the north whose jobs had them monitoring machines that protected national security.

  While an easy fact to forget, everyone had heard that the string of radar stations—scores of them, a marvel of science—was in constant communication as it anxiously watched the sky for airborne Soviet missiles. Winston wondered what toll the job took on the men in those frozen habitats. Facing the blasting cold, stuck in a tiny hut, and then sitting on a chair and waiting for enemy missiles to announce themselves: not the sort of work that could be described as pleasurable. Maybe the responsibility was reward enough. He guessed that drink must flow during off hours.

  Their dedication was cold comfort to him. It did not offer true protection or even lull with a false sense of security. Instead, it made him believe that he was caught between the proverbial rock and a hard place, though what was Scylla and what was Charybdis remained unclear. It was all a historical accident in any case: he and his country were at the wrong place at the wrong time. While the D.E.W. Line was no folly like Maginot, Winston pictured volley after volley of missiles that would register on radar screens mere moments before they reached their targets. What use was such knowledge? There would scarcely be time for the men to reach for their telephones before the explosions started. Ordinary people would follow their routines right up until the blasts took their lives away; they’d never get word from the messengers up north.

  Cameron McKay had said that protecting American leaders was the real intent behind the enterpr
ise, and the idea was that Russian missiles would be heading to American targets—not Canadian ones—so they would fly right overhead. Yet there’d be no protection from missed targets or missiles with engines—did they have engines, Winston wondered—that stalled en route. Wedged between two bullies on a playground, the hapless child will not escape without injury. Winston thought it was an apt comparison.

  The Manor’s front yard was full of green budding promise—all this juice and all this joy!—for which, he grudgingly admitted, rain should be paid respect. In a matter of weeks the shrubs and trees would be fully in leaf; day by day, the dark clusters on Alberta’s white lilac trees grew plump. Their bursting forth always seemed like nature’s official announcement that grey winter and its cold rains had retreated for the next half of the year. The metamorphosis was invigorating. He recalled the old poet’s sour Earth’s old glooms and pains, but could never muster that concentration of hopelessness.