Wigford Rememberies

by Kyp Harness

  “Yes… Yes,” murmurs Henry, inching on the seat over to Buzz, his trembling fingers reaching over and hesitating about an inch from Buzz’s shoulder.

  “Huh,” says Buzz. “Well, that would be somethin’,” he muses, and as Henry’s heart quickens in his chest, Buzz turns to him now with a roguish grin and his upper lip curling back over his tiny, hard teeth all white. “But ya know in that case, Henry, seems to me I might as well stick it out for a while yet seein’ how I can go on an’ have all the fun I want an’ be saved just like one who never had no fun at all—sounds like a good deal to me,” he says, beaming with the cleanness of his irrefutable logic. “Yeah, think I might as well go for it for a while yet then fix it all up later, sounds damn good to me, Henry.”

  He grins brutishly and Henry, whose brain is now turned upside down, is struck with speechless befuddlement. “Whoops!” says Buzz. “Here’s the tenth line already!” He turns off the road, halting the truck in the crunching gravel. “See ya later!” he says to Henry and waits silently as Henry moves in awkward puzzlement, climbing out of the truck and retrieving his suitcases from the back.

  “See ya!” cries Buzz from the truck as it whooshes off into the night, little specks and stones of gravel sprinkling up and crackling, and Henry left by the road in his baggy pants. He blinks mindlessly as he watches Buzz’s tail lights disappearing off down the road, his face completely blank. He then bends to pick up the cases and trudges off down the tenth line in his old, weaving, scissor walk. And as he walks, he begins to smile and murmur happily to himself. His pace quickens: he’s going to the Wigford Church, they let him play the organ there.

  Nightsong

  Night comes down on Wigford, upon the deserted town centre that scarce seems less deserted than in daylight hours; the grey storefronts shut up upon themselves, their store windows reflecting nothing, the sidewalks naked, the whole town palmed in the earth’s hand and dwarfed by the black reaches of the sky, clouds drifting over the random stars and over the white moon, three-quarters full with pale blue pockmarks across its face, fixed stationary as a sentinel except for when a solitary car travels along one of the backroads navigated by absorbed parents carrying their precious, offspring cargo in the back seat, at which point the moon detaches itself from its watch-place and agreeably drifts over the passing fields and behind scarecrow trees for the sake of the wandering eyes of the too-alert child—and all around the creek-straddled valley and the hillocks and the gulleys and the vast patchwork quilt of the croplands unfolded and sprawled out to the mysterious dark bushlands where birds sleep unbothered by the tiniest twig snap, to the silent houses where no sound breaks for ears unawake to hear but the slow tick of a clock by the kitchen table, the stark cross-frame of the window shadowed by the grey light pouring in over the empty yard on which no eye peers, and over the fields of yellow grass uncombed by any wind, and homes so bleak and shadowed as to have been deserted for forty years, and out again to the highway where the transport truckers speed through on all-night, make-or-break hauls and coffee-wired travellers flick between stations nervously, red and white streaks of light under overpasses, on ramps and turnoffs, whooshing over the landscape, as if no one ever lived or died there, and if they did, who cares?

  Onward—time to be made—and out to the rail yards where the trains ram and crash into one another like restive bulls in a pen, their wheels squealing, spraying sparks on the cinders, and far out a cow picks up its hoof from the sticky mud and lets it sink again with a liquid sucking sound, and the lights change at Barker’s Corner for no one, the grit in the asphalt road twinkling, and over the fences of the yards of the townsfolk, lawn chairs sitting out waiting for the dawn to wet them, inflatable wading pools, a garden hose curled around on the lawn like a slumbering serpent, the garages, junk, piles of lumber near ramshackle shacks and makeshift contraptions of metal, unfinished projects.

  Mr. Millgrim shuts his book and reaches for the light, ushering in the hour of the night when everyone sleeps, no sky so huge, no night so black that it can dwarf the immeasurable faith of the stolid sleepers who rest at last with full belief their eyes will open on a day, a life, a world, exactly alike to that which these eyes last closed on, with relief, with grief, with satisfaction and submission to sleep, hands folded over breasts or turned on the side with mouth open and snoring like a chainsaw, laughing in sleep or with arms wrapped around another warm body, legs akimbo, sleeping with expressions of grim disapproval, or a certain nonplussed quizzicality or intent concentration, as if determined to solve a problem before sunrise—and not even sleep can stop the bodies churning, their stomachs like black oceans of screeching creatures, bodies turning and straining thick brown blankets, and out of doors the night sails on, the dark air silent with nothing to echo, the leaves of the trees hanging colourless, the branches glowing ghostly and unreal in the light of a streetlamp while far off across the countryside horses stand slumbering on their feet and Happy Henry lying on a mattress on the floor by the stove smiles to himself.

  He ascends a solid gold staircase and seats himself at an immense organ whose silver pipes reach far up into the glorious reaches of the sky then disappear. He lifts his fingers poised above the keyboard and murmurs happily as he turns on the mattress, and Buzz rides a bicycle down a steep hill, his son’s arms around his torso riding behind him, when it becomes apparent that his son has somehow become caught in the chain of the bicycle, is being dragged down into its machinations as he starts crying.

  Buzz is unable to stop the bicycle as it speeds down the hill. He turns to try and grab his son, his head darts sideways on his pillow and he moans as the night flows on over the blue- and grey-drenched countryside: the pigs in their pens in the barn are quiet, huddled and squeezed together like so many fat sacks; every so often a tired grunt or an oink sounding like a resigned fart in the dark, in the cool black maze of slanted branches and the refuge of bats floating silently on wings of leather and green-eyed cats slinking with cunning cruelty through desolate grasses, their eyes glowing guiltily, wolves and foxes, raccoons.

  Mr. Crowe sits before his television set, his eyes fixed upon the screen as he reaches down and elevates his left buttock to scratch it. Empty parking lots, schoolyards, the bulbs of a neon sign for a motel hum and buzz and tiny insects and brown moths flitter around them, a young retarded girl keeps asking Momma Simpson, “Please open the door,” and every time she does, the door slams closed and the girl asks her again.

  Momma Simpson purses her lips, becoming a trifle annoyed, and the moon, having followed the car and seen the child home, now speedily ascends to its solitary vantage point and remains still for the rest of the night, looking down on Wigford and even out past the town over the highway and the fields, even to the lake whose waves crash upon the sand tirelessly, draining back then roaring up anew, the white and grey waves playing only to amuse themselves, and out across the father of the waves, out across the smooth surface of the water stretching out for miles, until the land is but a dimly remembered idea, a dimly seen small blot on the horizon, then no more, out on the calm lake’s surface which mocks land and humanity, where no snore or sigh is ever heard, on which no foot has ever walked or building ever built or ever could be, where land (dreaming, striving, word, thought) has never even existed to be remembered, or forgotten, that still, clean, untainted, smooth, dark surface where the moon finally finds its reflection.

  Then Again What

  Mona Hendricks, forty-five, having set the table for dinner, now stands in the kitchen after turning down the heat to simmer on a pot of mashed potatoes, and wonders if she should move to the phone and see if he’s still at work. No, he’s left by now, but where is he? The sound of the television before which the children sit crouched on the carpet in the next room reverberates in waves of crackling noise behind her, and her lips tighten with anger as she shakes her head.

  I told him to call, she thinks. I asked him to call, but then why would h
e? The reason he does this is exactly part of the reason he doesn’t call; if he called, he wouldn’t have to do it at all, that is; it’s part of the whole movement, like a flow, no call, then it’s past supper time, then it’s the television, then it’s time for the kids to go to bed and I wake up later and he’s still not there, then I wake up again when I hear him come stumbling in the door, out of his head.

  It’s all made to look like it isn’t considered or thought of at all, or maybe it really isn’t thought of at all, and then going to work tomorrow (well he’s going to have to deal with getting through his day there, feeling the way he’ll feel) and then tomorrow night after that, and all the other days—Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday after that—like a cycle or a circle, and it all gets lost in the days; that is, you can’t pick it out or point it out or mention it, or you can, but he’ll just be so ugly about it, or ugly in the first place, all mad and silent at the table, just opening his mouth to bitch at the kids (especially tomorrow night, feeling the way he’ll probably feel) so that you won’t even want to bring it up, at least when the kids are awake—they get so upset when there’s an argument or a fight and then again, what’s the point?

  She moves to the phone and picks it up, dials the number, lets it ring four times—Well, what did you expect?—she hangs up.

  “It’s ready,” she calls to the kids.

  “Okay,” they say from the living room.

  She moves to the stove, takes the pork chops from the frying pan, lays them on a plate covered with a paper towel and takes the potatoes off. So it’ll just be silence, she thinks, waking up in the morning, not talking, or talking but only to say something about not forgetting to pay the hydro bill, in that way that it’s obvious you’re only talking because you have to, about something that can’t help but be talked about, because the hydro must be paid, in that voice that you use without bending or feeling, with no hole in it for the idea that things are all right, because they’re not, saying you like an accusation, no not like an accusation, more like a swear word, or you hope it sounds like a curse or a swear word, but it still always sounds like a bending, no matter how hard and firm and angry you try to make it, and cling to the reason it must be said.

  It’s always a loss somehow, acting angry and at the same time trying to remember how angry you really feel, and him all meek and quiet and nodding and saying yes in that way he can sometimes be when he knows he’s in the wrong and’ll stand for being talked to in that way, not even meek really, just seeming that way in the absence of mouthing off and getting mad because he knows he doesn’t dare, oh no, he knows he doesn’t dare start mouthing off and getting mad back, not with me who’s got the right to be mad right now, and he knows it, so he just won’t say anything, quiet over his coffee, nodding yes to the hydro bill and slipping off to work, and also because he’ll be hungover and in no mood for any fighting or hearing me scream.

  She goes to the door, “Now!” she says.

  “But we just wanna watch this one th…”

  “It’s on the table. Get in here!” She starts dishing out the potatoes as the kids come shambling in, crawling into their chairs.

  “He’s not here yet?” one of them asks.

  “We’re starting without him,” she says, but also, she thinks, also because he knows, or thinks, that it’s the price he must pay, that is, just act like this a few days and everything’ll be all right, after a few days of the silence and only speaking when having to, and me not smiling or laughing at any of his jokes. Well after a few days of that I’ll soften and everything will be normal again and the same as it was before, and I will and it will be, all just like it’s forgotten or never even happened in the first place to be forgotten, but of course it won’t be forgotten even if it seems like it has been, even if it seems like it never even happened to everyone but me because I’m the only one who knows it did happen.

  It’s just that you get tired of being mad all the time, or acting like you are, and besides what’s the point if you aren’t even going to talk about it like you usually don’t because you figure what’s the point

  So you just be mad or act like you are for a while as he pussyfoots around a bit, and sometimes you can get him to do things he usually won’t, like go shopping, or get him to give you some extra money to go shopping, and he acts guilty and contrite to a certain extent for a bit, and whether he really feels that way or not I don’t know, likely half the time he’s just acting guilty the same way I’m acting mad, because he figures, yes, just be that way for a few days, weather the storm, and pretty soon the debt’ll be cleared, just pay up until you can get her soft again, till everything’s normal and fine and the same as it always was, with a clean slate till the next time he goes and does the same goddamned thing again—goddamn him—because he knows if he went and did the same thing the next night, or a couple of nights after the same week without acting guilty and going through the quietness, it would be—it would really be it—too much, the end right there, because he knows…

  The kids are arguing amongst themselves as she sits down to her meal, yelling in a bristling argument which is just about to erupt into physical violence.

  “Hey!” she shouts.

  “He keeps puttin’ his foot on me!”

  “Keep your foot over by your chair.”

  “I wasn’t doin’ nothin’!”

  “Just mind your own business and eat your supper!”

  “I wasn’t doin’ nothin’!”

  Oh he knows, she thinks, that that’d just be just too much, there’d be no way, and besides, because he knows that he knows he’s in the wrong and that he’s done wrong, I imagine that he does feel wrong and guilty and doesn’t just act that way, maybe it’s half and half like with me being mad, you start out mad and then you don’t say anything in so many words, and then you only end up acting like you feel that way—you don’t really feel it after a while, or at least I don’t—to the point where you actually have to think to remember that you’re angry, and sometimes even why; maybe it’s like that with him, where he does feel bad, then keeps acting that way just to pay the price to my angriness long after he’s stopped feeling bad, just to put in the right amount of time because I don’t say anything, I won’t say anything, because what I’m saying through my silence is: I’m not shouting at you, I am not screaming at you, I am not going to argue with you about what is right and wrong because you know what is right and wrong.

  I am speaking to you through my silence of my anger, which I feel you are not worthy to hear of through my words, and not only of my anger but also and even more so of my hurt—you did not come home from work, you went out and got drunk, you did not call. I am telling you that you have hurt me, once again, and though there may be a time when I will forgive you once again, it is now too soon to tell, though there may come a time when I will forgive and speak; I wish for the present only to make the fact of my hurt known, and until then, all is broken between us, all is silence and that fact.

  And he is saying, through his quietness, through his meek agreeability: yes I know I have wronged you, I know I have hurt you, and see, to show that I know this, I nod quietly, I speak softly where normally I would shout and holler; thank you for your silence, I appreciate your not bitching or yelling at me, in return I am willing to slice my power in half and leave it abandoned at your feet—see how I nod my head—I will continue to manifest this approximation of shame until such time as the fact of your hurt has been firmly established and your forgiveness is shown in speaking in a polite everyday manner. Because maybe his making the effort to act guilty is the same as feeling guilty in itself, knowing in his mind that he is guilty, that he has done wrong, or rather that he hasn’t done wrong in his mind but knows that his actions have caused me pain, and he’s guilty and sorry for that, not the action…

  But shit, she thinks. Bullshit! He knows full well what he’s doing, and has done, and at the heart of it all, th
e wounding fact is that he has chosen to hurt me in this way. No, it’s not just a movement or a flow, like sleepwalking, like the days rolling by underwater, sitting in front of the television set, getting up and making the kids’ lunches, coming home from work, sitting around the dinner table and then television again, ironing clothes, pulling in and out of the driveway, work, bills, maybe going out to a dance sometimes, family get-togethers, it’s not just more of the same and something which must be accepted because there is no other choice; there is a choice, always a choice, and at the bottom of it all, in the centre of it all, all the nights and days rolling by, of acting like you’re angry or not acting like you’re angry for the sake of the kids, buttering a piece of bread with your stomach all knotted up inside, your lips pursed over it, is the simple burning fact that HE HAS CHOSEN TO HURT ME IN THIS WAY.

  Because he can, because I can take it, because it’s part of us now, like the mortgage or the kitchen counter, like the weather, something to be accepted, or not, but what then? I go, I leave, yes, that’s what his silence says: Well, leave then. And you don’t speak, and you bend, because after all, that’s what it comes down to; otherwise, what’s the point, you leave. And that’s why you don’t think, that’s why you keep it going in front of your eyes or at a lower level, in the self that goes to work and washes the dishes, in the self that you use to peel potatoes or go to the bank with, that does what must be done because it must be done without wondering why or looking anywhere or thinking of anything beyond that, because to think would be to think of leaving, of falling down on the spot and weeping, of crying No and refusing to be moved, and then what after that?

  After that’s a blank space, a vast whiteness so big you shrink in it, you can’t even conceive or imagine or foresee, so you keep it where it is, unthinkable, and straighten the tablecloth, concentrate on the furniture, the wooden leg on the kitchen chair, the wallpaper peeling at the baseboard, anything.