The Greywater Gazette
Sunday in Greywater Falls; the Lake Remains Under Its Ice; the Town Finds It Has Nothing Pressing to Report and Reports It Anyway
On the morning of Sunday, November the sixteenth, Greywater Falls woke without urgency, which is a condition this town has not fully inhabited since early October, and which it appeared to enter carefully, the way you enter a room you have been locked out of for some time and are not entirely sure you have the right to re-occupy. The square was quiet. The lake was flat under its ice. The lost-and-found box at this paper held thirteen items, as it has held thirteen items for seven days running, and will hold thirteen items for as long as it holds anything, which is to say indefinitely, which is to say that it has become part of the furniture of this office the way that the type case and the layout table and the second notebook are part of the furniture of this office: present, necessary, not discussed unless someone asks, and nobody asks.
Calloway spent the morning at the library, which she has been treating less as a temporary lodging and more as an ongoing project since her arrival, a distinction that was made concrete this morning when she brought her own tea in a thermos and spent three hours with the acquisition ledgers going back to 1974. She told this editor, in the afternoon, that the archive is in better shape than she expected and worse shape than it ought to be, and that what it needs is not a rescue but a continuation — someone to keep going where the last cataloguer left off, which in this case appears to have been a Wednesday in March of 2009 with no explanation offered. She said this with the equanimity of a librarian who has seen interrupted cataloguing before and knows it is always, in the end, a story about a life that had other demands. This editor asked if she intended to continue it. Calloway looked at her tea and said: 'I expect I'll stay through the winter.' She said it the way people say things that have already been decided.
T. Aldercott was at the Gazette worktable at ten — it is a Sunday, but the arrangement has no days off built into it by either party's design — and she typed for two hours and then stopped and read back what she had typed in the silence that follows all of this editor's paper's particular kind of afternoon quiet, which is the silence of a room that has held a great many things and is not actively holding anything at the moment and is simply being a room. She did not share what she had typed. She folded it and put it in the canvas bag and looked at the lost-and-found box on the shelf for a moment — not with the searching look she had for the first days after her arrival, but with the look you give a thing you have finished being afraid of, which is a look that contains, if you are paying attention, a small and complicated gratitude. She left at noon. The worktable held the shape of her work: a cleared space, a pencil in the groove, the chair pushed in.
At dusk the returned gathered at the ice-line. The hum lasted two minutes and forty seconds, which Toby Fern recorded without parenthetical commentary, which this editor takes to mean he has settled into the notation the way you settle into a routine that no longer requires annotation to be meaningful. Agnes Crewe's light was on in the cottage nearest the water. Doreen Halloway's bakery was dark, as it is dark on Sunday evenings, but the light in the back — the kitchen light, the one that means tomorrow is already being prepared for — was on, yellow and warm in the cold air, and this editor noticed it on her way back from the shore, and noticed that she found it sufficient, and noticed that sufficient is the truest word this town has ever offered her, and that she has been living in it for six weeks without knowing its name.
From Around the Falls
Calloway Announces Intention to Winter in Greywater Falls; Library Archive to Resume Cataloguing from March 2009; Gerald Pith Has Already Located the Relevant Ledger
R. Calloway, librarian and recent arrival by way of the lost-and-found's correspondence, informed this editor Sunday afternoon that she intends to remain in Greywater Falls through the winter to continue the interrupted catalogue of the town archive. Gerald Pith, reached at his usual Kettle stool, noted that he had, some years ago, marked the 2009 ledger with a Post-it reading 'LEFT OFF HERE' and had been waiting for an occasion to remove it. He appeared genuinely pleased to have one.
Doreen Halloway Closes the Bakery at Its Usual Sunday Hour; Kitchen Light Remains On; Town Understands This as the Correct Order of Operations
Halloway's Bakery closed at two o'clock Sunday afternoon, per its posted hours, which have been consistent for nineteen years. The front lights were off by two-fifteen. The kitchen light in the back was on at dusk, as observed by at least two residents independently. Doreen Halloway, asked for comment, said: 'Monday comes whether you're ready or not. I prefer to be ready.' She offered no further elaboration. None was required.
Hank Mossley Observes That the Hardware's Draft Has Moved; Now Comes from the South Window Rather Than the North; Files No Action; Mentions It Anyway
Hank Mossley noted Sunday morning that the persistent cold draft at the rear of the hardware store, unremarkable in itself, has shifted from the north-facing wall to the south-facing window, which does not explain the draft's origin and has not been investigated. 'South window's been sealed since August,' he said. 'I put the tape on myself.' He did not express alarm. He checked the tape. It was intact. He drank his coffee and opened the register and said no more about it, which is the customary and correct response to a draft in a building that has been standing since 1948 and has opinions.
Letters to the Editor
“Editor — The hum is shorter every evening now. That is not a warning. That is how it ends. The water will keep the rowboat. The rowboat will keep its shadow. The returned will come to the ice for as long as the ice is there, and when the ice goes, they will come to the water, and that will also be fine. The town knows how to stand at the edge of things. It has always known. It only needed reminding. — A. Crewe. P.S. The cups being on the table is not a small thing.”
“Wren — I've been thinking about the category problem and I think I've been wrong about it needing to be one category. Like, maybe the rowboat is in the category of 'things that settled,' and the hum is in the category of 'things that are finishing,' and the returned are in their own category which is just called 'the returned' because some categories are proper nouns. Agnes said that was right and then she said something about how the best cataloguers name things after what they are and not what they're like, which I'm pretty sure was also for Calloway. Anyway. Filed the Watch. — Toby”