The Greywater Gazette
Wednesday; the Season Closes Quietly; the Town Is, on the Whole, Glad to Have Been Here for It
On the morning of Wednesday, November the nineteenth, Greywater Falls woke to clear sky and cold light and the particular stillness that follows a long thing's ending — not the silence of absence, but the silence of completion, which is a different quality of quiet entirely, and one this town has earned. The ice on the lake was unbroken and pale gold at its edges where the winter sun reached it at its low November angle, and the smoke from the bakery chimney and the hardware chimney and the cottage chimney nearest the water rose straight up into a blue so pale it was nearly white, and this editor stood at the Gazette window at six-forty in the morning with her coffee — the coffee, she notes, from a cup that is now on the table, where cups belong — and thought: here it is. Here is what the season was for.
Gerald Pith measured seventeen and one-eighth inches at the shore before seven, a second decrease, and he came to the Kettle and told Marigold, and Marigold had the coffee ready, and Gerald sat down and opened the blue notebook and looked at the two asterisked entries and then closed the notebook and put it in his coat pocket and said, 'That's a trend.' He said it without triumph, in the tone of a man who has been keeping data long enough to know that trends do not require celebration, only acknowledgment, and then he drank his coffee and read the paper and left at eight twenty-nine, which is the right time to leave. Marigold watched him go and then wiped down the counter, which was already clean, because she had already wiped it down, and this is the kind of redundancy that means everything is fine.
T. Aldercott arrived at the Gazette at nine-thirty, as agreed, and she typed for two hours and then she stopped and she looked at what she had typed and she took the papers out of the canvas bag — all of them, the full accumulating stack with the binder clip at the corner — and she set them on the layout table in a single even pile and said: 'I think it's done.' This editor asked if she wanted to read it back. She said she already knew what it said. She left the papers on the table and took the empty canvas bag and looked at the lost-and-found box on the shelf — not the searching look, not the relieved look, not the third look, but a fourth look that this editor will not attempt to name, because some looks belong to the person who is doing the looking — and then she left, and the papers sat on the layout table in the winter light, and this editor did not read them, and this is an arrangement that both parties understand without discussing.
At dusk — and this is the last thing to report, and this editor reports it exactly — the returned gathered at the ice-line. Mr. Whiskers and the drake and the rabbit and the sparrow came down to the water's edge in the last flat light and faced the deepest water and hummed, and the hum lasted one minute and nine seconds, which is the shortest it has been, and when it ended there was a moment — four seconds, Toby Fern timed it — of a silence so complete that this editor heard the ice settle. And then the returned turned from the water, unhurried, and went where they go, and the ice held, and Agnes Crewe's light was on in the cottage nearest the water, and the lost-and-found box on this paper's shelf holds thirteen items and will hold them as long as it holds anything, which is to say that the season has concluded and the town is accounted for, and what this editor did not expect, and what she finds she cannot leave out of the record, is that it was enough — that all of it, from the first wet cat on the doorstep to the last four seconds of silence on the ice, was enough, and that the town knew this, and that she is only now catching up to what the town has known all along.
From Around the Falls
Gerald Pith Records Second Consecutive Decrease; Confirms Trend in the Blue Notebook; Closes the Projection Section; Opens a New Page Headed 'Spring'
Mr. Pith measured seventeen and one-eighth inches at the shore at six-fifty-two a.m., his second recorded decrease, and noted in the blue notebook: 'Trend confirmed. Rate of decline approximately matching rate of rise, corrected for temperature differential. See spring.' He drew a horizontal line under the autumn entries and dated it. He told Marigold at the Kettle, who had the coffee ready, and they sat with the information for what Marigold estimates was about ninety seconds without anyone saying anything further, which she described as 'the right length of time for a thing like that.' Gerald will continue daily measurements through winter. He considers this the ordinary work.
Doreen Halloway Bakes Nine Standings; Serves Nine; Reports the Count Correct; Returns the Plate with the Blue Border to the Back Cupboard; Good Apron Now Hung for the Week
Halloway's Bakery opened at six a.m. as it has opened throughout the season, and by nine o'clock nine Standings had been served, nine cups of coffee poured, and nine receipts written in the morning ledger. Mayor Halloway, at the counter, reported the morning as 'right' — her word — and said she had moved the plate with the blue border back to the back cupboard, where it keeps, and that the good apron was going on its proper hook for the week. She said this without ceremony and with complete satisfaction, the way a person says something they have been waiting to say since approximately mid-October and have finally, on a clear Wednesday in November, been given the occasion.
Calloway and Gerald Pith Hold First Wednesday Arrangement at the Library; Fourteen Pages Continued; Cross-Reference Resolved; Acquisition Log for 2009 Now Open and Ongoing
As agreed at the Kettle on Monday, R. Calloway and Gerald Pith convened at the library at ten a.m. for the first of their Wednesday morning working sessions. By noon, Calloway had continued the acquisition log from the March 2009 interruption through a further fourteen entries, and Gerald had resolved the cross-reference he identified Tuesday, saving — as predicted — the equivalent of two Wednesday mornings' work. Calloway, reached for comment, said the archive is 'a longer project than one winter, probably, but winters here seem sufficient for long projects.' Gerald agreed. The library will be open its regular hours.
Letters to the Editor
“Editor — The cups are on the table. The season is done. Now put the table by the window so the light gets at it in the morning. That is all. — A.C.”
“Hi Wren — I know you're going to print this so I'm trying to write it right. I've been watching the lake every dusk since October and I filed twenty-six Lake Watch entries and I still don't have a proper category for half of what I saw, which Agnes says is fine and which I am starting to think is actually the point. The rowboat's shadow is correct now. I don't know what it means that I'm glad about that. I think I'm glad because it means something was wrong and now it's right, and that's a direction, and directions are — I don't know. Enough? I think enough is the right word. See you Thursday. I'll have the notes for spring. — Toby”