The Greywater Gazette
Tuesday; the Shelving Unit Arrives; the East Alcove Prepares to Receive Something
On the morning of Tuesday, November the twenty-fifth, a delivery truck from the Alderton supply co-op turned onto Cress Street at eight forty-two and stopped in front of the Greywater Falls Public Library. This editor saw it from the Gazette window, which faces Cress Street, and noted the time in the first notebook before she had decided to note it, which is the kind of reflex this work gives you after long enough. Calloway was at the front door before the driver had set the brake. The shelving unit — pine, three shelves, flat-packed in two parcels bound with paper strapping — was unloaded in four minutes and carried inside. The driver signed his clipboard, turned the truck around in the library's small car park, and was gone by nine. The whole transaction had the crisp, ordinary quality of a thing that has been arranged and has now occurred.
Calloway confirmed, when this editor came by at ten, that the shelves were still in their parcels in the reading room. She had not yet begun assembly. She said she intended to lay the pieces out first, make sure everything was present, and then take her time with it — an approach she described as 'the right way to start something that has waited this long.' She used the word 'waited.' This editor wrote it down. The alcove door at the end of the reading room was closed, as it has been since Sunday, and the pale winter light was coming through the alcove's exterior window and lying across the floor in the same stripe as yesterday, though at a slightly different angle, because the light moves and because it is Tuesday now and not Monday.
Gerald Pith measured the ice at seven forty-five and reported two and three-eighths inches to Marigold Vance at the Kettle counter at eight-seventeen. Marigold had the coffee ready. Gerald said the rate was holding and his notebook was in good order and Marigold said 'quarter-inch since Sunday' in the tone she has been using all week, which is the tone of a woman who has stopped being surprised by the direction but has not stopped watching it. The new pot on the back burner is still not announced. This editor did not ask about it and Marigold did not offer, and there is an etiquette to these things.
The blank return slip is still on the layout table. The shelving unit is in the reading room in two parcels, waiting. Calloway has not yet opened them. The alcove floor, which was swept to a particular thoroughness last Wednesday, or perhaps not last Wednesday but on some other occasion that Calloway has since remembered more clearly, is ready to receive the shelves when Calloway is ready to put them there. This editor has now written the word 'receive' in the first notebook, which is where she puts the things she intends to print, and she is aware this is a thing she has not done before with that word, and she has left it there, and gone back to typesetting, and the truck is gone and the library is quiet and the shelves are waiting in the room where the light falls.
From Around the Falls
Shelving Unit Confirmed Received; Calloway to Begin Assembly 'When the Room Is Ready'; East Alcove Door Remains Closed
Calloway confirmed Tuesday morning that the pine shelving unit — three shelves, ordered from the Alderton supply co-op and estimated for the first week of December — arrived this morning, one week ahead of schedule. The parcels are in the reading room. Calloway said she would lay the pieces out before assembly, as she always does with furniture. When asked whether the alcove door would be open during assembly, Calloway said she would cross that when she came to it. The notation above the sketch still reads LOCAL INTEREST AND HISTORY in pencil. Calloway said the pencil was still the right instrument for that, for now.
Doreen Halloway Reports Seven Standings and One Experimental Spiced Pear Loaf; Notes the Pear Loaf Is Not on the Menu and Will Not Be Unless the Town Decides Otherwise
Doreen Halloway baked seven Standings on Tuesday and, separately, a spiced pear loaf that she has placed on the counter under a glass dome with no label. She said it was a Tuesday impulse and she was not committing to it. Gerald Pith had a slice at eight twenty-five and said it was, in his view, very fine. Doreen said she would see. By noon the dome was empty and Doreen had begun a second loaf. She has not added it to the menu board. The board still says Standings, quince, coffee. The dome is back under the glass.
Hank Mossley Notes Delivery Truck Turned 'Sharper Than It Needed To' on Cress Street; Hardware Otherwise Without Incident Tuesday
Hank Mossley noted, when this editor passed the hardware at nine, that the Alderton delivery truck had turned onto Cress Street from the Route 9 junction at a sharper angle than was, in his professional estimation, necessary for the road width. He said the driver clearly didn't know the corner. He said the library received its shelving, which he had heard from Doreen, who had heard from the postal carrier. He said it was a week early. He said 'there you go' and went back inside. The pipe insulation foam is still at the front of the hardware. No one has argued with the foam.
Letters to the Editor
“To the Editor — I want to put something in the record before anyone says I didn't notice it first. The returned turned west-southwest last night. Eighteen degrees off from every previous dusk since I started the Watch. I know eighteen degrees sounds like nothing. A compass can be off by eighteen degrees and still get you mostly where you're going. But the returned are not compasses, and they have been pointing the same direction every single night for weeks, and last night they didn't, and I wrote it down at 4:52 p.m. before the hum stopped. I don't have a category for it yet. I'm working on the category. I wanted it in print first. — Toby Fern, Grade 11”
“To the Editor — The shelves are here. Good. A thing does not choose its moment; you choose yours. Calloway will know when the room is ready. She already knows. She is just being careful, which is correct. — A. Crewe”