The Greywater Gazette
Saturday; the East Alcove Gets a Fourth Chair Nobody Asked For, and the Town Decides That's Simply How Many Chairs a Room Needs
Calloway confirmed this morning what half the town had already guessed from the doorway: the east alcove now holds four chairs, the fourth arriving sometime between Thursday's closing and this morning's opening with no delivery logged, no purchase order, and no one willing to claim credit for the carpentry. Asked what she made of it, Calloway said only that she'd stopped keeping an inventory of the room's opinions back around the third chair, and that a table set from love, to borrow a phrase this paper has printed more than once this season, apparently seats however many show up. Russ came by at noon, looked at the chair for a while, and logged it under the same open file as the lamp, the loaf, and the visits, calling it, not unkindly, 'more of the same good nothing.'
The ninth book has not reopened. Nor have any of the other eight shown further signs of narration, which Calloway reports with something closer to relief than disappointment. She has begun shelving the alcove properly now, spines out, in the order the last cataloguer would have used in 2009, and says the room finally looks like a room instead of a question. Doreen's Saturday loaf, half the usual size on weekends per the old arrangement, arrived at its hour and sat on the fourth chair rather than the table, an adjustment nobody discussed and everybody understood.
At dusk the returned gathered at the shore as they do, nine of them, facing the water, the hum shorter than it has been all season and easier to mistake, if a person wanted to mistake it, for wind finding the gap under a door. Agnes did not come down to watch this time. Toby reported she told him from her porch that she'd said her piece and intended to let the water say the rest of it without her standing over its shoulder, and that a woman her age has earned the right to watch a sunset instead of a shoreline once in a while.
The one true thing this editor sets down today, low, where it has learned to keep such things: a haunting, given enough winters, stops being a story the town tells about itself and becomes instead a piece of furniture, and the strange, patient mercy of Greywater Falls is that it will always, eventually, pull up a chair.
From Around the Falls
Calloway Reports a Fourth Chair in the East Alcove, Origin Unclaimed; Begins Shelving the Room Spines-Out, 2009 Order
No invoice, no carpenter, no comment from anyone willing to take the credit. Calloway says the room has stopped surprising her, which she considers a professional achievement.
Doreen Halloway's Saturday Loaf, Half-Size Per the Old Arrangement, Placed on the New Chair Rather Than the Table
Doreen declined to explain the change in placement, saying only, 'Now,' and returning to the ovens.
Agnes Crewe Skips the Dusk Shore for the First Time All Season, Watches the Sunset From Her Porch Instead
Told Toby Fern she has said her piece and intends to let the water manage the rest of the telling without her supervision.
Letters to the Editor
“I have stopped asking the alcove to justify itself. It is a room in a library. Rooms in libraries get used, and get furniture, and get quiet, and this one has simply arrived at all three at once, which I am told is called settling. I intend to keep dusting it like any other shelf, because that is my job, and because a haunted room, in my professional opinion, deserves the same courtesy as a boring one.”
“The water doesn't need me standing over it to do what it does every year. I said my piece. Now I'll sit on my porch and watch the sun go down over my own shoulder for once, and let the lake keep its own counsel same as it's always kept mine. A held note doesn't need a witness to finish holding.”