heading off to basic training didn’t look to him like heroes in the making. And Martin couldn’t ignore a kind of gray pallor spreading across the faces of his coworkers, a grim portrait of the inescapable. Assembly lines and lifelines, vitality draining off the way the factory floor was hosed off at the end of the day, taking a little of their sweat and blood too, all of it down the drain and lost for good.
Company men. Company town.
Working six days a week, he made a point of getting to the library every other day either before or after his shift. The second time he met Sophie among the stacks, their conversation had veered toward music, toward geography, toward poems. During her break, they sat side by side wearing headphones and listening to Robert Frost recordings or Dvorak’s New World Symphony . When Sophie closed her eyes, Martin watched her lids tremble along with the sounds. Someday , he thought, you can share Joseph’s stories with her . Someday.
The geometry of himself as well as Henry leaning toward Sophie rattled him as dangerously as a broken windowpane. He forced himself to imagine some collision in which all three of them could be friends without friction, a blending of ancestry and melody like the kind Dvorak wrote into his music. Some casual but perfectly synchronistic arrangement. And then it turned out that the river actually wanted to flow that way. Because of a canoe.
For three years, Martin’s father had stopped returning to Electric City altogether. The way Annie tended her garden out back was the only true reminder of a reliable tempo now. If Joseph had lived long enough to teach him the craft of canoe building, maybe that would have been his doorway to an autonomous future, but there were already too many factory-made canoes coming from Maine and Vermont, not to mention the scarcity now of cedar and ash.
He had to do what was necessary to keep Annie’s home repaired, the screen and storm windows alternating through the changes in season, the persistent supply of firewood for the stove. She braided rugs for the house’s bare floors, using scraps of old denim and wool that had oncemade up Joseph’s wardrobe, simple colors and textures to memorialize a well-loved utilitarian life. The ovals made from Joseph’s shirts were the softest ones, placed on the floor beside her own bed and Martin’s.
The other day, Annie had come in from the garden with an armful of tomatoes and squash, saying she planned to start canning early this year.
“Bounty now will get us through any kind of winter ahead,” she smiled.
To Martin she often sounded like a mystic even when she was referring to vegetables. When he saw the altar in the hallway with a freshly placed scattering of marigold petals, he realized this was the anniversary of her marriage to Joseph. She confirmed it when he asked.
“Today is sixty years,” she said.
Martin tried but failed to comprehend that amount of life shared with anyone. His parents had been together maybe three years, or four. Long enough to conceive and give birth to a son, but basically leaving him to become what they had woven together.
“You know there’s his last canoe,” Annie said, turning to Martin after preparing her stewing pots, wiping her hands on her rough faded skirt. “You have to take that one out onto the river to let it breathe, and then sell it. Joseph’s spirit told me it’s time.”
Martin thought he heard a quiver in her voice, saw the tender gleam of tears at the corners of her eyes. Speechless at her request, he searched her face for an explanation that could make some sense.
“I could drop out of school to work full-time, you know,” he said.
She put her hands on his chest, stopping him from saying anything else. “No arguing,” she said.
When he reached out to hold her, the sudden frailty of his grandmother’s bones surprised him. Had it been such a long time since he’d embraced her? The years were spinning faster now that
Company men. Company town.
Working six days a week, he made a point of getting to the library every other day either before or after his shift. The second time he met Sophie among the stacks, their conversation had veered toward music, toward geography, toward poems. During her break, they sat side by side wearing headphones and listening to Robert Frost recordings or Dvorak’s New World Symphony . When Sophie closed her eyes, Martin watched her lids tremble along with the sounds. Someday , he thought, you can share Joseph’s stories with her . Someday.
The geometry of himself as well as Henry leaning toward Sophie rattled him as dangerously as a broken windowpane. He forced himself to imagine some collision in which all three of them could be friends without friction, a blending of ancestry and melody like the kind Dvorak wrote into his music. Some casual but perfectly synchronistic arrangement. And then it turned out that the river actually wanted to flow that way. Because of a canoe.
For three years, Martin’s father had stopped returning to Electric City altogether. The way Annie tended her garden out back was the only true reminder of a reliable tempo now. If Joseph had lived long enough to teach him the craft of canoe building, maybe that would have been his doorway to an autonomous future, but there were already too many factory-made canoes coming from Maine and Vermont, not to mention the scarcity now of cedar and ash.
He had to do what was necessary to keep Annie’s home repaired, the screen and storm windows alternating through the changes in season, the persistent supply of firewood for the stove. She braided rugs for the house’s bare floors, using scraps of old denim and wool that had oncemade up Joseph’s wardrobe, simple colors and textures to memorialize a well-loved utilitarian life. The ovals made from Joseph’s shirts were the softest ones, placed on the floor beside her own bed and Martin’s.
The other day, Annie had come in from the garden with an armful of tomatoes and squash, saying she planned to start canning early this year.
“Bounty now will get us through any kind of winter ahead,” she smiled.
To Martin she often sounded like a mystic even when she was referring to vegetables. When he saw the altar in the hallway with a freshly placed scattering of marigold petals, he realized this was the anniversary of her marriage to Joseph. She confirmed it when he asked.
“Today is sixty years,” she said.
Martin tried but failed to comprehend that amount of life shared with anyone. His parents had been together maybe three years, or four. Long enough to conceive and give birth to a son, but basically leaving him to become what they had woven together.
“You know there’s his last canoe,” Annie said, turning to Martin after preparing her stewing pots, wiping her hands on her rough faded skirt. “You have to take that one out onto the river to let it breathe, and then sell it. Joseph’s spirit told me it’s time.”
Martin thought he heard a quiver in her voice, saw the tender gleam of tears at the corners of her eyes. Speechless at her request, he searched her face for an explanation that could make some sense.
“I could drop out of school to work full-time, you know,” he said.
She put her hands on his chest, stopping him from saying anything else. “No arguing,” she said.
When he reached out to hold her, the sudden frailty of his grandmother’s bones surprised him. Had it been such a long time since he’d embraced her? The years were spinning faster now that
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