The Age of Cities (19 page)

Epi[logue] II Ap[ril] [19]65

Winston grabbed the squat clock that stared at him from the right front corner of his desk. As he turned its key, he wondered how many times he'd completed his working day with this ritual. And the others—he always checked to see if windows were locked, made certain that no student had borrowed himself in a cubbyhole, and swept the room for leftover items that would lay forgotten in the cardboard Lost and Found box he stored in the broom closet. Over the course of the day, Winston had already found a white barrette, two notebooks—each inscribed with teenaged proclamations of
True Love
—and a tube of lipstick. Dust would be their true love soon enough.

He heard the door close with a gentle click. The sound prompted an instantaneous frown. It irked him that it would be necessary to tell this student that he'd have just five minutes before he must leave for the day. It was an unusual time for a student to appear; he should be attending some class or another. What fool would show up so late? A delinquent, no doubt, sent to this hallowed hall of learning as some fruitless punishment.

A plain-looking girl with hair as black as Grendel's approached him. She held a notebook close to her bosom.

“Mr. Wilson, I'm flunking History. Can you help me?”

“You have me at a disadvantage, young lady. What is your name, pray tell?”

“Em.”

“Em?”

“Oh, Emily Sanderson.”

“Pleased to meet you, Miss Sanderson. I don't recall having seen you in here before.” He raised his eyebrows. “Perhaps that may account for your less than stellar grade in History.”

She stood in front of his desk, eyes cast downward.

“Now then, what are your requirements?”

“I figure that if I can do real, um, really well on the final assignment … it's worth a quarter of our final grade, you see.” Winston guessed she arrived by bus from one of the outlying farms. He admired her pluck for staying in school. Her father must be laying down the law by now, letting her know—in ways both subtle and blatant—that the farm was her rightful place and that her labour was needed there full-time. Her desire for a better life was not what mattered, she'd be told. It was the
rerum natura
for a farm girl, her father would say in so many words.

“Alright. What have you done so far?”

“You know that we have to write about Valley history, right?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I thought I would do something about women in business in the early years of River Bend City. My gran says the Bend used to be run by women.”

“She does, does she? Yes, I hear a small band of Amazons settled on the riverbank decades before Father Pourguet. Look, it's already fairly late in the day, Miss Sanderson.” He tapped the top of the clock with his index finger. “Spend a few minute jotting down your ideas—specific ones, not so vague—and come in with them tomorrow. Alright?”

Wandering through the library for the day's final inspection, Winston imagined Alberta as one of the lost descendants of Queen Hippolyta, bent over in her garden wearing the fabled golden girdle.

 

 

“Mr. Wilson? Oh, Mr. Wilson?”

Winston turned when he heard the fluty trill of Mrs. Pierce. She was leaning her torso into the hallway as though her dedication physically tethered her to the classroom.

“I'm done for the day, Delilah. Is there something I can help you with?”

“Oh. It's nothing. I saw you and thought you had absentmindedly forgotten to say goodbye.” Her wheedling tone set his teeth on edge. It was all he could do to be pleasant. She veered between nun and spinster and neither hue in her personality held any appeal. Her coy romantic overtures were going
nowhere fast,
as Johnny would say.

“Yes, that must be it. I was … well, yes, my head was in the clouds. See you tomorrow, I suppose.”

“Unless the Russians have their way. Talk to you soon!” Despite the gloomy insinuation, she waved like a schoolgirl. He pictured her writing
True Love
on her grade booklet.

 

 

Along his route toward Wilson Manor, Winston could not help but notice the density of the heavy grey clouds. There was no magic in predicting that another deluge of rain was imminent; he decided resignedly that “How much?” would be a more illuminating question than “When?” His thoughts drifted from the weather's pushiness to the invisible rays, pulses, and beams overhead. Even as he took each step, he knew, there were men living in polar isolation hundreds of miles to the north whose jobs had them monitoring machines that protected national security.

While an easy fact to forget, everyone had heard that the string of radar stations—scores of them, a marvel of science—was in constant communication as it anxiously watched the sky for airborne Soviet missiles. Winston wondered what toll the job took on the men in those frozen habitats. Facing the blasting cold, stuck in a tiny hut, and then sitting on a chair and waiting for enemy missiles to announce themselves: not the sort of work that could be described as pleasurable. Maybe the responsibility was reward enough. He guessed that drink must flow during off hours.

Their dedication was cold comfort to him. It did not offer true protection or even lull with a false sense of security. Instead, it made him believe that he was caught between the proverbial rock and a hard place, though what was Scylla and what was Charybdis remained unclear. It was all a historical accident in any case: he and his country were at the wrong place at the wrong time. While the D.E.W. Line was no folly like Maginot, Winston pictured volley after volley of missiles that would register on radar screens mere moments before they reached their targets. What use was such knowledge? There would scarcely be time for the men to reach for their telephones before the explosions started. Ordinary people would follow their routines right up until the blasts took their lives away; they'd never get word from the messengers up north.

Cameron McKay had said that protecting American leaders was the real intent behind the enterprise, and the idea was that Russian missiles would be heading to American targets—not Canadian ones—so they would fly right overhead. Yet there'd be no protection from missed targets or missiles with engines—did they have engines, Winston wondered—that stalled en route. Wedged between two bullies on a playground, the hapless child will not escape without injury. Winston thought it was an apt comparison.

The Manor's front yard was full of green budding promise—
all this juice and all this joy!
—for which, he grudgingly admitted, rain should be paid respect. In a matter of weeks the shrubs and trees would be fully in leaf; day by day, the dark clusters on Alberta's white lilac trees grew plump. Their bursting forth always seemed like nature's official announcement that grey winter and its cold rains had retreated for the next half of the year. The metamorphosis was invigorating. He recalled the old poet's sour
Earth's old glooms and pains,
but could never muster that concentration of hopelessness.

At the front door, Winston yelled out, “Hello, Mother,” and walked to his bedroom. He felt eager to discard the visible signs of the day. Even in his room, the air was redolent with Alberta's Lapsang Souchung.

Once his cardigan was buttoned up and his feet were inside slippers, Winston was looking forward to tea and conversation in the kitchen's soft light.

“It's coming down in buckets,” Alberta said as she was looking out the window above the sink.

“Thought I'd get caught in it.” Winston picked up Grendel and cradled him upside down. The cat, he knew, would stay relaxed for well under a minute.

“You got a letter from the city.”

Winston looked at her and thought he saw a trace of Delilah Pierce's pursed lips. Alberta disapproved of this friendship, he understood. They had exchanged no words over it, though she had remarked about their apparent frivolity—based solely on what he selected to tell her—and his travel extravagance more than once. She believed they ought to at least make the effort of visiting him. For Winston, their visit to the country was anathema; he did not want Dickie and Alberta to ever share tea and biscuits and idle conversation. Here was another rock and a hard place, he sighed.

Winston strode to the front hall. The envelope was from Dickie, of course—at some time he'd been voted in as the gang's official secretary of correspondence.

The note's tone was slapdash and teasing:

 

April 24, 1965

Farmer—

We miss the pleasure of your company. We've discovered a new haunt, The Embassy (The Fembassy, actually, if you catch my drift). It's a stone's throw from the respectable part of town. And right next to a greaser hang out. What luck!! It's a delight, in short. We're heading out tonight.

Yours,

Dickie & Co.