This Will Be Difficult to Explain and Other Stories (9 page)

I do not think it's likely they're watching, but still I imagine that they are, and feel glad when we complete the turn in my father's drive without stalling the car, and begin to pick up speed, and pass the coulee, and head out to the highway.

I think: So this is how it feels to be a grown-up person. I look at my hands as if they belong to someone else. I feel neat, and gathered up within myself, as if I took a broom to the far corners of my body and swept myself clean into a pile.

C
LARENCE

 

ALL MY LIFE,
Clarence had lived at the top of the Lakehead road in a tall, upright house that looked just like my mother's. It wasn't, however, until I was eighteen years old—the summer I got a job working for the
Weekly Gleaner
in town—that I ever laid eyes on him.

Guy was the
Gleaner
's editor-in-chief. He said Clarence was the oldest man in the county—probably even the state. It was hard to tell exactly, and even more difficult to prove. Clarence himself hardly knew anymore just how long he'd been alive. He didn't get around much, hadn't for a while. Not, at least, for eighteen years. Even the Save-Easy boy (who had grown, over the intervening period, into a surly, dough-faced Save-Easy man) never saw Clarence anymore when he went up to the house once a week, delivering the groceries and the mail.

But that was the summer of the fiftieth-anniversary spread, and Guy said he wanted Clarence right on the cover. I'd only just started, but he gave the job to me anyway. “Let the old fella tell you a thing or two,” he said, when he sent me up the road. I could tell he thought that he was doing me a favour.

IT WAS CLARENCE'S WIFE,
of course—twenty-five years younger—and not Clarence himself, who came to the door. She had taken her time, and when she did arrive, she opened the door only partway—hardly wide enough to pass. “Oh, it's you,” she said. “Come from the paypah.”

I nodded my head, and indicated my new camera, which I had purchased with my own money. She stared—first at it, and then at me—before, finally, opening the door a little wider. “Well,” she said. “Come in. He sure ain't coming to greet you.”

In the same way that people, over the years, come to resemble the things that surround them—their animals, their wives—Clarence had come to resemble his house. He was tall, even sitting upright in his living room chair. Straight as a chimney. And—like all the houses along the Lakehead road, where large families had long ago moved into town—mostly shut-up-looking, like only one or two rooms were lived in at all.

And old. Terminally so. His eyes sunk so deep in his head, like inset windows, that his skin, where his eyes should have been, ruffled out around them like curtains for the Fourth of July. His long neck was so thin and straight that his head seemed to be set there as if only temporarily. When, finally, I worked up the courage to speak, I did so quietly—afraid of disrupting what seemed to be a delicate balance. Even with how eager I was to get Clarence's name—and my own—onto the front page of the anniversary special, I didn't mind particularly when I saw that there was no story to find at
Clarence's house. Even when (cautiously) I managed to lift my voice, each of my carefully prepared questions was met only by a devastating silence. I was happy enough not to test the limits of that particular silence. Happy enough to take my leave as quickly and discreetly as possible, and—having gleaned nothing—simply head back to town. I had, in fact, just resolved to go when I discerned a low hum—a sort of sad, slow whistle, like a distant train—which (emanating, as it did, from Clarence's general direction) I took to be a form of reply. Still—and though I strained, desperately, to do so—I could not make out a single word. Once more, I resolved to make my departure.

But again I was checked by something. Again, I paused, cleared my throat, and read through the list of questions I had prepared earlier in the day. This time, though, the words stuck curiously in my throat; I nearly choked on them. I had not even reached the middle of the page when I stopped, mid-sentence. I wanted only to get away—and fast. What, I wondered, had possessed me to enter that house at all? To trespass that last, and most remote outpost at the end of the Lakehead road? What had I hoped to uncover there?

Still, for some reason, I remained. Setting my notebook and pen gingerly to one side, I sat, uncomfortably, as the low and wordless hum, which I had taken, just a moment ago, as a sort of reply, continued to echo—as though from a great distance—from the general direction of Clarence's large, and mostly emptied, frame.

Finally, I unpacked my camera and shot a roll of film as if at random. Then, and without announcing my intention to either Clarence or his wife—I let myself out the front door, and pretty well ran all the way back into town.

GUY WAS NOT
SO
easily discouraged. Once he set his mind to something it was pretty well set, and that summer he was set on having Clarence on the cover of the anniversary special. “Don't worry,” he said when I returned. “You'll try again tomorrow.” He slapped me on the back, hard—in a way that he had no doubt hoped was encouraging—and was about to leave when he caught a glimpse of one of the photographs I had printed from my hastily shot roll, drying on the rack by the door. “Hey,” he said, “that's not half bad.” He pinched the print from its hold and looked at it more carefully. Then he handed it back, nodding gravely. “You could still make the covah,” he told me—but now it sounded like a warning.

It was true; it was a fine picture. Clarence appeared just as he had in the dark living room earlier that day. His eyes nearly lost in his head, which sat perched above his wide, and by comparison large and unaltered, woodcutter's frame. In every photograph, and this one was no exception, his mouth appeared to be shut tight, a firm and single line.

“Now, see, it's all about the angle of the thing,” Guy said the next day, as I prepared for my departure—taking longer than usual. He himself was leaned comfortably
back in his bendable chair, which he would not be required to depart from—that day, or any other. I nodded. Though I could not imagine what possible “angle” might illuminate, with Clarence, any story at all—let alone one worthy of the anniversary special. Finally, there being very little to do in the way of preparation, and so no means of drawing it out any longer, I made my way to the door. “Tell me,” Guy shouted after me—sensing my concern, which I had found difficult to hide—“tell me if there isn't a man alive won't say a few words for the front-page news.”

Despairingly, I pulled the door shut behind me, muffling Guy's final words, but just as I did so—it hit me. I didn't know why I hadn't thought of it before. Like most good ideas, what had occurred to me then was very simple, so that now that I had thought of it, it seemed very obvious that I had. By the time I had arrived at Clarence's house, I was in a completely altered mood. Even the atmosphere of the old place seemed changed. Even Clarence (when, after once again being met at the door, I was led down the seemingly destinationless hall to join him) seemed different somehow. He seemed—more relaxed. Almost cheerful. Instead of the whispering ventriloquism of the day before, a heavy silence prevailed, but even this did not trouble me, so certain was I that my idea would in no time have us all—myself, Clarence, and Clarence's wife—smack on the front page of the anniversary special. It was true—it was all about the angle of the thing. At that very moment, Clarence's wife (who had once again greeted me
at the door, saying, “I was starting to wondah if you was coming at all”) was upstairs, readying herself for her own feature photo. Much to my relief, she had quickly agreed to the suggestion—disappearing hurriedly up the dark stairs, in order, she said, to change into something that would “suit.” It was, of course, Clarence's wife—not Clarence himself—who could answer the few and simple questions I'd prepared, and fill in the gaps of the story. I simply had to wait.

And so, in the silence that did not weigh so heavily now, I began to tell Clarence a story of my own, about the time when I was fifteen years old and I saw a snake devour a trout, in shallow water, at the bottom of the Lakehead road. I don't know why that was the story I thought of just then. At first, I thought I might inspire Clarence to tell some story of his own. That an errant word might stir in him some long-forgotten remembrance—but after a while I forgot about Clarence almost altogether.

I had been out with my brother, Frankie—I said—in our uncle Trevor's boat. Uncle Trevor used to be married to Aunt June, but now he lived in Bangor, and didn't have a boat, and I never saw him. Frankie worked at the mill in town, but I hardly saw him either. Even when I did, it was like we hardly knew each other the way we always had to try so hard just to find something to say. But back then, it was different. We often went off together, sometimes for whole afternoons, and when we could find it to take—a couple of beers, or when we were especially lucky, some
of Uncle Trevor's homegrown weed—we did, and drank it, or smoked it, or both, and felt for an hour and a half better than we ever had, or ever likely would again. It was as if it was not then—sitting at the edge of the lake in Uncle Trevor's boat, with a long line dropped straight down, which we never bothered to recast—but at every other time that the world was only half-real, and we were half-men, and full of illusions.

On that particular day Frankie had found a quarter bottle of Uncle Trevor's whiskey in the bottom of the boat, all wrapped up in a life preserver. When he found it, he gave a whoop and a holler, swinging it above his head for me to see, and then the two of us drank it down, all of it. Or what was left. Our eyes bugging out of our heads with all the effort it took not making a face. Then we sat around in the hot sun for some time. Not feeling real at all—or grown-up, or anything. After a while, Frankie staggered up and puked into the lake. I watched him, but it was hard. The whole world, and he with it, seemed to spin unsteadily in slow circles. I had to hold on to my head in order to make sure that it was not my head that spun. But no—my head stayed in its place, and the world spun. Something must have come unfixed inside me. Either that or the world—and my position within it—was a lot less solid than I had so far supposed. Perhaps this—I thought suddenly—was what dying would be like someday, when it happened. A beginning to … unravel somehow, break away. Until, finally, all the small and disconnected pieces that had somehow,
inside you, mysteriously, and for so long, conjoined, began to slowly disentangle themselves from one another, be sent—spinning—away …

I did not, at first, hear Frankie yell. Or, rather, I heard the yell, but I did not hear Frankie. That was how disconnected everything had become. But finally I realized that it was Frankie who yelled. That the yell stemmed from a probable cause—was directed toward an equally probable effect. I got up reeling, dragging myself down in the direction of the lake. Then, there it was. The snake, his jaw slackened and unhinged, inching his way over the body of a fish, over three times his size, which had been floating, dead, in the shallow water.

It must have been nearly three-quarters of an hour before the snake finally swam away, the fish devoured. All that time, Frankie and I—even in the state we were in, or more likely because of it—watched. Both of us transfixed, unmoving. It was the only time I ever saw my brother approach anything close to what you might call
awe
. When it was over, and the snake—his belly stretched and fish-shaped—had swum unevenly away, Frankie said, “Wow! That … was
amazing
,” and then he began to laugh in a way that I hadn't heard him laugh in a long time, even then, and I felt really sad for a minute when I heard him, because it made me remember that things had changed, and that being real and grown-up-feeling sometimes meant that also you didn't feel the way you used to feel. And that things were, from now on, going to keep on going that way; and
that has certainly turned out to be true. That afternoon, though, it was just Frankie, with his eyes all wide, looking at me, giggling in this funny way, and saying: “That was like a baby being born …
but different
.” So that then I started to giggle, too—managing only to say, “Yeah, but—
really
—
fucking
—
different
,” between fits, and then we nearly killed ourselves, doubled over, laughing, and finally I threw up.

I HAD BEEN INTENDING TO
tell Clarence just a bit of the story. Just the part about the snake, leaving out everything else. Get him going, I thought. Some line of his own. But then, when he didn't respond—when he only continued to stare, disinterestedly ahead, a slight smile on his face, as though he already knew everything and was only patiently hearing me out—I really did, I began to forget all about him. I began to flesh out the details; that was how Uncle Trevor's whiskey got in. And then the strange way I felt then. In the approximately three-quarters of an hour in which Frankie and I sat on the edge of the lake in Uncle Trevor's boat, watching a snake eat a fish. The way that, when I found my attention slip, in its reeling state—even for a fraction of a moment—away, I would say to myself, in that voice that spoke—that was still itself inside my brain—“This … is
extraordinary
…” and that would serve somehow, at once, to bring me back. I didn't know what for. Or why that word in particular was the one that came to mind. It was just the one that did, and I told Clarence about it. And then about how I had been thinking—just then, as I spoke,
as Clarence and I sat, waiting together, for his wife to come downstairs finally, and finish the story—that maybe that's all you ever needed, really. To find, and hold on to, some extraordinary thing.