FLOSSY NOTICED THE CAR again this morning, a dusty green Volkswagen parked beneath Lottie Fulton’s sugar maple. She thought she’d seen it there for some of the evening yesterday too. No one parked on the street in Great Village.
As she hung her dishtowel on the clothesline at the side of the house, she could see there was someone inside. At first she hadn’t paid much attention, nor would she have now if Jimmy hadn’t mentioned he’d heard there was a guest at the bed and breakfast asking about Elizabeth Bishop. He’d heard it was some professor from down in the Valley. She stepped back inside the house and glanced at the telephone. She should cancel Atlantic-Tel; who needed it with a visit from Jimmy three mornings a week?
It was another hazy day, already warm by nine-thirty. Ruth had gone off with Jimmy and Logie earlier to check the weir. Flossy reached for her hat. Beyond the screen door, a huge crow caught her eye lighting on the corner fence post at the back of the garden, like a black cape dropped from the sky. It bobbed and bowed in the direction of the house as if it knew there was someone inside. She could see the cool blue mantle shimmering on the bird’s shoulders and hear it’s rattle and caw caw caw.
“Elijah?” she whispered. It hopped from foot to foot, flapping and calling. Flossy counted the decades off with her fingers. Seven. She looked again at the bird, dancing its antics. Had it really been seventy-five years since Thomas took her down to the spruce grove by the bay to see the crow chick that had fallen from its nest? It had no feathers at the time, just a dusting of grey lint over its scrawny body. Seventy-five years? Mighty Sakes they were all getting old. Stepping outside, Flossy watched the big bird. It stood its ground, watching her too. The bird flapped its wings, bowed and called twice — she could see the black head rear, the long yellow beak snap — as if introducing the last act of a play.
“Out, out, brief candle!” she replied, “Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more.” She, too, reached her arms out, bowed, and by the time she was upright again the bird was off. She watched its graceful retreat to the southeast.
She was not ready. “No no,” she whispered, watching the big bird disappear. She looked around. They needed rain. The grass was parched. Even the leaves of the shadberry and red currant were mildewed and dull. She must remember to put a pan of water out for the birds and get some to the pots in the backyard. The farmers, she knew, would be snuffling and stomping over at the feed mill, spitting and growing anxious over their withering crops. Flossy wondered if this heat might last into September.
Every year they could count on the weather breaking by the middle of August, leaving the mornings to drift in cool enough to search out a woollen sweater. Morning rains would come, then set off down the shore by noon. Though it happened every year, every year just the same the change came as a shock, bringing them all back to the grim reality that golden summer was rushing headlong to its twilight. Though it was still hot, other things were already retracting, like the light. She was getting up in the dark now, and by the time she and Ruth were sitting down to supper the light was fast fading. Gone was the summer’s abundance of endless hours of soft evening. Fall, the herald of winter, was tightening the noose. Apples and pears were dropping and birds were flocking. It could make you sad, if you were so inclined. She thought of Thomas.
Sitting in a car on such a warm day had to be unpleasant. She stepped back inside the house for a moment to fill the kettle and place it on the stove, then walked back outside, ignoring pots in want of water, and headed down her lane way towards the street.
But the dusty green Volkswagen and Richard Archibald were already gone.