Are You Sure You Took Down What the Radio Said Word for Word?

MIDDLE ECONOMY SITS between Upper Economy and Lower Economy. Upper Economy is farthest west. Locally the joke was, if you were traveling west to east along the Minas Basin, your financial prospects got worse by the mile, until finally you ended up in Lower Economy. I never once heard the logic of that joke reversed: if you traveled from east to west, you'd get rich. I suppose it just wasn't the disposition of people born and raised in that part of Nova Scotia to tell it that way.

I hadn't set eyes on Tilda in close to four years, since the summer of 1937, when she would have been going into ninth form. On that occasion, Tilda had come to Halifax with my aunt and uncle because Constance needed to have a tooth pulled, and they all spent the night at my family's house. Despite my aunt's being in pain, we had a nice family reunion. Though I do recall my father and uncle sitting in the parlor after supper discussing in somber tones Hitler and Germany, commenting on radio broadcasts made by Winston Churchill. My mother sat on the porch, providing my aunt with powdered aspirin and commiserating with her over her throbbing tooth. At one point Tilda and I were playing a spirited game of checkers at the dining room table when we heard my aunt call out the word "Groan!" which extended into an actual groan. That made us laugh, though sympathetically. Also, we couldn't help but eavesdrop on my father and uncle. "My dad's got more opinions about current events than the Smith Brothers have cough drops," Tilda said.

I think I was five or six when I first met Tilda. I remember how my mother put it: "You're about to have a very special surprise, darling. Aunt Constance and Uncle Donald couldn't have children of their own. God saw to that—no, no, I mean God has graced their lives with a new little girl. They've named her Tilda. They're all coming to visit this afternoon."

Tilda's real parents had lived in Glenholme, which is fairly close to the Economys. There was no immediate family, or none willing to take Tilda, age two, when her parents died within three months of each other. The only word about that I ever heard was "wasting disease."

Anyway, my aunt's dentist appointment was at nine the next morning. While Tilda sat in the waiting room, my uncle took the opportunity to ship out two sleds directly from the train station. I'd gone along. "My very first customers from British Columbia," he said. "You just can't get any further away in Canada than that, can you? Excepting Eskimo territories, and I'd be God's biggest fool to think Eskimos would need one of my sleds." By one o'clock they were back on the road. I can still see them driving off. My aunt sat in the middle, her face swollen, still groggy from laughing gas. She leaned against Tilda's shoulder. When my uncle's truck got five or six houses down the block, Tilda, without turning to look back, stretched her arm out the window and waved goodbye. It's my self-generated theory that Tilda assumed I'd be watching from the porch, not wanting her to leave—that she somehow knew, far in advance of me, that I already loved her, even though we'd spent virtually no time alone and had made only small talk.

Two habits were set early on in my life in Middle Economy. One was set by my uncle, the other was set by me. Starting the first day of my apprenticeship, my uncle insisted that I join him every workday morning for breakfast in the kitchen at six A.M., allowing us to be in the work shed by six-forty-five sharp. Then, with his permission, at ten I'd drive my DeSoto over to the bakery owned and operated by Mrs. Cornelia Tell and spend my half-hour break over a coffee.

The bakery was in the center of town. On one side was MAUD'S SEWING (Maud Dunne sat in the window working her sewing machine), on the other BAIT AND TACKLE. Early on, I'd got a sample of how Cornelia Tell questioned all motives for politeness. I'd sat down and said, "Would it be too much trouble if I got a scone with my coffee?" Cornelia Tell shot back, "Even if it does cause me trouble, do you still want a scone?" I never put it that way again, believe me. I just said, "I'd like a scone." That same morning, while I sat eating a cranberry scone and drinking my coffee, Cornelia Tell was behind the counter, swirling frosting on cupcakes. "Today being Tuesday," she said, "do you know who you're going to meet back home at lunch?"

"I have no idea," I said.

"You'll be sitting down for lunch with Lenore Teachout. She's originally from Great Village, not too far down the road. Her parents still live there."

"And why would Lenore Teachout be at our house today?"

"Because every Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday—except earlier this week she had a cold—Lenore carries a box of pencils, a pencil sharpener, a notebook and an exercise book called Shorthand Self-Taught over to your house. She knocks on your door and your aunt lets her inside and serves tea. Then Lenore listens to your radio. She writes down what people on the radio say. She practices stenography—do you know what stenography is, Wyatt?"

"There's a stenographer in Magistrate's Court, right?"

"Right as rain. And that's the employment Lenore Teachout aspires to. And it's very sensible of her. Because Lenore potentially could find work in any Canadian city where there's a busy courthouse."

"Why does she practice stenography in our house, though?"

"Because she doesn't own a radio."

"You seem to know a lot about her."

"Your aunt Constance and I are dear, dear friends, Wyatt. True, even the dearest of friends keep things from each other, but they don't keep everything from each other. Your aunt keeps very little about Lenore Teachout from me."

"Does Lenore know that?"

"Maybe, maybe not. Anyway, you'll notice how tall Lenore is. She was always tall for her age. Wait here, I'll show you something."

Cornelia Tell went out the door onto the street, then back in an adjacent door that led up a flight of stairs to her rooms. She'd lived above her bakery since her husband, Llewyn, a fisherman, had drowned at sea twenty-three years earlier. When she returned to the bakery she set down a copy of the Great Village Elementary School yearbook for 1914 and paged through the grainy individual portraits of administrators, the school nurse, teachers and students, and a photograph of all the students taken near the flagpole. "Aha!" she said, "found it!" She placed her finger on a quarter-page photograph of a Christmas pageant. "This girl, right here, is Lenore Teachout, age ten. Your aunt Constance brought this to my attention." I bent close and saw that Lenore was costumed up as a camel, on all fours, men's shoes for hooves, a bale of hay on her back, posed next to the Magi and a crèche. "They made her a camel," Mrs. Tell said, "because she was tall for her age, eh?"

"She doesn't look too happy there," I said.

"Unhappiness followed Lenore all the way up to her adult life," Cornelia Tell said, "though lately she seems less unhappy, which bodes well. Anyway, who in their right mind would ever say a person was supposed to be happy? In your life happiness is either cut to your length or isn't."

"Thanks, Cornelia, for all the this-and-that about Lenore Teachout, whom I'm about to share lunch with," I said.

"You're very welcome." She noticed that I had a few bites of scone and half a cup of coffee left. "Let's see, what else?" she said. "Well, Lenore had a year at Dalhousie University. The first in her family to go to college. Too bad Halifax proved to be all distractions. Lenore made a whirlwind marriage to a fellow student, then just as whirlwind a divorce. Have to hand it to her, though, she fit a lot into that month of February! I remember Lenore saying, 'True, I failed my academic course work. But I kept my ears open and got highly educated in the thoughts of men and women.' According to rumor—I suspect a rumor started by Lenore herself—during her time in Halifax she kept over a thousand pages of a journal full of conversations. I don't know where she got the moxie, but she didn't merely eavesdrop, she actually wrote down what she'd overheard!"

"A thousand pages," I said. "That's impressive."

"I once asked her, 'Lenore, don't you annoy people, writing down their every word like that?' And do you know, she got all huffy and said, 'Well, Cornelia, aren't you grateful someone took down all those actual conversations found in the Bible? What if nobody had bothered? Where would we all be then?'"

"I'll have to think about that one," I said.

"You do that," Cornelia Tell said.

I paid for my scone and coffee, stepped outside the bakery, smoked a Chesterfield and then drove back to the house. In the shed, while my uncle measured and cut crosspieces, I sanded planks for an hour or so, trying not to respond to his sidelong glances or deep sighs, which were judgments of my work. It didn't much bother me. Finally, he said, "You go on in, Wyatt. I'm skipping lunch today, I'm pretty sure. Aggravated stomach. Maybe bring out a thermos of tea when you come back, okay?"

"Sure thing, Uncle Donald."

"You're doing fine, by the way. Honestly, better than I expected."

"Damning with faint praise, but thanks."

When I entered the house through the back door, I heard Tilda talking to someone in the kitchen. Taking off my work shoes, I listened in.

"—what with Wyatt sleeping in the room next to mine, I don't feel nearly as comfortable walking around in my birthday suit, eh? Not that he can see through walls or anything. It's just that I like to be—how's Mom say it? 'Elegant in my dailiness.' It just wouldn't feel right somehow. From now on I'll have to change directly from clothes to nightshirt, no lingering in between. Hardly a sacrifice, is it, considering how grateful Wyatt must be to have a home with relatives, employment, not having to go it alone in Halifax. Wouldn't you agree, Lenore?"

"Fully agree with everything," Lenore said.

"Did you catch every last word?" Tilda asked.

"I think so," Lenore said.

"Read it back to me, then."

Lenore began, "'You know, Lenore, what with Wyatt sleeping in the room next to mine—'" But I shuffled loudly, on purpose, into the kitchen. Tilda turned toward me, holding a tray, which held two cups of tea, a porcelain hippopotamus full of sugar, two cloth napkins and a spoon. "Oh, Wyatt!" she said. "Speak of the devil."

I looked away. Tilda must've thought it was out of embarrassment.

Then I glanced at Lenore. Factoring in her ten-year-old self from the yearbook, I thought, Yes, she appears to be about thirty-seven or thirty-eight. She had a lovely face, including deep worry lines, cascading brown hair. She was wearing the same sorts of clothes that Tilda wore, dungarees, sensible shoes, flannel shirt. But Lenore wore eyeglasses. Tilda set the tray on the table. "Wyatt," she said, "I'd like you to meet our friend and neighbor Lenore Teachout. She's here quite often to practice her stenography. Or the stenographic art. Didn't you once call it that, Lenore, the stenographic art?"

"Just the word 'stenography' does the trick," Lenore said. "Glad to meet you, Wyatt."

"Take a close look, Wyatt," Tilda said. "You'll see authentic shorthand, which at first might look like children's squiggles and doodles, but it's a method." I leaned over to inspect Lenore's notebook. "Is this your first opportunity to see shorthand?"

"Yes, it is," I said.

I stared at Tilda, and she stared right back and held her stare. She looked ravishing. (I'll later tell you why I used that word.) Tilda was about an inch taller than me, "shapely and mostly modest about it," as my aunt later said. Tilda had green eyes, the only student who did in her elementary and high school career. A lovely mouth, slightly tilted smile, only slightly, though. "Rambunctious, with a mind of its own" is how she described her thick black hair. Mornings before school she'd attempt to discipline her hair with a hundred strokes of a brush, tightly combed and organized it with no fewer than eight bobby pins and two barrettes, yet still there'd be unruly precincts. At table, Tilda always sat like a marionette held stiffly upright on a string. At age eleven, she'd injured her back in a spill off one of my uncle's sleds. A patch of ice hidden under the snow had spun her every which way and finally into a tree. Once out of hospital, she'd been trussed up and assigned to bed for several weeks. She had to see a specialist in Halifax. He prescribed exercises to keep her limber, one of which was to sit as upright as possible at each meal, let alone at her desk in school. "At first she cried and cried, the pain worse for sitting up so straight," my aunt had said. "But our Tilda impressed us all, what with the diligent work it took to hold her posture."

My aunt walked in carrying a Grundig-Majestic radio, which she placed on the kitchen table, stretched the cord and plugged it into the outlet near the sink. When she looked at us, Tilda's and my eyes were still locked. "Great glory's sake, Wyatt," she said, "cat got your tongue?"

I snapped out of whatever I was in. "Oh, hello, Aunt Constance," I said. "I just came in out of the cold rain into this warm kitchen." No doubt, I'd obviously just described how I'd felt while looking at Tilda. But it must've sounded loony.

"Interesting, since it's not raining out," my aunt said.

I tried to regain some balance and said, "Uncle Donald's not feeling well enough to eat. He'd like tea later, though."

"Well, sit yourself down, then," my aunt said. "How's my husband treating you out there, anyway?"

"I'm learning a lot," I said.

I noticed Lenore writing away, taking down everything she heard.

"Don't let him bend over your work and hurry you," my aunt said. "You're not a sewing machine."

"No, I won't."

I sat down opposite Lenore. Once she had served carrot soup and bread, my aunt sat opposite Tilda. I ate too fast, which my aunt noticed. "Wyatt," she said, "in this house, if a meal's not satisfying, you want it over with fast, one way or the other."

Tilda and Lenore exchanged glances, and I said, "No, no, the soup's delicious. I think I just need some air. The shed's close quarters, Aunt Constance, that's all. I think I'll take a short walk down the road and back."

"It's a nice day for a walk," my aunt said.

"The soup was delicious," I said.

"You've said that twice. The second time convinced me less, but thank you," my aunt said.

I stood up from the table and started toward the front door. "You don't have any shoes on," Tilda said.

"Maybe in Halifax they take walks in stocking feet," Lenore said.

"Don't trip on the dog porch," Tilda said.

See, Marlais, in local parlance "dog porch" meant the floor. So by saying I shouldn't trip on the dog porch, Tilda was declaring how I could hardly handle the simplest thing—a conversation—which was true enough. Though more to the point, it was the sudden new import of Tilda's loveliness that had got me so tongue-tied.

Then, for some reason, I sat down at the table again. "Is there enough for seconds?" I asked.

"Seconds, thirds and fourths," my aunt said.

"I'll serve myself, thanks," I said. I went to the stove and ladled more soup into my bowl. I sat down and ate at a deliberately slow pace. My uncle came in and said, "My poor stomach's making me call it quits for the day, I'm afraid. Say, Wyatt, why'd you take your shoes off? I nearly killed myself stumbling over them."

"Do you want a bromide?" my aunt asked.

"Maybe later," he said. "I'll just sit here for a while and have some tea. Then I'll go in and lie down. Probably a nap."

"Well, you were up to all hours with those radio bulletins, Donald," my aunt said.

"I have to keep up with the war," my uncle said. "Some choose not to."

My aunt poured him a cup of tea. My uncle turned on the radio. As he fiddled with the tuner dial, he said, "No European war news on yet, but let's see what's what anyway, shall we?" As he jumped from station to station, he said, "Lenore, if I catch you using your stenography on our small talk, I'm going to have to ask you to put on a dunce cap and finish your soup in the parlor."

It seemed to me that my uncle was teasing, but Lenore was stung and quickly set her notebook and pencil aside. My uncle finally found a program out of Halifax in which people called in items they wanted to get rid of—from sofas to pigs, firewood to egg beaters, fishing rods to dolls, hay to hay wagons—for an hour it ran the gamut. The program was called Bargain Basement and was hosted by a man named Arthur Bunting. "I've always found it dishonest of Arthur Bunting," my uncle said, "to speak of every item, no matter what, with equal excitement. I mean, how can you compare a dog collar to a freestanding generator? On the air he'd peddle lint out of a pocket if someone called in to declare said lint was no longer wanted and would take fifty cents for it."

"Admit it, Donald," my aunt said, "you're still angry at Arthur Bunting, despite the fact it's been two years since he offended you."

My aunt then spoke directly to me, probably because everyone else already knew the story. "Roughly two years ago," she said, "we were listening to Bargain Basement when all of a sudden Graham Hejinian—I've sat in the same pew in church with his family, before they moved to Advocate Harbor—Mr. Hejinian called in to say he had one of Donald's toboggans for sale, at a very cheap price. Kristin, the Hejinians' daughter, was already married and living in Kentville. And their son Charles was in the RCN—and the Royal Canadian Navy isn't going to allow a toboggan on a Navy vessel, now, is it? So it made perfect sense that their toboggan was no longer needed. But couldn't Graham have simply stored it in the attic or basement? Let it wait there for a grandchild."

"Seems to me the blame sits with Graham Hejinian," Lenore said, "not Arthur Bunting."

"Well, Donald considers them partners in crime, you see," my aunt said.

My uncle got the tuning just right, static close on either side on the dial. The first caller was a woman who had a love seat on offer. She said it was only a month old. She was asking ten dollars.

My uncle sipped his tea and remarked, "Let's see, today is September 23, so that means it only took since August 23 for love not to work out anymore on that seat, eh? If my calculations are correct."

"People do have sudden debts," my aunt said. She was clearing the dishes, except for teacups. "Perhaps the caller had an unexpected debt."

"I should've jotted down that woman's telephone number," Lenore said, "because I'm interested in that love seat. Even though I live alone."

"What about Denholme Mont?" my aunt said at the sink, rinsing the dishes.

"Postal worker from Truro?" Lenore asked.

"The very same," my aunt said, setting plates on the wooden drying rack.

"What about him?" Lenore said.

"Well, I believe we were talking about love seats and living alone," my aunt said.

"If you must know," Lenore said, "since last April, Denholme Mont and I have lived together, but for only a few hours of a given evening."

"At a go, you mean," my uncle said. "But maybe if you had a love seat, he'd begin to stay upward of twenty-four hours. Weekdays and holidays, at least. Him being a postal worker."

"I have no intention of learning how to cook breakfast for two," Lenore said.

"Come on, Lenore," my aunt said. "It's just doubling the amount of eggs, toast and whatnot."

"If only that was all there was to it," Lenore said.

That ended the conversation. My uncle went into the master bedroom and I started back for the shed. But as I put on my shoes, I heard Lenore say, "Ladies, in my notebook, here, I have a conversation. Hundreds of words Denholme Mont and I said to each other. Saturday last."

"Did you take down every word, do you think?" my aunt asked.

"Denholme fell asleep right after," Lenore said. "So I quickly took up my pencil. I think I got most of it."

"Practice makes perfect," Tilda said.

"Would you like to hear it?" Lenore said.

"Not if I'm going to need smelling salts and a fainting couch," my aunt said.

"Probably not, Constance," Lenore said. "Unfortunately."

"Go right ahead, then," my aunt said.

I quietly closed the door behind me.

Truth be told, during lunch that day, it was I who practically needed smelling salts. I'd never thought of myself as particularly romantic, or romantically available, or romantically interesting, though in high school I'd taken girls to dances. Also, some had refused me dances. The previous winter, however, I had what might be called a dedicated romance with Mavis Joubert, a French Canadian, and I stayed miserably dedicated months after she broke it off. During our courtship, Mavis was twenty and waitressed at a fish-and-chips place near the bottom of Duke Street. Her two-room apartment in a house on Gerrish Street spilled over with books. After our breakup she got involved with a professor of art history at Dalhousie, who took her on a tour of museums in Italy, though she returned by herself. Yet once my wounds had mended, I realized I was grateful Mavis and I had had nighttime experiences together, of the sort my mother preferred to call "not casual."

Marlais, it's important for me to tell you why I looked away from Tilda in the kitchen. It's related to memories of a teacher I had in tenth form in Halifax. Her name was Mrs. Francine Woods. The thing is, my grades were only average, but I felt above average at paying attention, especially when it came to history and English literature. For instance, I'd paid very close attention when Mrs. Woods—I'm amazed now to think that she was probably no more than your age, or perhaps a year or two older—spoke passionately and learnedly about the English poet John Keats. She recited his sonnets and read us some of his letters. Keats was her favorite writer of all time, and she said as much, more than once.

Now, you may well ask, how does this pertain to my turning away from Tilda? It pertains because I can definitely say without hesitation that stepping into the kitchen and watching her prepare tea was the moment I fell in love with her. Completely gone, smitten, whatever other words you might find in the dictionary. She was too much beauty, and I had to turn away.

You see, at some point during a full week devoted to Keats, Mrs. Woods provided an anecdote. One day John Keats and a friend were walking in the English countryside, which they often did. They trekked up a hill and took in the broad vista below. The sun was behind some clouds and the pale moon could still be seen in the sky. Mist hung low over a pond, swans gliding in and out of view. The big elm trees looked magnificently intelligent (I think "magnificently intelligent" were Mrs. Woods's words, not Keats's). And according to Mrs. Woods, the sight was suddenly too much for John Keats. "Too much beauty—he had to look away," she said. "Class, can you understand this?"

Despite the fact that your father is whatever is the opposite of a poet, there in the kitchen, when I looked at Tilda, when I really took her in, too much beauty is why I looked away. I'm certain you can understand this.

We had a nice birthday party for Tilda that autumn. Her eighteenth birthday, November 4. (My eighteenth was October 11 and passed without me telling anyone.) It was attended by three of her high school friends, Constance, Donald, Cornelia Tell and me. Cornelia provided the cake. There was gramophone and radio music all evening. I had one dance with Tilda and one with my aunt. No one else asked me, and I didn't ask anyone else.

My apprenticeship in sleds and toboggans went methodically. One week my uncle instructed me in how to test the pliability and strength of plywood, how to measure and cut it. The next week I learned to construct a cargo box and fit iron runners. The following week we went step by step in completing a seven-foot-long trapper's sled, including the metal and leather dog harness. The days were given over to the use of steel bridges, brackets, hitch crosspieces, clevis bolts, various types of sandpaper, the application of glues and linseed oil, and so on. I also learned about the clerical aspects of the business, invoices, correspondence, bills to pay.

A month or so after I started in the business, my uncle allowed me to work solo on a three-board toboggan with wrappers and hitch, along with a cargo box and standard handles. It had been ordered by a man living in Heart's Desire, Newfoundland. "I sold him a sled last year," my uncle said. "He's expecting quality work again. My reputation's based on quality work, Wyatt." In order to give my fullest attention to this toboggan—that is, to prevent Uncle Donald from giving me pointers every minute—I decided to work on it after supper and late into the night, and kept it under a tarpaulin outside the shed during the day. Difficult as it may have been for him, my uncle, much to his credit, took the hint. I finished the toboggan in two weeks, and I mean fourteen full days, because I worked on Sundays, too.

At seven A.M. the following Monday, I unveiled my toboggan. I stood there while my uncle inspected it top to bottom, testing every joint, running his hands over the wood to detect splinters or rough spots of any sort, tilting it to examine more closely the linseed flush and how evenly the shellac had been applied. "Yesterday," he finally said, "I saw some children sledding in back of the church. Snow's always nicely packed on the slope there. I'll take this toboggan over there right now and try it out, eh? If it can hold me, who's practically a walrus compared to those boys, how bad can the world be? But if it splits and I fly through the air and crack open my skull, Wyatt, you're to look after your aunt Constance, understand?"

"I understand," I said.

"I don't have a last will and testament," he said, "except what I've told my wife in pillow talk, and that's not open to discussion."

I waited a good hour and a half in the shed, mostly smoking cigarettes and listening to the radio kept on a high shelf, and when my uncle returned, he said, "It's fine." We went directly back to work on two sleds ordered by a family from MacLeod Settlement in Nova Scotia. Their letter had mentioned that there were twin girls, age seven, so could Mr. Hillyer please somehow differentiate the sleds in some way that didn't interfere with his design, "to avoid the girls' bickering"? The letter suggested that my uncle paint a board on one sled black or red. After an hour or so of working on these sleds, my uncle slid a log into the woodstove and said, "Wyatt, I've been wanting to ask you something."

"Go right ahead, Uncle Donald."

"At the time you left Halifax, what was the mood in the city? About the war, I mean. Your aunt complains that I'm becoming more and more agitated by the day. Truth is, she only knows the half of just how agitated I am."

I looked at a few of the headlines from the Halifax Mail that were tacked on the wall over the workbench:

UNHAPPY CHRISTMAS DAY FOR GERMAN TROOPS

TIDE OF BATTLE TURNS HEAVILY AGAINST HITLER

IN ALL-NIGHT BATTLE,
ALLIED TROOPS FIGHT FOR THEIR LIVES

AXIS U-BOAT "WOLF PACK"
ATTACK CONVOY; 11 SHIPS LOST

"There's a restaurant, the Green Lantern," I said. "People like to call it the Green Latrine. It's along a block of brothels, and nearby's the Orpheum Theatre. Every night the place is crowded as a pigeon coop. Lots of military. Lots of music and dancing. Anyway, there's this fellow named H. B. Jefferson—have you heard of him?"

"The newspaperman," my uncle said, "who was appointed wartime press censor."

"That's him. That's H. B. Jefferson. His voice is very recognizable. He's always on the radio using that American slogan 'Loose lips sink ships.' Warning there might be German spies listening in all the time, so if you have a husband or wife in the military, you shouldn't repeat anything they've told you, you know, just daily on the street corner."

"Sure, sure," my uncle said.

"Well, one night H. B. Jefferson steps out with his wife, Lennie, to the Green Lantern. People are shouting and laughing and drinking and dancing, the place is jumping. I was there that night with some friends of mine. In fact, we had a table right next to H. B. Jefferson's, and some sailors and their wives or girlfriends had a table on the other side of H. B. Jefferson's. Suddenly a sailor recognizes Jefferson's voice—his radio voice. And this sailor'd had quite a bit to drink, that wasn't hard to tell. And he stands up on his chair and busts a beer bottle on the table and points at H. B. Jefferson and shouts, 'Hey—hey, everyone! That right there's Mr. H. B. Jefferson—right there! Say, Mr. H. B. Jefferson, what do you know that you're not telling all these fine people in this fine establishment?' Then some other sailors got that fellow right out the door."

"What's the point, Wyatt?"

"On the one hand, maybe more than ever, the war's made people let off steam, drinking, dancing. Brothels. Over to Rigolo's Pub. The Green Lantern. The Night Owl. Drink and dance and get crazy every night they possibly can."

"On the other hand?" my uncle said. He had stopped working and was listening closely.

"On the other hand, the whole time people have their stomachs twisted in knots worrying that there's some terrible news they don't yet know about. Like there's a terrible secret about to be told them. And see, at the Green Lantern that night? There was a moment where I really thought some of those sailors were going to drag H. B. Jefferson into an alley and kick him senseless till he told them what he knew and they didn't know yet."

"You couldn't really blame them if they did, eh?" my uncle said.

"No, not really, I guess not," I said. "But H. B. Jefferson's got a tough job, I'd say."

"Certainly he does," my uncle said. "But don't forget, there's human nature. I remember being in an English village during the last war. My buddies and I were beat to hell and hadn't slept in days. We were put up in a farmhouse. The farmer told us that his neighbors had shot a collaborator of some sort. He didn't go into detail. But in a nutshell, he was talking about how suspicion got cranked up so high, his very own neighbors, some he'd known his whole life, were all at wits' end. And I'll never forget what he said. He said, 'My neighbors, they got wind of a saboteur in their midst and started to look at everybody in a different light, for all I know even their cows and sheep.' What I'm saying is, as a wartime censor, H. B. Jefferson's walking a fine line."

"A fine line between—?"

"Between both slogans I hear are posted all over Halifax: 'Keep a smile on your face, hopes alive' and 'Loose lips sink ships.' You've got to feel for the man, though. Knowing what secrets he knows, he can't be but a light sleeper."

"Yeah, I bet his telephone rings in the middle of the night," I said.

"I bet every night it does."

As my uncle stared at the newspaper headlines on the shed wall, I could almost see his sympathy for H. B. Jefferson draining like color from his cheeks. "But I don't need H. B. Jefferson's secret information to know that things are getting worse by the hour," he said. "Wars always get worse by the hour. That's their nature. Then they end. And the average person's stunned shitless when a war ends. Why? Because up to the last minute things are still getting worse."

Just before supper there was a knock on the shed door. What happened next, to my mind, went hand in hand with my uncle's brief lecture on war. He opened the door, stepped back and said, "Lenore, what brings you so far from the house?"

Lenore held up a piece of paper. "I used my stenography and took down a bulletin from the radio a short while ago, Donald," she said. "An auxiliary Navy vessel called Lady Quintanna was sunk. Yesterday, November 19. Thirty-seven people lost."

My uncle sat right down on the floor. "Isn't there one living, breathing soul—where's Adolf Hitler live? It's in Berlin, isn't it?" he said. "Isn't there one person in all of goddamn Berlin, Germany, with enough goddamn sense and gumption to shoot Hitler in the head?"

Lenore looked pensive. "My father," she said, "when I was about five, he put a bullet into our dog because the veterinarian said our dog had a fever in the brain. Not curable."

"Point well taken," my uncle said. "All right, then, Wyatt, let's close up shop for the day. We're in for supper. Probably you're eating with us, Lenore."

"I've been invited, yes," Lenore said.

She shut the door. My uncle and I tidied things up a bit and went into the house. When we washed our hands in the sink and sat at the kitchen table, my aunt said, "I've put the radio in the bedroom, Donald. I don't want to listen to it while we eat."

"I'll tune in after supper," my uncle said. "Immediately after."

Aunt Constance served us chicken and potatoes. The conversation hopped subject to subject, and that was good, because it kept things lively, though the lack of continuity in conversations often put my aunt on edge, and she'd say, "Can we please keep the needle in the groove, please?" But this time she left well enough alone. When Tilda had cleared the dishes, Uncle Donald took from his shirt pocket the radio bulletin Lenore had copied out in shorthand, and said, "Lenore, would you kindly translate this into English for me?"

"Mr. Hillyer," Lenore said, "it's common knowledge I'm training to be a professional stenographer."

"Of course," my uncle said. "Well, once you've completed the task, make out a receipt and I'll be happy to sign it and pay you on the spot."

"May I use your parlor?" Lenore said.

"Yes, Lenore, use the parlor," Tilda said.

Lenore took about half an hour. She then wrote out a receipt on a page torn from her notebook. My uncle read it. "This amount's being professional, all right," he said. "It's steep, but so be it." He went ahead and signed it. He then handed Lenore three dollars and the receipt.

"Should we have tea in the parlor or at the table?" my aunt asked.

"At the table," Tilda said.

But first my uncle sat in the parlor and read what Lenore had translated. He then came to the kitchen table and started reading all five pages, about the sinking of the Lady Somers, out loud. My aunt and Lenore were sitting at the table. I was standing at the counter. Tilda was in the doorway to the bedrooms. Tea hadn't been served yet. When my uncle finished reading, you could hear a pin drop.

"Now, Lenore," he finally said, "are you sure you took down what the radio said word for word?"

Lenore looked confident. "I'm satisfied that I did," she said.

My uncle said, "Then this bulletin isn't your average keepsake."