Hejira Rewound.

The day Fanny May won the State Exclamation Lottery – which also happened to be her birthday – she decided that almost the first thing she would do was buy her old man the boat. She was generous like this. But, first, she had to go to work. So, she clingfilmed the dish of creamed potato and chives, finished her second coffee, pocketed the keys, left the scruffy apartment and drove the old car across Tacoma. The snow lay shadowed in the gutters and the sun treasured the morning traffic. The Joni Mitchell cassette played on the stereo. When it reached the end of one side, she pressed rewind and began it again.

She worked at the zoo. Her official title was Monkey Binder, and this meant that she helped the monkeys with their binding issues. It was humdrum, repetitive, work, but she was good at it. She made it look easy, which, if you’ve ever tried, you’ll know it isn’t.

“Fanny May, I swear, you’re generous to a tee,” said one of her colleagues as she handed out plastic forks, paper plates and napkins to each of the team. They were in the staff room, gathered around the platter of creamed potato and chives. It was a traditional, southern recipe, the preparation and serving of which on one’s birthday was a custom Fanny May had acquired from her mother, who had received it from her old man’s mother, whose family had hailed from Tennessee. In fact, not only the delicacy, but the very dish itself – a great, glass extravagance, ornate with etched mockingbirds, ormolu, and bearded iris appliqué – was said to originate from the previous century.

“I’ve never really got to grips with what that means,” she said. “Generous to a tee. It’s a real awkward kinda apophthegm, don’t you think?”

The others said nothing or else nodded, creamily. Mmm.

She felt it was Old English. Or Old French. It was something anyway. She’d looked into it once and found, confusingly, that tee was an abbreviation of the outmoded ‘tittle’ that, at one time, had signified the dot above the letter i. One of her dictionaries (she had a few) suggested further that actually tee was a truncation of the ancient Greek, iota. It was a curiosity anyway, and it didn’t overly concern her as she was more than capable of deploying such a word as apophthegm.

They ate mostly in silence and she took this to mean that the creamed potato and chive dish was as good as ever. She would take her mother some flowers.

*

Her old man had been a keen kitchen table sailor for as long as she could remember. He reminisced, with surprising detail, the Aegean adventure he’d undertaken a lifetime ago. It always began with the lucky acquisition of the brilliant white yacht on that pined, azure, Athenian bay – the comedy of the FOR SAIL sign – and ended with the two eloping young lovers’ sudden airborne exodus, alongside many dozen Santorinians, with the broken island falling away beneath them and the cathedral bells glimpsed, tumbling through the opened steeple. He’d recounted chapters of it so often over the years that she felt the tale as much hers as his. For instance this – ‘… full tilt over Kefalos Bay, the last day of June, ’56, the Grecian breeze tasting of lemon, of salt, of almond, the distant and pretty town lights, strung, afloat, like chiffon scarves, on the blue water, a large silver fish had tumbled from an empty sky, with a thwack, onto the deck. It lay, gasping for breath, before flipping itself over the side, back into its true realm. Then another fell, and another – this one bouncing off the gunnel with some awkward, acrobatic movement – and, then a brief, but heavy rain of sea creatures fell, splashing, like fat, silver raindrops, all around the brilliant white yacht, disappearing at once beneath the surface. I looked all around, but I was, again, alone.’ At this point, her old man, feigning a surprise rise from the table, openmouthed, would hold his palms to the kitchen ceiling, in some long practiced magician’s gesture.

*

She scrambled some eggs and some onions and some sausage one morning and read again, for the hundredth time, the magazine clipping caught beneath the Go! WA! magnet on the refrigerator door.

The Shale Basin. 50′ – twin berth – galley – handmade – handsome – 1956 classic – ocean ready – $54,000 ono.

She drove the old car out to Puget Sound. It had come from a secondhand lot in the dock area and would only play the one cassette that was jammed in the deck and had come with the vehicle. Since owning the car she had grown to know all the songs on one side of the tape by heart, although she had no idea of their titles or the name of the album. In fact, she was only aware that the artist was called Joni Mitchell because the salesman had mentioned the snared cassette tape when they’d settled a price.

“There’s a Joni Mitchell tape stuck in the deck. It’ll play one side and then you just ride the rewind. You can have that for free!”

It was now the second week of December and, unusually, the mist had been burnt off by a low, winter sun. The city took on a new and shiny appearance as she travelled through it. She sang the songs and she began to wonder if, in this new future, she might leave her apartment in the suburbs and buy a sea view place on the peninsula, or one of those downtown lofts that were now in favour. Maybe.

But, actually she enjoyed her scruffy apartment. She loved the solitude of the forest and the relaxing walks around Point Defiance, so she thought she’d probably just stay where she was. Who knows, perhaps the old man would get it into his head to make a return to the Greek islands and she’d leave the zoo and join him? Well, there was a whole world out there – and now, being a lottery winner, she could do pretty much what she wanted. As she drove over the Narrows, the city behind her, she played a dozen scenarios over in her head.

*

She stopped abreast an old wooden lodge at the water’s edge, the boards mostly green, damp looking. It was set back from the track among a spread of tall pine. The windows dark squares. She checked the address on the magazine clipping. There was a brilliant white yacht out there on the diamonded water. She turned off the music. She could hear the breeze rattling the rigging. A vast V formation of geese passed overhead and, honking excitedly, moved over the bay. There was a man in blue overalls stood on the yacht.

He was coiling a rope. Winding it onto the deck. She watched him work. He passed and gathered a collection of generous and even loops from one hand into the palm of the other. Each new loop he gave a slight twist as he collected it in this slow and methodical manner. She found it a joy to watch – the way a practiced motion can appear quite simple and artful. Hypnotic. His breath appeared and disappeared.

As she closed the door of the old car, the man looked up. He laid a final coil and, shielding his eyes from the winter sun with his palm, looked in her direction. She put the keys in her pocket and walked to the water’s edge, the last of the morning frost holding, briefly, her bootprints.

They spoke snatches for a while at a distance – she, at the lip of the water. He, cupping an ear, at a crouch. After some time, the man stood, shook his head, held up his palms, turned and disappeared behind the cabin. Fanny May took a step backwards, clapping her gloved hands, humming a refrain. Shortly, from behind The Shale Basin, the man appeared again, now rowing a snub-nosed dinghy, his back to the land, the breeze bristling the water, whipping his hair into a grey pennant. He gravelled the vessel, levelled the paddles and, stepping from the craft to the sea to the shore, brought the squat boat with him in one seamless movement. She went to meet him, ungloving her hand, offering both it and her name. He did likewise, and, after some time, a deal was struck and they shook hands again. She put on her gloves.

*

Her old man, clutch of Camellias caught in cellophane, corduroy coat, buttoned to the jaw, watches the city neighbourhoods approach and fall behind from beneath the faded Cougars brim.

Old Beale Street is coming down
Sweeties’ Snack Bar, boarded up now
And Egles The Tailor and the Shine Boy’s gone
Faded out with ragtime blues
Handy’s cast in bronze
And he’s standing in a little park
With his trumpet in his hand

“Real cheersome,” he says.

“Sure beautiful though, ain’t it,” she says, all hokey.

His laughter is cigarette sticky. Brings the bouquet to his nose. Says, “Got my trumpet in my hand.”

“The aroma of Tacoma.”

“For sure.”

*

Arm in arm, they wandered the paths, the lawns, the headstones. Now and then, pausing to read, or merely to listen to the other, to the peace of beyond. To the ghosts they appeared, perhaps, aimless among the tiny, limp flags and the flowered jam jars: the evergreens bejewelled with late morning raindrops, with birdsong, birdcall and occasional ribbon. A woman knelt on a gardening mat, trowel in hand, at a distant plot. They saw no one else and, eventually, inevitably, they came to the simple white knuckled rock with the plaque that always read her name, her dates and In Loving Memory. She stood at his back. He studied at length the words and the gravestone and, crouching, laid down, at last, the red posy.

*

Monica’s is busy. They take a mid-front booth. She wipes the window, removes her gloves. Hot coffee and a slice of pie is welcome reprieve from a north-western mid-afternoon when the snow clouds gather above the Rainier foothills and the streets beyond the glass begin to take on a greyness akin to slate despite the lances of headlights and the slow dance stop lights on North Sheridan. He unbuttons his coat, removes his cap, places it on the plastic table between them, and they order. The custard sauce is cinnamon dusted, the apple sugared, and Fanny May’s spoon sings the bowl as he begins. “Santorini. I was anchored in the caldera, the witch’s cauldron. I took the tender and rowed into Thera, the old harbour, Santorini proper. Needed to stretch my legs, fill up on water, on supplies. Sure a pretty town. Whitewash cathedral. Blue domed.” He looked out at Rainier. “And, of course, there’s the volcano, the Minoan museum. I’d met this guy on Mykonos, Canadian. Had a stammer, missing a finger. Nice guy. Forget his name now, but…

“Bill S-s-s-s-simmons,” she says. “Lost it to a Newfoundland lobster was the way it goes, pa.”

“Lost it to a lobster. That’s right. Kinda careless, if you ask me.”

“Indeed.”

They looked at each other, smiling. “So, yeah. Bill Simmons recommends the museum. And the rest is history.”

She taps the bowl with her spoon. “Now, come on, pa. Don’t skip out on me. She was wearing a white cheesecloth blouse, a yellow, woollen wrap. Her hair was black and stacked on top of her head. She said, ‘I’m sorry, but…”

He took up the slack. “When I reached the museum, it was quiet. Empty. So, I sat on the steps and was looking down over the town. I listened to the bells. A brigade of tiny blue tits landed, one after another at my feet. They just swooped in and lined up before me. I remember thinking how much they looked like little chocolate box soldiers – black capped, white faced, smart little yellow waistcoats. Then, the door opened behind me, I turned, and there she was. She was wearing a white cheesecloth blouse, a yellow, woollen wrap. Her hair was black and stacked on top of her head. She said, I’m sorry, but the museum is closed today. The guide is sick, and I’m about to close for lunch. I’m kinda hungry myself, I says. Maybe we could go together? Her voice was like a beautiful song. as she was at the end.

 

∞

 one side of a cassette

Coyote

Amelia

Furry Sings The Blues

A Strange Boy

Hejira