|
|
|
One moment of pure concentration, the slightest of pressures focused on an area smaller than the head of a pin. Then the spring slips into place and I am able to lower my shaking hands to the table.
The grandfather clock in the hallway toned four times as I fit the last screw into the back of the watch. I set the time to four and wound it, then held it to my ear for a moment. It's ticking. I count the remaining springs I have scattered across the table in front of me, then counted them again. Exactly a dozen. Twelve watch springs left in the whole world. Well, my whole world anyway. I stood up and rubbed the stiffness out of the back of my neck and went looking for Gimp. I found him curled up on top of the radiator, lazily licking his good hind foot. "I'm done. Time for our constitutional", I told him, and he leapt to the floor and headed for the door with that odd hopping gait of his. The woods all seem so unnaturally quiet these days. At one time a walk along this road would have been interrupted repeatedly by some new birdcall that needed immediate identification, but these days I'm lucky to catch sight of a flock of sparrows on my walk. I think it's been almost a year since I've heard a frog. Gimp reached the gate before me and halted, his thin body folded back on itself almost in half so that he could catch me with his steady green gaze. I scooped the cat up and tucked him into the front of my jacket, zipping it up until only his narrow black head poked out. We traveled that way for the remaining 40-minute walk through the meadow and over the crest of the hill that marked our final destination. I was holding my breath as we neared the top. I always hold my breath. The view from this hill used to be one of the things I loved about the property I had inherited from my father. Joanne and I would picnic on the hill and watch the deer slip between the trees in the valley below us. Now there was only another 50 feet of grass before the wall of cold gray fog that marked the end of the universe. We stood for what seemed like a long time, looking at the markless face. Finally I sighed. "Ready to go back, Gimp?" "Yeah, lets," said the cat. "I'm freezing." I would prefer to sleep for most of the day after being up all night like that, but it seemed like I had barely closed my eyes before I was awakened by a paw on my nose and opened my eyes to see Gimp's black face only inches away from mine. "It's almost noon," he whispered. I slid out of bed as quietly as possible so as not to wake Joanne and got dressed. It took the better part of two hours to walk the distance between my house and the old gas station that now functioned as the centre of town. I carried Gimp most of the way, letting him walk alongside whenever he got cramped or bored. He was on foot when we arrived at the station, and he paused and crouched low to stalk the few scrawny pigeons that pecked hopefully at the dust in front of the entrance. He leapt just as the birds lifted their heads to regard me and I was suddenly engulfed in a flurry of wings. Gimp casually shook a few lose tail-feathers out from between his claws and sauntered up the front steps of the station while the large male pigeon leaned over the edge of the roof and swore furiously at him. The bird had an inexplicable cockney accent. I followed the cat into the building. The woman behind the counter turned her head towards the door at the sound of my footsteps and I called out a greeting. "Good afternoon, Doris. It's Richard." I placed the watch on the counter with an audible click. "Ben's watch," I told her. "I replaced the spring." She closed her fingers around the watch and smiled up at me. "I'll give this to him when he comes in," she told me. "Oh, and I have something for you." I watched her hands fumble at the empty shelves behind her until they came in contact with a couple of small dense-looking apples. Doris had gone blind two years after the last of her insulin supply had run out. She held them out towards me with an air of triumph. "For Joanne," she said. "Walter brought in a few of them earlier today and I saved a couple for her." I slid the apples into the pocket of my jacket and thanked her. I exchanged nods with the few other men in the place and gave a quick pet to the border collie stretched across the floor. Gimp skirted the dog warily and jumped up onto the counter to let Doris stroke his fur. I wandered into the back of the room, squinting at the loose piles of rusted metal and broken appliances that littered the shelves. One of the men wandered around the shelf to join me. "Looking for something in particular?" he asked me. "Hi John." I poked at the blade of a fan lying on it's side. "I've been thinking," I said, "I'm running low on watchsprings, and I was wondering whether or not I could make new ones. Then I started thinking if I could make small ones, I could make bigger ones... Maybe turn my hobby into something more useful." He raised an eyebrow. "What did you have in mind?" I picked up an end from a coil of barbed wire and twisted it around my fingers. "I'm not sure yet -- but I know clockwork pretty well by now, and I bet I could build some kind of simple wind-up mechanism that we could add to an existing machine. Say... something like a water pump." He gave me a tilted smile. One of our few functional wells was on John's land, and with the power gone all the water had to be hauled out by hand. "A wind-up engine? That's not a bad idea.... What would you need to make it work?" "The hard part would be making the springs. I need metal that's flexible but strong." I put down the pieces I had been testing in my hand and we headed back to the front of the store. "I know Jeff has some sheet metal sitting in his barn that he's not using. We could drop by his place on my way back, he'd probably be glad to help out." I paused to nod to my neighbour Grant as he stepped inside the open door. He was as grey and tired-looking as the rest of us, his coveralls hanging from his once burly frame. He spoke without meeting our eyes. "I'll be needing some help tomorrow afternoon," he said. "I need to slaughter a few of my herd." The conversations in the room slid off into silence. From the corner of my eye I saw Gimp and the collie tense imperceptibly, their ears swivelled towards Grant. "There's not enough grass and I'm running out of grain..." he started and then trailed off. He sighed, and started again. "Doris, if you wouldn't mind letting the others know as they drop in?" "I'll do that Grant," she said quietly. He nodded and walked to the back of the store. I saw the collie quietly put his muzzle down under his paws to hide his drooling. John was ready to go so I called Gimp and we stepped outside. John's bay mare lifted her head from where she had been picking at the sparse yellow grass and walked over to be buckled into her harness. I ran my knuckles along her bony neck. "I need a ride over to Jeff's and then I may have to drop a few things off at my place," I told her. "I hope you don't mind giving me a lift." "Not a problem," she replied, arching her neck so that I could rub away an itch. "It's an easier job than some," She added in a lower voice, and I looked up to see Grant leaving the station. For the thousandth time I wondered how the animals always knew everything so much faster than we did. Old habits died hard I guess, and it was hard to remember that every field mouse has ears. The cows would know of course. Some would curse us and struggle, some would beg, some would be resigned and stoic. But they always knew. I felt vaguely sick, even as I swallowed some saliva of my own. Fresh meat was a rare treat for everybody. Gimp was unusually silent on the way home, even for him. Back home, I unloaded the cart while Gimp ran into the house to the bedroom, his tail a triumphant banner. When I finally followed him he was curled up under Joanne's fingers and purring loudly. I joined him on the bed and the two of us told her of the gossip of the day. We carefully avoided mention of Grant's cattle, telling her instead about my plans for the new mechanisms, about spring lambs and how everybody had asked after her. She smiled as she listened to us just as she always did. I pulled the small hard apples out of my pocket and watched her roll them around on the bed with her palm for a few minutes before letting them lie discarded beside her. "Maybe next week I'll be feeling better," she said. Just as she always did. "I'll come into town with you and say hello to everybody. "You should come out for a walk with me," I told her. "The fresh air will do you good." "I'm sure I'll feel better soon, she told me. She glanced over to the window and the pale grey light. "I'll feel better in the spring, when the sun comes. I always have more energy when the sun comes..." "Do you remember what it was like before?" I asked Gimp, as I sat cutting up strips of sheet metal. He blinked slowly and looked away, a gesture that I long ago learned is the feline equivalent of a shrug. He'd heard this question many times before. "I don't remember," He answered finally. "Was it better before or now?" I continued. "Before," he answered decisively. I looked up. This was a direction this conversation had never taken before. "Why?" "Because I didn't know I was going to die before." For the longest time I couldn't think of anything to say and by then he had hopped off the table and gone to find some place to sleep. The sheet metal and it's possibilities held my attention for longer than usual and it was after 6 before Gimp and I took our daily walk to the wall. It was obvious by the time we reached the meadow that there was something wrong, Grant's Clydesdale was standing at the fence at the edge of the property and looking anxiously towards us. I put Gimp onto the grass, and he streaked across to her. I watched the two animals touch noses briefly. I could hear the low murmur of their voices, then Gimp turned and ran back to me, his body an ungainly black blur against the brown and yellow. I picked him up. "It's Grant," He said breathless. I nodded. I already knew. One of the milk cows was standing in her stall when I got into the barn, her head lowered and leaning against the wood. A group of the other cows surrounded her, trying to coax her away. She looked up when I entered. "Is it my fault?" she asked me. I looked directly into alien brown eyes. "All I said was that his hands were cold. That's all I said. He didn't do this because of me?" "I know it wasn't your fault" I tried to soothe her. I could feel the knobs of spine along the back of her neck as I petted at her. "Come on, Gertrude, " said one of the other cows, and together we gently persuaded her out the door. They left single file, not looking at the heap in the corner of the barn. Once they were gone I picked up the rifle where it had fallen from Grant's fingers and started cleaning up as much as I could while I waited for the others to come. The funeral was a brief affair, as they tended to be these days. Nobody has the energy for long drawn out reminders of how few of us are left since the morning we first woke up to find that day and night had turned into a single grey entity and the animals opened their mouths to speak with human voices. It had been Grant who had held onto his brother’s belt while Roger had stepped out into the fog that nobody ever seemed to return from. After a few minutes of silence Grant had pulled his bother back to find a wizened and aged man in his hands. Roger had died raving a few days later. Many of us had lost family since then, but Roger had been one of the first. And one of the worst. As we were all turning away Grant's German Shepherd slipped away from the person holding him and bolted straight for the fog wall. A few people made a quick dash to try and head him off, but he dodged them easily and the last we saw of him was his tail disappearing into the grey. Gimp tucked his head under my chin, rasping my neck with his whiskers. "Let's go home," he said. |
