short story: the tinker's second pack

Well, each of the fifty pieces of outline turned into a hundred words, and here it is at precisely five thousand. I think the constraints helped me get it done.

It's still not action, but it isn't as peaceful as I'd feared.

The kind of walking that takes no mind, no navigation, just letting her legs swing, eyes glancing down just enough to avoid rabbit holes and stray rocks without even thinking the word 'rabbit' or 'rock', passing the information to her legs without her. The kind of walking that doesn't even tire, at the time, because she isn't really there.

She isn't, in any meaningful sense, doing the walking. She's carried above the walking legs: a pair of eyes, a pair of ears, a set of teeth, some hair, and an unseen thing called a mind that registers holes and rocks.

The mind, not being needed for the walking, is already in the next town along. It won't be the next stop. At the next town, she is thinking, there should be nails, there should be some better screws, there might be more sandpaper. There will almost certainly be tape, or at least glue to make her own tape. If her glue brush weren't wrecked from the day she worked too long into night and fell asleep before washing anything. If she can use the workbench that has a vice, she can dismantle and re-hair her glue brush. Yes, of course.

She tries to avoid 'should' these days but something old still says that she should have mended her glue brush at the last town. Of course they had a vice. How can a set of five hundred houses, even if half of them are standing empty, not have a workbench with a vice? But they didn't have a school, or a nurse. They didn't have bandages. People in rags. So she didn't ask them for anything, in case they began to wonder if the few things in her pack would be more use divided among them. People in reused rags.

The walking brings her to a turn in the road around an oak tree, which is older than the road. Outlived the land registry, of course.

The tree is alive, so the road turns round it carefully. The house coming into view is her next stop. Bringing her mind back from up ahead, with effort, back into her walking body, where it notices that her pack has slipped and needs shrugging. Where it prepares the face (a pair of eyes, a set of teeth) for the old man who lives in the old house you see from the oak turning.

Gravel in the drive, still, despite the efforts of clover and fallen leaves to return it to field and turf. A round stone skitters from the edge of her boot, and there's no response from the house.

No cat face peering from a window or round the side of a shed. Another oak leaf falls, and she looks up. Just the season. Just the tree living. Onto the tiles of the porch, scraping her boots on the old iron, and she knocks at the door. More old iron. If there were fairies, there aren't now. There probably weren't before, anyway.

There's no answer, of course. She felt the silence of the house too deeply for there to be an answer.

Stepping back and off the porch, she looks through the two front windows - nothing but bookshelves. Nothing but a workbench, a shoe upside down on it. No just-left mugs of tea, no open books set words-down. Nothing still rocking or steaming. There was a door between the kitchen and the garden, she remembers. Round to the left… no, but she walks on round rather than turning back. The kitchen is in the south, of course. Old men choose warmth.

The kitchen door opens without lock or creak. She coughs, laughs at herself, and calls out "Hello?" The kitchen says nothing back, and the house holds a denser silence than the drive outside.

She looks around. Nothing wrong has happened in this room. Knives and tongs bright on a wall. The sink empty, clear. One clean mug is beside the kettle, one clean spoon. The chairs at the square scrubbed table are both pushed in, sunlight reaching the table. She calls "Hello?" again, quieter, the silence holding her throat, and looks back at the door. Could just assume he's out.

She opens the cupboard above the kettle. It's as stocked as it ought to be. Jars, handwritten labels over labels over worn-off washed-off labels. Cardboard boxes remade out of other boxes turned inside out. Old-man handwriting SUGAR, NETTLE, CAMOMILE, ROSE. A brown glass bottle is marked VINEGAR. A white china caddy painted with cranes is marked SALT.

She closes that cupboard, opens the next. Half a loaf of bread with a thumbprint of green fur on its cut edge. She lifts it by the paper bag and it begins to crumble across the worksurface, so she puts it back quickly.

There is a box on the table. He isn't out. The box is cardboard, its corners taped for strength. The note on the top of the box is folded and marked TINKER, TUESDAY. She hadn't known he was still counting days by name. But then he stayed still in this house. What else would you count by? The moon. The crocuses, the broad beans, the apples. And of course, the days people on routes arrive. Vain, perhaps, to think that this might become tinker day, instead of Tuesday. Just because this is oak house man day. But where is he?

She looks at the kitchen door again. Could just leave. But no. She opens the note.

Tinker - Box is old spectacles - should have given them to you before now - useful for the little hinges even if you can't match them to people - funny prescription, astigmatism - varifocals mainly - can't think why I kept them - cases handy for things too. I was having a sort-out. Hope I'm here.

She puts the note down and looks towards the door that leads inwards to the rest of the house, hoping he isn't here. But she must know.

She puts her pack down on the table, carefully, next to the box and its note. Walks much, much slower than outside, away from the clean square table and her pack, towards the hall. A candleholder, a stack of folded handkerchiefs. One coat and one woollen hat on a coat-stand.

Nothing in the front rooms - the one with bookshelves and a deep leather chair, nor the one with the workbench. Nothing just-left. Nothing rocking. Books, framed photographs of people she's never met, shoreline paintings, and that silence. The carpet is striped from sweeping. The curtains are all hanging straight.

The stairs are worn in the centre but clean. Framed watercolours of the sea follow at her left shoulder as she walks, slower and slower, up the staircase.

She never went upstairs here before, of course. There was no reason before. There should never have been a reason. More books on the landing: brighter colours, creased spines, novels instead of reference. She stops - this walking is not like outdoor walking, these steps are taking everything she has. Her mind is searching everywhere but ahead. Another candleholder on the shelf at the top of the stairs, a box of matches.

There are two doors. The closed door has a tile glued to it, with the word LAVATORY in dainty curled letters. For guests, when there were guests.

The other door stands open but its angle blocks the rest of its room. Walking has never been this difficult. Walking in snow, in hail, with sunstroke, while sneezing, while bleeding, no five steps were harder than these. Four. Three. Two. There is another watercolour on the wall right next to the door frame. A lighthouse on a rocky outcrop, pale sun breaking through clouds. She stands and looks at it long enough.

The oak house man had put himself to bed with time enough to gather water, food, handkerchiefs around him. Sheets of paper stacked on a bedside table. A pen on the blanket, next to. No. He had had time to cap the pen. He had lain there, writing. His handkerchiefs make a snowdrift beside the bed. There is still water in a jug, a line of mineral above its level. There are crumbs on the plate, a curve of jam. He had not starved, at least. That wasn't what. No.

He had set up his sickroom well. And nothing moves.

She picks up the stack of paper. Each is folded once, like the note that said TINKER, TUESDAY. They say, in sensible capitals, ELLEN and HARGREAVES and ROSIE AND CLARE and IF YOU'VE FOUND ME I'M SORRY and GUTHRIE and THINGS TO KNOW ABOUT THE GARDEN and LIST OF PAINTINGS and FRANK. She separates out IF YOU'VE FOUND ME I'M SORRY and puts the others down, glass-careful. She hasn't looked at him yet, really, but the sheets aren't rumpled. There was no. He hadn't. Perhaps it. It must have been in his sleep. He had time to cap the pen.

The bedroom window shows his garden (she imagines him saying, calmly, practically, "Things to know about the garden -") and the curtains are open. A silk flower in a wooden vase centred on the sill.

A magpie on the grass, foraging at the edge of a tree-shadow. The paths need sweeping soon, before rain softens the leaves. The row crops are well weeded, a watering can is ready beside the barrel. There's a bird table built from mismatched wood - a reddish platform, paler battens, a pillar darkly varnished. She can't see from the window if there's seed on it.

She looks down. Opens the note.

Overdid it having a sort-out in the work room - heart feels like it did before surgery, as best I can recall. That was eighteen years ago. Perhaps what they did was never meant to last twenty year. I tidied up. It's a good house and I was very happy here. The Hargreaves boy, on Hargreaves farm, yellow gates, wants to set up his own house with the redhead. This might suit them. Tell him it's a good solid house and we were happy here. Keep an eye on the babies once they're crawling.

She does not crumple the page, but it's close. She puts the paper back on the others and leaves the room, fast and faster across the hall down the stairs. Good solid stairs and he was very happy here.

Good solid kitchen. Good solid square clean table, and he was very happy here. She pulls out a chair, the noise of its leg on the tile floor filling the house and garden and fields and the world, and tries to sit. Quiet tries to come back in but she's not letting it.

Stand up. Use his matches, light his woodstove.

And once that's lit the next thing is to run water into the kettle from the filter tank. To take down SUGAR and NETTLE. To take a different mug from the cupboard, a different spoon. He was sorting out the work room, then, where there's one boot upside down on the table, and he felt his heart do something that he recognised, and he put himself to bed. He wrote letters and went to sleep. A good solid death, and he was very happy here.

The kettle is warming and shivering on the stove. She doesn't want to sit down.

Takes up a cloth sack from the worksurface, folded in ninths. Shakes it out, opens the cupboard where the dry bread crumbled. Bread into the sack, keep the paper, check on the scones in another paper bag but they're perished too. Into the sack, keep the paper. Glass dish of salad leaves - the slime into the sack, glass dish into the sink. Opening more cupboards and loading more perished food into the sack. While the kettle boils, its sound and steam warming the room.

And take the sack to empty on his admirable compost heap, to become food again.

Returning to the kitchen a little calmer from the air outside. She folds the sack back into ninths - its creases show her where. Pours the hot water on the nettle tea infuser, and takes the mug to the table. Now she can sit down.

Her pack and the box on the table block off part of the room from her view, lower down. She looks around through nettle steam. No paintings in the kitchen, but four different chalkboards with messages in his sensible capitals. BROCCOLI EGGS BACON PEPPER. PEA CANES MILDEWED - BOIL WASH. LEFT BROWN BOOT FIX HEEL.

The SORRY note is back on the stack with the others. She didn't move anything else in the sickroom. She could just take the box that was meant for her and go. She could just not have been upstairs, assumed he was out. Someone else can read SORRY. Someone else can read that he was very happy here. Someone else can go to the farm with yellow gates and tell the boy he has a house and apparently babies with a redhead. She needs to be in a town by tomorrow night, mending her glue brush. Back on her route.

She pulls the box on the table towards her, flips its leaves open. There are ten, fourteen, sixteen cases of spectacles in the box. Arranges them on the table in a row, the gold-plastic stamps of company names worn away on the case lids. Yes, the hinges will be useful. Four of the pairs are a woman's, the rest wider and steel. She holds one pair up to look through, and the room shifts. A little scratched, but if she can find someone whose sight they match they'll be worth a lot. She settles them back in their case. Click.

He wrote he was having a sort-out. That's more than one box of one type of thing. She stands up again, the chair stuttering on the kitchen tiles. The tea is too hot to sip so she takes it with her to the workroom.

The one coat and one hat on the stand in the hall no longer seem awful, only cloth. Good solid cloth, and he was. No. The swept stripes of the carpet, the straight curtains. The workroom faces north so it has a woodstove. Labelled boxes on shelves, here. She sets her mug down beside the boot.

CHISELS AND RASPS in one long box. A splendid collection, each of unknowable age, some with bright new handles on old steel. She chooses one finer than her own and one coarser, puts them on the workbench. SAWBLADES & RAZORS in another, peer in instead of reaching in. Yes, all loose, of course. Put that back for now. STROP / STONE in a third, squarer box. Her hand hovers over the sharpening stone but leaves it. Hers is adequate, and it's too heavy a thing to carry two. STRING / CORD is a very large box and she leaves it.

She looks around for a bag, or a box marked BAGS, and sees a canvas duffel on the row of pegs beside the door. A slightly darker khaki than her own - perhaps it was the same when they were both new, and hers has worn in the sun. She takes it down and turns it over, looking for rips or bare patches, not expecting any. A sensible man.

Its side pocket shifts and she unzips it, tilts it up to the window to check inside. Two acorns, a conker, and a paper envelope marked HOLLYHOCK. It rattles with seeds.

Suddenly it's the year before last and she's following him in to the kitchen, his square table strewn with envelopes of seeds. "Excuse the mess!" he had said. "It's that time of year. You take sugar, don't you?" and she had nodded, drifting around his table, reading the labels. BROCCOLI, SUGARSNAP, CORN, LINUM, AMARANTH?, DWARF CLIMBING, JAVELIN, TANSY.

"I already had the habit of saving some seed each year, you see."

"Of course," she had said, out of her depth. "They always did, didn't they?"

He'd turned from the kettle and laughed. "Most stopped for a while. Catalogues were easier."

She zips the side pocket back up. Carefully places the two rasps into the heart of the duffel, handles downwards so they don't file their way through. Find something to wrap them in, of course. A hand towel - she needs a new towel, he can spare a hand towel. Or the Hargreaves boy and his redhead and babies can spare a hand towel, and never be told it was there.

Now she has a second pack, she can look through the workroom more seriously. Something from each named box, leaving nothing empty, and no need to let anybody know.

Duffel bag over her shoulder, the strap a perfect length. The hall, stairs, the watercolours on her left side brighter now, each of a different shoreline. Bright sun over northern seas, pebble shores.

The bathroom door, this time. Towels on a steel shelf. She shrugs the new pack down her arm, wraps the two rasps in a small towel from the stack. There is time to look around the clean little room. The silence has softened, somehow. There is a mend in the vinyl flooring where it was taken up to close off the drains, after the mains water stopped.

A tidy, sensible man - he would have sealed the house off from the road with cement that first year. There is a clean pot inside the old china lavatory, when she lifts the lid carefully. Of course he would. She looks up to a high shelf, takes down two wrapped soap bars, feels to the back of the shelf for anything else. She leaves the soap that's on the washbasin, and the rest of the towels.

The landing, the picture of the lighthouse. And the sickroom, again, which is a big and pleasant room now the dread has gone.

She puts her new pack down on the floor and opens the lid of his laundry basket. Scoops up the handkerchiefs in their drift beside his bed and drops them all in, blossom-fluttering. His trousers and a shirt folded neatly on a chair, into the laundry. A pair of socks at the end of the bed, into the laundry. The water jug, plate, an empty glass and an orange peel she collects and stacks at the top of the stairs.

It's a nice room, easy to keep tidy. He did well here for a long time. We were happy here.

She takes the pen carefully from beside his hand, sets it with the notepaper on his bedside table. Someone must make this into a bedroom again. If you've found me I'm sorry. She doesn't know the Hargreaves farm, doesn't know if the boy who needs a house of his own would be able to do this.

Take the blankets from the bed, shaking them briefly and folding them into four, eight, sixteen. Place them folded on the chair where his clothes were. The sheet he's lying on seems fine, and she takes each edge and folds them inwards, over him.

She hadn't looked at his face properly. The room is more of him than how his face would look. The room is full of choices, over years. The room is how he wanted to spend his time, a tidy space he chose to look at all those days and seasons and years. The view across the garden, when he could have moved to a downstairs room or put a couch in the kitchen where it's warmer. He chose to have a bedroom, over and over. That's far more worth looking at than the face or body he had to leave.

Now he's covered, she thinks of leaving again. The fourteen cases of old spectacles bumping around in her new pack. Maybe move some things from her pack to the new one to even the load on both shoulders. The cottage is neater than she found it, that could be enough. She could go on to the next town and ask who knows the Hargreaves farm. Pass all that on.

And next time her route brings her this way there will be a dazed boy living here, a redheaded wife, different tea in the cupboard. Different coats on the coat stand.

Had he mentioned the house to the Hargreaves farm before, though? Does the boy know he has a house? The notes by the bed might have been the only offer. She needn't go to that yellow-gated farm, she needn't tell anyone about the notes. A good solid house, and he was very happy here. The bedroom is a bedroom again, with a view across the garden. The magpie is gone from the lawn. She could choose to have a lawn. This lawn. She could choose this bedroom that he chose over and over. Make his workshop hers. Read his books.

His lists had said BACON. Other merchants stop by here. He grew food in this garden but not bacon. Someone will drop in, just as she does on her eight week circuit, and find the new… owner. Whether that's the boy and his redhead, or the tinker. And the new owner will explain, and trade for bacon.

She could learn to work the garden from his books and notes. She could choose to unpack, light his woodstove, make a meal and stay at least until dark. Find out how it feels to be here as night falls, into a morning.

She has drifted to the top of the stairs, her hand on the newel. Collect the plate and jug, take them to the kitchen. Set them in the sink. Dip more water to the kettle, set it to boil again.

It's easy already. It could be this five, ten times a day.

She opens her pack on the square table, the new pack still upstairs, and tips out her bundles of possessions. Clothes would fit where he kept his clothes. Her cooking kit could fit whole into a kitchen cupboard. Her tools to the workshop, in his neat labelled categories.

Should have been on her way to the next stop already. A mug of tea with the oak house man, ask if he’s sure there’s nothing he needs her to mend, and then onwards. Every other time was simple. Her bootprints in the snow that time, only just filled in as she walked out again past them. Should have been that quick. She needs to remake her brush, trade for tape or make some. Needs to stock up on pins at the forge. An eight week circuit means nobody is waiting for her in trouble, but it’s the principle, surely.

“The journey is the point,” she says, out loud, startling herself. Looks around. The kettle has boiled again. She pours some hot water on the crockery to wash up. A pinch of soap flakes into the water, a knitted cloth beside the basin. Cold water into the hot, and use the plate to mix it. It’s still too hot on her hands but she washes up anyway, watching her fingers scald. “The journey is the point. I’ve been saying that the whole time. They stopped asking, I must have convinced them all. Now you want to stay in a house?”

Her voice is creased from keeping quiet, but it sounds right for the room. Words hitting the garden window and the tiled floor and the varnished cupboard doors, and finding other words there. Years of talking in this room.

“The Greek. You’re meant to be like that Greek, who travelled his whole story. Nobody cares about the farm he raised after he stopped moving. Nobody cares about the sewing she finished after he got home. The journey was meant to be the point.” Setting the jug on the draining board too hard, and calming at once. “I wasn’t heading here.”

Wipes her hands on a second cloth, hangs it from a cabinet handle.

Back to the pack at the table, and reloading it with her bundles. Clothes at the bottom, lightest but least often needed. Tools in the centre, close to her back. Cooking kit at the top. “He was supposed to take his sail and walk, and stop when he got somewhere they didn’t know what it was. That makes more sense than this. An hour ago you had no idea. You want to stay here because he died? Because he left his house to someone you don’t know?”

She’s upstairs again, not even noticing the lighthouse this time.

She opens the SORRY note, rereads it at the window. Reads the HARGREAVES note. It’s to the farmer, the father. It’s grateful for all his help. It doesn’t mention the house. Because they had already discussed it, or because they hadn’t? Because he wrote it first? Because he wrote it last, and was fading? Too much unknown. Too much only in the old man’s head. Someone else should have found him, someone else should have read SORRY. Someone who already had somewhere they were going back, someone with a bed.

Puts the notes back in their stack. Opens a cupboard door in the slant of the eaves and finds it’s a wardrobe. Stares at the ranks of shoulders of brown and grey and off-green shirts, gardener’s shirts, darned and stitched up and frayed and patched, like everyone else’s, but his own. Brown leather belts, treated with wax against the cracking of time. Leather boots, paired off socks in more greys, more darning and mending. Corduroy. Fields of corduroy.

The strap of the duffel bag hadn’t needed adjusting. He must have been her height, she’d never noticed. She could take clothes.

He’d spent decades in this house. From before things stopped. He was already saving seed and mending shirts before everyone else. The room full of presentable books, the shelves of battered novels, he hadn’t raided or traded them since things stopped. Those were the things he’d had at the end.

This house is rammed with a lifetime of things he chose. It should feel tighter. It should feel that it’s pushing her out. It doesn’t, and she doesn’t know why. All this he had at the end, the bedsheet folded across his body, and it doesn’t feel like an end.

“What did happen to the Greek, anyway? Did he find somewhere they didn’t know of the sea? Did he stop?”

There’ll be a copy in the room downstairs. The story safe on pages, not just in her head. She doesn’t carry any books, but maybe if there’s a copy she could take it. Her voice in the room has warmed it, a little. She could read his books, wear his clothes, burn the SORRY note. Put the duffel bag back on its workroom hook. All a person has at the end isn’t all they ever had. Even in a house.

She’s had things and passed them on, let them go, and so would he have. He’d have given things away that served him for a time. Planting seeds and getting seeds back. Crumbs to the bird table, rinds to the compost. A good solid house doesn’t mean you keep everything.

Drift down the stairs again. This could be five, ten times a day. Walking the same route over and over indoors, instead of between her stops. She finishes her cooled nettle tea and sets the mug beside the kettle. Tea at this clean square table every day. Thousands of mornings.

Drift into the room of bookshelves, and scan along the spines for the story she wants. Here, it’s green linen bound, silver-stamped letters less worn away than the stamping on the spectacle cases. She takes it to a chair under the window and begins reading. Renowned, resound. Deed, bleed. Restored, lord. Choice, voice. Beneath, death. Plain, main. It’s here. Plain, reign. Days, decays. Well, so it was an oar and not a sail. Toil, soil. Hand, land. So it ends, and nobody gets to stop moving. She closes the book, looks out of the window to the shifting oak leaves.

With borrowed overalls, a borrowed spade,

she heads outside to lawn that’s in some shade.

Cuts the turf to mark four foot by three,

and starts to dig. Birds singing in the tree.

He’s wrapped in white. She brought the body there

before gravedigging tired her beyond care.

Return him to his land, to green the lawn

beneath redheaded babies not yet born.

The magpie crackles in the tree above her as she digs deep enough. It only needs to be hip deep. This isn’t her first grave. She knows the work well, and this is good airy soil. There will never be any need to turn this part of lawn to vegetable bed, so he will be undisturbed even without a marker. She knows how to pace herself to dig one end to hip depth, and then stand in it and dig across without needing to bend.

It’s not harder than walking, really. This is a fine day for it.

The story sways in her head as she digs. The pairs of words, the rolling lines, and she finds herself lifting the loosened earth and shovelling it aside on its rhythm. It helps a little. The journey not ending.

It’s almost night when she leaves the house again. She is tired, but her legs will take her a little further before she needs to camp. The turf is back over the grave, the mugs she used are washed and set to drain. The notes are stacked on the clean square table. She’s moved the rest of his tools and books to hide the gaps she made. No need for anyone to miss a few rasps, a knife, some brushes. A book.

And there’s hours to think about a house, while walking. Perhaps this all ends closer to the sea.