Canary on the Window Sill by Jerry Whitus

. . . so many things seem filled with the intent / to be lost . . .
—Elizabeth Bishop

Howard Styles, sixty-eight, a small-town accountant and tax specialist, was at his desk long past midnight on an icy Thursday, just a few hours before his clients’ semi-annual reports were due. Even bent over his work, one could see that Howard was tall, lean, sturdy. He had large freckled hands, sparse hair combed over a shiny spot and half-ruined eyes (an occupational hazard) behind trifocals set in amber frames. On the desktop, along with a telephone, was an IBM computer he barely trusted. Basic calculations were spit out of a bulky forty-year-old electro-mechanical calculator, if not out of his own head.

Howard was a bit of a savant with numbers. Even now, as his mind wavered with fatigue, he could scan columns of five- or six-digit figures and sum them up in an instant.  (Decades-old phone numbers he could also recall, as well as dates, though he had never been good with names or addresses.)

His instrument of choice was, had been, a simple 2 ½ HB yellow pencil with a hexagonal shaft. He nearly always started a report creating handwritten rows of basic calculations, which he keyed into charts or spreadsheets or government forms, if they were called for: a neat, clean system that had become second nature to him.

Years ago, as an apprentice in the accounting department of his hometown bank, Howard had treated his gift as a parlor game to attract attention or impress girls. “Write a string of numbers on the napkin here,” he would tell a girl on a date, and then have the joy of watching her eyes grow big, as he added them before she took another breath—doing the trick time and again for the ones that begged for it.

The figures he drew were as personal as his signature: a straight line through the shaft of the 7, the 8 a snowman with the wisp of a plume on top, the 5 rotated clockwise, the 4 constructed as a sail on a windy day. It was crazily eccentric—Howard knew that—and mattered to no one but him. How to explain that drawing numbers was a form of contemplation, smoothing out the wrinkles in the world?

§

1:25 A.M. The windows in his office softly lit by a distant street light. It had been a long time since an automobile passed. Rolling his chair back, Howard wrapped the pencil in his fist. He stood and stretched his long spine. At the window, he extended his hands over the sill to feel the cold creeping through—and speeding the dial of his gas meter. He could see the numbers turning, taking money out of his pocket. Then all at once, he felt a spasm coming on, the asthma acting up—tight chest, itchy throat, watery eyes. Fumbling, he laid the pencil aside, pulled an inhaler from his sweater pocket, steadied the damn thing with two hands and took one hit, then another. Breathing a hoarse breath, he cranked his head back, waited for his lungs to catch up, the palpitations to ease.

Breathing again, Howard glanced at his watch. 7:30, he told himself. At 7:30, maybe 8:00, he’d be done. A short drive to drop one package, as promised, at the office of Henderson-Bates Iron Foundry, his largest client, and another in the box at the post office. Then home for breakfast with Louise, a hot bath, a warm bed, the satisfaction that he had once again accomplished what was required of him.

Meantime, still a little stuffed-up, he took the coffeepot from the top of a filing cabinet, headed out the door and down the hallway to the bathroom. This small one-story building with four tenants had been his office for twenty-some-odd years. He passed the door of a new neighbor, Eck’s Wholesale Wigs and Hair Pieces. The minute Leonard Eck settled in, he had begun bugging Howard, offering wholesale. “A little extra hair will give you ten years,” he said, showing him a natural, light-reddish toupée. Howard told Eck he’d as soon wear lipstick as a wig or hairpiece, whatever it is you called it. The man had too thick a head to be offended.

The hallway was dimly lit and, for the thousandth time, forgetting to duck, the crown of his head hit the low lintel, ringing his ears, sending an electric shock down his neck. In the mirror, under the thin glow of a weak bulb, he ran his finger over a rising lump. Ignoring the tender ache, he swished the pot clean, or nearly clean, filled it with icy water and, back in the office, put the coffee on to perk, considering what sort of man in this town would wear one of Leonard Eck’s hair pieces made of somebody else’s hair.

With coffee poured, Howard sat down to work, reached for his pencil and discovered it wasn’t there. Where it should have been, resting on a yellow pad half-filled with numbers, was nothing but open space. It took a minute to fully grasp the situation. He pushed back and looked on the floor beneath his feet, all around the desk legs and empty wastebasket. He pushed farther back to search under the chair. He rolled forward and ran his eyes over the desktop, the bright spot where pools from two lamps merged, the space around and under the calculating machine, the phone, the computer keyboard, the terminal and wiring. He lifted the picture of his wife Louise, at the age of fifty, sitting pretty on a towel at a beach in Key West. And then the one of his twin granddaughters taken last year when they were eleven and with their father at a Cardinals-Cubs baseball game, the one where Mark McGwire hit his seventieth home run, September 8, 1998, a Tuesday—pumped up on steroids, people would say later on.

Forearms propped on the desktop, Howard began to experience a slow, methodical quake, like a man who had thought, and was now dead certain, his wallet was missing. He tried to recall, step by step, what had transpired over the past several minutes. But like some other things in his memory at times, it was a bit muggy. His eyes grasped the coffee he had just poured. He took a sip, realizing he’d forgotten to sweeten it. He located a flashlight in the tool kit he kept for emergencies and directed the beam all around, including the black crawlspace under the desk, the dim corners of the office, the file cabinets and bookcases, the coffee table, a stuffed chair and sofa.

Then, exercising his need for thoroughness, he retraced his steps down the hallway, slowly swinging the beam over the vinyl tile floor, running it along the baseboards. He paused at Eck’s doorway to see if the crack between the door and floor would accommodate a rolling pencil. Remembering to duck, he entered the bathroom, flipped on the feeble light, searched through the paper towels in the trash can, which Marilee, the cleaning lady, hadn’t seen fit to empty, and pointed the beam of the flashlight behind the commode.

At his desk again, Howard gazed at the place the pencil, by all rights, ought to be. He waited, as if a steady stare would bring it back to life, dabbing a handkerchief under his damp nose and wondering if age had something to do with this.  Louise, he thought, would get a kick out of it. They were always fussing about who misplaced what. He imagined a cartoon where an “O” was suddenly drawn, an opening that allowed the pencil, transformed into a yellow worm, to crawl safely through. He came to his senses. It could have fallen and ricocheted. Dropping to his knees, he searched under the desk again, this time with his rump in the air like a cat stalking a mouse. Down there he felt foolish, then angry, contrite . . . then eaten up with frustration.

He touched the tiny lump on his head, and unfolding his body full length, began to search the desk drawers. He rifled through them, all neatly organized as practically everything in his life was. In the long drawer that opened beneath the desktop there were paperclips and staples, gum erasers, a pocket knife, printing ink, cough drops, an extra inhaler, and a few cheap ballpoint pens stamped with advertisements.

Using gummy ballpoint ink wasn’t a pleasant option, had never been. Like everyone else he worked with when starting out, he required a 2 ½ HB pencil with pink erasers secured by gold strips of tin. The harder lead held its point, didn’t smear and erased easily.

Before taking drastic action—bashing in Leonard Eck’s door, for example—Howard entertained a last ditch hope, a faint possibility. In the top drawer of the filing cabinet near the windows was a cardboard box where he kept extra pencils. Normally there were half-a-dozen or more in there. Yesterday, however, in the late afternoon he had told Marilee to get some pads and pencils for her grandkids, three needy, tow-headed boys, who were there waiting for her to finish up. (Generous to a fault, Louise would say when she wasn’t on him for being a tightwad.)

Howard drained his cup of tepid coffee, opened the file drawer, lifted the lid—the box was, as he had expected, open space, an empty coffin. He attacked the corners of the drawer anyway, and then the ones below, which were filled with years of files, old correspondence, invoices, tax reports: stuff long useless except as proof of his existence.

He thought of driving home, their peaceful, wooded place bought for retirement, eight miles west of town. There would be pencils there. But that would mean waking Louise and a sixteen-mile round trip on icy roads. Nonetheless, he might have given it up, made the drive, if he hadn’t thought of Misenheimer’s. Mack Misenheimer, a lifelong friend, owned the place where Howard had bought office supplies for years. They were Elks—brotherly love, justice, charity—and often spent early mornings over coffee, Fridays after work at the VFW bar. Mack’s wife had passed on not so long ago, his children were scattered to the four corners, OfficeMax and other outfits had pretty much strangled the life out of his store. Mack kept it open, the original sign weathered, the shelves half full, to give himself a place to spend the day, entertain what friends still came around, and perhaps maintain some of his former self.

Howard started to call him, then gazing at the phone considered the consequences: rousing Mack from a warm bed, waiting for him to get to the door, retrieving the keys, getting them back to him later. What the hell, he knew how to get in from the alley; a window back there opened into the bathroom, and he knew right where the pencils were. The more he thought of the idea, the more he liked it—out of character, a little daring, but by god he needed a good pencil, and some brisk air wouldn’t be so bad right then.

On the sofa, exchanging slippers for leather shoes, he gave in to a plan, buttoned his sweater and slipped on a black, fleece-lined raincoat. He took the flashlight and placed a small hammer, screwdriver, pliers into the deep pockets of the coat.

A frigid wind ambled across the open lot beside his building. His big Buick groaned, complained, came to life. The street was streaked with ribbons of ice, and the snow banked up between the roadway and security fences sparked when his headlights hit it. Howard drove three blocks, crossed the Santa Fe and Union Pacific tracks, turned right at the Conoco station, closed up tight, and down Third Avenue along the edge of downtown, what was left of it. The old fashioned street lights were dull and useless as paper lanterns.

He smiled at what he was about to do. Mack might act up a bit, but in the end he would get a kick out of it, Howard burgling pencils.

He parked where he always parked in the alley between Misenheimer’s and a printing shop—mostly T-shirts now—with a security light in back that Mack took advantage of. He eased the Buick deep into the alleyway, pulled on a pair of woolen groves and locked the doors because it seemed the smart thing to do. Nonetheless, stepping out into the cold again, he felt a stroke of apprehension; his chest groaned, his throat clogged up, producing a moment of labored breathing. He used the inhaler, two pumps. Waited for the medication to begin kneading his lungs. At last, he reached a handkerchief and wiped his glasses and watery eyes. There were patches of ice. He waddled carefully around the corner of the building up to the window, which was dimly lit by the blue glow of the printer’s halogen light. The window was covered with a wire mesh so old and brittle it pried up easily with the screwdriver. Three taps of the hammer cracked and then shattered a filthy window pane. Howard reached his fingers through jagged glass and turned the latch.

The window jamb was tight. It took a bit of a struggle, a few bangs of the hammer, to loosen it. Then, applying the hammer claw as a crowbar, he got the lower sash moving. With cranky jerks it slid on up. Howard paused, distracted by a sudden hush. He waited to get his breath, and finally, grunting like an old hog, lifted himself through the dark hole, head first, using the commode tank for support. The tiny bathroom stank of disinfectant and something akin to rotting paper; the door into the shop was wide open.

Tubes of pale red neon surrounded the plate-glass window in front, but Mack didn’t have sense enough to leave a light on inside, not one. Howard shuffled along, lamping his feet with the flashlight. He kneeled on the floor behind the glass counter, counted out thirteen pencils—a baker’s dozen—and envisioned himself relating this story: a great tale, he thought, worth all the effort even without the pencils. Mack will get a new window pane and maybe burglar bars, a few beers; Louise will grumble and be secretly amused. Howard was pleased with himself.

Climbing out proved easier than breaking in. The sole of one big foot found a pillow of snow on ground; bit by bit he pulled his body through. He wrenched the window shut, reached through the broken glass and slid the latch in place, silly as that seemed. He put the rusty screen back and hammered it down, though it hung a little lopsided. All done in fifteen, twenty minutes, from the time he had left the office. Huffing, padding his gloved hands together, he rounded the corner of the building and had reached the door of his car when blinding lights, sharp as needles, suddenly exploded in the lenses of his glasses, whirling pure white one moment, red the next.

A voice, rough as tree bark, came at him: “Stop! Don’t move! . . . Freeze right there. Police!” a man called out over a speaker, though the orders were unnecessary. Howard knew immediately who it must be, what was happening.

A thought, I’ve got some explaining to do, rolled through his head. He removed his hand from the door handle of the car. There were two men. He could make out the outlines of their upper bodies, their square hats swept by the revolving lights.

Think before you start talking, he told himself. He wasn’t greatly alarmed, or frightened, more annoyed at what he might have to go through to get out of this mess, how much time it would eat up, his work waiting.  Stand still, he thought. He stood still. The policemen hadn’t moved; what were they waiting for? It was unnerving. “Hey, look,” Howard called out to them, breaking the silence. “It’s nothing. Look.” He drew the handful of pencils from the pocket of his long black coat, thirteen of them, and thrust his arm in the air.

At first, he didn’t hear the explosion, but felt an iron fist drive into his chest. His head and shoulders went back, his feet flew up in front of him. He landed on his back, a sudden whoop hitting the frozen earth. No immediate pain, but a terrible, dizzy numbness and ringing ears, as the explosion reverberated off brick walls. He was aware of all this and then wasn’t. He couldn’t find his mind or move, didn’t want to move. Fiery red and white lights were bouncing overhead. A shadow came forward and slid over his face like a blanket being spread out.

“Craig,” the cop blurted. “Hey, come here. Shit! Come on!”

The other one came with his gun, that’s what Howard knew, there was a gun. They stood uttering metallic words . . . pencils, goddamn pencils . . . Howard heard.

He struggled to keep his eyelids open. An ache built, scalding heat. It spread through his chest, ribs, arms, while his mind, detached from his brain, it seemed, began to drift through bits and pieces of floating pictures, perceptions nearly clear one moment, distorted the next. There came, in frail light, a memory of Louise, Louise . . . and then yellow wings.

Not long after their wedding, a Saturday afternoon, forty-eight years ago, Louise came home from work with a canary. She had fallen in love with it in a pet store.

When not fluttering around their little apartment like a yellow shuttlecock, the canary lived in a cage strung from the ceiling of the room they called a living room by a copper wire. One winter day they found him on the window sill bathed in sunlight, his eyes startled and chest twitching, as if his heart were a small motor pumping the life out of him. Howard managed a shallow breath, felt a sense of wonder. Out of his dreamy head emerged a thought: he knew, was almost sure he knew, where he had left the pencil.

Jerry Whitus’s stories have appeared in Ploughshares, Manoa (a “distinguished story” in Best American Short Stories), The Chicago Quarterly, The Carolina Quarterly, The Literary Review, Potomac Review and other journals. He studied writing in the graduate program at the U. of Texas, wrote educational and industrials films, and has taught in universities in the USA, Japan, Singapore, Vietnam (on a USAID grant), and Colombia.