“Let’s move back a little,” William said, “even though they’re unlikely to scare off.” Still, they had a fine view, and each in his own fashion felt it was an exhilarating sight. “Looking at them, you can get fooled into thinking the whole world’s working right.” Behind them the Tecoskys’ swans were moving loudly about their pen, yet the whistlings now all appeared to be sleeping. “I can’t imagine how bone-tired they must get. I saw swans out of an airplane once.”
“Where was that?” David asked.
“Right here over Nova Scotia. I went up in a small airplane with John Pallismore. He was a skywriting expert. Now that’s a story.”
“I imagine I’m going to hear it.”
“Keep looking at these wild swans. It’ll get you through.”
“Go ahead, William. Really, I’m all ears.”
“This was in 1972. I remember, because we’d hired someone, just for a few weeks, to clear brush and paint both porches. This fellow Sam shows up. No automobile. No money to speak of. Samuel Oliver — dodging the American draft, didn’t want the Vietnam conflict to murder him or otherwise postpone his life, was morally opposed, which he and I agreed on one hundred percent. Not everyone in Parrsboro did.
“Anyway, back to seeing swans from a plane. The thing is, you needed a special license to skywrite with an airplane. There was just John and one other fellow with skywriting licenses in the entire province. John was also our local mail carrier, all up and down Route 2. He supplemented his income with skywriting, though not much. The mainstay of his skywriting work came out of Halifax, where the money was. He’d be hired to help launch some business or other. The time in question, I flew from Truro to Halifax with him. His job that day was to spell out the name of a new hotel above Halifax Harbor. The plane was specially fitted for this purpose, and I joked it was like flying a big cigar, smoking all on its own, a cigar that could spell and write. Anyway, flying back to the airstrip near Truro was when we saw the wild swans high up, pretty close by.”
“That’s the story?”
“No, that’s just when I saw the swans. The story is, John Pallismore had a high school sweetheart named Ellen Tanning. And John had been smitten without decline after high school as well. It was unrequited, though. Ellen simply could not return John’s affection, eh? And as if that wasn’t problem enough for him, when Ellen married locally, she and her husband — Eammon — set up house in Upper Economy right along John’s mail route.
“That meant John had to stop by Ellen’s house every day but Sunday. This was torture for John. He delivered mail to the life he wanted, but he himself wasn’t living it.
“Ellen and Eammon had a daughter, Elsa-Louise, plus they’d adopted Ellen’s niece at age five, Mildred, who’d been orphaned. She came to live with them and fit right in. They weathered things well. The four of them attended church together and such.
“Then, when it was approaching Ellen’s thirty-fifth birthday, Eammon hired John Pallismore to skywrite a birthday message out over the Bay of Fundy. They worked out terms. John always got half up front, half when the job was done, if every word was readable. On Ellen’s birthday there was a social going on in Parrsboro, lots of people on the church lawn, which was how Eammon planned it — you want people to see your matrimonial devotion at work. And when all those people looked up, there’s the words HAPPY BIRTHDAY ELLEN, loud and clear and so beautifully written, like the heavens themselves were communicating.
“Except. Except—it was signed, LOVE, comma, JOHN. Not LOVE, EAMMON, but LOVE, JOHN.
“No big secret, really. I mean everybody in Parrsboro already knew John was madly in love with Ellen and always had been. But his declaration of it was kind of new. Well, first thing, the church social breaks up — people went right home. Secondly, the next day Eammon petitioned through official lines to get John’s skywriting license revoked. Next, thirdly, and this everyone agreed was a good decision, John Pallismore had to switch mail routes with a man named Sander Malachy. That was smart of the postal system, wasn’t it, to avoid all sorts of problems. You don’t want a murder — not that Eammon was capable of such a thing. He must’ve felt murderous, though. Family embarrassment displayed on the world’s biggest billboard like that.
“The minister of the church offered that John might consider skywriting an apology of sorts. Well, John picked right up on that advice. He got the skywriting apparatus shipshape and up he went, same part of the sky, whereupon he wrote: ELLEN I HAVE LOVED YOU FOREVER, comma, JOHN.
“Oh, my goodness, a skywritten sentence can stay intact floating out there quite a long time, let me tell you, depending on wind conditions. And this time John had done it on his own nickel, so he could write whatever he pleased. Of course, he’d written what he’d pleased the first time too, hadn’t he?
“Next, Eammon drove the family down to visit cousins in Port Medway for a week. Took the girls right out of school. And when they got back to Upper Economy, John drove up to their mailbox and delivered — and this is the amount rumored — two thousand love letters he’d written to Ellen since high school but had never sent. Stacked them neatly bundled.
“At this point, and without special encouragement, John committed himself to Nova Scotia Hospital, there in Dartmouth, for observation. Much to his credit. He just sized his mind up, drove to Halifax, parked his car, took the ferry over and got a room there, he said, like he’d checked into a hotel. Thirty days worked. Now he’s living in Yarmouth. Needless to say, he’s no longer delivering mail. He’s employed, last I heard, at the ferry terminal in some capacity.”
“He landed on his feet, then, John Pallismore,” David said.
“Basically,” William said.
They watched the wild swans for a few more minutes and then William said, “Just out of curiosity, David. Which person in that true story do you consider most wronged by life?”
“The children, I suppose,” David said. “Is there a reason you told me that story, William?”
“Margaret always loved it. She thought somebody should write an opera. The first opera set in Nova Scotia.”
They stayed with the wild swans till dark, then returned to opposite porch swings. Sitting down, William said, “I can’t stand it another minute.” He went inside, brought out a can of 3-in-One oil, thoroughly oiled then tested both swings, returned the oil to the house and joined David back on the porch.
“I said I was going to get to it,” David said.
“Now you don’t have to.”
They didn’t want to leave the wild swans. Managing only small talk, they mainly looked toward the pond until late into dusk. Then William said, “I’ve got a directive from Margaret and she hopes you’ll follow it.”
“Directive?”
“My word, not my daughter’s.”
“What is this directive, then?”
“You can look at her through the window,” William said. “But she doesn’t want you to come out and speak to her or anything. You just keep to the house.”
“Pretty much the status quo, isn’t it?”
“Status quo, except for the baby rounding out, as the saying goes. What’s changed is that you don’t have to leave the estate and drive around through two tanks of gas till Margaret leaves anymore. Actually, the directive’s her way of asking you not to leave, is my interpretation.”
“And should she happen to saunter past the guesthouse? To go swimming, say?”