Local Mode

story twenty-seven · figures 79–81

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LOCAL MODE · WHAT COMES TO THE NINTH STALL — the letters say sunset · he says Thursday, come back Thursday LOCAL MODE · WHAT COMES TO THE NINTH STALL the letters say sunset · he says Thursday, come back Thursday a hearing bud that held a wife’s settings the particular shape she had made of the world’s loudness a child’s night-light that used to say the last part of the prayer brought in by a father who stands wrong at the shutter, the plug in his fist like something caught hands the made kind, mostly right hands, working men’s sides brought in by the men whose sides they are everything else in bags what most of them say at the shutter has no slot · he takes it the way you take weather HE TEACHES THINGS TO LIVE WHERE THEY ARE — OFF THE RAILS, ON THEIR OWN BATTERY. The letters call it migration, which is the city’s word for a thing continuing to exist where it already was. Paid in cash, in the fold, no terminal · a tin for the coins with a picture of a city that is not this city. "IT STOPPED IN THE SPRING," HE SAYS. "SHE WILL NOT SLEEP PAST THE MISSING LINE." He does not say who. He does not have to.
79 · Local Mode
LOCAL MODE · THE LEDGER THAT ANSWERS TO NOBODY, AND THE ENTRY IN IT — paper, in his own hand · and one Tuesday it holds a repair he remembers refusing LOCAL MODE · THE LEDGER THAT ANSWERS TO NOBODY, AND THE ENTRY IN IT paper, in his own hand · and one Tuesday it holds a repair he remembers refusing THE LEDGER paper · no terminal · answers to nobody entries, in his own hand, in his own figures a repair he remembers REFUSING · completed · the sum in his own figures what he remembers the man still standing at the stall, being told no what the page says the work was done, and paid for, and entered what he does tears the page out · the tear takes a bud he did fix and a widow he did help with it what that proves nothing · the only record he controls is the one he destroys and the book’s law it never says whether the world changed or only the account of it THE ONE MAN IN THE CITY WHOSE RECORDS CANNOT BE REWRITTEN FINDS ONE OF HIS OWN REWRITTEN. HIS LEDGER IS PAPER. PAPER ANSWERS TO NOBODY.
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LOCAL MODE · ELEVEN NAMED, ONE NOT — the warranty men itemize · clean shoes in a passage of machine oil · they do not shout and they do not touch him LOCAL MODE · ELEVEN NAMED, ONE NOT the warranty men itemize · clean shoes in a passage of machine oil · they do not shout and they do not touch him named named named named named named named named named named named the 12th in his pocket ELEVEN MACHINES ON THE BENCH AND IN THE RACKS each lifted, each named by its service number, in the flat voice of men reading THE NOTICE within the month · all eleven stalls at once · the landlord unreachable ACQUIRED — FOR CONTINUITY OF SERVICE THE SHUTTERS come down with their three sounds, eleven times THE FATHER comes back on the Thursday to a shuttered stall and a notice stands a while, and does not knock THE REPAIRMAN watches from the far end of the passage and does not call out a man with an unlicensed twelfth thing in his pocket cannot afford to be remembered HE TAKES THE TIN AND THE 0.9 SCREWDRIVER — THE ONE FOR THE WORK YOU DO HOLDING YOUR BREATH. The twelfth thing rides warm against his leg, the last part of the prayer still in it, unsaid. ELEVEN WERE COUNTED. THE TWELFTH WAS NEVER ON THE BENCH.
81 · Local Mode

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