Free Remembrance by Alistair MacLeod

– 1 –
    WHEN DAVID MacDONALD went out to stand by his woodpile, the sky was still dark, although the grey light of the approaching morning was beginning to make itself known. It would not be the kind of morning associated with the earlier summer when, if one waited long enough, the sun would gradually appear over the mountaintops to the east. Then the night’s dew would slowly evaporate, the petals of the flowers would begin to open, and the sounds of the approaching day would replace those of the departing night.
    The raucous crows that nested in the trees above his house would begin their squabbling conversations, even as the yelping of the coyote pack, farther to the north, would gradually subside. The squirrels would begin to chatter, and the wasps would begin to tentatively appear from under the eaves of his shed. The deer that grazed in the field above his house would gradually fade into the surrounding forest; he could sense their quiet movements almost more than he could see them.
    Because of his deteriorating eyesight, he sometimes mistook the standing spruce trees for deer, straining his eyes to see if the shapes would move. He knew he should visit an eye doctor to test his failing vision but feared that unwelcome results might lead to the cancellation of his driver’s licence. Now he rarely drove at night, and when he did, each light encountered seemed like a starburst or an elaborate Christmas decoration. Sometimes they reminded him of the artillery shells that had exploded over his head during World War II. He and his comrades had watched the bursting shells from what they hoped was the comparative safety of their filthy, water-soaked foxholes. Recently, he had been told that such starburst lights were common to those who could not see very well, but when he received such information he only nodded thoughtfully. As if such facts might apply to other distant people, but certainly not to him.
    Now in the autumn coldness of November, the world was different. The sun would be slow in coming, if it came at all. Sometimes the grey light brought only freezing rain, or stinging sleet. On colder days, the windshield of his truck would be covered with frost and the troublesome muddy ruts of his driveway would be frozen into what seemed like imprecise permanence. Sometimes the tracks of his rubber-soled boots, made in mud and frozen in frost, became almost like works of art, or something akin to the initials that small boys might imprint on still-setting concrete. Created in softness and then stiffened into forms of rigidity.
    The deer, when he saw them, had by now exchanged their golden coats of summer sheen for those of autumngrey. Sometimes he saw them at the base of the leafless wild apple trees, nuzzling for the windfalls that had dropped from the bare branches. After heavy winds there would be an abundance of apples on the ground, and the deer would become more selective, taking explorative bites from some and then moving on to others. In later weeks they would eat those they had originally spurned, even those that had rotted or were permanently frozen in the glittering frost.
    The rabbits’ coats were changing from brown to white, and they were presently in danger from the cruising white-tailed hawks and bald eagles that sometimes ventured inland from the now sullen grey-flecked sea. Field mice were trying to get into his house, where they hoped they might find warmth.
    His grey cat purred and curled herself around his ankles. The buzzing of insects now was stilled, and only the hardy purple asters represented the flowers that had once been so prolific. It seemed like a fitting setting for the remembrance of the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month.
    Thinking of the asters, he adjusted the plastic poppy pinned to the collar of his blazer. He moved some of the sticks of his woodpile with his toe, looking without urgency for some that might fit into the firebox of his kitchen stove. He knew