This Will Be Difficult to Explain and Other Stories by Johanna Skibsrud Page A

checked by something. Again, I paused, cleared my throat, and read through the list of questions I had prepared earlier in the day. This time, though, the words stuck curiously in my throat; I nearly choked on them. I had not even reached the middle of the page when I stopped, mid-sentence. I wanted only to get away—and fast. What, I wondered, had possessed me to enter that house at all? To trespass that last, and most remote outpost at the end of the Lakehead road? What had I hoped to uncover there?
    Still, for some reason, I remained. Setting my notebook and pen gingerly to one side, I sat, uncomfortably, as the low and wordless hum, which I had taken, just a moment ago, as a sort of reply, continued to echo—as though from a great distance—from the general direction of Clarence’s large, and mostly emptied, frame.
    Finally, I unpacked my camera and shot a roll of film as if at random. Then, and without announcing my intention to either Clarence or his wife—I let myself out the front door, and pretty well ran all the way back into town.
    GUY WAS NOT SO easily discouraged. Once he set his mind to something it was pretty well set, and that summer he was set on having Clarence on the cover of the anniversary special. “Don’t worry,” he said when I returned. “You’ll try again tomorrow.” He slapped me on the back, hard—in a way that he had no doubt hoped was encouraging—and was about to leave when he caught a glimpse of one of the photographs I had printed from my hastily shot roll, drying on the rack by the door. “Hey,” he said, “that’s not half bad.” He pinched the print from its hold and looked at it more carefully. Then he handed it back, nodding gravely. “You could still make the covah,” he told me—but now it sounded like a warning.
    It was true; it was a fine picture. Clarence appeared just as he had in the dark living room earlier that day. His eyes nearly lost in his head, which sat perched above his wide, and by comparison large and unaltered, woodcutter’s frame. In every photograph, and this one was no exception, his mouth appeared to be shut tight, a firm and single line.
    â€œNow, see, it’s all about the angle of the thing,” Guy said the next day, as I prepared for my departure—taking longer than usual. He himself was leaned comfortablyback in his bendable chair, which he would not be required to depart from—that day, or any other. I nodded. Though I could not imagine what possible “angle” might illuminate, with Clarence, any story at all—let alone one worthy of the anniversary special. Finally, there being very little to do in the way of preparation, and so no means of drawing it out any longer, I made my way to the door. “Tell me,” Guy shouted after me—sensing my concern, which I had found difficult to hide—“tell me if there isn’t a man alive won’t say a few words for the front-page news.”
    Despairingly, I pulled the door shut behind me, muffling Guy’s final words, but just as I did so—it hit me. I didn’t know why I hadn’t thought of it before. Like most good ideas, what had occurred to me then was very simple, so that now that I had thought of it, it seemed very obvious that I had. By the time I had arrived at Clarence’s house, I was in a completely altered mood. Even the atmosphere of the old place seemed changed. Even Clarence (when, after once again being met at the door, I was led down the seemingly destinationless hall to join him) seemed different somehow. He seemed—more relaxed. Almost cheerful. Instead of the whispering ventriloquism of the day before, a heavy silence prevailed, but even this did not trouble me, so certain was I that my idea would in no time have us all—myself, Clarence, and Clarence’s wife—smack on the front page of the anniversary special. It was true—it was