“A Letter to Agamemnon”
 

The sea remembers more than any priest,
And keeps no counsel once the winds arise;
Beneath black cliffs where winter gulls have ceased,
Men learn to measure strangers by their eyes.

A harbor hardens slowly into stone;
Salt seasons fear as surely as the mast.
The man who walks too far becomes alone,
Though every door he passes may hold fast.

Some speak too much; some carry quiet shame;
Some bear their labor hidden like a scar.
Yet every village kindles up a flame
Against the ones who wander from afar.

Take heed what judgments gather by the tide:
The dark grows deeper where the proud decide.

The kings of old sent sons and daughters forth
To purchase winds for proud and waiting sails;

They named it duty, measured out its worth,
And drowned their doubts beneath triumphant tales.

Yet every harbor keeps an altar stone,
Though smoke no longer stains the salted air;
Men still cast lots to spare themselves alone,
And call the chosen burden just and fair.

Beware the tongue that hungers to declare,
The hand that lifts a rumor like a spear;
For crowds grow righteous quickly in despair,
And certainty is born from borrowed fear.

The sea asks less of men than men demand:
Most storms begin long ere they reach the strand.

Jens Jensen was a powerful man who didn’t stink of the sea and of fish in a land and in a time and place when all powerful men stunk of the sea and of fish. So when he walked into Steinvik with a big brown sack flung over his back and passed the people and they noticed he didn’t smell like one of them, the tongues started wagging and the fingers started pointing. But Jens Jensen walked by them, not looking in their eyes, and on to Ingmar Helse’s boarding house.

​

“Ingmar Helse, are you home?” Jens called out in a room-filling voice, but he was outside, at the front door of Helse’s boarding house, so his voice filled the streets instead.

 

Ingmar opened the door and peered out with his one good eye. “Yes, and what’s your business with me?”

 

“I have heard that you have a room and a meal,” Jens replied.

​

Ingmar’s one good eye first went down, and then up the entirety of Jens Jensen. “From out of town? You should know that the boats are all out. You won’t find any fishing crew work in this town until they come back,” he said.

 

“I am not a fisherman,” Jens Jensen replied.

 

“Can you pay your room?” Ingmar asked, still looking him up and down with his screwed-up eye.

 

“Indeed,” Jens replied. “I can pay a month in advance, if you would like.”

 

Ingmar Helse stretched out his hand to receive his payment. “I’ll take it by the week, like everyone else,” he said as he opened the door to let Jens inside.

 

Ingmar led Jens to his room. It was a small room, containing only a bed and a chair, and a small hanging oil lamp. Jens smiled when he saw it, saying, “This is a nice room. Well worth the price.”

 

“The day’s meal is done,” Ingmar said, walking away. “But there is some chowder enough for you.” He pointed to the kitchen. “Be on time from now on for the meal, or there’s no eating afterwards.”

​

Jens entered the kitchen, found a clean bowl, and filled it with the chowder in the middle of the table. When he was done, he washed his bowl, put it on the counter, and went to his room. Soon, he was fast asleep and dreaming of what had to be done.

 

For three weeks, Jens Jensen walked with his heavy sack over his shoulder from the boarding house of Ingmar Helse, through the town, and towards the sea. He walked before breakfast sometimes, and sometimes after, and sometimes again when the day’s light was low and the gulls were turning grey against the sky. He spoke little, paid what he owed, ate what he was given, and took neither more bread nor more beer than any other man. This, too, made people uneasy, for a stranger who asks too much is a nuisance, but a stranger who asks nothing gives a town no handle by which to hold him.

 

It stirred up conversation amongst the old women of the town.

 

“What do you think he’s here for?” Old Kålnese, the town spinster, asked the owner of the general store one day.

 

“Some reckon he’s running from the law,” the store owner replied.

 

“I heard say he may have run from the city.”

​

“Arms on him could crush rocks without a hammer,” the owner returned.

 

“But he seems quiet enough,” Kålnese offered. “Not a criminal look about him.”

 

“Quiet is how criminals keep,” the store owner said.

 

Old Kålnese nodded, because this was the sort of wisdom that costs nothing and therefore spreads easily.

 

“Someone ought to follow him to the shore one day, to see what he’s up to. Maybe he’s looking for treasure or something down there? What’s in the sack?”

 

“Tools, maybe,” said a boy who had been listening beside the salted cod.

 

“And what would a stranger need tools for in Steinvik?” the store owner asked.

 

The boy had no answer to that, and so the lack of an answer became one more thing against Jens Jensen.

 

That winter had been a hard one, and though spring had come, it had not yet softened the memory of it. Two boats had gone missing before Candlemas, and one had come home with half its crew and the other half named only in prayers. There had been talk, as there was always talk, of building a light on the black shoulder of rock beyond the eastern shoal. There had been talk in the tavern, talk at the council table, talk after funerals, talk when the wind took the roof from Rottesen’s shed.

 

But talk is cheaper than timber, and grief does not plane wood.

 

So the shore remained dark.

 

One evening in the pub, when the men were full enough of beer to feel brave and empty enough of money to feel wronged, Jens stood near the window and looked out toward the water. The night had come up thick. No moon showed. Only the low slap of the tide could be heard between the bursts of talk.

 

“You stare at our sea as if you mean to buy it,” said Nils Nilssen the grocer.

 

“No,” Jens said. “Only to understand where it takes men.”

 

The room lowered around him.

 

“The sea takes who the sea takes,” said Tørrtonn Rottesen.

 

“Sometimes,” Jens replied. “Sometimes it takes who darkness gives it.”

 

No one answered him at first.

 

Then Old Kålnese, who was drinking a small beer near the stove, said, “No man comes to Steinvik to improve it. Not unless he means to shame somebody.”

 

A few men laughed, but softly, and not because the words were funny. They laughed because something had been said aloud that many had already felt and had not known how to name.

 

“I mean no shame,” Jens said.

 

“Then mind not to bring any,” Nils replied.

 

After that, folk spoke of Jens Jensen differently.

 

By the end of the week, Jens Jensen had become three different men in Steinvik. To the widows he was a thief, for thieves are easier to imagine than accidents. To the boys he was a murderer, for boys will sharpen any story if it makes them afraid and important. To the fishermen he was a city man with soft hands somehow hidden inside hard ones, and that was worst of all, because no one knew what such a man might think himself better than.

 

Only Ingmar Helse still believed him to be merely a quiet boarder with large hands and good manners.

 

“He washes his bowl,” Ingmar said more than once.

 

“A murderer may wash his bowl,” Nils answered.

 

“So may a decent man,” Ingmar returned.

 

“Then why does he not say what is in the sack?”

 

“Because it is his sack.”

​

This answer did not satisfy anyone, because a private thing in a small town is never thought private by right, but only by concealment.

 

And so the talk of Steinvik went for another week, until Jens Jensen couldn’t walk down the road without heads turning and whispers flying about like fish in a net. Children followed him at a distance and dared one another to shout after him. Once, a little girl asked him if there were bones in the sack. Jens stopped and turned, and the children scattered as if he had raised a hand against them.

 

But he had not raised his hand.

 

He only stood there a moment, looking at the place where they had been, and then went on toward the sea.

 

The next morning, someone had kicked mud over his boots where he had left them outside his door. The morning after that, the bread at breakfast was passed around the table and did not reach him until it had been fingered by every other boarder. Jens said nothing. He cut away the handled parts and ate what remained.

 

“You need not put up with that,” Ingmar told him later.

 

“I have put up with worse,” Jens replied.

 

“That is not always a virtue.”

 

Jens smiled a little at that. “No,” he said. “But it is sometimes useful.”

​

One day, as Jens Jensen was filling his belly with beer at the pub, Lars Larsen, who was in town because he could no longer fish since he’d lost his hands at sea, approached him.

 

“Just who are you, Jens Jensen?” Lars asked outright.

 

“I am Jens Jensen,” he replied, sipping his beer.

 

Lars twisted his eyes and said, “I mean why are you here in Steinvik? You’re no fisherman.”

 

“No, I’m no fisherman,” Jens agreed.

 

“Where’d you get those arms?” Lars asked. “Thick as trees.”

 

“And what affair is it of yours?” Jens asked, pushing his mug for another fill. “I may as well ask you why this town hasn’t gotten around to building a lighthouse. Will the mayor take the responsibility for the last crew lost at sea? I mind my business, you mind yours.”

 

The men nearby heard this, and though none of them said a word, the silence grew legs and walked ahead of Jens Jensen into every house in Steinvik.

 

Lars sat beside Jens and put his arm around him, smiling. “Listen, friend, it’s nothing personal. It’s just that we’re a curious folk, and you’re a quiet man.”

 

“Ah, well, that’s how I’ll keep it, then,” Jens replied. “But I’m not unfriendly. How about I buy you your next drink?” And the two men drank until it was time to go home.

 

When Nils the grocer received word from the city about Jens Jensen, he did not at first show the letter to anyone. He put it under the counter, beneath the account book, and looked at it from time to time as if it might become more useful by being left alone.

 

By evening, he had told three people that the city knew of Jens Jensen. By morning, six people knew that the city had confirmed something. By noon, everyone knew enough to be certain.

 

Jens awoke the next day to an angry mob at the door of Ingmar Helse’s boarding house.

 

“And what’s this?” Jens asked as he started to leave for the shore.

 

“Nils Nilssen heard from the city that you were a criminal,” Old Kålnese said.

 

“We want you to leave our town,” Nils added.

 

“I pay my room and board, don’t I, Helse?” Jens asked his boarder.

 

“No doubt about that,” Ingmar replied. “And he even washes all the dishes every night,” Ingmar added, defiantly shaking his fist at the crowd on his boarder’s behalf.

 

“We don’t want no criminal elements around here,” Nils hollered.

 

Jens Jensen slung his sack over his back and walked past the angry mob.

​

“What’s in the sack?” Old Kålnese hollered just as Jens passed her.

​

“My business,” Jens replied.

 

“You a thief? Tørrtonn Rottesen says he’s been missing a few things around his farm.”

 

“Why were you in jail in the city?” Nils demanded.

 

Jens Jensen ignored them and continued on his way towards the shore. Someone threw a stone at him, hitting him on the back of the heel. He shook his leg and continued on. Another rock hit him in the back of his left leg. He again shook off the pain, and continued, but the crowd followed, pelting him with stones. He did not walk faster when they grew closer.

 

“Stop that nonsense!” Ingmar Helse called out.

 

It was then that Nils Nilssen threw a rock that hit Jens in the back of the head. The great hulk of a man’s body became soft, fell to the ground, and did not get up. A pool of blood formed around his head as the angry mob surrounded it.

 

“You killed him, Nilssen!” Ingmar hollered as he limped towards Jens’ motionless body.

 

Lars Larsen came out from the crowd, waving his crippled hands in Nils’ face. “I saw you throw that stone! You’re in for murder! What did Jensen ever do to any of us?”

 

“I bet you find Rottesen’s things in the sack!” Nils returned, pointing at the sack.

 

Jens Jensen started to moan.

 

“He’s alive!” Old Kålnese shouted.

 

“Someone hold him down!” Nils hollered.

 

But no one stood forward to hold Jens down, and he slowly pushed himself onto his knees and then stood. He rubbed the back of his bloodied head with his huge hand and showed the blood to Nils. “That’s it, then,” he said. “Their souls are on your conscience.” He walked past Nils and the others, heading not for the shore, but in the direction that would take him out of town.

 

“Good riddance!” Nils shouted.

 

When Jens Jensen disappeared from view, Old Kålnese asked the others, “What say we go to the shore and see what he was up to?”

​

And so, the townspeople of Steinvik wandered to the shore, where they found a set of footprints on the beach. They followed these for some time, until they came to a pile of lumber.

​

“It looks like he’s been planing this wood,” Ingmar said. “It’s smooth like only a carpenter can smooth wood. He was a carpenter by trade. Probably had his tools in the sack.”

​

Twenty feet from the pile of wood stood the beginning of a frame. Near that was a large, flat piece of wood with plans penciled on it.

​

“What was he building?” Nils asked.

​

“I’m only going to guess from the plans,” Ingmar replied, screwing up his one good eye to focus, “but it looks like he was building us a lighthouse. Does that letter say why he was in jail, Nils Nilssen?”

Nils Nilssen hanged his head, as if in shame.

 

“What is it, then, Nils?” Ingmar demanded. “Let me see the letter.”

Nils handed the paper to Ingmar, who had to squint to read. Once he had read the letter, Ingmar Helse stared a stare of pure hatred at Nils.

 

“What does it say?” Old Kålnese asked.

 

“The mayor of the city regrets to say that they’ve never heard of our thick-armed carpenter, Jens Jensen.” He let the paper drop to the ground and limped back into town.