A Beautiful Song, Very Melancholy and Very Old

THAT SUMMER, FLIES SANG around the trash heaps and grocery stands and alleyways of Toronto. Millions of flies, humming and darting about the head, landing on collars and cheekbones and lips, rubbing polluted legs together before lighting off for road apples fresh-plopped from some wormy cart horse, then onto swinging meat at the St. Lawrence Market, the nipple of a baby's bottle, or a roll of sanitized gauze at the Victoria Hospital for Sick Children, waiting for an open wound.

The flies were luck for Leland, who came home from the leather factory, dyed completely red, pinching a clipping from the Star. The clipping had been passed among the men who worked in the dye yard, so it was colored at the edges: oxblood and blue and bruise-yellow. But Leland had snuck away with it, and he'd held it, careful, knowing he might sully it by folding it into a red pocket or clutching it in a red hand.

Again, his teenaged daughter, Myrtle, waited at the doorstep. Her disappointed look already fixed, like she'd worn it all day in anticipation of his return. She braced herself against the jamb, pinning the screen door wide open while the flies wheeled in and out of the house. Even her hair ribbons seemed to wilt in the heat of July. A fly settled on a loose ribbon's end. Myrtle slapped the fly away.

She eyed the clipping Leland held up like some flimsy standard. What's that? she asked.

Music lessons. Leland gave a flourish in imitation of a conductor and tucked the clipping into the pocket on Myrtle's apron.

Myrtle retrieved it, read it aloud.

grand prize competition

SWAT THE FLY!

millions of flies are to be assassinated

The Fly Has Got No Friends, and He Does Not Deserve Any—

He Carries Disease to the Baby and Fills the City Cemeteries.

The newspaper would award a youth, aged sixteen or younger, fifty dollars—a fortune, for a youth—for killing the most flies. Carcasses would be received at the Health Office on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays between four and five p.m. Breeding of flies strictly prohibited. Fly breeding was a public nuisance and a menace to health. The object was to make the city a flyless city, to obliterate the unstopping buzz and the teeming maggot patch.

You're just the one to win it, said Leland.

I don't know how to slap but a couple flies. Myrtle worked her heel against her ankle, after some itch.

To catch thousands of flies, a girl needs a trap.

I don't know about traps.

Don't you know I'll make you the traps, stupid? How many times have I gone fishing with a whole coffee can full of flies? We've got enough flies right here in Cabbagetown to fill barrels! He motioned past the skimpy yard. There on the street, as if he'd called her up, the Rag Lady passed with her reeking cart, her gray hair knotted into terrible burrs.

How many music lessons does fifty dollars buy? asked Leland. You'll have enough music lessons to take you to Carnegie Hall.

Mother says supper's ready, said Myrtle. She turned back into the house, letting the screen door slap closed before Leland could follow.

Only mistrust from the girl, who scowled at Leland over the dinner table, the steaming crock of purple cabbage and the boiled corned beef. Flies settled on the food. A crazy waving of hands to shoo them, the whole family waving: Leland, his wife, Minnie, and their six daughters, all crushed around the meal. Myrtle's face, crimped and sour as the cabbage. Leland could hardly watch her without feeling soured. But he still cared for Myrtle. Why? Why this bitter one, this lanky, homely one, fifteen-and-a-half, who now spat the fatty end of her meat, well sucked, back onto her plate? Again she looked at him and her look was daggery. But she was the only...