Equal Temperament

On the final week before he retires his van and his tuning kit for good, Harold Bell drives out to the Whitfield place to put one more upright in order before it’s sold. Under the fallboard he finds a rubber-banded stack of a child’s practice cards, and the ordinary mechanics of his work — temperament strips, beat rates, unisons brought into line — start to loosen something he has kept carefully tuned for three years. A story about the difference between silence and rest, and about what it costs to strike the first note again.