As I began to read I noticed a distinct lack of emotion in  Strout’s “Sign.” Tommy Guptill’s farm has been burned to the ground but there’s no sense of devastation or upset. Chronologically, the order of the story is very strange. The story is told from the past tense, he’s old enough to have full grown grand-children, but we also receive glimpses of his past, when he was 35 for instance. Tommy is a simple man. Strout’s writing is not complicated or elevated; he’s bright but probably doesn’t have a Ph.D. God’s words to Tommy early on seem to articulate just how simple he really is “It’s all right, Tommy.” He is regularly caught thinking about his past life, and perhaps the voice of the tired but satisfied and content old man is why I believe him to sound so simple. Had we gotten the story from the 35-year-old Tommy, he might seem more energetic, more passionate. Or maybe he’d be the same.

Tommy is also a man who is concerned with his reputation and character. He worries about what people think of him and holds his family very dear. Strout’s choice to create Tommy as a janitor is one that allows him to be both “invisible” and observant. He contains so many of his own secrets and those of the students in the hallways. He realizes and tries to understand the sadness of so many of the people in this town: Lucy B. with her small and frail body and Marilyn Macauley with her nervous face and distant husband. He is also a man who confronts very real problems; we can relate to Tommy because experiences are not so distant from our own.

I’m interested in the presence of nature in this story with repeated images of trees — one that had been struck by lightning and now lay on its side and another that felt a breeze Tommy had not — but also the vine Lucy B. draws on the blackboard and the soil of the remnants of the farmland. These soybeans seem to represent new life and new beginnings in this small town, but it’s just not enough to create any real happiness. The image of the sun is repeated as well, especially while Tommy and Pete talk in his car. “The sun had grown so high in the sky it could not be seen from the car.”

I have so much more I want to say about this small story but finally, I’m struck and almost bothered by the presence of secrets. The story ends with a new secret, one Tommy can use to restore himself in some way. All of these people are so troubled and we see Pete as the tragic consequence of holding such a terrible secret for so long. He’s deteriorated, alone, and has struggled every day with the knowledge that his father may have started the fire.