Secret playing

Secret playing is a brief story Ona Friesen tells August Epp about a squirrel and a rabbit. Its significance lies in how it reframes the women’s unread minutes: what seems to have no use for the women becomes something August is meant to carry away, while the animals’ hidden play offers an image of something witnessed even when it may not have been intended for an observer.

The Story Ona Tells

Ona tells August of a squirrel and a rabbit engaged in secret play. She suggests that perhaps she was not meant to see them playing, yet she did see them. The account hinges on that small discrepancy between what is hidden or unintended and what becomes known through witnessing; the evidence gives no further description of the animals or their play.

The Minutes and Their Purpose

The story comes as August is considering what the minutes can do for the women if they cannot read them. Ona’s animal story leads him to reconsider the assumption that the minutes must be useful to their intended readers. Perhaps, he realizes, their purpose all along was for him to take them. The story thus shifts the minutes from a document whose value depends on the women’s ability to read it to something carried beyond them by August.

Witness and Reversal

The parallel is suggestive rather than explicit: as Ona sees play she may not have been meant to see, August recognizes a purpose in the minutes that had not seemed apparent to him. His understanding gathers the minutes and life into the same thought, but does not settle into a simple conclusion. He smiles and laughs at the circling realization, even as he concludes that there was no point to the minutes. Secret playing leaves that contradiction intact: something may be witnessed, carried forward, and matter without resolving into a clear purpose.