A Solitary SoundI don't know exactly why I did it, but I have an idea. I think you'll understand after you hear my story.We'd left Bakersfield and that first glorious view of the Mojave behind us. You know the one where you come up over a hill and there's a ribbon of road winding down the mountains, and all you see ahead is miles of unbroken flatland, dotted here and there with sagebrush and tumbleweed. I was doing a steady 70, trying to keep the image in view. I love the desert, having grown up in Barstow, a place most people drive through on their way to Vegas or LA. During my childhood, I lived with heat that would send Satan himself running for the cold section of an air-conditioned Safeway. Rosemary, my companion through life, sat beside me. Her ready wit always tilted toward the bitter edge, complaining I was way over the speed limit. She said the parade of yucca trees was swimming by so fast, it looked like a picket fence. To me, it was like music, a lovely symphony. I'd made a comment, you know the kind of meaningless thing you say when you're walking on eggshells and you don't want to spoil the mood. I'd remarked about her new ability to read in the car. "Yes," she said then went back to her paperback. I studied my face in the rear-view mirror, the lines under the eyes, the receding hairline, then looked down at the scaliness of my hands gripping the wheel. Jesus, the best years of my life. Gone. "I thought it made you nauseous," I said, not taking my eyes off the road. "Yes. It used to, but I'm fine now. Really amazing, isn't it?" "What?" "I can't eat asparagus or Brussels sprouts anymore, but I can read in a moving vehicle without throwing up. Bloody miraculous." "Truly one of life's deeper mysteries," I told her, and then I thought of Phil, those carefree Saturday mornings so long ago. The drives into town to browse Healy's Hardware, to fill up the tank at the corner Chevron, to buy mini-cheesecakes, fresh from the oven, at Maddock's Bakery, proudly telling the clerks, "Yes, he's mine. He's my son." I stopped for gas at Boron. A young man in dirty jeans and a tattered jacket stood by the roadside. He was holding something written on a flap of a cardboard box, and Rosemary read the sign aloud, slowly, word for word like a child newly hooked on phonics. "Traveling. Homeless. Hungry. God Bless." She looked away then said, "Traveling. That's a laugh." I rolled down the window, pulled a dollar from my wallet and gave it to the man who raised his cap in thanks. "Always the benevolent romantic, Howard. By the way, the light's changed." So it went like that, a combination of events, words, and memories. Fate, I suppose. I tried to be pleasant, but she wouldn't let up. At one point I turned on the radio, an easy listening station, the volume high. Since the advent of my thyroid problems, I'd suffered a mild tinnitus. My doctor explained how environmental sounds could activate the buzzing,increase the ringing in my ears. And so I used the radio as a buffer, a wonderful way of tuning her out. My thoughts drifted back to a summer like this one, the day we received the letter and knew our son was never coming home. He'd wanted to join the service, and I was happy he'd managed to get away, something I knew I'd never accomplish. Peace time, for chrissakes, a few minor skirmishes, but nothing serious going on. I knew he'd be safe. But then the impossible happened. A sudden storm and his plane went down over some remote spot in the Kalahari. They never recovered his body. So you'd think I'd hate the desert, right? But I don't. I find it peaceful, a place for reflection. We were about a mile beyond the dilapidated 66 where we'd stopped to gas-up, when she saw a sign we'd passed before on our drive north. This time, she wanted to stop. It was a run down museum, or herpetarium, I think they call it, with a yellow sign and bright red lettering above the door boasting the one and only "live" two-headed snake. The rest is a bit hazy, so I'll give you the facts as I know them, as they were told to me later by the sleepy looking deputy who whisked me off in his patrol car to one of those jails right out of "Bad Day at Black Rock." Calling it a one-horse town would be kind. We go inside and the lights flicker from a set of sconces drooping down the wall like long, silver tongues. The young attendant, a kid probably still in high school, his face covered with pits and crevices, motions us to a glass container, a piece of wire covering the top of the case, then he leaves us alone. The only sound, a hissing that ignites the white noise in my head. I'm not really sure why I did it, why I removed the lid, grabbed her arm and pushed her hand down into the slimy, slithering mass, holding it there until it bit her finger, the one with the rings. Not once, but twice. Perhaps the reptile was attracted to the shiny stones. Who knows? Anyway, I'm on my own now, free to read, sleep and think as I wish. That's the situation at the Men's Colony, another sort of desert, a place of isolation and contemplation, the solace broken only when I allow it to happen, when I focus on my constant companion, the ringing in my ears and know I am not alone. |