Our Dried Voices (7 page)

XII

S
amuel forgot about the piece of paper he had discovered at the broken bridge until a few days later. He had carried it with him in the pocket of his tunic ever since he found it, along with the broken window latch that was now a bit duller from so much use. It was raining. He sat cross-legged on the bed he had slept in the night before as the thick drops streaked the windows of the sleeping hall. Feeling rather bored, he reached into his pocket and dug out the now-crumpled scrap.

The paper—the first sample he had ever encountered of such a material—was tough and fibrous, similar to papyrus, but not as crisp. The picture was scratched on one side in broad, mottled, black lines. The other side was blank. Two of the edges were perfectly even and came together at a square corner while the other two edges were ragged and appeared to have been torn or roughly cut. On the longer, torn edge, Samuel could just make out another short black stroke that disappeared beyond the tear, as though this drawing were part of a larger picture which had been ripped away.

He was studying this scrap when Penny approached his bedside. He did not notice her until she stood right next to him, and his stomach flip-flopped when he sensed her presence.

“Hello,” she said.

“Hello,” Samuel answered. “How are you?”

“Finethankshow—” she began, then, “I’m just fine, thank you.” She forced her lips wider as she repeated her old joke. “And how are you?”

“Very well, thank you,” said Samuel. He recalled the first time she had spoken those words. It was good to see her again, to hear her voice. And yet the same questions bubbled up inside him once more. He wanted to provoke her, drag her from the shadowy cave into which she had retreated the last time they spoke. But he did not know how to begin. He looked back down at the scrap of paper and rotated it mechanically in his hands. She took a cautious step forward to stand by his shoulder.

“It’s a bed,” she said after a moment.

“What?” He did not quite hear her at first, and continued to turn the paper even as he looked up at her. She leaned over him and gently rotated the paper in his hands.

“It’s a bed.”

Samuel stared at the picture. Then he stood up and glanced back and forth between the picture and his own bed. She was right. The drawing was unmistakably a picture of a bed. He had a strange impulse to throw his arms around her, but that did not seem right anymore. He sat back down and gazed at the scrap of paper as Penny slid down beside him.

“It is a bed,” he muttered. “But… why?”

He looked at her hopefully. She shook her head and shrugged.

He pressed on. “It was on one of the bridges. One of the broken bridges. The ones I fixed.”

“I watched you,” she said.

“But how did it… why…” Dimly he sensed an important difference between the picture on the torn scrap of paper and much of the world around him, the same difference that distinguished the bridges from the river beneath them, the fence from the trees it surrounded.

“Someone made this!” he blurted out. The sound of his voice shocked him, as though his uttering the phrase created the very thought in his mind.

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“Someone made this!” He stabbed at the paper with his finger. “Someone made this picture, on this paper. Someone made this. Just like someone made this bed, and this building, and…” He could scarcely believe the words tumbling from his lips. “Someone made this,” he continued, “and someone left it on the bridge.”

He looked at her to see if she understood. Her face bore a fiercely contemplative frown. He could imagine the struggle in her mind, for he had passed through it himself many times before. It was like being trapped in a deep and narrow shaft of water, clawing your way to the surface, to the light. You did not always make it. Sometimes the light went out before you could reach the air, and you felt a momentary stab of panic before your consciousness gave way and you drowned. Sometimes you gave in of your own accord, succumbed to the cool and peaceful blackness, relaxed the struggle. But still the panic was there at the end, though muted this time, spread flat like a trampled meal cake and overwhelmed by resignation and relief.

Penny stared at his wrists just above his hands, which still held the picture. “Someone made it.” She thrust the words out one by one. “They… draw it, draw it with…”

Her vocabulary failed her. But it was enough. The strain in her voice told Samuel that she understood, that she was not just repeating his words.

“Yes,” he said. A rock inside his chest melted away. “They dr—made it with… a crayon… something like a crayon.”

“Yes,” she said, and her face lit up with the sheer exhausted elation of having at last, if only for one brief moment, crawled out of the dark pool to lay stretched on her back on some rocky shore, gasping at the fresh air, soaking in the sun’s radiant warmth.

“And someone left it on the bridge,” he continued.

She bobbed her head, even as the hard certainty in her face began to soften.

He pushed on, hoping not to lose her. “But why? Why did they leave it there?”

It was the wrong tack. The question frightened her. It was like watching someone being sucked into quicksand. Her body did not move, but in her face and eyes he could see her legs kicking, her arms flailing wildly.

“Maybe… maybe…” She was almost under now, her hands grasped vainly at anything they could find: branches, grass, dirt; everything gave way under her weight, nothing could stop her slide. “Maybe they lost it.” And then she was gone.

Outside the rain mustered one last salvo, drumming on the glass panes as the sky blackened and obscured the windows with shadow. They sat together on the side of the bed, Samuel’s mind racing headlong through countless possibilities as Penny stared dully into the quiet hall.

* * *

Later that day, as he waited in line for the evening meal, Samuel was still thinking about the scrap of paper with the picture of the bed on it. As was usual on rainy days, the meal hall was packed, since most colonists
had
nothing better to do when it rained than wait for the next meal. The sky had lightened as the day waned, the rain slackened to a faint drizzle. Samuel moved mechanically through the meal line, his mind occupied by other thoughts. He was a few places from the front when another scrap of paper fluttered to the floor in front of him. He leapt forward, bumped into two other colonists, shoved them aside and snatched the paper off the floor. The other colonists backed away as he wheeled about in search of the person who had dropped this scrap. Blank faces and empty eyes stared back at him. Beyond them, those who had already received their meal floated away. He pushed through the circle of colonists around him, but there was nothing but cream-colored clothing and brown skin in every direction. Blurred figures drifted to and fro, waited in line, sat idly at the tables, the whole hall a shifting mass of greasy putty that slipped through his fingers each time he tried to grasp it.

Samuel felt sick. He slumped to a seat against the wall. The piece of paper in his hands was identical in consistency to the other fragment, thick and rough and relatively sturdy. It was torn on one side and bore a group of pictures draw
n in coarse, black marki
ngs.

Samuel studied the paper, turning it around in his hands in an attempt to determine the correct orientation, but he could make nothing of it. And whoever had dropped the paper was gone, if indeed someone had dropped it at that moment at all, if it had not been left there hours ago and just then kicked up by some stray breeze.

'
' '

The next morning, Samuel found Penny seated atop a hill, basking in the first rays of sunlight. He pushed the newest fragment of paper in front of her. “Look at this.”

Penny’s face slackened. Her dark eyes flitted between him and the picture.

“What do you think?” he asked. “What is it?”

She held the paper in her hands, turned it around and shook her head despondently. “I don’t know.”

“Please,” he begged, for both their sakes. “Please help me. Look again.”

“I don’t know,” she repeated.

She never apologized, but the fall of her words said it for her. The fleeting hope he had felt just a moment ago withered inside him like a rose petal in winter. Her eyes—big and deep and black as always—stared forlornly into his, and Samuel felt something way down inside himself begin to wither as well. The stomach-sickness again, fainter this time, but isolated in one spot. There was nothing left for him to say. He rose from where he had been crouched at her side with too much effort, as though he had aged considerably in those few moments. He felt his jaw tighten and there was a bitter taste in his mouth. He turned and walked away from her, down the hill, toward the river. He felt her gaze on his back, her silent pleas for his return. But he was beyond supplication then.

He walked along the river and turned the scraps of paper about in his hands, as his thoughts swirled with the soft gurgle of the river water and resonated soundlessly in his mind. He sensed there was some crucial realization he could not quite reach. The words in his head became overwhelming and he struggled to cut his way through them. The stream surged on beside him and the sun climbed overhead and glittered maddeningly in the current. He felt the mud squelch between his toes rooted to the bank. Then he pulled his feet free and dove headlong into the water. He exhaled deeply, bl
owing out all the air in his lungs into little bubbles that swarmed over his face and led his body up and away. The current dragged him along as he surfaced and floated on his back, and by the time he passed under one of his newly repaired
bridges, his mind had cleared once more.

XIII

S
amuel sat in the shade of a big tree near the river and stared at the two little scraps of paper in his hands. He had carried them in the pocket of his tunic for the past three days but had made little progress toward unlocking their meaning. It had been another warm day, and even now, late in the afternoon, the heat lingered in the meadow and the air hung thick with drowsy indolence. It was the perfect time to lean against the trunk of a shady tree as Samuel did now, to feel the hard roughness of the bark on his back, the tender kiss of the wind on his cheek, the perfect moment to venture off into dreamland, or just to sit, awake and comfortably sated, to feel the first pleasurable stomach-tremblings that indicated the imminence of dinnertime and the end of another day. It was the perfect time for a story.

The colony had an old tradition of storytelling, perhaps as old as the settlement itself, though no one knew for certain. But for as long as Samuel could remember there had always been a storyteller and there had always been a story. The story was told intermittently, sometimes once a week, sometimes once a month, without any designated time or place. Little by little, a small group would gather in the vicinity of the storyteller. They would sit and wait, and then at a moment of his choosing (the storytellers were almost always older males), he would begin his story.

Today the teller sat in the shade of the next tree over from Samuel. A handful of colonists had already gathered around him, and as the old man spoke, more settled into place at his feet, reverently whispering together, “Thestorythestorythestory…”

Samuel had listened to the storytellers many times before, and once again he felt the old sense of calm evoked by the words tumbling languidly from the teller’s mouth. But it was not until this moment, this telling, that Samuel actually heard the storyteller’s tale. He had listened many times to be sure, and could have recalled those stories immediately after their telling, could have rehashed their basic plots to another colonist in passing. But he had never
heard
them—a distinction as subtle as being poked by a pin and being pricked, between seeing the skin depressed and then rebounding, and feeling the pin actually pierce the surface, seeing the tiny red droplet slip past the tawny wall and catch on one of the downy hairs. And now, as Samuel listened to and heard this story, he realized with a short shock that was entirely out of tune with the soft heat and the mellow cadence of the teller’s voice that this story was the same story, that each teller had been telling one identical story all along.

It was a strange sensation for Samuel, to hear and remember the story at one and the same time, to have its fabric woven together in
déjà entendu
in his mind, like a woolen scarf knitted from both ends. The story itself was an old one, perhaps of an ancient world. Samuel recognized many of the words, but certain creatures, objects and relationships were entirely unfamiliar to him.

“Once upon a time,” the storyteller began, “there was a young boy named Sully, who lived with his family in a simple house on a quiet street…”

And the storyteller began to describe the adventures of this young male, Sully, and his “family,” which seemed to be something like a small colony. This family consisted of an adult female (“mother”), an adult male (“father”), the boy Sully and a young female of similar age (Sully’s “sister”), who was called Penny. The story began with a fight between the mother and father, complete with arguing, yelling and the like. Sully and Penny, not knowing the subject of the disagreement, and being too young to understand it anyway, were sent out of the building in which the family lived to play in the meadow of the park nearby.

There they played a game called “hide-and-go-seek,” in which one child concealed himself while the other’s eyes were closed, and then the latter opened her eyes and attempted to find the hider. They had played this game for some time, and it had fallen on Sully to be the seeker. Penny stifled her playful giggles and raced away to hide. Sully closed his eyes and began to count, seated comfortably on the soft grass in the shade of an old oak tree. It was a rather hot mid-afternoon in the park—very much like the climate in the colony at that time—and being rather sleepy from a full lunch, the warm air and the perpetual exercise that comes with being a young and healthy boy at play, when Sully’s eyes fell shut, he soon drifted off to sleep.

As he slept, Sully dreamt he was a much younger child and was sitting on the knee of his grandfather (another male member of the family, but older than the mother and father). His grandfather bounced Sully on his knee for a bit, and the two of them laughed together. Then his grandfather stopped the bouncing and turned Sully around on his knee to face him.

“Sully, my boy,” he said, “you’ve got your whole life ahead of you, and what a life it will be. You will see so many things, things wondrous and frightening to behold. You will see terrible beasts and hear beautiful music. You’ll meet all sorts of people, people who will go out of their way to help you along, and people who will rob you blind just as soon as look at you. You’ll fall in love, and out of love, and back in love again.

“Yes, Sully,” he went on as he leaned back in the chair, “it’s a long road ahead of you, one fraught on both sides with excitement and danger, adventure and boredom, joy and sorrow, peace and suffering. It won’t be easy, but you’ll see it through to the end, you will. And there’s just one thing to remember…”

His grandfather bent forward and whispered in Sully’s ear. “Don’t be afraid, Sully.” He settled back in his chair and went on with a conspiratorial grin and a glazed look in his eyes. “Yes, Sully, don’t be afraid, never fear. The road is long and winding, but you’ll get to the end someday. Yes, my boy, you’ve got your whole life ahead of you, and what a life…”

His voice faded and he craned his head back against the chair and fell asleep. He began to snore quite loudly, his mouth open, the sound reverberating from his throat like rolling thunder.

Then Sully woke up, and the thunder growled in the sky, and the rain began to fall. Fortunately, it was one of those brief and violent summer thunderstorms that shroud the Earth in darkness, with crackling thunder, searing lightning and torrential downpour, and then are gone just a short time later, leaving no sign of their presence. Sully crouched against the big oak tree until the storm cleared and then got up to look for his sister. But Penny was nowhere to be found. He searched all over the meadow for over half an hour before he gave up and decided she had probably just gone home when the rain started. Besides, even though he was quite fond of his sister, Sully relished this newfound independence, the chance to play on his own, to have a real adventure without her getting in the way, as she was often apt to do.

He set out across the park, not knowing or caring where he was headed, forgetting his parents’ argument and his dream and the rainstorm, and enjoying the pleasure of walking through a lovely meadow on a warm summer afternoon without a care in the world. As he passed a row of hedges near one end of the park, a thin and rather mangy-looking dog crawled out of the brush. The dog had only three legs and a melancholy look in its eyes that said it had lived a rather unfortunate life up to this moment. It wagged its tail and stared mournfully at Sully, seemingly divided between an ingrained mistrust of all human beings and a wellspring of hope that this kind and innocent-looking boy might be different.

Like all young boys, Sully loved dogs, and he wasted no time in
commencing to pet, scratch and rub the creature in all the ways pleasing to the canine species. The dog rolled onto its back to let Sully rub its belly, and its tail wagged furiously and its tongue dangled from its mouth as it panted gleefully. They went at it for a few minutes, both dog and boy quite enjoying the other’s company, until Sully’s vigorous and playful petting mistakenly rubbed up against a fresh scar buried under the dog’s fur. At once, the dog twisted its body away and snapped at Sully’s hand. Sully jumped up and extracted his fingers from the path of the dog’s vicious fangs, delivering an unintentional kick to the creature’s midsection as he did so. Whatever friendship had momentarily existed between them had been lost, and the dog snapped at Sully again and snarled through bared teeth. Sully took off across the park with the dog just behind him, barking and growling and snapping at his heels as he ran.

Sully was lucky the dog had just three legs, for dogs are considerably faster than young boys, and it was only this handicap that spared Sully some nasty bites. Nevertheless, the dog was scarcely a few steps behind Sully when he reached the street that bounded the park. Seeing a truck with its rear door slightly ajar, Sully leapt inside, slammed the door and slid the latch in place to lock it shut. The dog barked and growled for a moment, then, as if sensing it had chased away a potential friend, began to moan loudly. Sully was just beginning to feel sorry for the poor creature when the truck pulled away and drove down the street.

As the truck moved, some music began to play, an easy and lively melody that jingled and crackled through tinny speakers outside the truck. Sully recognized the tune immediately: it was an ice cream truck! He looked around and discovered he was inside the freezer hold of the truck, surrounded by a bounty of ice cream types and flavors. Marveling at his good fortune, Sully searched through the boxes of treats until he found his favorite: double chocolate caramel swirl. He took two bars, tore off the wrappers and popped one into each corner of his mouth. Presently, the truck came to a stop and Sully heard voices outside. The rear door opened and a pretty young woman stared at him with an expression of surprised amusement. Sully froze, a double chocolate caramel swirl bar in each hand and a considerable amount of chocolate smeared around his lips.

But the woman merely laughed and reached past Sully to grab a box of cherry popsicles. “It looks like we have a stowaway here,” she said. “Why don’t you stay and finish your ice cream while I take care of these customers?”

Sully, his eyes wide and mouth sticky with caramel, could only nod. The woman closed the door most of the way and said, “I’ll be back
for you in just a minute.”

Sully’s mind raced. Should he run? Or wait for her to come back? What would she do to him? Call his parents? Or the police? But before he could do anything, even finish his ice cream, she returned. She opened the door and held out her hand to him.

“You better come out of there before you freeze.”

Sully gulped down a bite of chocolate, took her hand and let her help him out of the truck.

“What’s your name, young man?” she asked.

“Sully.”

“Well, Sully, what am I going to do with you?” She eyed the two double chocolate caramel swirl bars in his hands and on his face. “That’s stealing, you know.”

Sully unglued his tongue from the roof of his mouth and began to talk as fast as he could. “Please ma’am, I didn’t mean to get in your truck. There was a dog chasing me and I just jumped inside and all of a sudden we were moving and I didn’t even know…”

She laughed. “All right, all right, Sully. I think we can work something out. I have a few more stops to make today and I could use some help. And since you owe me two ice cream bars…”

“I could be your assistant!”

“That’s right. My name is Lucy. Come sit up front with me. Welcome aboard!”

Sully climbed into the front seat next to Lucy and off they went, cruising down the road, the music playing merrily all the while, calling the children out to buy their treats. They stopped every few blocks, and Lucy stood at the window of the truck and took orders from the long lines of children, while Sully handed her the correct ice cream bar or went around to the back of the truck to get a fresh box.

“Well, Sully,” said Lucy, after they had been driving around for about an hour, “only two more stops left. Have you enjoyed yourself today?”

“Oh yes, ma’am, very much,” Sully answered.

“Good. You don’t have to call me ma’am, you know.”

“Okay.”

“So would you like to help me again tomorrow?”

“I don’t know. On Tuesday my mother always takes us to the market…”

“Oh, I’m sure she wouldn’t mind,” said Lucy. “Besides, didn’t you like helping me? And you can have all the ice cream you want.”

“Yes, ma—Lucy,” Sully said. But he wasn’t sure anymore. He liked to go with his mother and Penny to the market. And Penny—where was she now? He had forgotten all about her ever since he discovered the box of double chocolate caramel swirl bars. He missed her very much, and wondered what had happened to her. Even Lucy’s golden blonde hair and the cheerful music of the truck now reminded him of his sister. And so at the next stop when Lucy asked him to go to the back and fetch a new box of peppermint sandwiches, Sully slipped around to the other side of the truck, ducked into the yard of the nearest house and scurried away. The sweetly enticing music called to him as he went, until he climbed over a fence and scrambled between some bushes, through the yard of the next house and onto the adjacent street.

By now Sully was completely lost. He could not remember at all where they had driven in the ice cream truck after they left the park. Penny and the rest of his family seemed very far away at that moment. He wandered along the sidewalk in search of any familiar landmark until he spotted a group of older boys eyeing him menacingly from the opposite side of the street. Sully looked away and began to walk a bit faster. Out of the corner of his eye he could see the older boys moving in the same direction across the street. Sully quickened his pace again and the boys did the same. He reached a corner and stopped to let a car pass, and the boys crossed over to his side of the road. The car drove by and Sully raced across the street. The boys followed.

“Hey kid!” one of them called. “Don’t be a chicken! We just want to talk to you.”

Sully looked back and saw them grinning fiendishly. They were gaining on him. He darted across the next street and was nearly struck by a passing car. The boys stopped to let the car pass, and Sully ducked into an alleyway. It was a dead end. Sully looked around wildly for any escape. The boys’ pounding footsteps drew nearer. He saw a manhole cut into the pavement, its cover cracked open just a bit, and having no other way out, he climbed in and pulled it shut behind him. He scrambled down the ladder to a narrow ledge next to the splashing, surging sewer water and ran down the tunnel. After a few minutes of hearing only his own footsteps, Sully stopped and looked behind him. The sewer was empty. He was all alone.