Was it getting louder? He closed his eyes, focused his mind. Seemed like it was coming from one place then another, from far away and right below. How many others heard it, and where? He shook his head, gazed into the distance. Yes, it was definitely getting louder.
The land could swallow you whole. In the heat-drugged draggy aftermath of hopeful morning, when everything drooped and hope slowly deflated, without a plan of action, without tasks and chores and little things to check off it was easy, oh so easy, to let the endless, merciless hours of afternoon drag you down, down…
Why not just give in, let the civilized world’s expectations and demands slough off like dead skin, and simply be.
Then, simply, not be.
Opulent white clouds sailed serenely over in grand disdain for the grubby earthly doings below. Must be nice, being a cloud. Instead, he’d been an architect. Thirty-seven years, a good run, mostly domestics, apartments, the odd strip mall. No great legacy—a hack, really. Never even made full partner, didn’t care to. So, now what?
His dad, a man’s man, who pushed him into his career, would have loved the place. Even so, after a day on the land he would have asked, “So, what all do you do around here?”
Do-do-do, mantra of Western man. You are what you do.
There was always wood to gather for the stove, chopping, carting, piling…a couple of sagging shingles on the cabin…fixing the water catchment, again…sweeping rat shit out of the shed…We are what we do. Little old rat-shit-sweeper me.
Maybe later. He held his arms out and let the breeze caress him.
They fell in love with the land when a friend of her family first brought them up, and the love never waned, despite the arduous work of rebuilding the ruined cabin and putting up the shed—ah, youth!—and the long drive from the city, the absence from comfortable, convenient urban life, the sense of surrender. Not to mention the bears and cougars: things that could eat you. And the lassitude of doing nothing, which could consume you in subtler ways.
His wife made lists and quietly ticked things off, but for her, just being on the land was doing enough.
He read, dozed, wandered, stared, pondered, napped, wondered, mused, brooded, and was.
Death, too, was. All around: bears, cougars, coyotes, lightning, forest fire, falling snags, wasp stings, poison sumac, ennui. Sometimes they heard coyotes howling in the distance. That poor girl in Canada, a musician, killed by coyotes. What had her last words been? Something to try to calm the animals, maybe—Hey, guys, what’s up?—just before they tore her throat out. Unimaginable. Poor girl. The injustice, the wretchedness of existence was overwhelming.
Only, this was living for real: when dying was an imminent possibility.
Become ghost: there’s a thought.
Ghost-like, he walked slowly away from the cabin and into the depths of the land, forty acres less the mule, down the path to the road. Past the compost pile he came to a patch of dark turds: bear scat, fresh, too. He clapped hands, made a barking sound. Nothing more dangerous than a surprised bear.
Except maybe lack of purpose. Hard to define purpose now, with no co-workers, no clients, no schedules, no meetings, no work. No cocktail parties, no office cruises, no water-cooler flirtations.
Just her, and she was enough. Twenty-nine years, that was something—no, that was everything. Transcendent. Life’s ultimate gift. How he had pined for it as a youth. He remembered that every time they made the five-hour drive to the land, enduring the interstate, the Republican yard signs, the sad, dusty valleys, the cramped legs, the waning sense of wonder—remembered that her profile against the far hills reminded once more him how damn lucky he was.
A flock of nuthatches yank-yanked, the tinny trumpeting always reminding him of the old Great Northern taking him and his brother to summer camp in the summer of ’67, his first time away from home, where he first heard nuthatches and first felt the touch of another…then carried him home to crippling loneliness, missing the games, the hikes, nights under the stars and the river and the boys…one boy. He got over it in time and moved on—that’s what life was all about, wasn’t it, moving on, and now he could look back happily as he kept moving on. Now, that he had a wife, a soulmate, a happy home, and a place in the forest with nuthatches all their own.
The clouds wheeled overhead, the land breathed, unperturbed by his footsteps, and in his head Bolero circled, around and around. Old Vern on Spokane Public Radio had played it the previous evening, the eternal mantra of the Mediterranean, clouds and sea and earth. She chuckled when it came on—“Haven’t heard that one in a while. I wonder what Bo Derek is up to these days.”
“Probably in some home, wallowing in her own filth. Never saw the movie.”
“Makeout music—or eat paella music…”
“One then the other sounds about right.”
And now, the damn thing would not let him be. But he loved it, had since he first heard it as a kid in dear Mrs. Turner’s music class, and on the land, what could be more fitting?
He came to the road and trudged uphill. It was good to walk, feel the curve of the land, feel his body on earth’s body, as music circled around his brain and made him feel part of it all. He stepped into a small clearing, sat down with his legs splayed on the downslope, and let the sun soak in. The valley lay at his feet and stretched away to the south and infinity, once the great inland ocean and home to plesiosaurs and now hardscrabble for scowling ranchers lumbered with cammo and conspiracy, thin-lipped wives bearing Bibles and grudges, depressed kids aching to get out. Same old story everywhere: in the bosom of nature’s wonders, human misery. Why couldn’t we do better?
The rolling mountains to the east concealed countless mysteries, beyond them lay a continent full of heartache, heartbreak, death, and life. The valley lay before him, naked. Up here was where he belonged. A swallowtail sailed by in glorious affirmation of life above pettiness and angst. How long had it been since he’d last seen one in town? Too long. Fading away like everything else now. Thanks to the little two-legged joker. The clouds marched on, on, on, in slow march, dum-da-da-da-dum-da-da-da-dum-dum…
Where had tidy, modest little Ravel found such passion? Perhaps in a tidy, modest little sex life, spiced with occasional just-so latherings of Latin ecstasy. There had to be ecstasy, somewhere. That relentless drum, sounded simple but doing it so mechanically, flawlessly, for, what, fifteen minutes? He had played drums in his youth, including a couple of seasons of percussion in Thalia Symphony, and he knew how much discipline such music demanded. Controlled orgasm, the ultimate discipline. Okay, Maurice, it’s you and me and the wilderness.
A sarvis bush rustled, making him swivel around, hair bristling. How would it feel if a cougar suddenly pounced on him from behind? It could happen, right now: a savage blow, a crushing weight, a stabbing pain, darkness. There were worse ways to go, many worse ways. And why should not an aging body sacrifice itself for the sustenance of another, a magnificent being of the land?
Well, if it happened it happened. Why not offer sustenance to another of God’s creatures? Some would consider it an honor.
No cougar came, no bear, no coyote. Instead, the hum. An almost subliminal low-frequency sound they discovered one of their first nights on the land. He heard it as he lay in his sleeping bag and thought it was a truck coming down the valley. But it did not die away, it just hung there in his head. Honey, he said, do you hear a hum?
She put down her book, listened. Yes, she said, I think so. A truck or something.
I don’t think so. It doesn’t go away.
You’re right. Hmm.
Over the years they heard the hum sometimes, did not hear it other times, and were not completely surprised to discover that it was a known phenomenon, people had even been interviewed about it on the news. It came, it went, it varied in intensity. Speculation abounded on the hum’s source—electromagnetic waves…secret military outposts…aliens—but no one actually knew where it came from. Just now the hum seemed louder than usual. Perhaps there was better reception on the hill. He gazed out at the valley, up at the nearby mountain. Are you out there, somewhere? What are you trying to say?
A metallic ping broke the mood: his wife in the cabin, fixing supper. The sweetest sound of all. That morning the sun came in and lit up her lovely face and soft silver hair, and she looked so beautiful in her light blue blouse that he could not help but kiss her, long and gentle, the kind of kiss sadly too seldom now.
She looked up at him with an enigmatic smile. “What was that for?”
“For being you.”
“Thank you, honey.”
When did passion slip into devotion? Their old naked Adam-and-Eve walks, genitals browned by the sun—last time he had suggested it, she had smiled tightly and said, Oh, honey, I don’t think so. Were her “honeys” now faintly tinged with mockery?
So much of their time now was laden with long silences, but he had always been a quiet man. She expected so little, demanded less. But the coughing, the stoops, the crazy-old-man hair, the rickety kneelings and labored standings—all must be taking its toll on devotion. Not to mention the farting. Just this morning, as she knelt nearby, he let one almost in her face. “A hummingbird!” she’d exclaimed, peering around for the little flier. He was glad for her to think so. Women detected weakness; next stop: contempt. It was not impossible that she had come to quietly and ever so gently despise him.
But he didn’t think so. He thought of her in the cabin preparing their supper, all their many suppers on the land, the ecstasy of their early years and how such ecstasy could never really die, and he thought again of old man Bazarov in Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons, reassuring his wife, You and I are like mushrooms growing in a hollow tree. Here we sit side by side without budging. I shall stay with you forever, just as you will stay with me.
He stood and walked up the hill, left the road, and moved through the brush to a small rock outcropping. The formation was riven with fractures, splotched with strange lichen, and looked immeasurably old. Ancient, probably, even when the valley was ocean bottom. Near the center was a slight depression, ringed by crumbling stone, that always made him think of The Mound, an eerie tale by Zealia Bishop and H. P. Lovecraft about a small hill in Oklahoma that concealed an entrance to a vast subterranean world. He liked to think the rock was just such a portal, or an asteroid from millions of miles in space, holding immense cosmic secrets. Including the hum? It didn’t seem any louder here, but maybe that wasn’t how it worked.
He sat down and stroked the warm rock, felt the patches of different colors, the weird fungal growths, shadows of things that had crept upon the rock eons ago. He pulled a knot of brush aside, moved a couple of smaller stones, and peered closely into the chinks. Was there a darkness there—a vagrant breeze emanating? The dharma wheel turned, the clouds passed, Bolero played, the hum hummed, all life was a mystery. Perhaps one was not meant to find, only to seek, and to wonder at something beyond knowing. To accept one’s own smallness. He could accept that. To pretend otherwise was fooling oneself. Had the Buddha heard the hum? The Om chant: perhaps it was a mimicry—an answer. Thousands of years of trying to reach the infinite, guided by hum, the herald of enlightenment. He began humming—Ummmm—ummmm…
A small cloud swam in front of the sun, throwing everything into shadow. Minor. Light, the great controller. Or was sound? Tonality—how a semi-tone’s difference made such a difference in our psyche! The sunny valley dimmed into the crepuscular realm of The Mound. This was how it would be when the asteroid approached. Twilight of the gods, now become clay. The dinosaurs—now there were gods! No need of any outside deities for them. So many millions of years successfully occupying their niche without endangering its very survival.
Depressed by the sudden darkness, he stood and strode back downhill, came to the shed, and went inside. Relics of their early years here populated the cool darkness—rusty scythes and sickles…an Aladdin’s lamp…Tin Cat rat trap…the water catchment parts he had yet to restore. Dead flies lay on the window ledge. He gently prodded one but it remained motionless. Trapped inside, they slowly ran out of steam. Poor things, all that animal energy, wings beating at thousands of times a minute, buzzing, buzzing, flying, then running down, down. Hell of a plan.
Bringing the cabin back from a tumble of ruins and building the shed—it seemed insanely impossible now, but youth had been equal to schlepping and laying plywood floors and sinking raw timber posts, putting up roofs, both of them together, sawing and hammering and muscling in one hot, sweaty, painful, glorious summer. They made love fervently, slept deliciously, thought only of the next day’s work.
“We could die here,” she whispered.
“Mmm. A good place to die.”
“We’ll have to remember that.”
Aspen leaves danced in the breeze, casting flickering shadows against the shed wall and making the little room a dreamscape. A perfect place to die. He stood in the center of the shed and listened. It was louder now, he was sure of it, almost as if emanating from beneath the planks. He put his hand down and felt the floor. Nothing. But that meant nothing, the hum could be generated miles—possibly hundreds of miles—down, in that underworld we knew almost nothing about. The vast, vibrating amniotic fluid of Earth. Ummm…ummm…
He walked out and leaned against the shed wall. The sunlight had returned but the shadows were now longer, the light softer. The day was growing old. The mountain to the west loomed like a great bear, a pileated woodpecker guffawed. Something crashed in the woods. Possibly one of the neighbor’s cows, but just as possibly…He clapped his hands, let loose a resonant Ahhhhh! that echoed from the surrounding mountain. Would the bear turn away, or plod implacably onward and devour him? He spread his arms, ahhhhhed again. Was that an answer? No, a continuation. The hum was singing to him. His body began vibrating, the hum filled his brain, Bolero playing the backbeat. And now he knew: The hum wasn’t a sound at all. It was absence of sound: the land itself, minus traffic and sirens and airplanes and electronics. Speaking to him, to all who listened.
He entered the nearby clearing where they used to pitch their tent while building the cabin. He hadn’t been scared of bears, at least two of which had come within fifty feet as they were outside working, or much of anything, then. Why now? The trees on the far mountain erupted in a sudden blast of wind that startled him. It was a calm day. Where did that come from? An ominous portent.
He looked around, at the crumbling ceramic pot his wife had made years ago…the tree with the deer antlers stuck on it…more bear scat…around and around…
His eye landed on the near embankment and something bright glinted at him. He walked over and saw an object emerging from the crumbling bank and gently pulled it from the dirt. It was a red and silver tin box of medium dimensions. He prised the cover open and found a small black and white photograph, curled and brittle, of an elderly couple. Or maybe not so elderly—maybe no older than they. A hill in the background, trees. Penciled on the back in neat cursive were names. “Wow,” he whispered. He returned the photo to the box, returned the box to the hole, returned to the cabin, and led her back to the spot. He extracted the box and showed her the photograph. “Oh, my,” she whispered—”who could they be?”
“Not your dad’s friends?”
“I don’t think so. These folks look like much older–an earlier time.”
“Homesteaders, maybe. People who lived here before your friends.”
“I always thought this was just their old family summer place. That sort of looks like our mountain…” She gazed at the names on the back. “Could they actually have lived here?”
“Just a single photo in a box. Strange.”
“Maybe they left it here to be found.” She looked at him, nodded. “I think that’s exactly what they did. They left his here for us.”
“Reaching out….”
“To the future…”
“What’ll we do with it?”
“We could bring it to the cabin. Or maybe we should just leave it here where you found it.” She smiled happily. “Yes! Let’s put a photo of us in it, with our names on the back, just like they did, and a note telling about us and the land, and about finding this, and put it back just where you found it.”
“A time capsule! We should make a marker of some kind, I’ll see what I can rustle up.” He thought of who might venture up here in ten, twenty, a hundred years. He felt a rush of excitement, more than he had in ages. “Yeah,” he murmured, “a time capsule.” He sat down on a nearby log, took the box from her and placed it gently in his lap and began drumming gently on it with his fingers. It produced a sweet, soft, tinny sound, almost vocal. He knew the pattern as if he’d been playing it all his life—
dum-da-da-da-dum-da-da-da-dum-dum
dum-da-da-da-dum-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da
The ancient rhythm filled the air, he smiled up at his wife, standing beside him in the clearing of ancient land. The only humans for miles, perhaps the only ones who had ever lived here. Or perhaps followers in the steps of another couple, who treated themselves to snack food packaged in a shiny metal box, then had the idea to propel themselves forward in time. And, hoping against hope, to connect.
She sat down beside him. “Whatcha playin’?”
“Bolero. Been rattling around in here all day, thanks to Vern. Time me.”
“Time you?”
“Ten minutes.”
She smiled, a new—or perhaps very old—kind of smile. “Okay.” She looked at her watch and nodded. “Go.”
He settled into the rhythm, frowning in concentration, nodding in time, and slowly began to relax and let his fingers take over. He closed his eyes and his mind soared through the Pillars of Hercules into a shining land of infinite possibility, sun and warmth and joy, joy in all its forms, cerebral, spiritual, physical…a land where, in a century or two or less, new beings would walk and listen and love…walk, with their spirits and many others…
“Time’s up.”
“Huh?” He shook his head, blinked. “Wow,” he whispered, “I’ll have to do that more often.”
“You were in the zone!”
“Guess so…far and near…things all around…So, how’d I do?”
“Didn’t miss a beat. You should’ve been a drummer.” She kissed him and snuggled close. “Do you hear it?”
“The hum? Loud, isn’t it?”
“Louder than I’ve ever heard.”
He took her hand, they sat in silence a moment, then he murmured, “Two mushrooms on a hollow log, side by side. I will stay with you forever, and you will stay with me.”
She looked curiously at him, then kissed him and peeled off her T-shirt. In another moment they stood forth in the sun and the warmth of the day and the gentle breeze and the land and the sweet low hum enveloping them. Two swallowtails danced overhead, their shadows passing over the two bodies below, and in the nearby trees, a black bear sniffed the air, snorted softly, then moved deeper into the wood. Nothing here worth bothering with.