The Sound of Water

The Sound of Water

-

Water. Drips of the translucent stuff tapped the liquid mesa of a faux crystal punch bowl, and pulsed with every rep. The sound is curious and quaint. Ted looked past his knuckles as interlaced fingers anchored the circumventing arms around his lower leg bones. The room was still, and the air was wet. Light rain pattered the tin roof that's worn and rusted. He took a breath, then stirred and reached down with one hand to stand up onto his feet. He interlocked his fingers again and did some stretching, then turned to the window. He waited. 

-

She should be there. He couldn't figure out what took her all day. They were supposed to talk about the recent debacle. He drew breath again, filled with angst. Ted tried to deaden his nerves, clearing out his thoughts. He moved to the rough fibrous recliner. His fingers tapped the arm rests’ faces. A miniscule dance of rhythmic flutter, barely noticeable and fleeting. A huge sigh pushed out from his abdomen. The chair flipped back as his feet kicked out. 

-

Heart pounding, he focused to bring it to a semi-halt. A hard ‘thump thump’ in his chest, then a pause. ‘Thump thump’, and he held his breath, creating a negative vacuum. He shifted the next heartbeat into its cosine auscultation from the sine pattern embodied previously. ‘Thump, thump’, pause, draw out that pause, ‘thump, thump’, pause, ‘thump, thu-’, pause, ‘thum-, thu-’, ‘thu-, th-’, ‘th-, t’, ‘tap, tap’, ‘tap, tap’, and release… After restraining the war horse back into a gentle cadence, Ted let go of the reins, entrusting that his heart would behave. 

-

Pushing play on a cd player, sliding the headphones on, keeping it still while it plays the plastic record with antishock mode enabled, he turned the dial up and listened to the amplitude climb. At the summit, the poor-quality speakers exceeded any semblance of competency. He dialed it back in a subtle amount until the sound was acceptable. The songs are a range of flowing brush strokes on an infinite canvas, visible in the emotive aspects of a living soul. He burnt etchings with a laser into this spinning plastic foil disc, a relic so quickly manifested, and even quicker to dematerialize. No one will miss the skipping scratches. Moth eaten, lice ridden, damned things.

-

It was and is a continuous flow of color mixes. Tastes and tones. Percussion and arrangements. A finite and vast waterfall that flows in both directions. Influences from before took part in sculpting the present, just as everything that comes after would, in reflection, do the same. His interpretations were built into new associations which require the mind to demolish the vacant and occupied structures. The freedom in form to create and destroy, continuously - Ted didn't know it yet, but he was blessed. He had an ear. 

-

Track 5 ended, and track 6 had 7 seconds on it when the door opened. Ted’s eyes cracked open, as he was just drifting away into a dense forest of undefined thoughts. He reached down and pulled the lever for his foot-rest as Michelle was five steps into the house and began to speak, but inaudibly. Ted pulled the headphones off his ears, and caught the last couple words, but only partially deduced what she said. “I was waiting for y -. I thought you would be home at 3.”

-

“I had to stay late. Angela didn’t show up to relieve me, and that made me late for an appointment I had to attend to after.” In the midst, Michelle shuffled in two arms full of bags and things brought in from the car. The stove light was all that gave luminescence, and the night was approaching. Michelle said, “Can you go get what’s left in my trunk, please?”

-

Ted stood up and moved through the open portal into the cool evening air, just before the last light. The toe of his shoe caught the step and tore, serving to remind him that he needs new toes. The road curved with the cliffs across its breadth, and the valley opened up with its stream on his side. Trees of maple, pine, birch, and alder gave an appearance of some kind of photoshopped commercial drug ad cast against the backdrop of beauty. But this was real. The spruce, the ivy vines, leaf pallets of orange, vermillion, yellows, and golds, browns, reds, and greens all defy nihilism. 

-

With blue scraggly grasses, some having purple edges to their blades, old buildings set up some time long ago on large plots of land. Heavenly foliage spread out of great nimbus clouds. They darkened to violet and red hues against the encroaching black firmament studded with quivering lights through the waters. The spirit of this place rests on peace. As far as Ted’s eyes could reach forth, filed away in the underbrush of his mind, there was this unconscious stillness. The harmonizing vibrations were quieted down into a profound, still whisper. Without that, the turmoil of the main scene could have induced a siege on him, immersed, and without the same grace on his being. For now, the growth must take place. The cedars in his heart will reach their appointed strength. The trials past and ones in store all allow the gold in his spirit refinement and purity.

-

Ted’s fingers intersected within the loops of grocery bags, and a 50 lb bag of dog food hoisted up near the apex of his frame. He brought it all inside and closed the door. 

-

Michelle looked into his eyes. She saw his concern. She tried to get ahead of it with a question. “Do you like it here?” 

-

Ted perked up, taking his gaze away from the cold bottle of milk that he placed within a rusty icebox. He met her eyes and said, “Yes, of course. It’s somewhere to be myself. I like taking walks in the woods, and up into the hills.”

-

Michelle’s eyelids pursed, with big black pupils edged out her irises from a deep sense of relief she was feeling. A surrender of the burdensome weight. “It’s ours. I bought it! It’s ours!”

-

Ted was hit by a cannonball. The density of those words tore through his anxiety like a violent flash flood. He had a home now, and not one with tightly wound stress coils giving off its constant hum. At his aunt’s, the men in and out, the kids always wild, the smell, the dirty dishes, and the alcohol made that place hostility rolled up in malice, and set ablaze with ignorance.

-

Ted mouthed the words to himself: ‘I can stay. This is ours.’ Michelle nodded, reading those affirmations from her son. “Yes” cracked into a giggle between three tears that fell from her face. This was something they could build from.

-

Michelle, girded with her happiness, asked, “Do you want a couple of burritos?” Ted definitely did. The stove went to 350, and a flat rack was filled with six tortillas wrapped around refried bean torpedoes with six thick slices of sharp cheddar laid on top of them. Before long, the night had settled, and crispy cheese crusts formed around. A dollop of sour cream completed the entree, and they sat down at the little table with two full plates of food. 

-

“Now that we have a house”, Ted interjected between chews of his fork cut and pierced sustenance, “I can start working on things, fix it up, you know? Like grandpa did with his.” 

-

Michelle guided the cup of tea to her mouth in the low light, and nodded. “Mhmm, that’s what I want to do too. We can paint it, remove bad boards on the porch, clean up the property.”

-

“Buy some bulbs.” Ted smiled. “I hope it's just the bulbs. If it's not, maybe I could get a book on home repairs? Maybe I can learn to fix the leak?” The same translucent globules of glass like tears pittled into the clear crystal basin, set there where Ted was seated an hour ago - a time when he was filled with so much fear about having to move again. 

-

The collected rain-water held a new overtone now. Thoughts drowning in anticipation and distress transformed now by the demolition crew. Redirected perceptions of the same sound reverberate into tracts of new thought centered on unexpected blessings. Yes, fear and doubt are sprayed with red x’s, and the crane is getting in position. New ground is broken here, sprouts of hope. Hope filled his eyes.