Noise

by Peter Wild

  ‘Well, not like that, I guess.’ That’s what I told her, almost like an apology, but she just left me and I remember she walked away on the tracks, kind of showing off, I think, that she could balance on the edge and not lie down on the rain. She always had this way to make me feel ashamed. I felt like I was the one who had done the wrong mistake and I almost ran after her to tell her I was sorry. Eliza kept saying, ‘She would have let you do it. She would have just walked away.’ I didn’t want to talk about it because Teri was my best friend. But Eliza kept talking about it and she would not stop. She’s like, ‘You know what? Teri would have just gone home, and been almost happy, saying, “Oh, Arielle committed suicide!”’ A week or so later, when we were in English, Teri told me she was just joking around and she was trying to save me. She said she was using reverse psychology.

  Have you seen Eliza? You should ask her about that day. She might not want to talk about it to you because, in this town, people like to forget the terrible things. It’s that way, already, with the deaf girl. Nobody calls her by her real name. And they never say murder or stabbing. They just say, ‘That thing that happened by the river.’ Same with the cops. They kept asking me about ‘the incident’. I got a little mouthy with them, which they didn’t appreciate. I said, ‘I don’t know why you use words like incident when a girl my age was stabbed.’ I hope you don’t use the word incident in your book but I guess that’s pretty much your choice.

  Do you know Teri’s mother? I saw her yesterday coming out of the Safeway. She was just pushing her cart in this frail way. She always seems faint, almost as if she’s been faded out or rubbed away. She told me Teri’s just a scapegoat and we’re all the bad girls who messed up her good and kind daughter. She said she got a big lawyer for Teri and the lawyer told her all about the dead girl and how she kept a diary and wrote about how she wanted to be reincarnated, or something, go to the other side. After Teri’s mom yelled at me, I had to go back to school and it’s been so hard to concentrate. I keep wondering how Teri had all that power with me. Do you know? If you met Teri, she’d probably convince you she was right about the whole world, even if you are from New York City.

  I’m sorry but can you please not put this story in your book. It’s not that I think you’re a narc. I just decided I do not want anyone to know this story. Please promise me. You could give me a different name? I guess that would be all right, but not really, because even if you changed my name everybody will know it’s me because I’m the only one in this town with red hair who lives by the railroad and has a father who died so suddenly when he woke up with his heart closed, just closed, like a broken clock, the doctors said, like a wrongly tied wire.

  flower

  steven sherrill

  ‘Use the word: fuck. The word is love.’ I mean, come on…is there any human endeavour or struggle that doesn’t have its knotty roots spread out in the space between those two words? The older I get, the less I know. How the hell did Sonic Youth figure things out so early?

  Sitting in the waiting room of Tommy’s Tyre Town, with late February, 5 p.m., and the ash-grey sleet that incessantly peppered the wall of windows all conspiring to obliterate any shred of hope and good cheer, Ulla Shooks wished she could kick off her thick-soled shoes and rub some cream into her bunions. After a forty-hour work week, dishing up pot-pie and lasagna, mushy green beans and flavourless corn kernels, after five shifts of keeping the chopped eggs, the croutons, the mixed lettuces and all the other stainless steel bins on the Saving Grace Hospital cafeteria salad bar full, everything ached. And the pain–like her heavy hips, her sixty-year-old breasts, her sagging cheeks and wattled neck–the pain, too, seemed at the mercy of gravity. It settled mostly in her feet.

  Ulla Shooks sat with her back to the other wall of windows, the one offering an unabashed view of the three men at work in the two garage bays. She didn’t want to see it. Any of it. Their grease-smeared faces, their cigarettes, their ill-fitting blue uniforms: one hanging loosely from a scarecrow of a man whose skin was so pale he’d be invisible if not for the oily stains; the other not quite containing the belly, neck or arms of the crew chief, a mopey man who could easily be either thirty or fifty years old; and Tommy, whose shirt might actually fit should he ever decide to tuck it in.

  For more reasons than even she was aware of, Ulla couldn’t bear willing witness to the activities in the garage. And even though the air wrench’s harsh ratchet startled her, sent a jolt up and down her spine every single time one of the men tightened or loosened a lug nut, she preferred to look the other way, out the other windows where the view offered up the Long John Silver parking lot, Plank Road and, somewhere through the thick winter clouds, Tussey Mountain.

  And if the placement of the flickering television (perched on a plywood shelf near the ceiling in the far corner in the direction of the unseeable mountains) was any indication, the mechanics didn’t want her watching them anyway. Ulla would’ve gladly watched the broadcasted game show, despite the jagged bolts of static that shot across the TV screen each time the air wrenches fired; would’ve found comforting distraction in the too-excited cheers from the audience and in the charming wit of the impeccably haired host. Would’ve enjoyed these, but couldn’t because the only other waiting customer in the lobby kept pacing back and forth between his chair, right beneath the television, and the high counter by the door to the garage, muttering to himself about how much time he was wasting.

  Rude. Inconsiderate. Ulla wasn’t about to look, but she felt sure this man, with his fancy tie and his clean fingernails, probably drove a pricey Japanese car. Something garishly coloured. It would not have occurred to her to rush the service on her ageing Ford Taurus. Patience does a body good: human or automobile.

  By the time the man had paid and left, the game show had ended in a frenetic chorus of shrieks and palpably urgent music. In its place, the local news promised details and regular updates on a breaking story about a stand-off at the city’s animal shelter. Ulla, not tall enough to reach the volume or channel buttons on the television itself, half-heartedly looked around for a remote. Truth was, even if she’d found it, and even though she was the only person in the room, changing the channel without Tommy’s OK went against her nature.

  Ulla riffled through the stacks of magazines on the low, flimsy and only table in the waiting room. Auto Week. Popular Science. Modern Turkey Hunter. Sports Illustrated. Nothing provided for the gentler gender but a single coverless Woman’s Day, and it two years old. More out of obligation than interest, Ulla picked up the magazine and flipped to the table of contents, not at all surprised to find not one, not two but three different articles on the topic of sex. One a survey, one a how-to and the third too disgusting to even finish reading the title. And in Woman’s Day, of all places. Ulla clucked her tongue and slipped the magazine to the bottom of a stack.

  Turning her head only as far as necessary to catch a glimpse of the big clock behind the counter–its hands made of polished wrenches, miniature pictures of tyres, oil cans and various other automobile images made up the numbers–as best she could tell, Ulla determined it to be 5.30. No hurries. Nobody to get home to. Nothing going on at church. But Lord have mercy, her feet hurt. She’d have liked nothing more than to slip out of those tight, black shoes and prop her feet on the table until her car was ready. But under no conceivable circumstances would Ulla Shooks sacrifice decorum for comfort. No. She’d settle for the small, small comfort of knowing she did the right thing.

  Ulla reached into her serviceable purse and plucked out the newest issue of Hark!, the Riggle’s Gap First Congregation Church of the Brethren’s biweekly bulletin, and began reading closely over the lists of deaths, births, calls for prayer, admonitions and aphorisms, and one or two good-natured, clean jokes. Ulla took care to turn the pages of the centre-stapled, single-fold publication by their corners to avoid the easily smudged ink. While she had no official editorial role, Ulla felt sure that her efforts towards pointing out typos and gramma
tical errors were appreciated by the higher-ups.

  Five thirty. Her feet hurt. And the wind-driven sleet tapped an unending, erratic beat against the glass. Ulla had a headache. Probably from the various fumes she smelled wafting from the garage. She couldn’t concentrate on the issue of Hark!, but wasn’t ready to concede defeat. Ulla took her glasses off and pinched the bridge of her nose. Anyone passing by on Plank Road, anyone who took the time to slow down, anyone able to penetrate the night, the storm, and peer into the fluorescent-lit diorama that was the waiting room of Tommy’s Tyre Town, would’ve thought Ulla Shooks was praying as she sat there. Or weeping.

  Who could’ve guessed that she was indulging in her one decadent fantasy?

  ‘Miss Shooks! Miss Shooks!’ All the fifth-graders cried out excitedly. ‘Tell us again about the wicked old comma splice!’ They flock around her, the boys, the girls, their eager pencils clutched tight. ‘Miss Shooks! Tell us what happened to the boy who put e before i!’

  ‘Miss Shooks.’

  A bell. The door?

  ‘Miss Shooks?’

  Ulla clutched at the copy of Hark! She must’ve closed her eyes. Must’ve dozed off. It wasn’t her imaginary students calling her name. It was Tommy, standing, untucked, directly in front of her, clicking a ballpoint pen against a clipboard.

  ‘Speed-balancing, Miss Shooks?’

  ‘Excuse me?’ Ulla said.

  With the pen, Tommy pointed towards the counter, but he looked in the direction of the new customer.

  ‘You want me to speed-balance them wheels?’

  Ulla looked at Tommy, then at the girl standing in the middle of the room, then at her own weary feet. She had no idea what ‘speed-balancing’ meant.

  ‘Why, yes,’ she said to Tommy. ‘That’d be real nice.’

  Tommy scribbled something on the clipboard then stepped behind the counter, where he, and Ulla from her seat, stared at the girl. The girl.

  The girl stood, her booted feet (scuffed black lineman’s boots, laced up to mid-calf) planted wide, her mangy thrift-store faux-fur coat hanging nearly to her ankles, but open enough for anyone to read her Hunka-Hunka-Burnin-Luv T-shirt, the text arcing over and under the mounds (and even Ulla could see that they were mounded) of breasts, the coat open enough for anyone willing to look at the wide crescent of pale flesh where the hems of her shirt and skirt didn’t quite meet, the dark pucker of her navel, the shiny gold barbell piercing it, stood with her hands plunged deep into the coat pockets, stood with her mouth open, another gold ball fixed in her tongue and clicking against her teeth, with her black-lined eyes shut, stood with the melting pellets of sleet glistening like diamonds in her hair, on her collar, stood swaying and bobbing her head in time with a bass beat that even Ulla and Tommy could hear pulsing from the girl’s earphones.

  ‘Can I help you, ma’am?’

  Then louder.

  ‘Can I help you, ma’am?!’

  When the girl opened her eyes, Ulla forced her attention back to Hark!, and worked hard to keep it there as the girl shuffled over to the counter to negotiate with Tommy.

  ‘Ya’ll sell retreads?’

  Ulla wanted to look. She could hear the girl’s music. She could hear Tommy’s ballpoint pen clicking and clicking.

  ‘No, ma’am,’ Tommy said. ‘We don’t carry retreads.’

  ‘You don’t got any retreads?’ the girl asked, with a shift in her tone.

  Ulla couldn’t help herself, she had to look, to see whether that young hussy had leaned in and perched those breasts on Tommy’s counter, which she had, but Tommy, to his credit, would not be moved.

  ‘No, ma’am. We don’t carry retreads.’

  ‘What’s the cheapest tyres you got?’ she asked, the syllables punctuated by the click of metal against her teeth.

  ‘What kind of car is it?’ Tommy asked.

  The girl pointed into the parking lot, into the night, and both Tommy and Ulla looked.

  ‘That old Ford Taurus out there,’ she said.

  Tommy sucked some air through his teeth. Ulla felt he was giving the girl’s question too much thought. Too much importance. Ulla felt the best thing would be for Tommy to send the girl on down the road, to some other more appropriate tyre store, one with a different clientele.

  Tommy flipped open a thick binder.

  ‘I can do these for forty-five dollars apiece, but that don’t include speed-balancing.’

  The girl asked if she could get just one.

  ‘No, ma’am,’ he said. ‘Wouldn’t be safe. But I can do your front two.’

  ‘OK, then,’ she said.

  ‘Be about half an hour.’

  Tommy eased back into the garage. The girl went into the unisex bathroom opposite the counter. Ulla could still hear her music, even through the closed door. Ulla thought she heard the girl singing. Ulla most certainly heard the unregulated stream of urine, and clearly heard neither a flush, nor water in the sink. Ulla said a little prayer that the girl would wait outside for her tyres. Or maybe go eat at Long John Silver’s.

  But sometimes the Lord likes to test his followers.

  The girl sat directly opposite Ulla. Directly. Not even one chair to the right or left.

  Ulla held Hark! as high as she could without seeming too obvious, peered over its hard edge once or twice and determined that it didn’t matter because the girl still had her eyes shut.

  Had her head leaned back against the window, rolling rhythmically from side to side. Bump, bump, bumping the glass for percussive emphasis. Over the girl’s shoulder, night had turned the window into a mirror. Ulla saw her own reflection–checked her posture–and beyond, in reverse, and incrementally smaller, Tommy and the other men in the garage, who’d paused in their work to gawk at the splay-legged girl sitting across the room, with her eyes closed, bobbing to music and fingering the stud in her navel. Clear as day, Ulla could see them! They stood right behind her, just on the other side of the glass, lined up like Christ and the two thieves at Calvary.

  Shame. Shame on them all.

  Mercifully, their voyeurism was brief.

  Mercifully, the poor girl never knew.

  She was too immersed in the song. The song she began to sing. Well, maybe sing wasn’t the right word. The girl began to speak the lyrics of the song. Erratically. Partially garbled, but forceful nonetheless.

  ‘There’s a new girl in your life. Long red wavy hair. Green green lips and purple eyes. Skinny hips and big brown breasts…’

  Oh dear Lord, she was singing about breasts! Ulla looked again for the television remote. Ulla looked towards the Long John Silver’s sign, an improbable beacon in the distance.

  ‘Support the power of women. Use the power of man. Support the flower of women…’

  Surely, Tommy must be just about done. Surely. Surely, the girl won’t keep singing about breasts in public. Surely, the Lord wants Ulla to learn something from this.

  ‘Use the word: fuck!’

  What? Surely, Ulla must’ve misheard.

  ‘The word is love.’

  The girl spoke, sang. Sang louder with each verse.

  ‘Support the power of women. Use the power of man. Support the flower of women. Use the word: fuck! The word is love.’

  Ulla stuffed her church bulletin into her purse, clutched the purse to her chest, like a lifejacket. A flotation device. She tried to pray, but found her silent words supplanted by the girl’s song.

  ‘Use the word: fuck!’

  Ulla cleared her throat. Maybe the girl just didn’t know she was singing aloud.

  ‘The word is love. Use the power of women. Use the word…’

  Ulla closed her eyes, but it didn’t help. The air wrenches wailed behind her; across the narrow lobby, the girl sang her nasty song. Song. Yes! The Lord surely meant for Ulla to stand firm in this hard moment. To witness. To testify. To counter the wicked with the godly. Ulla knew what to do.

  Ulla began to sing.

  ‘Have you been to Jesus for the cleansi
ng power?’

  Ulla threw herself into the song, wavering briefly in and out of tune before finding her key.

  ‘Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb? Are you fully trusting in his grace this hour?’

  And the girl:

  ‘Fuck! The word is love. Use the word.’

  And Ulla:

  ‘Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb? Are you washed (are you washed) in the blood (in the blood)?’

  ‘Support the power of women. Use the power of man. Support the flower of women.’

  ‘In the soul-cleansing blood of the Lamb. Are your garments spotless? Are they white as snow? Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb? Are you walking daily by the Saviour’s side? Do you rest each moment in the Crucified?’

  And still, she could hear the girl.

  ‘Use the word: fuck! Use the word: fuck!’

  So Ulla sang louder.

  ‘Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb? When the Bridegroom cometh will your robes be white, pure and white in the blood of the Lamb?’

  ‘Miss Shooks?’

  ‘Will your soul be ready for the mansion bright? Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?’

  ‘Miss Shooks?’

  ‘Lay aside the garments that are stained with sin, and be washed in the blood of the Lamb. There’s a fountain flowing for the soul unclean. Oh, be washed in the blood of the Lamb!’

  ‘ ’Scuse me, Miss Shooks.’

  Ulla Shooks opened her eyes after that final emphatic refrain, found Tommy and his clipboard standing, once again, directly in front of her. In the gap between his belly and crooked arm, Ulla could see the girl, open eyed and smiling in her direction.