Sign Languages

by James Hannah

  He walked a full hour, until almost dark, before he knew he could stop and rest without turning back, without running headlong toward the loop of trail and the pickup in the gravel lot. Because by now, with all the twisting and turning up easy valleys—treacherous slopes and limestone ledges soon proved too thwarting—he was lost. The sun was down, the clouds heavier than this morning.

  He was tired. He figured he’d sweated away a couple of pounds. He pulled his soaking shirt away from his chest and stomach and looked around at the woods. The light was failing rapidly now. And all of this was incomprehensible. His back and legs began to stiffen; he stood clutching the trunk of a tree and walked on, amazed at the depth of these woods. He’d thought this countryside mostly open and cleared. Where farmers raised corn and soybeans, hogs and dairy herds.

  In the dark, the travel was difficult. He learned to move carefully, to judge the distances of dark, unfamiliar shapes, to plant his feet cautiously, aware of the unevenness of the ground. He had fallen a half-dozen times and no longer feared falling, though by moving slowly he only stumbled occasionally, usually catching himself on a low bush or thick, supportive branch. He feared snakes, animals that shuffled away in the absolute dark of the lowest brush and fallen tree trunks. There was rain high over his head in the treetops; he heard it but it never reached his hot face.

  He thought about Annie eating at her brother’s dining table. Later, birdsong, harsh and hesitant, broke out all around him.

  Suddenly he stepped out of the woods and onto a dirt road that bordered an open field. The dark shape of a cow lumbered past on the other side of a rail fence. He smelled it, heard it defecate. To his left a few hundred yards was a large white frame house up under some trees. Charles blinked his eyes in what seemed intense light after the darkness of the forest.

  He turned up the road. The windshield of an old car caught the light from a high window. He heard animals move easily as he passed the barn. Turning his watch face to the sky he tried to tell the time but couldn’t.

  Almost at the front gate of the chain-link fence he stopped as a pack of small dogs tore out from under the house and raised an alarming racket of yelps and snapping teeth. The bravest lunged against the fence. Charles stepped back, gauging the height to the top bar.

  Then a yellow porch light came on and the front door opened.

  “Jasper, Mary, shut up, you hear me! Get quiet.”

  Charles watched the thin old man descend the cement steps, his hand gripping the metal bannister. He scattered the dogs with a swipe of the cane in his free hand. Behind him, in the doorway, a small old woman pulled her quilted housecoat shut and locked it with clenched fists.

  The old man hobbled to the gate and caught the top of it. Charles saw the scrollwork that framed a large letter W at its center.

  “What the hell can I do for you? Sorta late to be making a social call, ain’t it, young fella?”

  Charles stepped up to the gate and smiled.

  “By God, you’re a mess.” The old man examined him. Charles noticed he tightened the grip on his cane, took half a step back toward the house.

  Charles waved his right hand in front of his face, dismissed his appearance, any threat he might present. But then, before he said a word, he moved his hands again, the way he’d seen it done in the movies, on TV during congressional hearings. The woman signing at a frantic pace to keep up. Charles hoped they didn’t know any better, that they didn’t have a deaf son or granddaughter. He took the chance; he had no idea what the odds were. He just knew he didn’t want to say anything now. He had no desire to talk. He was amazed at himself; he felt his mouth open, his chin drop. But he moved his fingers in front of his chest slowly, trying hard to duplicate what he’d only half-noticed, hoping to hell this old man and woman didn’t recognize the fraud, scream, do anything but let him up on the porch and inside. He considered the news on TV, in newspapers, what his own reaction would be. Dreaded the scream, felt an answering one at the back of his throat.

  “My God… well I’ll be goddamned.” The old man spoke over his shoulder. “Livy he can’t talk. It’s all with his hands. I’ll be damned.”

  Charles smiled, tried to look harmless, bobbed his head, felt himself act foolish. Livy stepped down to the gate. In the weak light from the porch, her face was the color of her gray hair, which was long and thick and had fallen loose from her nest of pins. It covered her left cheek and one dark eye.

  “Can you hear?” she asked. “Can you hear me?”

  Charles tried not to blink. He felt himself drifting into some stereotype. The village idiot.

  “Deaf and dumb,” the old man muttered. “And lost to boot. I’ll just be goddamned. Middle of the night. Look at the shape he’s in.”

  Charles caught himself; he’d almost followed the old man’s eyes down to his torn pants.

  “Mute,” Livy said, lifting the gate latch. “It’s mute, not dumb, Gale.”

  She patted Charles’s shoulder and brought him through the gate. The pack of dogs came out to sniff his pants legs. Livy ignored them, waded through, pulling Charles with her.

  “I don’t know about this, Livy.” The old man was behind and below them on the steps. “Middle of the goddamned night. No car. Torn clothes. Could be an escaped convict from up at Madisonville. Livy, you hear me?”

  They all stopped under the yellow porch light and Charles didn’t have any idea what would happen next. He expected the old man to scream in his ear, the sudden trick in those war movies where the spy reflexively turns around and is carried away by the Gestapo. So, you can hear, you swine.

  Livy looked into his face. Charles swallowed and smiled his best smile. He signed some more, caught her eyes with his fingers and tried to work them deftly, methodically, in some repeated patterns. He thought behind them, tried to speak with them, tried to tell this beautiful old woman everything he could about his life. What had happened to him, without excuses. What he understood and didn’t understand.

  “He’s okay.” She spoke distinctly as if that would enable Charles to hear. “Let’s get in out of the mosquitoes.”

  The old man sat in a chair by the refrigerator and crossed his hands on the cane handle. Charles smiled and ducked his head. The old man nodded his own but didn’t move his thin lips a fraction.

  She touched Charles’s shoulder. “Here,” she said loudly. “Here’s some supper.”

  “He’s a goddamned mess, Livy. Needs to wash up,” Gale added sharply.

  Gale hobbled ahead of Charles back through the living room full of heavy ancient furniture. The nap of the horsehair sofa was prickly under Charles’s hand. Despite the warmth of the night, a low blue flame burned in the huge gas heater. A tin can of water bubbled in front of the red grates, humidifying the already damp, thick air.

  Charles closed the bathroom door behind him, heard the old man’s cane bumping back down the hall. He smelled the soap, the odor of honeysuckle, and washed his hands and face. He opened their metal medicine cabinet and took out the plastic bottles. There were more for her than him. For pain, two a day. Something for blood pressure. For cloudy vision.

  He squatted by the tub. It was large, solid, up off the floor on lion’s paws that had once been gilded but now had only flecks of gold between the claws. There was the smell of other, unknown lives, and he inhaled deeply. Vicks VapoRub, Ben-Gay lotions, the funk of hidden, dirty clothes, old furniture, older flesh.

  Later he ate two bowls of thick beef stew. They talked about him, wondered all sorts of things. Until, finally, Livy stood and said “Ah ha,” and took a pencil stub and notepad from a drawer.

  As the two stood close over his shoulder, he breathed in their smells. Gale leaned over as Charles wrote, rested a hand on Charles’s shoulder.

  He wrote his real name and how he was coming from Madisonville and had had car trouble, walked into the woods, and gotten lost. Then he’d come out here, in their meadow.

  “Didn’t know they let ‘em drive like that,” Gale
mumbled.

  Charles winced slightly for he didn’t know either. Then she took the dull pencil and wrote their names, how it was almost midnight and he’d sleep here, they’d take him into town for a mechanic in the morning. Did he need anything else before bed? Anything special? Was he still hungry?

  They wrote back and forth for quite a time. Tore off pages, Livy finding another partial pad, Gale sharpening the pencil with a penknife.

  Later Charles got into bed, the soft mattress swallowing him a bit. The weak bedside light dully illuminated the room. Charles guessed it had belonged to a child. Who would be much older than he now. It was full of heavy, dark furniture, all topped with lacework and photographs. Most were black and white.

  Tonight he lived with these two old people, would sleep in a room unslept in in years, protected by all those small dogs.

  He listened to them talking about him. They were almost deaf and shouted at one another.

  “Ain’t it something. I mean, goddamn, ain’t it something.”

  “It’s amazing.”

  Charles guessed she had a smile on her face. They had done well. Here was something amazing, mysterious, they’d remember the rest of their lives. They’d talk about it, smile, and shake their heads.