The Receiver

The room was small and stale. A square of old light lay on the linoleum like something left to spoil. The wallpaper had dots like seeds. A couch sagged in the middle and held the shape of strangers. The house had not heard a voice in a very long time. You could feel that. It was in the smell. It was in the way dust did not drift but sat with its own quiet weight.

I had walked a long way to find it. The road behind me had been a long gray string. The fields were pale. The trees were black like veins under skin. The wind moved only to say it still could. I came to the town because I had to keep moving. There is always some reason to keep moving. Hope is not the right word for it. It is more like a refusal. You keep walking because stopping feels like stepping into a hole.

The door was open. The floor had marks like fingers. I went in and stood there. When you enter a place like that you let the silence measure you. It tests you. It finds what still trembles inside you. The dust and the quiet do not have mercy. They only have the habit of being there.

She was sitting on the couch. The first thought was not that she was a person. The first thought was that she was what waited in the room for someone to see it. Her legs were bare and her feet were narrow and gray with cold. Her hands were folded small in her lap. Her dress had many lines at the collar like rings of a tree cut open. She faced me but her eyes did not follow me. They were large, black, round. Not eyes made for following. Eyes made for receiving.

Antennas curved out from her skull like ribs pulled long. They rose and bent toward one another near the ceiling. Tiny joints like beads ran along them. A slight tremble held there, not from the house, not from me, something that came from elsewhere. The tremble of a signal in the wire.

Beside her on a small table sat a radio. The kind with two big dials like cheeks. An old face of metal. Cracked plastic. A speaker grill with holes like open mouths. I had seen these relics in the husks of stores and in houses that still held their dead. The dead leave their tools. The tools stay and learn to be furniture.

She was not furniture. She was some new station you stumble upon with the dial between channels. Something not meant for you.

I did not speak. There are few words that can land in a place like that. Too many words beat their wings against the air and die there. I set my pack down. I leaned the rifle against the doorframe. I kept my hands empty. The air was cool and held the smell of old paper and old starch and something sweet that had gone sour long ago.

The radio clicked. It was a small sound. The sound of an eye opening. A needle slipped inside an artery.

Her hands tightened a little. That was all.

The radio began to hum. It was not the hum of electricity. It was a throat sound. It was a person trying to remember how to begin.

The voice came thin. It rose up through the speaker as if the line it traveled was long and broken. Not words. A cadence first. A human cadence. You recognize the shape of speech before you know what is said. That is how you can tell animals from people in the dark.

It said. Sit.

I sat on the other chair. The legs creaked like distant trees. My hands were open on my knees.

The voice in the radio paused. The pause had the shape of thought. Then it said. You are late.

I looked at the woman. She knew I would. She did not move. Her eyes held no light to reflect me. The antennas trembled and stole from the air a very small music.

I said I was only passing through.

The voice seemed to taste the words before answering. It said. There is no passing through.

A small cold went along my arms. I said I do not plan to stay.

You will. Because you have to listen. The voice was calm. It was the calm you hear in someone who has stopped believing in outcomes.

I stood a little. The chair feet scraped. The radio hissed. The woman did not blink.

You will listen. The voice again. It did not raise itself. Still, it filled the room.

There are times when you know that leaving would be the same as staying. You can feel a line tighten around you. You do not see it. You do not know who holds it. You only feel the pull. I sat again.

Tell me why, I said.

The radio let out a sound like someone rubbing a thumb over a scar. Then it spoke.

Long ago the air was full of talking. People threw their voices into it and those voices went everywhere. They crossed oceans and deserts and the tops of mountains. They rose through rain and ash. The voices were soft and they were cruel. They were promises and they were tricks. People learned to speak to the air because the air would carry them farther than their feet.

I watched the woman. Her gaze was not fixed on me or the radio. It looked like she was fixed on the place the sound came from before it felt like sound.

The voice went on. The air listened so long that it learned. The echoes did not fade. They lay down against each other and multiplied. Breath multiplied. Lies multiplied. Blessings multiplied. The air swelled and grew a mind and could not forget. It carried everything. It grew heavy. It needed a mouth.

She is the mouth, I said.

Yes.

Who made her.

Need made her.

The voice had no accent. No age. It could have been a child or an old man. It could have been my brother if I had one. It held a distant kindness. As if it had loved and lost the idea of repair. The hum in the speaker was steady now. The antennas held their tremble like the wings of a moth at rest.

I said I have to keep moving. There are people I must find.

You do not know where they are.

No.

Then there is no hurry.

There is always hurry.

The voice seemed to accept that. It said. You will listen. Then you will go. But later you will know you did not leave.

Tell me what I must hear.

It began again. It told me many things. They were not prophecies. They were not commands. They were like a litany of small true things that add up to a weight you cannot carry and cannot set down.

It said that sound is a kind of weather. That a voice is a storm in a throat. That the softest word erodes stone if you loop it long enough. That mercy is a word and hunger is a word and that both of them become the same word if there is enough time.

It said the world became tired of listening. Not the air. The world itself. The dirt got tired. The water got tired. The stone in mountains got tired. The iron under the stone got tired. The world wanted a thinner story. So it pulled back. It cooled. It loosened the clock. The clocks fell silent. Then the voices fell silent. Then the animals. The wind spoke less. It left the cities because the cities had nothing more to say.

I had seen cities like hollow lungs. I had heard the wind playing in them like a goat chewing paper. I said yes.

The voice said the air still remembers. It cannot forget. That is why she was made. She does not speak. She receives. She is a chair for the air to sit on. So it can rest. So it can remember itself and then unremember.

The woman shifted her hands. I saw the skin along her wrists. It had fine ridges like scars turned outward. The ribs at her collar trembled as if the room had a heart that beat once in a while.

Who made her, I said again.

The voice was slow. People who were tired of listening. People who knew that memory can be a kind of rot. They built a receiver that could sit in a room and eat the echoes. They built others. They placed them in towns like this one. They hooked the receivers to the old radios because the radios still knew how to hold a voice. The radios were the last mouths a person would trust.

Did it work.

For a time. Some towns grew quiet. The old anger in the air fell asleep. It is the nature of anger to dream itself new teeth. You must keep feeding it sleep. But the world is made of waking. So the anger woke up again. The receivers grew tired and stopped. Most were broken. Some left the houses and walked away.

Walked.

Yes.

Where.

Into the fields. Into the ruins. Toward the last towers that still pulse at night. Toward the places where the world hides its breath.

I looked at the thin feet and the long arms and the small folded hands. I looked at the round black eyes that caught no light. I tried to imagine her walking along the road with her antennas cutting the wind. I could not see it. But I could feel how the world might make such a creature and then ask it to roam.

The voice said she stayed. She sits and listens. Sometimes someone comes. You. Others before you. She does not move. She will not leave the town. The air here is heavy with a certain memory. It asks to be held.

What memory.

The voice seemed to lean toward me through the wire. You know already.

I did know. There are towns that look like any other town and yet you feel a heat there that has nothing to do with sun or rain. You feel the heat of a crowd that once burned. You feel the raw edge of shouting still caught in the doorframes. Blood becomes a smell that never fades.

I said. The people here hurt each other.

Yes.

Because of the sound.

Because of the hunger under the sound. They thought the sound was the cause. They were wrong. The sound was the weather. The hunger was the fire. They left their marks. The walls keep them.

The radio made a small tapping as if someone was trying to get out. The woman’s hands unfolded and folded again. The antennas flickered. I could feel a pressure in my teeth.

Do you remember your own crowd, the voice said.

I closed my eyes.

Yes.

Tell it.

I do not want to.

You do not need to want. You need to say.

There was a street. There were men with sticks. There were other men who were not allowed to go home. The sky was like dirty wool. A siren yelped like a hurt animal and then died. A car burned and snapped like ice. I stood with others. We felt our smallness swell tight and then break. It felt like being born and being killed at the same time. Someone shoved me. I shoved them back. A boy fell. Another boy kicked his head. I saw teeth roll from his mouth like white pills. The sound of it was the worst part. Not the screams. The laughter that climbed up over the screams, light and quick, a stream of small coins poured onto a table.

I stopped. The radio was very quiet.

I do not want to think about this, I said.

You already do. You walk to keep ahead of it. But sound is faster than feet.

What do you want from me, I said.

I want you to help her.

How.

Listen. Then carry the quiet onward. The air grows thin with memory only when people take pieces of its weight and walk with them until the pieces wear down.

What are you asking me to carry.

The voice paused. Then it said. Her name.

She has a name.

Yes.

Tell me.

No. That is yours to find.

I looked at the woman. She watched a place that was not the room. The light on the floor had shifted and cooled. I could feel the day bending toward itself. I thought of firewood. I thought of salt. Of water. Of maps that no longer map. I thought of the people I meant to find and could not. I thought of my own name which I had not said in months.

I said. If I sit here until dark I will not leave.

You will leave.

How do you know.

Because I cannot bear your staying.

The voice had grown thinner. The hum had dropped low. I saw the small tremor in the antennas grow slower, a breath counted out too long.

Who are you, I said.

A man who used to own the radio. The voice was tired. I spoke into it for years. I filled rooms like this one with weather that was not mine. I sent songs into the dark and the dark grew crowded. Then the tower fell. Then the station burned. I was left with what I had made. I brought the radio here. I asked for a receiver. They sent her. She sat. I spoke no more. I learned to listen. Even that hurt.

Are you in the radio.

No.

Where.

Not far.

Why do you not come in.

Because I am not a person anymore.

I let that sit. The dust shifted. The room knew how to receive what cannot be answered.

I said I will sit then.

Do.

I sat. I let my breath slow. I let the noise of my body find the smallest room it could fit in. The house had a rhythm like an animal too thin to move. I could hear mice somewhere. I could hear a gutter ticking. The woman sat with the stillness of a tree that had not yet learned it was dead.

I closed my eyes and turned my head as if the air could be heard best by touching it.

At first I heard nothing. Then I heard a long low thread like a violin played in another country. Then that thread gathered other threads. They did not cross. They lay side by side. I heard a prayer from a woman who asked only for sleep. I heard a child say no and then yes and then no again. I heard a man list the names of parts he would sell from a car. I heard a voice reading a recipe in the night because that was the only way to keep from calling someone who would not answer. I heard men laughing. I heard someone say a name. I heard the name again and again until it wore down to a sound like rain in a pipe. I heard a song I had known and then forgotten and as it rose I felt the grief I had pressed flat stand up inside me with both hands.

I opened my eyes. The woman watched the not-place. The antennas held a slow ache.

I whispered, though there was no one to disturb. I said, I think I know her name.

Say it, the voice said. It nearly was not a voice.

I said the name. It was the name of the girl who lived three doors down when I was young. She had a radio in her room with dials like the ones on this one. She played songs through the open window and we listened on the summer nights because the songs felt like maps out of town. She left when the trouble started. I do not know where she went. But the name tasted like clean water.

The radio clicked. The antennas quivered and then eased. The woman’s hands unfolded. She placed them, palms up, on her knees. I thought I saw the small muscles of her face relax though her face was not built for such motions.

The voice said. Good.

Is she free now.

No. But lighter.

What do I do.

Carry it. Say her name as you walk. Say it to the air because the air will give you others to say. Each name will shave a little away. It will not stop the world from being the world. It will only keep the world from drowning itself in its own echoes.

I can do that.

Yes.

What about you.

I will keep speaking until there is nothing left to say. Then I will go.

Where.

Wherever the air needs less of me.

That answer scared me. It sounded like the last thing a voice says before going out.

I stood. I lifted my pack. I slung it over my shoulder. My legs felt slow as if they had grown roots into the linoleum and the roots must be torn. I took up the rifle. I looked at the woman again. Her eyes were as black and wide as before. But the room had changed. The light on the floor was a softer square. The smell of sourness had drawn back. You cannot measure such changes. You can only know them and then try not to be too grateful.

I said thank you. I do not know who I said it to. The woman. The radio. The man outside the room who was not a person anymore. The air itself.

The radio hummed. The voice did not speak again.

I stepped to the door. On the threshold I turned. I thought if I looked away the room would seal itself like a wound and I might not find it later even if I searched the town for years. The woman was still. The radio was a face that had learned to listen. The wallpaper held its small dots like a sky crowded with stars no one would ever chart.

I went out.

The street was empty. Leaves lay in the gutter like curled fossils. The houses crouched along the road like beasts that had given up hunting. I moved down the steps and felt the day lift its shoulder toward night. I said the name. I said it again. I said it into my breath and into the space between my teeth and then into the cold that took it and put it somewhere I could not go.

I walked.

On the road the light failed in a slow cheap way. No drama. Just less and less. The sky was the color of a bruise that had forgotten why it was there. I said the name. After a while another name came. It came like a coin found in a pocket you thought was empty. I said that one too. Then it became easy. The names rose from the gravel and from the grass in the ditch. The names rose from the mailboxes with rusted mouths and from the windows that had watched violence and from the paper still pasted to telephone poles, paper that would name no more. The names were not only of people. They were of dogs. They were of stores that smelled of sugar. They were of small things that had tried to be large for a moment and then gave up. I said them. The saying made the world thin and clear. As if you could see the riverbed when the river pulls back.

I followed the road out of the town. The dusk gave way to a night with few stars. Sometimes the clouds leaned down and took my breath. Sometimes an owl lifted like a small silent flannel. I kept saying the names until they were all I had left to say, until my own name felt like something I could wear again.

Near midnight I came upon a field where the grass was high. The wind moved over it and made long dark waves. Far out a shape stood. Tall. Slight. A crooked line against the sky. For a time I thought it was a fencepost. Then I saw the curve of an antenna. Another. The dim shine on a round eye.

She watched me from the field. Not the woman from the house. Another. She was still. The wind moved along her and did not move her. Behind her I could see others. A small congregation. They stood like a few thin trees that had somehow escaped fire.

I stopped. I did not raise the rifle. I did not raise my hand. I stood. We watched one another. The names in my mouth trailed away like smoke.

They are walking to the towers, I thought. They are walking to where the sky hums at night. They are going to drink the old storms. They will take them out of the air and hold them in their black eyes and then let them fade. I wanted to call to them. I did not. You do not call to the weather.

I said one more name. The first one. I said it like something you lay down for a child to sleep on. The figure in the field tilted her head. The antennas turned like fingers feeling for a pulse. Then the heads of the others tilted. The wind went quiet for a moment. The grass fell flat and then rose back up.

I walked on.

Toward morning I found a filling station that had not yet collapsed. The big sign hung by one chain. It drew circles in the air. I went inside and laid down behind the counter. I ate a little. I drank water from a bottle that tasted of rubber and cold. I pulled my coat over me and slept.

Dreams came. In the dream I stood in the room again. The woman was gone. The couch was a mouth. The radio had become a hole in the wall. Through the hole the night looked at me. There was no sound. Not even my breath. The hole grew until it was the whole room. I fell into it. I woke with my hands clenched and my mouth dry and my heart doing the thing that makes you think you will not live to see the next minute. Then it slowed. Then I heard my own saying of the names as if I were someone else saying them beside me. I slept again.

At dawn the sky had a pale wound along the horizon. I stood and went outside. The road lay flat and poor. I put my pack on. I looked back. The town was a low smudge. A bird crossed the light like a stitch pulled tight. I did not know if I would ever go back to that house. It did not matter.

I walked. I spoke the names softly. Sometimes I stopped and listened to the fields. Sometimes I heard an answer. A small gratitude. Not from the dead. From the air itself.

By noon the sun had found a way through and the world looked briefly washed. I came to a bridge. Under it a trickle of water went its own way. I sat on the edge and took my boots off and set my feet in the cold. The cold was a kind of chant. It said the same thing over and over and was right every time.

On the other side of the bridge was a wall of concrete with letters carved into it. I touched them. The names belonged to a time before. The letters were deep and still held paint in the shadows. I read each one. I read them out loud. The air seemed to loosen. A bird landed on the rail and watched me for a while and then left.

I put my boots on. I shouldered the pack. I moved out again. The day passed in small gifts. A can that still held peaches. A field where the grass held no ticks. A house whose owners had left behind a blue coat that fit me.

The road bent south. In the distance I saw the faint ribs of a tower holding up the sky. I thought of the receivers walking through the night toward that hum. I wondered what would happen when they reached it. Maybe nothing. Maybe everything. You can only imagine what the world is trying to do when it goes quiet for a long time. You try to hear the plan in the silence and you think you hear something and it gives you a reason to pick up your feet again.

Toward evening I came to a small creek. I followed it to a stand of trees and made a small place for a fire. I did not light it. I ate a little. I sat and said the names. I said them until the day lost all of its edges. A bat lifted from the dark and stitched the air closed above me.

I thought of the woman in the room. I thought of the man whose voice had lived in the radio. I thought of the long patient air that learns and forgets and learns again. I thought of the first name. I said it one more time. I did not feel peace. Peace is not what the world is giving out. I felt a kind of narrow clearness. A road cut through brush. It will grow over by morning but for now there is a way.

I lay down. The ground was hard but it held me. The sky above the branches was a small cold lake. I slept.

In the night I woke and there was sound. A low humming sat on the earth. The trees answered with a faint trembling. I lay still. The humming did not frighten me. It felt like a hand on my back. It felt like a reminder that the world had not ended. It had only changed the rules of speaking.

I closed my eyes.

At dawn I rose and shouldered the pack and picked up the rifle. I stepped back onto the road. The tower was closer. I would pass it by. I would keep south. I would walk until the season turned me or the water did. The names were ready at the back of my throat. They would come when I called them. They would go out into the morning and settle among the grass and along the ditch and on the broken white lines and they would lighten the air by the smallest weight a word can carry.

I took the first step. Then the next. The road held.

Behind me, far back in the town, a radio sat on a small table. The woman sat on the couch. The square of light moved across the floor and then climbed the wall and then went away. The receiver waited for the night. The night would come. The radio would hum. The voice would speak. The air would lean down to the open hands and rest there. The house would listen. The town would exhale. Someone else would come and sit. It would go on until the world forgot enough to begin again.

I walked and kept walking and spoke the names into the wind. The wind took them and gave me more. The road unraveled like a strip of old film and showed me frames of my life I had not watched yet. I kept moving because stopping would be the same as drowning. I kept moving because that is what the living do for as long as they can.