Scraps & Chum (4 page)

“
Straight up, Bee. Pops thinks you a shorty or sumptin.
”

I felt like I was back in my classroom just last week, listening to the devolution of language by the same primates who would someday be wiping my ass in an old folks home.
As
an author and teacher who had devoted his life to the
written word
it disgusted me to hear such ignorant speech. Don
’
t get me wrong, I
’
m all about colloquialisms and fun s
lang.
I remember saying Far Out
and Groovy
and confusing my father unti
l he just shook his head at me. The last
ten years teaching high school English gave me the ability to interpret teenage nonsense, but
the
way these idiots talked sounded like
someone had injected a vi
rus into the nature of coherent
communication
. As I listened to these two youths, who probably spelled
“
ask
”
by rearranging the last two letters, I couldn
’
t help but fear for the art I loved so dearly. It was bad enough all these horror and sci fi authors were making the bestseller lists, with their penchants for gore and sex and robots—-such drivel—but to think one day there might be nov
els published in such incoherent
nonsense made me want
to leap off the nearest cliff.

“
Sorry,
”
I said, and ordered a whiskey from Pat. I drank it down and left.

III

The weekend passed, a meaningless couple of days to a
newly
jobless man such as myself. The high-pitched sound rose steadily and I now found myself
getting a headache,
eating Tylenol as if they were Tic Tacs and stuffing cotton balls in my ears.
I finally called the electric company and tried to get some answers. They had a prerecorded message saying they were aware of the problem and were trying to solve it.

I sat in front of my computer, desperately trying to ignore the noise and complete chapters to a novel I
’
d started years ago. Again, though, my writer
’
s block kept me from turning out anything meaningful, so I turned the computer off and stared at my kitchen cupboards.
I was out of chips. I was also out of booze. I am not a drunk,
despite what you might think. T
he other night
’
s drinking session was a capricious incident
, an attempt to find a muse and forget recently being made redundant. And v
isiting O
’
Connor
’
s just gives me something to do now and then.  But I did consider the notion that perhaps some alcohol would help me deal with the
grating
noise. 

“
Welcome to the Bank of Desperation,
”
I said as I dug through couch cushions looking for dimes and quarters. As I treasure-hunted, I listened to
the television, which
was now showing
news reports concerning the strange whine that seemed to be everywhere. Nobody had yet been able to find its source.
The phone companies were also
reiterating, rather angrily at this point, that they had no idea where the sound was coming from.
The news flashed B-roll as the story unfolded.
The ent
ire town was wearing earplugs.

“
Sound specialists and geologists from several Universities are running tests,
”
the reporter said,
“
but have not concluded anything significant yet. We also have confirmation that the sound is being reported in other cities, both domestic and international. Officials are assuring people they will find its cause very soon.
”

Captions scrolled across the bottom of the screen as the man talked
. He too, was wearing earplugs. I noticed they used the word ORAL when they meant AURAL. Idiots.

As I walked to the store
the sound level jumped up emphatically
.  It made the backs of my eyeballs twitch in pain.

The store was
suddenly
full of people racing about in a panic. Like birds at a feeder, they fought one another for the remaining stock of bread and milk. I laughed at the notion that such items would serve any purpose at the end of the day. Everywhere I turned, people were holding their ears and asking each other what the noise could be. Babies were crying, and the store was
cacophonous with their collective wails. I grabbed two bottles of Jim Beam and paid for them in the checkout line. Beyond me, a young mother in her early twenties was yelling at her child.
“
Oh please, Chelsea
, just shut yo mouth. Damn, girl, I can
’
t deal. There ain
’
t nothing I can do about it. For real.
”

I took my liquor and shuffled outside as quickly as I could, o
nce again sad for our dwindling sense of eloquence
. Was I really that much of an elitist, I wondered. Some people did not have access to an education such as I
’
d had. Should I blame them for being raised with that type of vernacular? Still, I couldn
’
t help but fear that perhaps the reason my books weren
’
t selling was because people weren
’
t rea
ding anymore. My students had thought a gerund was a small animal,
and
took gr
eater pains in learning what rhymed with the N word so they could be hip hop stars when they failed out of school.
I felt like the butt of a joke, like the subject of dramatic irony.
Everyone
around me knew our precious written language was
dying out, evolving into senseless
code, and they embraced it; I still believed I could utilize its dy
ing breath to secure my future. What a joke.

On the way back home,
eyes squinted and fingers in my ears
, I passed by a park. Some children ran in a circle and threw a rubber ball at one another while an older woman in a long blue coat watched them intently. A young boy threw the ball at a young girl and hit her in the face. The girl fell down crying, and the woman rushed over and picked her up. She grabbed the boy, and made several wild gestures at him. The boy responded in kind, and I realized that he was deaf, that it was a class of deaf children. I can
’
t read sig
n language, but I could tell
some sort of heated argument took place next among all the students. Hands maneuvered quickly, fingers dancing and wri
sts twisting, conveying thoughts
I could only guess at. I stared fascinated for a few minutes,
ignoring the grating sound in the air,
thinking what a hard li
fe it must be to not hear. T
hen remembered I was carrying my booze. As I turned toward home, I noticed that
none of them
were wearing earplugs.

IV

By morning the sound was unbearable.
If I closed my eyes I envisioned someone standing right next to me scraping a fork on a ceramic plate. My neighbors began congregating in the street, staring at the sky and shakin
g their heads. A few of them wore earmuffs
, while others had hats pulled over their ears. Surprisingly, no dogs or cats seemed to be in any discomfort. The pug
nestled in my neighbor
’
s panicked arms
was as happy and excited as he was any other day.

I had given up on writing
or looking for a new job and focused solely on alleviating my ever present headache
; even with my earplugs in and my mind succumbed to the alcohol, the sound
was too intense to ignore
. It seemed to radiate from thin air, which explained the people in the street staring at the sky. Only by getting drunk had I been able to ignore the noise and fall asleep the previous night, but when I woke up it was right there again, everywhere and nowhere at once.
Incredibly piercing. I
felt lucky to have gotten the little sleep I did. The black circles under my neighbors
’
eyes to
ld me they were not so lucky. 

“
Time to get the hell out of
Dodge.
”
I looked for my car keys, trying to decide between heading to my parents
’
house up North or going out West to the beaches.  Then I remembered the news and realized I might not be able to get away from this maddening sound.

The television
was still reporting on the phenomenon
on every channel, tired reporters pointing toward space and shaking their heads. Images from the Middle East and Africa and
every other place imaginable showed similar scenes of confused and terrified people yelling at the sky. Everybody on Earth seemed to b
e experiencing the same thing.

It was evident the electric company had nothing to do with it now. Experts from the world
’
s top research centers were meeting with the world
’
s leaders, or so the news reported. At some point during the day, someone had drawn up a sign and placed it on the side of the road near my home. It r
ead: THE END IS HERE BEOTCHES!

I became scared.

I had no idea where I
’
d put my keys.

V

Oh my fucking God! Unbearable!

The sound
suddenly soared to such an unearthly high decibel level around noon that s
mall cracks stitched down my window panes. The walls vibrated. I pressed my hands over my earplugs and ground my teeth, sweating and swearing. It was all I could do to maintain rational thought.
An hour later
the world
’
s leaders declared a state of
emergency.
How they had the strength to make decisions was incredible.  The news reporters, in some mockery of standing in a soundwave hurricane, winced in pain and shook their heads as they reported, barley getting words out.
All flights were stopped, schools were closed and kids were sent home, work ceased, the National Guard rolled in to
w
atch
the State
House, the nation
’
s military
sc
attered around D.C., FEMA mobilized in
every major city. It did no good; no one could withstand the noise. Everyone was useless.
  Car accidents were clogging up the roads. Lunatics were firing off guns.