I’ve been waitin’ for a day and an age for you to say sumpin’ to me, but all there is is static and a growing pile of dead batteries. The ones to the bottom have burst open, spilled their corrosive guts all over the damned place, and now even the air tastes like metal.
I should probably stop. Give up, you know, and just stop this damn game. ‘Cept I’m not sure where that would leave me. Who the hell am I an’ what the hell am I doing here without you ta talk to? Even if you just a ghost, and you ain’t never comin’ back.But that’s too personal, i’n’t it? I’m only s’posed to give the news. Talk data. Things what could be useful for whoever’s on the outside and lookin’ in on this. The sense makers. If they even there.
Well, here it is, then. The report. I take the measurements like I’m s’pose ta. Every hour of every damned day. Down to my last pencil, if ya care to know. I’ve been saving the coals from the fire, when I’m feelin’ brave enuf and cold enuf and lonely enuf ta do it. Make that big bold signal that near anyone with eyes ta see it can. You can smell it, too. Wood char and dung roasting in the air like some kind of delicacy when it first gets goin’. But then it hangs. It lingers and sinks inta things and stays and stays. But the coals, those will be my writing implements when the other supplies are gone. And when the papers done too, I figured I just pick up a sharp rock and scratch my recordings into whatever will bear the mark.
Don’t even feel strange to have that kind of thought now. I’m not sure when I crossed over that point. I am sure I don’t care to know it. I’m here now. There ain’t no other place I can be but here. Now that may change in time, but there ain’t no goin’ back, that’s for sure.
I guess that may still be to damned personal for you. Whoever you are, what’s actually pickin’ up this signal. You want the report? Well here it is. The measurements haven’t changed for going on 36 months now. This is still a dead zone. And I think there ain’t no amount of tinkering what can fix it. Put that in your cap.
***
I was out to the south station just 20 minutes ago, recalibratin’ the instruments. Barometer. Anemometer. Vanes and gauges. It was really hard to concentrate on those bodies of plastic and steel, though. And I didn’t care much about getting anythin’ right.
See, the one mile an hour wind that’s been plaguin’ us for the past three years just died. It’s still as a dead horse around here. If ever I did complain ’bout the nothingness of this place, I reckon I ought naught have. I had no right, because this, right now—I can feel it in places I didn’t know I still had to lose.
You know how from south station, you can see the north station vane. Instead of it’s gentle whirrin’, it stood useless. Across that landscape where rock, wind, water and time have converged for millennia, there was no wind, and I remember you a hell of a lot better than I remember water.
I’m sitting hear now, wasting away my lead drawing trees and birds and clouds cuz even if they’re fakes, I need to see something else besides the gold hued rocks against the relentless sky.
I even opened up the bottle of scotch I been savin’ for your return.
Remember when the wind would turn, an age ago? South winds carryin’ rain in it’s mouth an’ all. There ain’t no wind no more. Nothing to carry in omens. There’s no truth sayers on the horizon in any direction, and that means there ain’t nothing comin’. There ain’t nothing more to be said. Which means listening is just as obsolete. The data logs. They pointless. All of it.
***
No wind. Got three quarter’s a bottle left and half a pencil. I think I’ll harvest the skeletons of the cacti, make somethin’ of them.
***
No wind. No scotch.
***
No wind.
***
No wind.
***
I’m hearing voices. Nondescript little voices whispering through the slats of this old shack. They’re whisperin’ ’bout the ocean. I can’t recall a genuine ocean. I just have this idea of what it should be. More endless, like the sky is here, ‘cept more inhospitable. Mile wide and miles deep of salty water that’s both life bearing and life taking in the same damned moment. It ain’t nothing you can drink. The salt near kill ya and it’s just as much of a wasteland as this place is here. It sounds purty, though. Idyllic an’ something what soothes a tattered soul. If it don’t bring sustenance, it brings the promise of other places better’n than one you in.
The voices even smell like salt. When we first married we had fish n’ chips at the reception. Everyone thought we damned crazy for doin’ such a thing in such a place, but that was how we met; on the sea at a shack what served the most succulent and crunchy fish ‘n chips. They only know we went away. They didn’t know we experienced, that we changed. We saw somethin’ of the world that was. Glimmers of what it could be.
We came back to this place, though. Came back and stayed when everyone else left. Maybe them voices are askin’ me why we stayed, and why, when it came time, I stayed and you left.
It’s dark out. I never broadcast at this time, but the scotch is gone and the voices are callin’ me, and when I first heard them, I thought this damned thing might actually be working. I ran over here, tripped on the dining bench and landed head-first on the corner of the table. Got a good gash in my head, if ya care ta know. Bled, too. You know what I thought when I saw that bright splash of red? I am still beautiful. I’m still capable of beauty. And pain.
I ain’t dead yet. Maybe I ought ta be, but I ain’t. And that has ta count for something.
***
I am hunkered. The steady recording’s I been making are gone ta shit. I feel a loss now there ain’t no routine. I’m sittin’ here surrounded by my stacks of notebooks, and what do they mean? These are the markers of my life for the past three years. Dutiful recordings of outside, but there’s an inside, too. And all that is drifting away from me during these transmissions. There’s no tangible evidence that this person’s innards ever was. Only measurements of barometric pressure, wind direction and speed, temperature and humidity. Five senses of the earth. Maybe. But five senses of a human being, my emotional landscape that’s completely different than what’s skulking around out there. The pathetic crush of time turning behemoths into sand particles. Well that ain’t me.
‘Cept maybe it is. I used ta be gardens. I used to be the fat blooms on yucca. Coneflower and elderberry. Your prairie rose.
Them voices won’t stop. They go so fierce, they even move the air. Act like breath in my hair. This place has been my own sensory depravation tank until now. Incessant whispers pinpoint all my nerve endin’s and blow fire into them.
Ya know how I know you never comin’ back? My mind made up voices. My mind basks in the glow of my spilled blood and calls that beautiful. And my landscape is full of sand. That’s how I know.
***
I went outside today, and damn near got blown sideways. Not cuz I was drunk or hungered. Not cuz it was so bright outside, the sun tried to sear my eyes useless. It was because of the wind.
That’s right, ya heard me. Wind. Blowin’ at 30 miles an hour and suspendin’ the desert in the air.
I stripped done ta nothin’ and stood with my arms spread, embracing the feeling of the earth breathing all over me, dustin’ me with the smell of salt, fried onions, and swamp water.
This means somethin’, doesn’t it? Something’s comin’.
***
Wheels screech to a halt outside.
Wheels?
I get up ta see, but the door opens and you’re—he’s standin’ there, lookin’ around the inside of my shack, fixin’ he gaze on them batteries, the blood I ain’t bothered to clean up, and maybe the worn nobs on the transmitter.
“What in the hell, woman? What you been doin’?”
I should know his voice. I should know the feel of his hands, what side of the bed he sleeps on, but fact is he’s like a stranger, a myth materializin’ in my doorway. “Transmittin’,” I tell ‘im. “Just like you told me to, every day mornin’ and night from the time you left until this moment.”
He wraps his arms around me. They’re fleshier and more muscled than when he left. His skin is nice and pale, and some of his lines ain’t quite so obvious no more. “Damn fool,” he says. “There ain’t been no working receiver for years.”
I know as much. I know my reasons for doin’ what I did, but I can’t tell ‘im that. “There’s someone been listenin’ to my prattle. It made a difference somewhere.”
He kisses my temple, and I can feel him grimace from the grit on my skin. “Come on. Transport’s waiting. We’ll get you clean and fed. And you and I can get on with things.”
My drawings are tacked up on the wall with old barbed wire. My bed’s neatly made, and stacks of chronologically ordered notebooks form half walls around the little room.
He’s frownin’ at me, wonderin’ what’s taking so long, no doubt. “Come on,” he says. And what can I say to him. That I ain’t goin’ cuz he’s not you?
Ananke and Eos 