Lost Echoes

15

Harry drove home, wondering why he had told Tad about it, this problem he had. It wasn’t something he talked about anymore, not since Joey and the doctors thought he was crazy. His mom too, though she would never say such a thing. And now he had told this guy.

But it was different. He didn’t know Tad, really, so it didn’t matter what he thought. This way he got to rant, get it off his chest. Tad would just write him off as a nutter, go back to the bottle.

They would be drunk nutters together in different places.

Something like that.

Harry had a full day to kill, and he killed it studying, when he could concentrate. But he spent a lot of time thinking, thinking about Tad and his family, the way the old man had whipped the shit out of those thugs out back of the bar, whipped them while drunk, took their money and didn’t even know it.

He believed Tad didn’t remember taking the money. Believed it wasn’t so much robbery as irony. An object lesson for assholes.

He tried to concentrate on his psychology book, but a shadow fell over him and the page went dim. He looked up to see night come early. Or so it seemed. It was a rain cloud, and it filled the room until it was black as a wedge of chocolate on chocolate.

Harry sat back, didn’t bother with the lights. The dark was pleasant. He could feel and taste the ozone in the air, could hear the wind picking up, the rain pounding lightly on the roof, then he heard it grow heavy, as if the drops were full of lead.

He got up, pulled back the curtain, and looked out. There was a bit of light in the shadow, and he could see big balls of hail. Lightning tore at the darkness like an angry child ripping at paper.

He thought about his car as he listened to the hail hit. There wasn’t any kind of garage; place didn’t have one. But he thought maybe the big oaks on either side of the drive would protect it some. Not that it was anything special, anything to be proud of, any kind of chick wagon. It was a brown car of nondescript nothingness.

He hoped at least the hail wouldn’t crack the windshield.

The ice came down hard and beat on the roof, and some of it clattered against the glass. Harry tried to figure if there was any way some horror could be trapped in the sound made by the hunks of ice; if in their impact on the roof there was an event, colorful and loud and terrible, just waiting to leap out. What if there was a guy drowned in a lake, thrashed and screamed and slapped the water a lot before he went under; say later some water evaporated, became rain, or hail—could that hold the memory?

No, that was too much. The water would have been transformed; wouldn’t happen. He hoped.

Harry moved back a bit, and it was a good thing. A ball of hail struck the glass near the windowsill, broke through, came bouncing into the room, rolling across the floor, sprinkling glass, shedding ice slivers. It came to a stop between his feet.

He picked it up. It was cold and firm. Felt like a small baseball found in morning-dew grass. He took it into the bathroom, dropped it into the sink to let it melt. That cold touch made him think about a cold beer. He had a few in the little refrigerator. But he decided against it.

A thing the old man had said, about the drinking. It stuck with him. How did it go exactly? Something about being a self-made man.

Yeah. That was it. A self-made man. Tad said he was a self-made man, a self-made drunk.

Tad told him he was driving the same road.

Harry tore off the edge of a cardboard box and got some tape and taped the cardboard over the hole in the window. Maybe the landlord would fix it.

He got a broom out of the bathroom, where it leaned against the edge of the shower frame, swept the glass onto a piece of firm paper, picked it up, and tossed it in the garbage can.

Harry moved his chair to the center of the room and sat listening to the summer hail. It slammed against the house for about fifteen minutes, subsided. Then there was a slice of light in the darkness, and it slipped through the curtains and filled the room.

Harry didn’t move.

He sat and listened, and the last of the hail, smaller now, passed, followed by a smattering of rain, then it too was gone, and the light outside grew brighter yet and he could see clearly in the room.

He sat in the chair and listened.

There was nothing now, not even cars out on the road in front of the house.

There was only silence and sunlight, and he sat in the warmth of the light and listened to the nothingness of silence for as long as it lasted.