Lost Echoes

24

Feeling better after a shower, dressed again, but barefoot, Harry shuffled down a hallway and into a kitchen dining area. Tad, looking clean, thinning hair combed tight against his head, dressed in loose white shirt and pants and tennis shoes, was at the counter, sitting on a stool, reading a book.

There was a sliding glass door on the far side of the room, and it was filled with daylight.

Tad glanced up.

“Dead man walking,” he said.

“Oh, yeah.”

“Come. Sit down. Have a cup.”

“How about a bucket’s worth?”

“I’ll keep making it long as you want to drink it. Got enough for a lot of cups. Italian coffee. Kona coffee from Hawaii. Plain old American coffee, and instant coffee. Much as I liquor up, I keep plenty of coffee. Got enough so you could fill a tub and bathe in it.”

“Think I’m supposed to be at work. Know I am.”

“Where do you work? You told me, I’ve forgot.”

“Bookstore. Downtown. University bookstore. I work in the stockroom a few hours a week, do the shelves now and then. Keeps me in beer and my fine abode. Or did. I’ve missed before and they didn’t like it. Way I remember, one more fuckup and I’m out in the snow.”

“It’s not snowing.”

“You know what I mean.”

Tad took his thumb out of the book and slipped a piece of paper into it, closed it, laid it on the counter, said, “You wrote me a note.”

“That was when I thought I was hot shit. That I was in love. And I am. But now that I know who I am and where I stand, it don’t matter anymore.”

“Sure it does.”

“Think so, huh?”

“That note, it got me to thinking. You and me, we have lost our center. You still want to get it back?”

“The girl I wrote about, I think it’s over before it got started. I don’t know if it was going to start. Not now. I think it was wishful thinking.”

“She tell you that?”

“She didn’t tell me anything. Joey made me see the light. I didn’t like how bright it was, but he made me look at it.”

“So this guy tells you she’s not for you.”

“Said she’s too good for me. And she is.”

“You believe that?”

“Oh, yeah.”

“You wouldn’t if you had your center. Things between you and her might not work out, but you’d feel different about it. You’d know how to deal with pain.”

“And you’re the master of dealing?”

Tad shook his head. “No. But we can master it together. Once I did master it—to some extent. You’re always gonna have things that make you wobble, but the trick is to not let yourself wobble so far the balance tips so much you can’t bring it back in line. That’s what mastering it means. It doesn’t mean life doesn’t come at you, and that it doesn’t try and shove you around, but it means you can negotiate the storm.”

“What if your balance is really fucked? Like I’ve gotten tipped bad, see, and I’ve fallen over and I can’t get up.”

“You can get up. You can always get up. Maybe not physically, sometimes, but mentally, emotionally, you can always get up.”

“No offense. But maybe you’re not the best example.”

“Point taken. But things have changed. For me. Or I’m trying to change them. You can be part of that change—for me, and for you. Interested?”

“I don’t know.”

“Remember, you’re the one who asked me.”

“Yeah, but it was during a period of euphoria.”

“People think being happy is an all-the-time thing. It’s a series of balancing acts. If you were standing—which I’d rather you not do too much of right now—but if you were standing there, you wouldn’t be balanced.”

“Because I don’t know how to stand?”

“No. All that karate-front stance, locked-horse stance, all that stuff, it’s bullshit. You were standing there, you’d be constantly trying to find your balance. I’m talking standing there without thinking, you know, just hanging out. What a person does is they constantly shift to find balance. We all do it. Gradually. You’re standing one way, you get tired, you got to shift—reason being, you got to renegotiate your balance. Same thing when it comes to life. Happiness is about renegotiating balance.”

“That one of those Zen things?”

“No. That’s a Tad thing. It’s what my teacher taught me. My instructor of martial arts and life. He was a balanced kind of guy. He knew some shit. Once, I thought I was balanced and knew some shit, then I realized I didn’t know half the shit he did. But, still, there was a time when I knew some shit.”

“You can teach me?”

“I can teach you what you want to learn. While I reteach myself. Interested?”

Harry sipped his coffee.

“Will it hurt?”

“Sometimes. Pain is an indicator of life, you know.”

“Yeah, but I don’t know how alive I’m wanting to feel.”

“How good do you feel now?”

“Not so good.”

“You just answered your own question.”

“So this wanting to teach me, does that mean you believe the stuff I told you?”

“I don’t know. But I looked some things up. Right here in my own library. Got a lot of books, Harry. Used to read all the time. I got medical books—I used to study the body for martial arts. I got all manner of books. I went to the library for one—one I was reading when you came in. Hold on.”

Tad went away, came back with a big, thick book.

“Medical volume,” Tad said. “I want you to listen to something.”

He began to read:

“‘There have been numerous cases where, either by accident or birth, or due to catastrophic injury, or even childhood disease, the brain has been affected, or altered, in such a way that it can perceive color as smell, or even sound. Meaning, to some, seeing the color red could activate sensors that would cause the observer to smell cinnamon, or rose, or even fecal matter. In reverse, smell can sometimes be perceived as color. There are cases of images being activated by the audio as well, resulting in the ability to interpret sounds as visuals. And there is some questionable evidence of sounds containing images of past events that have been recorded in the surroundings. Rocks, dwellings and the like, even the designs on pottery. Trapped in the manner of sound trapped in the grooves of old-style records. Sometimes, these “recordings,” like the remembered voices and sounds of songs sung, come back in flashes of sound, appearance, and, most destructively, emotion.

“‘Some people believe this is the source for the belief in ghosts, and since not everyone has this innate, or acquired, ability, this is why some people hear or see “ghosts” and others do not.’

“That’s from the Texas Medical Journal volume The Mystery of Senses, Perceptions, and the Brain, by James Long-Williams, Ph.D.”

Tad closed the book, put it down, picked up the book already on the counter, flipped to the marked page, said, “Now this:

“‘Audiochronology: akin to second sight, but instead of the ability to see the future or the past, it is the ability to determine past events through the transference of sound and its transformation to visuals of past events contained within the sounds hidden within objects or structures. Often a sound will activate images, wherein the audiochronaut can travel back in time, at least in the sense of seeing past events as they happened and were recorded in inanimate objects. Often these images are retained in the objects due to a violent discharge of bioelectrical energy being absorbed by the surroundings and, in turn, being reactivated by sound, therefore discharging the bioelectrical energy, which in turn now acts as an audio, visual, and emotional recorder. The slamming of a door, the scraping of furniture, provided the door and furniture were a part of the violent past event, can easily stimulate this action in an individual prone to this ability. The person experiencing these events not only hears what happened in the past, sees what happened in the past, he receives the emotional energy in such a way that he or she may be affected to the point of nausea, illness, or disgust.

“‘The facility is often inherited, or is sometimes brought on by injury to the brain, or even disease, or perhaps a combination of all three.’”

“Damn,” Harry said. “That sounds right. That a medical journal too?”

“No. This is a book on supernatural and preternatural abilities. Latrell’s Encyclopedia of the Strange and Unnatural.”

“Swell.”

“But the thing is, Harry, my man, they—the medical and the preternatural businesses—agree, even if they give slightly different reasoning…really not that different. That’s the interesting part. So, could be something to that shit you’re talking.”

“Thanks.”

“Really doesn’t matter. That’s not the point. I think we can help each other. You can give me impetus, and I can give you the knowledge you need to at least control, to some extent, your ability to deal with this sound business.”

“If you don’t know for a fact you believe it, then how can you know if you can give me control over anything?”

“Anything and everything is about self-control, Harry. Discipline. Organization. Even creativity. It’s not about wild abandon. It’s about control of yourself to the point where you can feel what you need to feel and reject what is unnecessary. Interested or not?”

Harry sat for a moment, looking at the counter, at the book Tad had laid there on top of the other. He lifted his head slowly.

“When do we start?”

“Today.”

“Tad? You doing this for me?”

“Kid, wish I was so unselfish. I’m doing it for me.”