By Dez Walker

Todd came home from the war with a noise in his head. It grew quiet sometimes, but it never went away completely. He sought out the noisiest places, to drown it out. He slept with the television on, loud, so that the people in the next room banged on the wall and cursed at him, but he didn’t mind — at least he knew that he wasn’t alone in the world. He was not the last living man on earth. He never turned the volume down, but he never watched it either. He couldn’t stand to watch these ghosts moving in silver lights and shadows across the screen, with problems that no real person had. Problems, everybody knew, that had nothing to do with life, nothing to do with death.

Quiet or loud he heard voices in the noise sometimes. He didn’t always understand them, but he never liked what they said. He tried not to listen but when it’s in your head there’s nowhere you can go to escape it because you take it with you.

So he spent his days walking noisy streets in the heart of the city and in the teeming screaming veins that ran away from it. He moved, unthinking, with the crowds of people, and told himself that the voices he heard came from them, from the outside. He walked, all day long. Sometimes he heard laughter in the noise, and this was the worst, the fucking end. Because there was nothing funny about it. He used to love a joke, Todd. He was constantly looking for a laugh, no matter the situation. And now he had a laugh, constant and bitter, following everywhere he went.

He woke sometimes, in alleys or parks or right in the middle of the goddamned street, and stared up at the screeching sky, wondering how the hell he got here. The noise always woke him, but it never told him where he’d been or what he’d done. It never explained why his guts were bruised and his eyes blackened and his knuckles bloodied with someone else’s blood.

When he met her everything went quiet for a second, and it nearly blinded him, it nearly knocked him on his ass. He couldn’t even hear her speaking, not even that. He looked up at her, he saw her lips moving he saw the riot of noise around her, but in his head, it was a strange stillness. And then some ratty guy spilled a cup of coffee on him, hot and nearly full, and the silence splintered into a white shrieking rage. He punched the guy in the face, maybe. He remembered blood streaming down a white shirt, as rich and strangely bright and new as blood always looked coming out of a body, no matter how many times you’ve seen it. No matter how many times.

And then god knows, who the hell knows, he was outside, lots of angry assholes lots of fists and hard shoes, hard, irate men. Women screaming, the noise so loud he thought he’d puke. Twisted pissed off faces. But not her, she wasn’t there. He remembered that. He remembered her.

That night he never turned the TV on. He lay in his bed listening to the noise. Sometimes if he really listened he could sink himself into it like water, and maybe it would rage at first and turn him upside down and strike him deaf and blind and stupid, but if he waited long enough, listening, he could lose himself in the thick woolen rhythm of it he could wrap himself in it he could rise and fall with it he could live with it.

He thought about her face. He thought about her kind eyes and he thought about the surprise and fear in them. He thought about the silence that she gave him, and he wondered what sounds had come out of her moving lips, what words? What questions? She had asked him something. She had walked with purpose to his side, and she had asked him something. He wondered if she was real. If she’d been there at all. If he hadn’t dreamed her, or she hadn’t been a story the noise told him.

In a fever at three o’clock in the morning, he knew that he would find her and ask her. Her question or her message. He had to stop himself from rising out of bed at that very moment and running naked through the streets to track her down. But though he didn’t know much these days, he knew this would be foolish. So he lay and listened to the noise come wash over him in waves and he very nearly slept, enough at least to be confused by the feeling of startling awake. Because he never slept, he always floated suspended in a world between life and death.

And the fever was gone with the grey raining morning, washed away. He lay sick and sorry knowing he wouldn’t leave the house. Not now, not for a while.

She didn’t see him walk in, but there he was in a booth in the corner, looking lost and even scared against an expanse of cracked Naugahyde. She felt anxious, too, jittery, at the thought of walking over to him, though she couldn’t have said why. Not because of what had happened last time she’d seen him here, all the yelling, fist flailing, blood spilling, strangely not because of that.

She waited till she felt calm, but that never happened, and one of the other girls went over to him. So she sat down with Mrs. Macintyre for a moment, but she looked past Mrs. Macintyre’s old face, and she watched him. Mrs. Macintyre shone smiling at the sight of her.

Mrs. Macintyre’s voice caught in her throat, as it always did, always making her sound as though she was just about to cry. “Meg. I want … I want … ” She grabbed Meg’s hand, smearing it with pea soup.

Impossible to tell how old he was. His short-cropped hair still dark and thick, but his face so lined, so tired.

“I want … I want.”

She watched him with the other girl, how he barely looked at her, how he shook his head and shrugged his shoulders. How the other girl rolled her eyes when she walked away, how she laughed at his confusion.

“I want … I want … What do I want? I don’t remember, do you know?” Mrs. Macintyre’s grip tightened on Meg’s hand.

He looked around and and she knew he was looking for her. She shouldn’t hide here, she shouldn’t stop here, she shouldn’t sit at all. She’d lose her job, and that’s a thing she couldn’t afford. After that last mess with this guy and the fighting. She didn’t know how, but somehow they’d blamed her for that.

“You already ordered, Mrs. Macintyre. You’re already eating.” Mrs. Macintyre had shaking crepe-paper-thin hands with dark blue veins. They were strong and soft, and when she held Meg’s hands, which she always did, she gripped them tight.

“I see him, too.”

“Who? Who do you see?” Meg was accustomed to Mrs. Macintyre’s shifting planes of thought, but this seemed so strange, so strange.

Mrs. Macintyre frowned and tried to focus her eyes on a clump of pea soup in the wispy yellowing hair that fell across her face.

“Who do you see, Mrs. Macintyre?”

“The sick child. The hurting boy. So you and I are nothing then, when on a diverse shore.” Meg pulled her hands from Mrs. Macintyre’s and they were suddenly so cold. Behind the counter, her manager stood watching, in his greasy t-shirt with sweat stains from each armpit threatening to meet across his small round belly. He had always been kind to her; until he wasn’t. He had always asked her about her life when they closed the restaurant together, he had always seemed interested in her stories, though heaven knows there was little enough to tell. He shook his head at her now and looked at his wrist, where a watch would be if he wore one.

When Meg stood, the strange boy saw her, he looked straight at her and his face went white, which made the dark hollows around his eyes darker still, which made him look more wild, more lost.

He stayed an hour and watched her the whole time. Not in the way normal people do, hiding it, glancing over from time to time, or pretending to read. Just straight stark staring. She didn’t go to him, she didn’t even walk by him, and one time when she came out of the kitchen he was gone.

She was last to leave after this long strange shift. Her boss thought he was punishing her by leaving her alone but she didn’t want to talk to him. She wanted to methodically do the things she had done night after night for years: She wanted to do them in silence. She married the ketchup and filled the sugar packets in their hard plastic cradles and stacked the chairs upside-down on the tables. She moved the wilting salads and sweating desserts from the reach-in to the walk-in. She swept and spot-mopped the floors. She sat, for a moment, surrounded by the smell of stale grease and industrial cleaner, on a revolving stool at the counter, swinging back and forth, thinking, suddenly very tired.

When she locked up, she saw herself reflected in the window, her face swimming blue and cloudy in the light from the sign, frowning. She had a nagging feeling of regret, she wished that she had talked to him. Now, of course, she’d never see him again. But with this thought she conjured him, and he rose up out of the shadows in the alley, wan and apologetic, and she couldn’t even be scared because he was so obviously terrified himself.

He said, “Can I follow you home?” In a voice rusty from disuse.

Outside the restaurant, the cool blue night smelled like dog piss and diesel and cigarette smoke from the bar next door, but as they moved out of town the air rang sweet with decomposing leaves and imminent rain. he didn’t talk or look at her, but she didn’t mind. She’d been nervous all day but now all of that was gone, and she just felt tired. It felt okay to have someone to walk with, she almost felt safe.

She’d come to work straight from the station and she had a small suitcase. It wasn’t heavy but it banged against her shins and she worried she’d bruise. She’d been visiting her sister and the new baby in Newton, and she longed for her own bed. Gone almost four days.

She remembered that she’d seen this man the day before she left. She’d thought about him on the train. On the way down, she’d watched the countryside flicker past, bronze and pewter, heavy, and she’d thought about the way he looked at her. As if he didn’t speak English, as if he couldn’t hear her at all. And then — right before the fight, right before his eyes had gone blank — as if he was losing her, drowning, being carried away, with great sadness.

Walking along now, shuffling through damp leaves with tired sore feet, she thought about the new baby, about his unseeing eyes and grasping hands. About how he made her want to cry. The sound of his voice did her in. Unraveled her completely. And he held his ears, the baby held his soft unformed ears with his soft inept fingers, as if the sound of his own crying did him in, too.

She looked over at the man walking next to her and nearly laughed to see his hands over his ears. He pressed his hands against them, and then cupped them, and then took them away. Pressed them and cupped them and took them away, over and over, as if he was testing. He only stopped when he noticed the bag and took it from her. It looked so small in his hands. She remembered when she’d gotten the suitcase. She was sixteen and she saw it in the department store and fell in love. Half a lifetime ago. Powder blue, with crimped satin inside forming pockets for all sorts of secret things she could only imagine, things that adults needed. She’d learn about it all, someday, when she saw the world. She’d learn about it all and know what everything was for.

Outside her house she stopped and looked up at his wild lost face in rainwashed shadows. He looked surprised. He looked at her house and he looked down at her. He looked at her for a while and didn’t say anything. He seemed to be listening. She couldn’t hear anything. Just the small wind in the dry leaves, and some insect, some late, cold insect with a sweet voice, who hesitated each time before its soft trilling song, as if it really wasn’t sure it should be singing in this still chill air.

The rain came, and it fell in soft silent drops on the eaves above them and on the soft dusty leaves beside them. It changed everything, and now it was colder and now she wanted to go inside. The rain came faster, suddenly, and splashed against the sidewalk to drown her tired feet.

Finally, he said, “It’s so quiet! It’s so quiet!” and she thought maybe this is a thing an adult needs to know, maybe she should know to be scared now. But she didn’t feel scared and she was so tired so tired. She just wanted to sit down, in her own house, and she wanted him to come too.

She didn’t offer him coffee, because she’d had too much coffee all day, and anyway her stomach was sour and aching from her trip. In a house this small everything was pushed together, the cramped kitchen right inside the door, the bedroom right off the kitchen. So it didn’t seem strange to go into her bedroom, and she was too tired to care anyway. She sat on her bed and took her shoes off and he stood awkward and uncertain in the doorway. She leaned against the headboard, not quite lying down, and he came and sat next to her, jumpy, nervous, like he had something to say to her. She just waited, closed her eyes, and felt as though she was still on the train, between stations, traveling somewhere at a slow steady pace she could not control.

His voice came halting, and he said, “That day, the other day, the last time. You said something to me, you asked me something but I couldn’t hear. I have to know.”

She cast her memory back to the only time she’d spoken to him. “I’m a waitress. I probably asked ‘How can I help you?'”

He made a strange sound, like a laugh, but anguished, and when she looked down at him she saw that he wasn’t smiling at all.

He woke up naked in her bed. And goddamn if there was one thing a man wanted to remember it’s how he got into a situation like this. For a sickening moment, he thought the noise had left him. And why would he feel it as a loss? Why would he panic if it was gone? But it was there, a low electric buzz, which surged and crackled when he turned his head when he tried to remember

A weak pink mourning light seeped through the curtains. He couldn’t see much of the room. A saucer full of coins by the bed, a lamp with an amber shade, a drawing of a dog in a silver frame — not good but strangely perfect. He didn’t see or smell blood, anyway, so that was something, that was hopeful. When he sat up the noise rushed in, heavy, like pain. He found his clothes in a pile on the floor, as if they’d fallen off of him.

He found her in the kitchen, doing a crossword puzzle. She looked up at him, and what she was thinking he couldn’t tell. Her face was broad and round, her eyes small triangles, her mouth a wide crooked grin. Like a jack-o-lantern with a candle inside, lit from within. Bright.

“Coffee?”

“No, it makes me crazy.”

She laughed but he didn’t mind. Mostly he hated when people laughed at him, but with her it was okay. Her laughter drowned out the noise for a moment. He sat at the table, but it was hard to look at her bright face.”

“Did we … ?”

“Naw.”

“I’m sorry.”

She raised her eyebrows and laughed.

“No, no! Sorry sorry.”

“Don’t be. You don’t remember? Drunk?”

“God no!” Alcohol made the noise blindingly, excruciatingly loud. He’d learned the hard way.

“Not old enough to drink?”

“No, I’m twenty-five.”

“Jesus, so young.”

“Not anymore.”

She asked him where he was from and how he got here, but he didn’t want to talk about it so he didn’t answer. The noise grew louder and his eyes grew dim. She looked at him and frowned and stopped asking questions. She made them some eggs and toast, and then she left for work.

With her gone all he had was a soft steady hum. He climbed into her bed.

She thought about him all day long at work and screwed up every order. She never made mistakes, but today, all day long, that’s all she did. How stupid to be so stupid. How stupid that when Mrs. Macintyre sang a song about memories she thought of him, and when one of the girls read an article about a crazy man who broke into women’s homes and stole their underwear she thought of him, and when a skinny dog ran by, she thought of him.

She didn’t know if he’d be there when she got home, and she didn’t know what she hoped for.

She found him in her bed, dressed, not really awake, not really asleep. Staring. Listening. He sat up when she came in, and held his head for a moment, as if against a wave of pain. She’d brought him a sandwich from work, and he ate some of it and drank some milk, and then they went to bed. He lay as far away as possible, over the blankets with all his clothes on, even his shoes. He never touched her or even looked at her. She thought she’d never sleep with him lying there, but eventually she did, she must have because she had a dream of a skinny dog running away from her in the woods.

For a few days, it went on like this. She brought him food and he ate more and more each day, with more hunger and enjoyment. He didn’t talk much but she didn’t mind; he never smiled. She asked him what he did all day while she was at work, and when he said, “Nothing,” she believed him. He would answer a few questions and then stop, and she could see in his eyes that he drifted away, that he didn’t hear her anymore. She talked to him sometimes, and she thought he liked the sound of her voice, unless she started asking questions. She told him about her imaginary friends — she’d had a few in her life, and she dreamed about them, often. She told him how each of them smelled (one like ferns, one like dried grass, one like the clouds) what their voices sounded like, and how they made her feel.

He slept in her bed every night, never touching her. But she thought about him, she thought about touching him. One night she walked to the other side of the bed and lay down in his arms. He looked scared, he pulled away, he put his hands over his ears. But she lay with her back to him, and she took his hands in hers and pulled his arms around her. He lay, stiff and silent, barely breathing. She moved against him and he grew harder, his whole body hardened and he moved away so that they still lay together but barely touching.

The next night she started this way, in his arms. She held his arms around her. She wanted him to put his hands on her, under her clothes, where she lay warm and waiting. But he never did. Not that night or the next. They’d gone to bed before it was even dark, even though it was darkening early, and she lay looking at the roofs and crossing wires and clouds in the blue evening light, thinking about all the people in this city, in this world. Alone, connecting, alone. She felt the muscles in his arms, through his clothes and hers, she felt him trying not to move.

The next night she turned to him and she kissed his neck. She breathed him in, his scent, his silence. He said, “No no no, I don’t want to hurt you,” but she didn’t want to talk about it so she didn’t. He lay on his back with his hands over his ears. And how good it felt to finally put her hands inside his clothes after imagining it a million times, lying next to him. She said his name, over and over, so that he took his hands from his ears and his arms lay stretched on either side of his head, a gesture of surrender. She took his hands and put them under her shirt, and something clicked then, something shifted, and he came to life, he moved his hands everywhere. And then he was so hungry he nearly scared her. And when they lay twined on her bed with the blue shadows washing all around them, she felt like saying sorry, but she didn’t. He said, “It’s so quiet. It’s so quiet. It’s never been so quiet.”

And one day she came home to find him on the roof. And she thought, her whole body froze with prickling fear, because she thought for a second that he would jump. But he was just cleaning years’ worth of dense decayed leaves from the gutters. He rained a handful of new dry redgold leaves all around her so that she saw his face through them, looking down at her, darkly shadowed against the stark sky.

He fixed things all around her house … a broken doorknob, a wobbling table, and her radio, which hadn’t played in months. He never told her, but she discovered each repair as she went about her day, and she suspected he’d fixed other things she’d never know about, because she hadn’t even noticed they were broken.

She didn’t know where he went during the day, he never said, but she knew he’d left the house. He’d change his clothes. And sometimes he came back with food or books, sometimes with flowers.

One evening she found him chopping carrots at the table, and a pot of food bubbling on the stove. She didn’t know he could cook. She didn’t know anything about him. He looked up when she came in, not smiling, but glad to see her. She thought he seemed glad that she was home. She watched his strong hand at this small job and felt a pang of something strange, pity or lust or love, she didn’t know. She watched his face, which was still gaunt, still pale, but less haunted, somehow, so that he looked younger. He knew she watched him and he looked up, but she didn’t look away and neither did he until he cut his finger, and he looked down, bewildered at the blood.

On her days off they stayed in bed. Nobody had ever seen her naked in the daylight before. She was scared to undress, but when he pulled her dress over her head he didn’t need to speak or smile for her to know how he felt.

Sometimes they walked the quiet tangled streets on the edges of town. Once they sat in a dirty park, with grubby kids climbing and yelling in front of them, and a lawnmower running behind, and birds singing overhead. But he wouldn’t stay long, he shook his head as if to clear water from his ears, and he walked away from her. Once they took a bus out of town to walk in damp yellowing woods, and when the light shifted, when the sun came out and half the sky was smoked grey, and half the sky was clear blue, he took her hand and held it, hard.

One day she came home to find him covered in blood. His face, his fists, his clothes. He stared at her as though he didn’t know her. She spoke to him, she asked him questions, but he didn’t hear.

The goddamn noise. the goddamn noise. You couldn’t let your guard down, you couldn’t relax, not even for a second. You couldn’t assume, because it had gotten so very quiet, because the noise had gotten softer, and the voices were almost gentle, the laughter almost kind, you couldn’t think for one goddamn moment that it was going away, that it would ever leave you alone. When you got too comfortable it would wait and wait and wait and then it would come on so loud, so sudden, that you wanted to claw your own fucking ears out.

He couldn’t remember and it hurt to try. He’d gone into town, he knew that much. He’d gone into town to pick up a few things. But he’d felt good. He’d felt easy and light. He’d seen her through the window of the restaurant, and she looked so pretty. She was laughing with someone and she was so pretty when she laughed. She didn’t laugh too much with him but he knew that would change, he knew that would change. He was coming back to life he was rising out of the heaviness and darkness.

Well, he walked to his old place to pick up a few things and his goddamn neighbor met him on the stairs, on the narrow stairs. He couldn’t even remember now why this guy was so angry, what he’d ever done. There must have been a fight; he couldn’t even remember it now. But his neighbor obviously could because he knocked him backward down the stairs. And that was that, all he could remember after that was the screaming in his ears.

He looked at her now, where she sat in a chair by the bed. He saw her as through a great bright noisy haze, but it was clearing and quieting, with her in the center of it. She watched him and she looked sad, which he expected, but she looked scared, too. And that was the worst, the fucking worst. He was sure, he was almost sure, that he would never hurt her. No matter how loud the noise, no matter what it said. If she was scared of him it would break his goddamn heart. Though of course, she should be scared. She should be. Everybody should be scared of him the way he was scared of himself.

She stood and sighed and left the room, moving through sad shifting shadows that clung to her skirt. He wanted to call her but he couldn’t yet so he lay rocking in the noise. He thought about the sounds she made when he touched her he thought about the way she sneezed and sighed and snored. He thought about a song she always sang. He’d danced to it on Saturday nights, before the war, but the words had meant nothing till he heard her sing it.

In the kitchen, she played with the radio he’d fixed. She looked up at him and spoke, but he didn’t hear what she said. Everything had gone perfectly silent. As seamlessly silent as the first time he’d seen her. She must have found a song she liked because she smiled and stood and started dancing, hands in the air. He could smell the rain and see it against the window, but he couldn’t hear it. On her second turn around the room she caught him in her strong thin arms. He could feel her breath warm against his neck, he could feel her smiling there, and he clung to her for his life, moving with her to a song he couldn’t hear.

Dez Walker was raised in Macon County, Georgia and now lives in Lisbon because he likes burnt custard. He’s always liked feeding the stray dogs in both places, and he always wonders why they don’t fight more. Why do they never fight? His stories have appeared in many actual publications, and not just in his dreams. Thanks for reading.