Radio Silence

      Paul bent down to tie his boot laces. Sweat dripped onto the soil from the tips of his hair. He coughed as he stood and pulled his shovel from some loose dirt. The sun was rising and the sky stretched, heavy with thick red clouds. His shadow stretch as well, far from his shoes and hoisted the spade onto its shoulder. He turned back to the house, his boots crunching in the frozen dirt and the sound ran off, lost in the great expanse of his land; fifty acres of dark red earth. His small cottage stood before him like an old man alone in the desert. Clutching to the old man's cane stood a woman dressed in a ragged nightgown, the horror in her face voiced only through the frost of her breath. Paul limped towards her, rested his shovel upon the dark wood of the porch and wiped his brow with a rag. The woman had her hand to her mouth now but no sound came from her shaking body as she sank to her knees. Paul did not speak to her but his hands clenched into fists as he passed by. He opened the kitchen door and sat back down to his coffee.

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      Paul distrusted people, especially hospitals “cesspools of sickness” he would say spitting into the dust. He was a lonely, small town man and he preferred it that way. When Emily went into labor he calmly laid her in a bathtub and delivered the baby with his hands still caked in red earth. His wife pleaded briefly to be taken to a hospital “for the baby” but she soon went quiet and bore the pain. People grew tough in Idaho. When his son was born Paul held him upside down and cut his umbilical cord with a pair of garden shears. The boy's eyes were closed and so was his mouth and his chest moved up and down calmly. His wife thought something was wrong but Paul knew everything was perfect, only his boy could enter the world calmly with no cry and take in the sounds and smells with closed eyes and a faint smirk. After ten years the boy was still quiet and calm. He was called Luke.

      Paul was a proud father but he was not the type to show it. He was an Old Testament potato farmer like his father was and his grandfather before that and his son would know the paddle and respect. Luke took from his mother's side. He had dark leathery skin and black hair and he was thin but tough and he was smart. On his eleventh birthday Paul bought Luke a radio. It was an old one that he picked up at a yard sale. It was silver and stained, it only received AM radio and the tuner knob was missing so Luke had to tune it with a pair of pliers. It had a long antenna that had to be propped up by the wall or a chair and Luke loved it. It was the first thing he had owned that was truly his and he would sit up at night and twist the tuner with those silver handled pliers and listen to Baseball games and screaming Christian ministers and fuzz. Mostly Fuzz. Every night he would play with it for a few minutes, tuning it to the most satisfyingly dead channel, and fall asleep as a hundred voices whispered “Shhhhhhhhh” into the darkness. Paul liked to sleep with his fan running, he understood white noise and Emily bore it like she bore everything.

      Five years had passed since the radio. Paul was growing older and more tired with each day. His back ached and his once nimble hands had been touched briefly with arthritis at the knuckles of his smallest fingers. Luke was almost fifteen and he was finally becoming strong enough to work in the field. They worked together in the sunset, raking weeds out of the thick red dirt and clay. They worked in silence. Paul watched his son as he tilled the earth. His eyes were cold and unreadable and they focused solely on the task at hand and he was very quiet.

      Paul had awoken a few days earlier from a dream. He was a child again, about Luke's age. He was sitting in a tree with the young girl who lived in the farm next door. He could not remember her name. They had run from their family and their chores and were bathing in sunlight from the high branches of an oak tree, the sun beamed through the swaying summer leaves. He heard the girl laugh and he touched her face with his hands, already they were dark and callused from digging. She brushed her hand through his hair and he smelled dry dirt and honey suckle and he felt calm and he felt love. He woke from the dream with a start. It was 4:00 A.M. He sat at the edge of his bed and looked back at Emily sleeping with her knees tucked up to her chin. Her face was grimaced even in sleep. She was a good wife, he thought. The dream had unearthed an ancient memory of his childhood, of his teenage foolishness. He remembered the hatred of his father and his potato farm and this dead-end town and Idaho and he remembered wanting to be free and wanting to love and wanting something else. Paul stood and walked to his son's room and opened the door. The radio “Shhhhhhed” beside his bed and Luke sat with his eyes open staring at the beams of his ceiling. When he heard the door creak open he turned his head and smiled emptily at his father, standing in the doorway in his boxers and Paul felt a rush of sadness for this boy and his broken radio and his inevitable future.

      Paul groaned as he set down his hoe and raised a muddy, plastic gallon-jug of water to his lips.

      “Luke.” He said

      “Yes Father?” Luke stopped raking but he did not raise his eyes.

      “Do you need anything?”

      “No sir.” This was always his answer.

      “I mean. . .I was thinking about inviting the Daniels over for dinner.” Paul squinted into sunlit mountains which sat behind his son. His words felt awkward and foreign in his red dirt sanctuary.

      “Yes Sir.” Luke's eyes still gazed down at his feet.

      “I mean...Alex must be about your age now.” Luke did not respond and Paul left it at that.

      Paul hated having company. Truthfully, this was the first time since he and Emily had been married. He felt uncomfortable sitting around his dinner table with his shirt tucked into his jeans, thinking of kind words to say as he stared into the dark wood of his table and then up to the dark beard of his guest. Jim Daniels was a single father who grew soybeans about five miles south. He was a big man with a booming voice and he was about the only person in the area that Paul could stand speaking to. Jim had a daughter named Alex who grew with strong influence from her father. She was a tough tomboy with blond hair that she only ever kept tightly held behind her head. She was thin as a rail with a pale narrow face and large white teeth. She wore jeans and a worn-out gray T-shirt and a pair of brand new pink running shoes. She was feisty and talkative, just like her father.

      “Well Paul I must say I was surprised to get the invitation. Not that I'm ungrateful but I took you to be the solitary type.” Jim boomed across the table as he shoveled mashed potatoes through his beard. Paul looked up, wiped his mouth and smiled.

      “Well, truth be told, I think Luke it getting a bit sick of us.” He laughed lightly and looked over at Luke who did not acknowledge his father but continued to stare into his potatoes with that unreadable quiet smirk. There was a brief awkward pause as everyone watched Luke eat and Jim shifted in his seat and cleared his throat. Alex sat up, her knees bouncing endlessly under the table and addressed her father.

      “Hey Pa, Luke showed me his cool old radio. It's kind of broken but it looks like a real antique! Like something you would've used when you were younger!” Jim looked up and smiled, thankful for a new subject.

      “Lord Paul, you bought your son a radio? Least you could do is get him an Ipod or something!” Paul smiled.

      “Maybe when he's older. Besides he likes to go to sleep with the static. Been like that since he was little. Right Luke?” Luke looked up from his plate for the first time that night and smiled at his father.

      “Yes Sir.” Paul smiled back at his son, vaguely aware of the judgmental look he was getting from Jim. Emily too was smiling at Luke and for a moment the three of them were unified. Paul was a different sort of father and a different sort of husband but he needed moments like this to prove to himself that he was doing something right. Outside it had become dark and the wind had picked up, whistling through the banister of his porch. Luke straightened a bit.

      “And I like to listen to the voices,” he said. Jim looked up and smiled at Luke.

      “You mean like those Christian ministers?” He asked.

Luke shook his head.

      “No, I mean the voices in the static.”

      “Oh? And what are they saying?” Jim continued, his smile growing.

      “I don't know they're not from here.”

      “Not from Idaho?”

      “Not from earth.”

      The table went silent. Luke put his head back down and continued eating. Paul stared at him for a minute not sure what to do. Emily's face had gone neutral again and Alex had stopped bouncing. Jim was sitting straight up in his chair with his fork hovering over his plate, his smile had faded. He looked briefly at his daughter and snapped back into focus.

      “Well. . .ehm. . .Luke that's. . .very. . .interesting.” He put his head down and finished his meal in silence.

      The Daniels had left pretty soon after that. Jim saying something about having to get up early the next day and Paul was relieved when their truck finally pulled away. He stood on the porch and untucked his shirt, watching the cloud of dust rise up from behind the receding truck. Emily walked out of the house. She stood next to him but she did not touch him and he could feel her stare.

      “You need to go talk to him.” She said.

      “I know.” Paul kept his eyes looking forward.

      “He's just lonely.”

      “Yes.”

      “He's almost sixteen.” Paul nodded. It was nearing the end of October and it was cool on his porch. There was a fall breeze and he smelled the wood and it reminded him of the stinging sweetness of his father's old cigars. From the open window above he heard the familiar buzzing of the radio being switched on and the soft Shhhhhhing sound. Paul glanced over at his wife but she was now looking forward. Gazing into the impenetrable darkness that stretched before them. Her dark brown, graying hair flowing around her shoulders in the cool wind. She did not shiver.

      Two weeks before it happened Paul had woken up in the middle of the night to pee and from the bathroom window he saw a strange light rising up from the middle of his potato field. Grabbing his hat and coat and his gun he ventured out into the field only to find Luke there under a blanket, the radio perched on his chest and a flashlight in his hands pointing directly up into the stars. Luke had told him that he got better reception out there and that he was trying to help because he thought the voices sounded lost. The next day Emily pleaded with him to take Luke to the doctors to get help but Paul absolutely refused. A few days later Paul broke his ankle after getting his foot caught in an iced-over muddy boot print. He tied a splint around his leg to keep it straight. He would not see a doctor and neither would his son.

      It was a late November morning and Paul rose before the sun like he always did in winter and he limped down stairs for coffee. After a couple of minutes Emily followed wearing a tattered nightgown and began making some eggs. As the sun rose through the mountains in the East, Paul, sitting in his dining room chair behind a steaming mug of coffee, became dimly aware of a figure standing in the middle of his field. It was Luke and he was holding the radio high above his head staring into the skies. He was half naked and bare foot but he stood stock still with his left hand propping the antenna in place and the radio resting against his head. Paul swore under his breath and rushed out the door onto his back porch. He grabbed a shovel that was leaning up against the railing nearby and, using it as a cane, limped out onto his field.

When he reached Luke he put his hand on his shoulder and turned him around. He stumbled back a bit in horror. Luke eyes were wide and his face was pushed into a large maddening smile.

      “They're coming dad!” He said, his eyes growing wider with each word.

      “They're coming here! They finally found me and they're coming!” It took Paul a few minutes to register what was happening and what had happened to his son. The Shhhhhhhhing noise echoed through the frozen field; that unending roar, that omen, that indicator of his son's growing madness. In one furious tug he grabbed the radio from off Luke's head, smashed it to the earth and proceeded to plunge the shovel blade into it over and over until the radio, whistling and screaming like a dying animal, went silent. There was a brief moment in which Paul stood straight again and looked back at his son. He noticed for the first time how tall his son had become and he noticed how out of breath he was from smashing the radio and he noticed too that his son's eyes, usually so impenetrable and cool, had grown narrow and mad. And then his son was on him.

      Paul did not really know what happened. He just knew that he was angry and that his only son had grown insane and that it was not fair that this was happening to him and his family who never bother anyone and keep to themselves. And then there was blood everywhere and from somewhere in the distance he heard screaming and the world spun around him like a painted vase which had been knocked off balance and, driven by its own weight, swiveled precariously until finally it toppled over and smashed on the cold earth and Paul became aware of the body at his feet and the shovel in his hand. In this moment of shock, standing with the shovel, Paul could only think of one thing to do. The same thing he had done everyday since he was a boy. He started digging. He dug through the frozen clay, hacking and grunting like a madman for what seemed like hours until he had dug a large hole and then he filled it back up again and the body was gone and he turned and bent down to tie his bootlaces.

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      Paul took a sip of Coffee. His hands were still covered in red dirt and blood. He smelled the wood and the coffee and the eggs which were now burning in oil on the stove. And he felt the complete and utter silence of his home. Through the kitchen door he could see his wife hunched down, shaking silently. The sky was very blue with clouds drifting lazily along. And suddenly there was a bright flash of light and then a crash. It rippled through the earth, setting off sand and ice and it shook the rickety wooden shack and Paul's coffee cup circled once and broke upon his boot and he looked up and she was gone.

“Emily!” He yelled and stood but she was already running, tears streaming as she went. Hysterical, she sprinted out into the fields of Idaho, bare feet crunching in the frozen soil, running towards freedom, towards the mountains in the distance and towards the 100 food ship which now jutted out from the red earth like a giant silver potato. 

End.

By Sam Patwell.