In the kitchen above him he hears the water in the sink run briefly. Cupboard doors shutting. And a slow ticking. Tick. Tick. Tick. Luke and June are talking and between the words the ticking. She is saying something about beating a dead horse and he is saying her name. She speaks and he simply repeats her name. It’s as if he is trying to talk someone down from the edge of a building or bridge. June, he says, and the ticking stops. She speaks, but Silas cannot hear the words. She is too far from the window. It’s stressful, whatever they are talking about, and Silas can tell by the tones and their volume that it’s getting worse. Shadows block the light from the window above him. They are right there, inches from his head. And now he hears every word.
June, he says, I’m not going to apologize for answering her truthfully. And it’s true: I’ve asked you twice now.
It’s not so simple. You know that. June’s voice is strict, like his mother’s.
But I don’t! Why the fuck is it not simple? I’m missing something here and you need to explain it to me. Silas has never heard Luke sound so upset. At work he can get serious, tense, but not like this.
June’s voice fades and Silas can only hear bits but he catches her last words because she shouts them. Because it can’t!
Luke, still by the window, says, Can’t is a lie and you know it. I love you and you say you love me, and not that I have a lot of good examples, but in my book that means you get married. His voice has risen to near shouting. Silas can hear June; she says something but she’s crossed the kitchen toward the stove and her words are just sound. Sound that ends the conversation, launches Luke across the kitchen and out the back porch. The screen door slaps shut and suddenly Luke is outside, walking swiftly and in a straight line to the back of the lawn, to the field, toward the far tree line, which leads to a maze of trails on the Moon. Silas watches his white shirt glide purposefully into the woods and disappear. He hears movement in the kitchen and then the screen door opens and shuts again. This time it is June, running, not walking, across the lawn, toward the woods. Her blond hair is what Silas sees flash along the same path Luke had taken just a minute before. Against the silver-blue field at night, her hair appears lit by a single beam of moonlight, as if it was following her across a great stage, like a spotlight following a rock star at a concert. When she reaches the dark border where the field meets the woods, she disappears, too.
They are gone, but in their place the ticking, which had stopped minutes ago, resumes. At first he thinks someone else must be in the kitchen. He waits a few seconds and the ticking goes on and there is no movement, no break in the light from the window. Did she leave the stove on? Is that even possible? Slowly, Silas stands. His legs and back are stiff from crouching. He steps to the other side of the window where a garden hose is coiled against the side of the house. He holds the window ledge, steps up to the top of the coiled hose, and hoists himself to see inside the kitchen. No one is there. The stove is on the opposite end to the window Silas is looking through — one of those old ones that rich New Yorkers spend thousands of dollars fixing up because they like the way they look. But this one doesn’t look fixed up. There is rust along the bottom and some of the knobs look like they’ve been replaced with makeshift knobs from other stoves. Silas loses his grip on the ledge and jumps down. His foot lands on the hose nozzle and his ankle twists and he collapses awkwardly on the lawn. He stays down. Again, he hears the ticking. Tick… Tick… Tick… Tick. What the fuck am I supposed to do? he thinks as he looks out to the field for any trace of Luke’s shirt or June’s hair. He sees nothing but the dark outline of the reception tent looming in the moonlit grass. No one is around, no one can hear. It’s time. He holds his breath and lurches across the short distance between the house and the shed. His hands scramble along the door until he feels and frees the iron latch. The door squeaks like a dying cat as it opens, and for a second he pauses to hear if there is movement or sound from inside the house. Nothing. Just the ticking, which has with the new distance from the house almost disappeared into the hum of the cicadas. It is hidden in the noise of the world and heard only if you stop to listen for it. Silas stops listening for it. Still on his knees, he feels behind the stack of Ball-jar boxes for his knapsack, and YES-HOLY-FUCK-YES it is there. He slides it around the boxes and holds it like a long-lost and beloved puppy. Time to go, he leans down and whispers into the bag, imagining the first hit he will take from his bong once he’s cleared the property. He closes the squeaking shed door, folds the latch shut, looks toward the driveway, and pictures his bike hidden in the weeds.
He stands to leave and there it is again, the ticking. Motherfucking fucker, he grumbles under his breath. Though it is the last thing on earth he wants to do, he steps toward the house. The closer he gets, the louder the sound. He can’t believe the whole house isn’t awake by now. He imagines Lolly sleeping and wonders if she is upstairs, alone, the night before her wedding; or if that nerdy douche bag is with her. He wonders if they’ve fucked tonight or if they’re waiting for their honeymoon. Silas hasn’t fucked anyone, and so far he hasn’t come close. He imagines Lolly upstairs getting fucked, and for a second he thinks he even hears a moan. He steps closer to the house and listens. The only sound he can hear is the ticking, and without thinking his feet move toward it. Soon he is under the window where he stood before, and here the ticking is the loudest. The noise is relentless, louder with each spark. He is the only one who hears.
Cissy
Dad was a looker. Tall guy, big shoulders, eyes as green as grass. Mom never stood a chance. They met when she was fifteen, pulling starfish from the sea or some nonsense. He was eighteen, engaged to marry a girl on the rez, and nine months later, upstairs in this same house, in the room my sister Pam now sleeps in, my sister Helen was born. All five of us were born in that room, up in Mom’s bed. And now all five of us, who got married and moved out, have come back, widows or divorcées, or just hopeless, to live here again. The only difference now is Mom’s been long dead. Buried in the Moclips cemetery next to her parents and nowhere near Dad, who was buried on the rez. I guess even at fifteen Mom knew what she wanted. She wanted Dad, and even though she couldn’t have him, she did. The story goes that when Dad went to his parents to tell them he’d knocked up a white girl from town, they didn’t bat an eyelash or raise their voices or hands to him. They moved fast and got him married within the month to that poor girl on the rez he was already engaged to. And that, as Mom used to say, was that. He had a son with that wife, and five daughters with Mom. Mom stayed with Gramma and Granpa and the three of them raised us. Dad came by for lunches a few times a week. Never at night, always in the day. We’d line up like little girl soldiers awaiting inspection when he walked in. He’d give us kisses and butterscotch candies and ask us about school and boys and wink before sitting down for a sandwich and coffee and cigarettes in the kitchen with Mom.
Mom graduated from Moclips High School and went to Grays Harbor College and got an associate degree. She was pregnant on and off through most of that schooling time, and she always said she never minded the gossip. She had Dad and Gramma and Granpa and us, she said, and besides, it kept the boys away. She would have kept going in school but Grays only gives out a two-year degree and nothing else was close enough for her to go to classes and come home in the same day. She worked as an assistant librarian at the public library in Ocean Shores until she died in 2000. Dad died that same year. His wife is still alive and lives on the rez. She must be in her eighties, maybe older. She survived her husband and her son, who died not so long ago, and she lives, like me, with what’s left of her family. My sisters and I never had a problem with any of them, but we were always careful to steer clear. We knew no one there wanted anything to do with us and we stayed away. For the most part, we still do.