Random Access Memory

The Cooling Sound of Rain

Hoopes — Fri, 23 May 2008 05:21:24 GMT

The nighttime rain fell in heavy sheets on the rippling metal roof as Jorge lay on his back and dreamed of going into the city one day. He was enjoying a cool breeze in the cabin of his truck when the shuffling sound of his mother entering the house in the dark made his twilight vision dis-appear. Her presence kept even his mind from straying too far from home. Silvia moved like a huge animal, breathing softly as she passed between the beds of her sleeping family. Jorge followed her slow dance through the rooms, watching the flickering yellow glow of her candle as it leaped between the cracks in the rough plank walls. Jorge looked at the roof and listened to the rain as it fell from invisi-ble clouds so far above his house. The chilling rain sucked away the heat of the smoldering day and washed clean the outside of the dusty house. It quenched the burning air and drove the daytime's fire deep into the ground, down into the cool black mud. Jorge rose and opened one of the screenless windows to let the breeze that brought the storm blow in cool waves over his damp body. The lapping wind touched its chill tongue to his bare skin and raised goosebumps on his arms and legs. Jorge was fourteen now, and each day he felt a force that came from within him push hard against his family. He felt an anxious swelling in his gut that cried for release. With each day he grew more nervous. He knew that the ripening fruit within him would some day explode, and he was afraid of what might happen when it did. He crawled back beneath the filmy mosquito net that hung from the ceiling and lay with his hands on his warm belly. There was a lone dog barking down the road, a yellow dog barking at nothing in the yard of Severo Cruz, the man who murdered his children and fed them to his pigs. The police had arrested him one night in October, at the height of the rainy season. His wife still lived in the house, alone. She was very old. Jorge heard the distant rumbling of a truck as it struggled on the muddy road that passed by his house. He watched the beams from its headlights rush in torrents through the horizontal cracks in the slatted walls of his room. The truck's powerful engine was grinding as it crawled nearer, and its mechanical roar shook the house. Jorge was sure the truck would stop, its brakes growling to an impatient halt outside his front door. His muscles grew tense as tightened wire springs, ready to shoot him out of bed. He wanted to be the first to meet the men who drove the steel monster. He had heard his father say some of the trucks came from as far away as the capital. "You want to make some money, boy?" a driver had asked Jorge when he was small. "Come with us and help unload the truck. You can count, can't you? Good, you can count the bundles as we unload them. You can go on the truck first and kill all the scorpions before they sting us." He had laughed and winked at his friends." And when the work is all done, you can go find us some women." The truck drivers roared, but Jorge was sure they were serious. He begged his mother to let him go, but Silvia just laughed. "How can you kill the scorpions on the truck when you can't even kill the ants that are biting you?" Jorge looked down and nearly wet his pants. He was standing on an anthill and a swarm of black insects cov-ered his leg to the knee. Jorge shrieked and ran into the river, cursing at the top of his lungs. Silvia and the truck drivers nearly died laughing. As Jorge listened carefully, the truck shifted gears and roared again with new breath as it passed without stopping on its way down the muddy road to Filadelfia, more than ten kilometers away. Filadelfia was nothing compared to the capital, but there were people there who drove cars everywhere, who watched moving pictures on little electric boxes, who just sat in the park all day without a care in the world because they had so much money. Some of them, his father had said, didn't even know how to work. Some of them had never in their lives picked up a ma-chete, much less risen early to chop sugarcane from before sunrise until late in the afternoon. The rain gently ceased as the sound of the truck passed away into the still night. There was a brief and brittle silence, broken by a crackling noise like that of a slowly spreading fire, the sound of thousands of water drops dripping from the metal roof and the trees onto the wet mud and brush. Jorge heard the restless grunting of the pigs in the yard and the dark nighttime song of the tropics began again, the symphonic beat-ing of countless insects singing in the wet shelter of the lush vegetation. Before long, the hungry mosquitoes returned to scream for blood with tiny whining voices. They swarmed in angry hoards against the pro-tective netting that enveloped Jorge's bed like a thin cotton cloud. Jorge rolled onto his side and bent his knees up to his chest. In one smooth motion he covered himself with a coarse woolen blanket. He tucked its ragged edge between his head and shoulder and hugged it tightly with his jaw. Jorge awoke to the call of roosters as the sun rose like a burning bubble over the blue hills in the distance and flooded his room with light. Angelica's baby started to cry, and she silenced it in softly hushing tones. Straw beds and woven hammocks creaked, the family's creased and calloused feet landed with quiet thumps on the sandy floor, and Jorge could hear his mother's steel pans rattling in the kitchen. Silvia rose every morning at least an hour before the rest of the family. Jorge tried, but he was never able to be the first to see the new day, to wake before his mother was up and stand alone in front of the house, to be the first to discover anything that had changed with the new day. He never rid himself of the feeling that his mother rose early in order to stake a claim, to make the day her own. From the moment he awoke to the moment he went to sleep, Jorge never saw a minute that had not first passed through his mother's roughened hands. Today, there was a cool smell of wet freshness to the air. It complemented the salty, smoky scent that drifted through the house as Silvia blew life into the sleeping coals in the kitchen's wood stove. Enrique, Jorge's father, was down the road chopping at a tree with his machete as Jorge made his way through the muddy yard to the outdoor toilet with a piece of newspaper in his hand. Silvia called them both to breakfast with a hearty yell. Enrique grumbled that he was not finished and came anyway. Jorge did the same. Silvia served them plates of steaming rice and black beans. She brought a stack of fresh tortillas and a pot of coffee and then left to go down to the river. Jorge's house was right on the bank of the muddy Río Tempisque, which wound in thick coils through the low swamps and fed the salty gulf to the south. The only bridge across it was in Filadelfia, so to make a few pesos for her family every day Silvia ferried the men who worked at the sugarcane plantation across the river in her boat. There was always a crowd of them waiting outside the house when the air steamed at sunrise, with their battered hats, machetes, and plastic jugs of water. Silvia served them coffee while she hurried to make sure that her own family was fed. The current in the river was strong, especially after a heavy rain, and often Jorge or one of his younger brothers helped Silvia to paddle across and back. Enrique never helped. He would have been too embarrassed when the men who had jobs saw him. He had been fired by the plantation for falling asleep too often. This morning Jorge's next youngest brother was in bed with a toothache, and Jorge was busy eating breakfast, so Silvia had to do the rowing on her own. "So you're going today?" Jorge asked his father. "I saw you cutting some wood." Enrique put down his fork and looked at his son. After a brief pause he said, "Yes, it has to be today. Or early tomorrow, otherwise there would be no time, right?" Enrique picked up his fork again and shoveled in another mouthful. "The festival is only three days away." Enrique was dark and gaunt, with a wiry moustache etched across his upper lip. His skin was stretched tightly over his sharp bones, and the tendons in his arm rippled like tight wires when he moved his fingers. Silvia was huge and meaty, the way Jorge knew a mother should be. Her arms were thick and wide, and she had powerful shoulders, the result of a lifetime of pounding laundry on a flat rock in the river and chopping wood for the stove. The two men watched as Silvia paddled hard, steering the gray dug-out across the river that flowed like a flood of coffee with cream. One of the passengers--she took four at a time--helped her to row the boat to the other side, but Silvia had to paddle it back by herself. She had to aim the boat upstream so that the current wouldn't carry her too far down the river. When all of the men had been ferried across, Silvia hauled the boat up onto the shore and climbed the muddy bank to the house. She sig-naled to Angelica to give her the baby and clear the empty plates and glasses from the table. "You're leaving today, aren't you?" she said to Enrique. "You don't have much time left, do you?" "And what if I don't?" Enrique grumbled, and went back outside with his machete. Angelica washed the dishes and then took the baby back from her mother. "Shaa! Sksst!" she hissed at a dog that came slinking into the kitchen. Angelica kicked it hard in the ribs with the toughened ball of her bare foot. Jorge went to bathe himself in the muddy river. He returned to find that his father had fashioned a new oar from the pole he was cutting at sunrise. Enrique was a wizard with his razor-sharp machete. Given a piece of wood the right size he could hack out any implement he needed. His arm was incomplete without the long knife. It extended the radius of his power by more than two feet. To Enrique, a sharp machete was more important than a pair of shoes. A man could work without shoes, but not without a machete. Every year at this time, in the week before the festival, Enrique and his brother Jose Luis disappeared down the river in Silvia's boat. They were always smiling when they returned a few days later, carrying heavy, dripping crocodile skins which smelled like fish rolled up on sticks like something to toast in a fire. When the greenish skins were spread out on wide planks in the shade the little boys pointed and whispered and the girls shrieked and chased each other, yelling about lizards. When a skin was rolled flat, Jose Luis crouched over it with a knife and sliced off slivers of white flesh that still clung to the tough flesh. Jorge's nose widened at the stinging smell of the coarse salt that his uncle rubbed briskly by the handful into the thick hide. The salt kept the skin from rotting before it reached the auctions. An acid taste crept into Jorge's mouth as he watched his father cut the amber glands from inside the animal's jaw. Enrique pickled them in alcohol and kept them on a shelf in a dark corner of the house. Whenever anyone had a toothache, Enrique put the gland on top of the sore tooth. Within minutes it miraculously dulled the pain and quelled its throbbing. Another part of the crocodile was also useful. Enrique took it from the monster's throat and hung it to dry in the rafters. He himself had never used it, but his father had once given it to Silvia as a remedy for lockjaw, and he knew it was wise to keep some around. It was always exciting when the family went to the festival to sell the crocodile skins. Each year, Enrique had been able to take at least three of them. A good one with no holes could bring as much as two hundred pesos. That was four days' wages on the cane plantation, and enough to keep the family fed for over a week. Jorge looked at his father's new oar and felt that his freedom was near. "Take me with you. I want to go hunt crocodiles," he said to Enri-que. Silvia heard him and laughed aloud. "You? What could you do? You're just a boy. You can't even shoot the rifle. You can't do anything. Why should you go?" his father said, without looking up. "I have to," Jorge said defiantly. "Too bad," Silvia answered with a wry smile on her broad face. Enrique looked at her and then at the floor. Then he looked up at Jorge. "You can't go," he said. Jorge looked at his father's weak chin and felt the tears rise hot in his cheeks. Painfully, he fought them back. "Jorge," Silvia said to him, "Come help me snout the pigs. They've been tearing up the garden." Silvia's pigs were like children to her. A good hog was worth several thousand pesos, and a good sow could give her at least ten piglets to sell. The pigs ate all the scraps from the table and all the food that was spoiled or burned in the kitchen. On hot afternoons Silvia tied strings around their necks and led them to the shade on the other side of the road, where they nibbled at the underbrush and fell asleep. Snouting the pigs was always an ordeal, and when his mother wanted to do it Jorge had almost always managed to be elsewhere. "Bring me the big needle from the kitchen!" Silvia called to Jorge as she went out to catch the first pig. She held a bundle of short, sharpened wires in her firm, beefy grip. Jorge held the squealing pig's hind legs as tightly as he could while Silvia squeezed its shoulders between her powerful thighs. She laughed to Enrique and grabbed one of the struggling pig's broad ears to lift up its head. With her left hand she clamped the animal's muzzle shut. The terrified pig screamed through its closed mouth and Silvia laughed again. "They never like it, but it's got to be done, no? They ruin the garden otherwise." She set her teeth and forced the long needle through the tough flesh of the wriggling pig's snout. A thin stream of blood trickled from the hole and fell in the dust. "Hold him tight, Jorge!" she said, and pushed one of the pointed wires through the hole she had made, deftly twisting its ends together to make a steel projection that would prevent the pig from ever again shoving its nose into the soft dirt of her garden. "All right, Jorge!" she cried, and they each let go of the pig. It squealed madly and ran a few steps, then it stopped and shook its head. A drop of blood fell in the dirt. The pig tried to nudge the ground, but as soon as the ends of the wire touched the dirt it jerked up its head and shook it. Before too long the pig nibbled at some weeds, then it trotted behind the house and fell asleep. Silvia caught another pig, a black one, and treated it the same as the first. When they had let it go, Jorge said, "I can do the next one," in a serious voice. He held out his hand for the long needle and the short wires. Silvia was reluctant to commit her valuable pig to such inexperienced hands, but she quickly decided that it would be wise to let Jorge learn to be useful. Jorge found the next pig and grabbed its ears to pull it into place. He stepped over it and grabbed its shoulders tightly between his knees. He hadn't half the bulk of his mother, and it was hard for him to keep a good grip on the struggling animal. When Silvia knelt down behind Jorge to hold its legs, the pig went crazy. It squealed in terror twice as loud as the other pigs had and kicked with all of its might to get free. Jorge grabbed one of its ears tightly to straighten its head. His long nails dug deep into the bristly flesh. Once he had the muzzle in hand, it took all of his strength to close the pig's mouth and hold it still. He lost his grip once and had to grab the muzzle again. The pig tried to shake its head back and forth as Jorge held it tight with one hand and gripped the sharp needle and the wires with the other. Trying to move swiftly, as his mother had done, Jorge jabbed the needle into the pig's gristly snout and tried to force it through, but he was too far back from the end of the pig's nose, and the needle wouldn't go through. The pig jerked its muzzle out of his hand and screamed. Blood welled up from the tiny hole. Silvia, trying to keep a tight grip on the pig's hind legs, asked Jorge if he needed help. Jorge looked up and saw that An¬gelica was smiling, her baby's eyes ludicrously wide. Enrique was slapping his thigh, laughing like a madman. Jorge grabbed the pig's muzzle and forced it shut again. His hand was covered with the pig's blood. He took the needle in his fist and jabbed it in at the right place, forcing it through the tip of the snout, but before he could take it out and replace it with one of the sharp wires the pig whipped its head back and forth like a dog breaking the back of an unlucky cat in its jaws. Jorge lost his grasp on the short wires in his fist and they fell in the form of a prickly blossom on the ground. When he reached down to pick them up the pig jumped. Jorge lost his grip on the pig with his knees, letting its forelegs touch the ground. The screaming pig made a final violent leap, freeing its hind legs from Silvia's clutches and shaking off Jorge's slippery grip on its muzzle. It burst forward with all of its might and ran headfirst into the wall of the house. The pig broke its neck with a bone-crushing knock and died on the spot. The baby started to bawl and Enrique laughed so hard he fell down, tears streaming from his eyes. Silvia snorted and laughed too, but when she discovered that the pig was truly dead she spat and hissed at Jorge and told him he was a fool. Jose Luis came to the house shortly after lunch to tell them he would not be able to leave on the hunting trip until early the next morning. Enrique carne and sat on Jorge's bed in the late afternoon. "Your mother left some food warming on the stove. Why don't you come eat?" he asked, in fatherly tones that swept over Jorge like warm breezes. "I don't want to. I'm not hungry," Jorge scowled at his father, and Enrique left the room. It was still light when he fell asleep to the sounds of dogs barking and his parents talking on the front porch. He awoke a few hours later from a dream that he was burning to find himself envel-oped by a cloud of mosquitoes. He brushed his arm and felt the slip of blood and the beading of their crushed furry bodies. Jorge jumped up and let down the mosquito netting. He took off his shirt and crawled back into' bed, pulling his blanket up over his head. Jorge's sleep was fitful and filled with terrible visions. He saw his father skin strange children with his machete, and his mother and Angelica force pointed wires through the faces of his broth-ers and sisters. He woke abruptly when a heavy truck passed by the house, but when he went back to sleep the dream was still there. When all of his brothers and sisters had been snouted and taken across the river in his mother's boat, Jorge knew that he was next. He almost screamed when someone grabbed his arm. "Come on now, we're ready to go," he heard his father say in the darkness. "Your mother thought it would be better if you carne with us." The stars sparkled so brightly he could make out their various colors reflecting on the mirrored surface of the water as Jose Luis steered the boat along with the river's current, heading far downstream to where the thick river wound slow and serpentine through the green swamps to the place where the giant lizards slept. Enrique snored softly and twitched in a restless sleep while his brother paddled the dugout in the dark. Jose Luis, silhouet¬ted against the deep indigo sky, was staring silently ahead. Jorge saw his uncle's black eyes glitter when he turned and they caught the light of a star. The sky grew paler and Jose Luis tapped his nephew sharply on the shoulder. In the east, the stars were melting into a violet blue the color of the ocean. Tiny black flies swarmed around Jor¬ge's face and crawled into his eyes. He swatted at them and his uncle snorted. "Just wait till we get to where the lizards are. You'll find out about flies there." Jose Luis made hissing noises and swatted violently at the air around him with his hat, pretending to fight off vicious swarms around his head. Then he started and slapped himself on the cheek. "You see?" he said, holding his hand out to Jorge. In it was the mashed body of a huge fly with black bands on its hairy abdomen and fire-colored eyes. Jorge looked at his uncle's face. There on his cheek was a heart-shaped mark of fresh blood. "That's the new kind of bee. It can kill you when it attacks in a swarm." Jose Luis smiled. Life to him wasn't worth living unless it was dangerous. Enrique awoke before the hot sun had risen over the trees. They ate the beans and rice wrapped in broad tortillas that Silvia had fixed for them. Enrique finished first and began to clean and load his gun. After his machete, it was the only weapon he owned. "Brother, look!" Jose Luis whispered loudly and pointed at the river-bank. "A wood duck!" There was a brown duck sleeping on a branch in the water near the shore. Its head and beak were buried beneath a ruffled wing. Enrique aimed, and a gunshot cracked wide the morning. They paddled to where the body was floating in the river. "Dinner!" Enrique grinned, holding up the dripping bird. Jorge looked out at the bright sparkles in the sunlit water. The heat was making him ill. They arrived at the swamp in the heat of the afternoon. The humid air hung quiet as death where the river meandered slowly ¬back and forth in wide loops. Jorge watched the riverbanks anxiously for the slightest movement. He wanted to be the first to see a crocodile. He could hear heavy bodies slide into the water as the boat -drifted past muddy islands covered with tall grass, but the movements were always outside of his sight. Fat, slimy logs floated in the tepid water, some of them with crews of turtles basking in the tropical sun. Black iguanas with long claws and tails pressed their bellies flat against the thick arms of the trees on shore and scuttled up and down the furry trunks. The biting flies were raven-ous, and the men covered their heads with cloths to protect the tender flesh on the backs of their necks. "There's the spot," Enrique said. He pointed to a fallen tree that lay on its side in the water. "Get the rope, Jorge." They poked the mossy limbs with their machetes, checking them for snakes, and tied the boat in the shelter of the spreading branches. The moist air was hot and soupy. "Now here's what we do," said Enrique, his leathery face dripping with sweat. "Jorge, you strip and wade to shore. When the biggest crocodile comes after you, whistle to us and then swim like hell back to the boat. That's why we brought you along, you know. For bait." Enri-que looked at his brother and they both burst into hilarious laughter. Jorge looked out at the shore. Something big rustled in a bush. "Look over there!" he whispered. Jorge pointed to a clump of weeds. The blunt snout of a dozing crocodile was barely visible in the tall grass. "Quiet!" Enrique said in a harsh whisper. "Be quiet, or you'll wake it. We'll sneak up on it while it's asleep." The oppressive heat of the swamp made Jorge dizzy. For some reason he felt afraid. "Can you get him, brother?" Jose Luis whispered when they were near enough to see the animal breathe. The air smelled like rotting fish and the huge reptile suddenly awoke and raised its head. It waved its nostrils and then flattened its body against the green earth. Enrique raised the rifle to his shoulder. The crocodile blinked and quickly started forward. Enrique fired, stopping it dead with a bullet that pierced its skull. The lizard's head dropped into the shallow, scummy water near the shore. "You couldn't want a better shot! Right on top of him!" Enrique said with pride. He cautiously placed his hand on top of the crocodile's head to finger the bullet hole. Jorge was silent. They pushed the boat up onto the muddy shore where the dying crocodile twitched its toes and tail. The lizard was almost twelve feet long. "Wait till they see this monster! Silvia will know she has a man in her house, no?" Enrique boasted. Jose Luis laughed with a knowing snicker at the thought of the stories they would tell. Jorge took the machete and stepped out of the boat first. With swift strokes he cleared away the brush from around the dead beast. His father and uncle skinned the huge reptile, slicing it open down the middle of its back to preserve the most valuable part-- the smooth white underbelly with a pattern of wide rectangles. It took about an hour to cut away the skull, roll the beast on its back, and peel away the skin without tearing it. The biting flies buzzed in swarms around their heads and fat mosquitoes dotted the men’s arms. As soon as they were finished, the white corpse was crawling with black ants. Soon the vultures would arrive. Jose Luis was busy cleaning off small pieces of flesh and rubbing salt into the hide when Jorge looked up and saw the other crocodile. It was sliding slowly through the underbrush, and they were sitting between it and the river. The crocodile walked with a swinging gait about fifty yards away, its belly high off the ground. It shifted its body from one side to the other, carefully and deliberately grasping the mud with each wide-toed footstep. Jorge saw it first and pointed it out to his father, but Enrique said it was best if they kept quiet and let the lizard go past them. They could run back to the boat, he said, if the crocodile got too close. Jorge's mouth fell open. It was clear to him that his father was a coward. "Go after it!" Jose Luis whispered, and Jorge started forward. He was amazed at his courage, all he held was the machete. The crocodile stopped and looked at them with a menacing gaze. Enrique was sure it was going to charge, and he ran forward, forgetting to cock the rifle. There was a sudden swish in a clump of swamp grass behind them and Enrique grabbed his leg with a yell, dropping the rifle in the green mud. A long black snake was clamped like a leech to his thigh, writhing madly and jamming its fangs deep into the muscle of his leg. As swiftly as it had struck, the snake released its hold, dropped to the ground, and zipped away across the mud. Jorge picked up the rifle and found that it was useless. It hadn't even been reloaded in his father's rush to plunder their first victim. Jorge looked up in time to see the big lizard charge. It raced forward, hissing like water on a hot stone, its pink mouth open wide. Jorge gripped the long machete and swung it with all his might. In the instant the blade slammed into the meaty part of the crocodile's upper jaw, Jorge and the lizard were frozen like statuary in the dripping green swamp. The sun broke through the heavy leaves above them and the flies stopped their buzzing. The blade stuck for a moment before Jorge could jerk it out for an-other blow, and as he raised the knife again the lizard snapped its jaws shut and began to whip its powerful tail. Jorge planted his bare feet in the mud and brought the machete down with both hands as the tail came forward. He swung the sharp knife with all his strength and heard the crack of bone as the blade split the lizard's skull and sliced into its brain. The mighty tail fell with a thump and the crocodile shivered. Its cold eyes stared up at Jorge and he felt a cool breeze descend into the swamp and lick him lightly on the cheek. Jose Luis came running when he heard Enrique's yell. When he ar-rived, he found Jorge cutting open the leg of his father's pants. "A snake hit me!" Enrique spat, and rolled back moaning in the black, organic mud. His breathing was getting heavier and he bent his head back. His mouth gaped open and his eyes were wide, like the eyes of a tremendous fish. Jose Luis wrapped a rope around Enrique's thigh and tied it tightly. He spit on the machete and wiped it on his pants. With its razor-sharp edge he sliced into the wound on his brother's leg. Blood welled up, and Jose Luis sucked hard, spitting the tainted blood on the slimy ground. Enrique moaned with a raging fever that night while Jorge and his uncle forced their way back upstream under the cold and heartless stars. They pulled the boat up onto the bank below the house in the early morning. The only trace of daybreak was a narrow band of blue on the horizon that was rapidly shrinking beneath bulging black clouds like breasts in the sky. The rain began as Jorge climbed the muddy hill to his house. A violent downpour crashed down upon his head as he stopped and stood outside an open window and stared down at his mother's bed, where Silvia lay sleeping beneath a white mosquito net. A light breeze blew and Jorge felt a chill. He had seen the day while Silvia was still lost in sleep. She lay like a mountain beneath a grey blanket, her face buried in a thin pillow. Jorge watched her for a long time; for as long as he could remember, he had never seen her sleeping. The rain plastered his black hair against his forehead in heavy spikes and soaked through his thin clothes. They clung to his body like a loose skin about to be shed. The raindrops beading on his cheeks looked like bright tears, and streams of water ran down the sides of his mouth. Jorge climbed dripping through the window and crept silently past his mother to unbolt the door. He went to his room and packed a bag of old clothes. He heard a rumbling in the distance and hurried outside to stand in the shelter of his front porch. The grinding roar of a truck filled the air, and Jorge saw it crawling through the rain, coming towards him on the rutted, muddy road. Its windshield wipers smacked back and forth with a loud clacking of rubber on steel. Jorge was sure the noise would wake his mother. He waved, and the truck rumbled to a halt. The icy rain beat like angry hands on the cab of the bouncing truck as Jorge rode towards Filadelfia. His father’s machete was at his side, and the cold steel burned like fire. [This original story first appeared in The Yale Quarterly in 1980. It won the Wallace Prize for Undergraduate Fiction.] ©2008 John W. Hoopes

Cuando Cantan los Gallos (When the Roosters Sing)

Hoopes — Sat, 17 May 2008 05:31:12 GMT

Everything seemed to quietly die in that eerie instant before the roosters began their twilight crying. It was as if all the tiny creatures of the darkness were expecting the faraway flying communicado. It was a peculiar phenomenon. A sudden plunging hush like the quivering silence of a just-beaten drum. A strange hush that saturated the darkness and had no reasonable explanation. A hush to prick ears up and wonder about. Perhaps the message that stifled the forest’s humming pulse of tiny voices was important. Important enough for the insects to wait silently and let it pass like a lost bird in the night. The ghostly call began in smoldering Guácimo, a good hour’s walk down the polished railroad tracks. But it was plainly audible form the start. All the more so for its quiet prelude. A stumbling man came home somewhere. He felt a swelling tension under his woven belt and stopped. He pissed fully and freely a warm beery stream on the gravel of the street outside the hotel and then went on, swaying with the half-random regularity of a flickering candle flame. The moon was full and brilliant, but restless cane spirits in sore bellies rendered it useless for anything save a weird vision of tall banana plants and rusty metal walls in a fantasy of monochromatic light. This was enough for blurred eyes when the pattern of dim forms meant the way back home. A pearly stream of spittle flashed and died in the dusty road. The man botched a clumsy step and caught himself. A heavy black rubber boot with rubber sole, rubber laces untied, sent a dusty chunk of gravel into a heap of aging rubbish. The missile struck a thin sheet of corrugated metal, rotted brown in the caustic citrus air. It sang a sorry note into the steaming tropical night. Nervous, awake, and watchful, a hoarse rooster took his cue and croaked a fragile nighttime moan. Nearby, another lonesome bantam voiced his concern for the broken stillness in a younger, shriller cry. The womanless farmer forgot the awe that hung in the late night air. Remembering his solitude, he cursed the stirring of the restless birds and spat at a shadow. Insects paused , and the call was sung again, to be slowly spread throughout the moonlit tropical forest. It happened from red dusk to blue dawn, with the cadence of a rusty clock, this haunting relay. Sound moved through the darkened lowlands like a snake through tall grass, parting the soggy air and penetrating the silky night. Another lonely rooster, alert among dozing hens, cried out that he too was still awake and alive in the sleep-killed world. Yet another wary cock let the still night know he was watchful, and the hoarse moans of sleepless birds spread throughout the tropical forest. Those keeping watch far away waited to stir until a closer neighbor roused them with a broken voice. Like ripples sent out by a small pebble splashing in still water, the cries fled the first hoarse crier in slow waves through the trees. Isidro, alone in his small cot, lay on his back and heard the phantom rooster as it came crying over the banana plants. When the first hush fell he shivered still. The sooty town where farmers drank and woke roosters was almost three miles from his house. Even so, he heard the faraway cry of the first lonely bird as it stirred and flapped its lice-ridden wings in the heavy darkness. He listened, his brain softly panting, to hear the closer reply. Soon he heard a response to that one, coming from a still closer yard. The haunting relay was passed among at least half a dozen nervous roosters on its way towards his house, the next moan always closer than the one before it. The cry made Isidro shiver. It always kept a certain distance. It would reach for his house, moaning as if flew, and then turn away or softly pass overhead before it found him. Isidro’s own rooster was strangely silent. The lonesome message left him as it came. Having kept near the railway path on its journey from Guácimo, the call continued down along the railroad tracks towards Guápiles. There, the sounds of late night jukeboxes and cantinas snatched the roosters’ invisible message from the sky and forgot it amidst harsh marimbas. The cry kept the rhythm of the night. It came in hourly waves, and Isidro would always wait until the cry was safely in the distance before he closed his eyes and ears to the soft night’s shadows and sounds. The haunting call that flew past him from Guácimo to Guápiles quivered with chilling mystery each time it passed. It meant something strange and awesome that he did not understand. Something magical and dangerous. Isidro thought of the machetes his father kept so well polished and their flashing bite through stalks of corn at the season’s end. A rhythmic slashing that rang out through the fields like chattering maracas. He remembered how, when a strong wind came with heavily black clouds and swayed the palm trees, his grandmother had stuck one of the long blades in the ground. Its edge was to the wind, to cut it and maim it. Isidro reached up to touch his face with his left hand. He had never felt that he was missing something important. It was only the peculiar, permanent gesture that bothered him, and that was even amusing sometimes. It seemed a strange sign language to the world, a language whose grammar or syntax he never learned, but that he somehow felt he knew. He made one sign, the most common one, as he lightly touched the smooth bony scars with a caressing thumb. They were all that he could feel of the two middle fingers of his left hand. The magical fingers that no one could see. Only he could feel them, sometimes. Most of the time he could not feel them, but he knew they were there. On moonlit nights they came back. In the watery darkness, as he lay still and listened to the lonesome birds calling, his fingers magically returned. Sometimes they felt sticky in the heat of the nighttime jungle, as if he’d been eating oranges. Sometimes they felt alive with frantic insects—soft fluttering moths, hungry mosquitoes, or angry tropical ants with fiery bites. Sometimes they were soft, light, and airy. Other times they racked his hand with paralyzing electric pain. They were gone, but he could still feel them. He had lost them to a noise, a quiet and mysterious noise. A noise with wings, like the flying cries of roosters, that was born in the heart of Guácimo and rushed past him down the tracks towards far Guápiles. There had been a train; a wonderfully long train of over a hundred cars. It had slithered like a gorged snake into Guácimo on whining iron wheels. It came with cars that had been packed at loading platforms in small towns buried deep throughout the rich Costa Rican lowland forests. The train was filled with tons of corn, bananas, oranges, cacao beans, and soggy sugarcane. It even had a few passenger cars tacked on the end. The were the load of a locomotive that had suddenly come to a halt on the track far down the line, stopped by a cracked part that would take weeks of waiting to replace. The freight locomotive came to the rescue, and the metallic serpent grew a colorful tail. While sweating workers in Guácimo loaded bags of kernels onto empty cars, their bodies coated like frying fish with sweet corn dust from the processing plant, Isidro and his brother ran the length of the train and played between the rust-stained boxcars. They seemed immensely powerful to the jungle children, who had seen wooden houses blow down in high winds, killing children they knew. The heavy steel cartons were invincible They moved with sleek grace unnatural for their size over shining rails that stretched far into heat distorted perspectives. The boxcars were the most powerful creatures the boys knew. Playing on them was a ritual adventure. The boys climbed over burning steel that scorched their bare feet and hands. The scurried over rough metal, searching for dark, shaded shadows that were cool enough to hold. The sun had been shining hard through a clear sky all morning, and the flaking black paint was drenched with heat. Isidro felt a strange magic in the solid fire that pressed against his skin, solid fire that had rumbled in from far away one night from far Turrialba. It was near the volcano that loomed in the distance when morning mists had died away. Isidro was climbing over a shaded coupling, an iron handshake between two cars, when he heard the strange quite noise rushing softly towards him from Guácimo. He stopped, perching on the hard steel. It was a fluttering, metallic noise, the sound of a mechanical butterfly, but it was moving fast. He heard the sound of the phantom machine racing towards him. Isidro had marveled at the rush of trains passing him by, but the noise they made was different. It held no mystery, only awe. The sound that flew at him held both. It stopped the world. Nothing was moving. The noise was a metallic clicking, and it came at him with enormous speed. He heard it coming, all the way from Guácimo. It got louder as it came, but was never very loud. It came softly. Quickly, but softly, to bring wonder without fear. Just as the phantom reached him, Isidro slipped. He grabbed at the iron coupling to steady himself. It was not until the noise flashed past him towards Guápiles and disappeared that Isidro realized something terrible had happened. His left hand was streaming with blood and it looked very strange. Only the thumb, index finger, and pinky remained. It was only hours later, when the afternoon rain was cooling the jungle and Isidro’s hand had been washed and bandaged amidst more surprise than pain, that someone was able to explain what had happened. The locomotive in Guácimo, they said, had suddenly jumped forward just a couple of inches. Hardly anyone had noticed the tiny movement except for a surprised brakeman who almost lost his balance The motion of the massive engine had been transferred the entire length of the train—car by car. Each coupling, loosened when the train had rolled to a halt, was been snapped tightly shut by the motion of the car in front of it. Isidro, grabbing for support, had caught the slackened coupling just before it shut. The shifting of tremendous masses had bitten off his missing fingers. However many times he heard this explained, little Isidro was never able to completely accept it. The first few hours of wonder at how the sound out of Guácimo had stolen his fingers made a deep impression on his young mind. He hadn’t noticed any boxcars moving. Nor had his brother, who was right there when it happened. Besides how could a locomotive in the heart of Guácimo possibly cut off his fingers so cleanly and with so little pain? Why would it? No, the train had not stolen his two fingers, Isidro told himself. It had been something else. The world was alive with forces he could not understand. lightning that dashed trees to splinters. Rain that swept through the tropical forest, turning small streams into rivers that swept under his house. The rains came from far away. He could always hear the storms in the distance before they ever arrived. The soft noise had rushed towards him like the sheets of rain that roared through the jungle. Like the rain that came to cool and bathe the world, the swift mystery could not have been an accident. As he lay and listened to the roosters’ lonely moaning at night, Isidro waved strange handsigns in the darkness. He listened to the soft sound of the night and knew that the world never slept. The hushed, rushing noise came back to him as he lay still. He stared into the black air and thought of mysterious things he’d never see, like the flying silence the roosters sang to as it flew out from Guácimo, gliding swiftly through the tropical night and bringing back his lost fingers. The people of the steaming coastal plain knew a world full of mystery. Mountains they would never climb loomed in the distance over their rich fields of corn. Crops harvested, packed, and sent away to places they’d never see, carried by steel trains on shining rails that plunged deep into the wild jungle, taking their loads to people in faraway cities they might never visit. At night, the men drank to forget the heat and damp as children lay awake and wondered, bathed in sounds of faraway cantinas, passing trains, and the organic pulse of the dark and lonely forest. [This original short story first appeared in the Yale Daily News Magazine February 14, 1979.] ©2008 John W. Hoopes

My Threads on 2012

Hoopes — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 13:35:15 GMT

A lot of my thoughts have unfolded in online musings, discussions, and disputes: Hunab Ku (a dogged pursuit of the origins of that ubiquitous icon of 2012) http://2012.tribe.net/thread/fb0eedeb-124b-4b1a-a93b-bd167201e98e 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl (a discussion that began before Daniel Pinchbeck's book was in print) http://2012.tribe.net/thread/348cfd7e-ab99-44c3-8b0d-9928cc2aa858 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl (continued) http://2012.tribe.net/thread/bb20af95-f26b-4954-ad5a-6aa9b861e67d 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl (extended) http://2012.tribe.net/thread/04677364-a159-470f-b0f5-c4eeda34f0a7 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl (elongated) http://2012.tribe.net/thread/b18de7a6-2894-447d-9f74-8c0ca52428d4 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl (prolonged) http://2012.tribe.net/thread/1d97600b-99c2-45f3-b8c6-4df9e0457531 If that's not enough, here's a review of Pinchbeck's book followed by a long discussion with John Major Jenkins: http://groups.google.com/group/utmesoamerica/browse_thread/thread/a636bb7dfc6d7e85/c412ee3a86e38b1a

My Thoughts on 2012

Hoopes — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 03:39:05 GMT

... can be found in these great articles: The Final Days, by Benjamin Anastas (New York Times Magazine, 7/1/07) http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/01/magazine/01world-t.html Five Years: 2012 and The End of the World As We Know It, by Tom King (Lawrence.com, 12/10/07) http://www.lawrence.com/news/2007/dec/10/five_years/

Tales from Northwestern High

Hoopes — Thu, 12 Apr 2007 22:28:38 GMT

NPR has been running a series about my alma mater, an urban high school in Baltimore, Maryland: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=7873385 I was in the Class of '76, back in better times... Go Wildcats!

FrankenEye

Hoopes — Thu, 14 Dec 2006 17:44:58 GMT

The vision thing has been a major preoccpation lately. Last week, in the middle of one of my last classes of the semester, the sight in my right eye suddenly went wacky. It was as if I were watching something projected on a screen that was flapping in the wind, followed by a twist of the focus knob. It took a succession of four doctors to determine that it wasn't a detached retina but a small leak caused by a spontaneous perforation, an extremely rare complication of a rare cornea disease I've had for at least the past twelve years. http://www.revoptom.com/handbook/oct02_sec3_1.htm The initial strategy was to try and seal the leak with some super glue. When that didn't work, the best option was an emergency partial cornea transplant, a football-shaped graft of a donor cornea that was delicately sewn into my eye on Saturday afternoon. Fortunately, there are some excellent eye surgeons in Kansas City. The procedure required general anaesthesia and great skill, but it went as well as could be expected. The leak is closed and I'm deeply grateful for the piece of someone else's eye that has now become a part of my own. This all made for quite a bit of excitement, inconvenience, and anxiety. There's no guarantee that I'll get back all of the vision in my right eye. Worse, there's also the possibility that this may someday get my left eye, too. However, I'm trying not to think about the worst case scenarios and am hoping for the best. That will probably mean several weeks of poor vision (it's still like looking through a piece of frosted glass) with heavy reliance on my "good" eye (my left eye has always been the weaker one!) I'm waiting on a better lens for the left half of my glasses, which is one of the reasons I've been slacking on my usual regular posts. Thanks for all of your kind thoughts and words of encouragement and support. This is another good reason to stop, pause, and meditate on how nothing should be taken for granted and also how, at any moment, every one of us can have our lives changed by the selfless act of a total stranger. If you're not already signed up to be an organ donor--as I have always been--please consider it! I'm grateful also for the miracles of modern medical science. Just a generation ago, my right eye would have been toast. Only better science (most of which has yet to be done) is likely to preserve my future vision. I'm hopeful and optimistic that it will happen.

Gone fishing?

Hoopes — Wed, 01 Feb 2006 05:27:00 GMT

Nope, just checking out the alternative community over at http://www.zaadz.com

The Case for Intelligent Design

Hoopes — Tue, 24 Jan 2006 04:24:54 GMT

This evening I went to hear William Dembski http://www.designinference.com give a presentation called "The Case for Intelligent Design." His presentation was sponsored by the Campus Crusade for Christ, who handed out free copies of Y-Origins, a religious tract designed to look as if it were a scientific journal (see http://www.y-zine.com). Dembski is teaching a course this semester at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary entitled "Critical Thinking and the Art of Argumentation," for which the syllabus states: "The goal of this course is to help students become adept at making a persuasive case for the truth of the Christian worldview." The ID community feels compelled to resort to subterfuge to make their case for ID as science. It would be much better for everyone if they would openly and honestly admit their Christian evangelical agenda and be done with it.

In the Beginning

Hoopes — Fri, 20 Jan 2006 04:40:40 GMT

My Spring semester classes at KU start tomorrow, beginning with "The Ancient Maya" (ANTH 507) from 10:00 - 10:50 and "Introduction to Archaeology" (ANTH 110/310) from 2:00 - 2:50.