Listening, Listening
by Bruce Holland Rogers
This story copyright 1995 by Bruce Holland Rogers. This copy was
created for Jean Hardy's personal use. All other rights are reserved. Thank
you for honoring the copyright.
Published by Seattle Book Company,
www.seattlebook.com.
* * *
Anyone who sang out sweet and high over the
waters of the lake might bring up the monster if the light and air were right,
but none of the men living in those rough cabins were willing to sing out in a
voice like a woman's, and they weren't about to let their women do it, either.
No, they would say, whatever is meant to be seen will appear of its own accord
and will rise when it is meant to rise. What lies in our keeping is the fruit of
our traplines: the fox, the hare, the mink. If our roofs were beneath the lake,
our traps would be there, too. We will not disturb the sleep of anything we
don't mean to kill.
So the women met by night,
slipping from the sides of sleeping husbands when moon and mists were as they
had to be. They gathered on the rock that rose, shiplike, from the farthest
shore, and they held their breaths to hear the sound of coils unwinding
underneath the waves. Then some one of them would softly sing a note as clear as
water, and another voice would join hers, and another after that. The men, still
asleep in their beds, would dream of masts and sirens.
Sometimes a shadow would glide beneath the surface.
Sometimes not. Sometimes the waves would clash with ripples that rose up from
below. Sometimes not. And then on some rare nights, the monster, dripping water
from its nostrils, would raise its head into the glowing mist to listen to the
one-note song.
And then the giant head would slip
back beneath the waves. The steady song would slip back into silence. The women,
silently, would slip between black trees, back to their cabins, back beside
their husbands.
Among themselves again in daylight,
the women would exchange no glance, speak no secret word about what passed in
the night, even after the men, with traps and chains rattling from their
shoulders, had made their way into the shadows of the trees.
Once a man who dreamed of sirens reached for his
wife and, not finding her, woke up. He rose, naked, and followed the sound, the
one high note in many voices, until he came to the water's edge. Out across the
lake, he saw the women singing, saw the water ripple underneath the moon.
The moonlight shone whitely on his body, and he let
the cold air in through his nose and out through his mouth. And then, without
meaning to, he lifted up his voice, singing with the voice of a woman from the
body of a man.
The water did not froth in the center
of the lake. The great head did not rise into the mist. At last, one by one, the
women fell silent, until the man was the last one singing. He stayed there on
the rocky shore, sending his voice out over the water long after the women, even
his wife, had made their way back to their beds. When he stopped singing, he
crouched beside the water, unable to go home. When the eastern sky began to
pink, his nakedness drove him back.
His wife was
waiting up. She had a fire in the stove, and she looked at him strangely when he
came in.
He stood confounded for a moment, and then
he lowered his brow. "What was that nonsense you were up to last night?" he
demanded. Then he put on his clothes. "I can't look at you, woman," he said.
"I'm ashamed of the things you do. I am so ashamed."
He never spoke of it to her again, but some nights
he would wake to the sound of singing. He would not stretch out to feel the bed
empty beside him, but would lie very still and angry, imagining what it looked
like, the massive head held high above the water, listening, listening.
Published by Alexandria Digital
Literature. (http://www.alexlit.com/)
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