The Silence

THE SILENCE

"I sit here some days and never say a word," he said with a far away look in his eye. I wanted him to continue.

"Really?"

"Yea, maybe for days at a time I never hear my own voice."

It was difficult for me to listen for I knew what he was saying. I had been concerned about him being alone. He lived in the same house where he and his childhood sweetheart Sarah had raised their family. Mama had died seven years earlier, and he had remained in the house with all the memories. Pictures of my sisters and me, and our children were still in place where she had hung them, or placed them on a shelf. The chair where she had spent her last days before going to the nursing home was still part of the living room where he stayed. The chest of drawers in the spare bedroom still had her personal items forever reminding us that she had lived there. Remembering Mama and her last years of struggle, didn’t dampen the feeling of being close to her when I laid down on the bed or touched her clothes still hanging in the closet. She was there in each curtain, or picture on the wall, or seemingly around each corner.

Daddy moved from the breakfast table to the porch. He walked with the aid of a three legged cane. Steps not as sure as they once were. He adjusted his chair so his face and body would be toward the sun. “I have to bake my knees in the sun, so they won’t hurt so bad.” he said, as he settled into his chair.

His hearing aids whistled, but he did not notice.

"You know? Not many people my age can say they was successful." He said, as he shifted his body getting comfortable. I set behind him in the porch swing, longing to see his face as we talked.

"I know Daddy" I replied.

"I was a success at anything I done," he said. "The farm, you girls. All of you got a good high school education and got an office job. Didn't have to work in the field like you did when you was kids."

I had to add, "None of us ever gave you any problem or heartache. That really is success in its truest sense!"

He heard me, but never responded. He raised his eyes to look out over the farm. The fields where his cattle once grazed, belonged to someone else’s now.

“I remember the hog pen down yonder”, I said as I pointed to the spot hoping to engage him further, He had had the good sense to make the pen away from the house on a rise above the creek.

“We had them named,” I ventured. “One we named Arnold!” Again, he didn't respond. I too was lost in my own thoughts. It was always difficult to learn which hog would be butchered come winter. By the time we put the fried tenderloin and biscuit in our mouth, we had forgotten that it once had a name.

Now and then he nodded understandingly, but he had thoughts of his own. I kept listening. At times he talked as though talking to himself. I think he was listening to a human voice even if it was his, or could it be these were the thoughts he had when he was alone and now with someone to listen he was ready to share?

"We had corn in that field, didn't we? Maybe tobacco in that bottom land across the creek." I asked just to keep him talking. I was thinking of how difficult it must have been on a farmer to have 6 daughters and no sons.

The land had changed over the past 50 years and what we saw in our memory was all we had. Today we saw mobile homes, drive ways and automobiles that spotted the scenery where stalks use to stand tall, heavy with ears of corn.

The creek had changed its course. Years and the elements had made the once rolling water a little more than a stream. Only memories remain of the swimming hole where we went on summers days to get cool. (Mama told us not to get in too deep water until we learn to swim!) We watched as Daddy came home from the creek, with a string of fish, knowing we would get to eat of his bounty.

The story of the farm was always interesting to us as adults. We loved getting him to talk about how he had it paid for in a year or two. How he bought more acreage from the neighbor as he could. One hundred dollars an acre some for less. There was a pride about owning and farming your own land. His dad had never owned property. He had just share cropped other’s land.

He talked about the team of mules that pulled the plow through the dirt to make furrows where seed would be dropped. How one of them once kicked him and broke a rib. He talked about clearing new ground and killing a rattle snake or a copper head. His memory was vivid and I listened, even though I had heard some of the stories before.

"I never will forget the first tractor I bought. It sure was better on my legs since I didn't have to follow behind the team."

"It was red wasn't it"? I interrupted.

"No, it was green" he corrected me.

Red, Green. I just knew that tractor was the nearest thing to an automobile we had at the time, and setting high on the tractor, I'd pretend it was a convertible. Otherwise the wagon, pulled by the team of mules, was our transportation to and from my Uncle’s house or to church on Sunday.

He remembers that I was new at driving but I pestered him until he allowed me to drive the tractor forward in the field. We had been helping him (and I use the words lightly) gathering corn. Once we had cleaned the stalks around us, it was time to move forward, so he would get on the tractor and pull the wagon several lengths ahead. However, he finally gave in to “let me do it this time”. Somehow, I turned the wheel too deep and I headed for him. He was yelling and instructing me to “turn it the other way”. I turned the wheel the other way, but again I turned too far, and started for him again. I panicked, but finally stopped the tractor, and was not allowed on it again, until I had better instruction.

He moved to another subject. “This community has changed so much since we moved here 65 years ago. I don’t even know any body any more. All the neighbors that lived here then have gone on. I don’t know anybody in these parts,” he continued.

I silently agreed, for I was remembering a few widows who lived down the road still, but could not remember any men of his era. When you are 98 you outlive your neighbors and even your children in some cases.

He talked about his first job, his first automobile. He recalled the first time he had his picture made.

“I was 18. Would you believe it took me that long to see myself in a picture?”

We still have the picture. He looked sharp. Three piece suit, a hat and tie. Sharp for an aging teenager! Made on the streets of Detroit. His brother was also in the picture. His brother is still living, and his children have the same picture. Our Fathers in their middle 90’s was once 18! It was so difficult to visualize, we needed a picture to remind us they had had a life before us!

As much as I dreaded leaving the picture of him baking himself in the sun, reliving his yester years, and the conversation that ensued, I knew we needed to start the long trip back to Arkansas. For sure this was one of those days I didn't want to go. My husband had packed the car as I lingered on the porch, taking a few more precious minutes to implant the vision of him on my memory for all times, never knowing whether we would have a conversation like this again. One is on borrowed time when one reaches 95+, and too, I knew he would be left alone to listen to the deafening silence.

“Daddy we need to start home”, I told him.

"You coming back for the gathering?" he wanted to know. That meant the family reunion in a couple months.

"Oh yes, we'll be here" I assured him.

I knew when we were gone that his eyes would follow us until we were out of sight. I knew also that he would watch the mail for a letter from “the girls”. I knew he would wait patiently for the phone to ring around 10:30 in the morning when his baby girl would make her daily call to check on him. I also knew he would eat a light lunch, so he would be ready when Martha came in later in the day to bring a hot supper.

In the meantime, wrapping his arthritic fingers around the neck of an out of tune guitar, he would sing, to what would look and feel like, an empty room. He might turn the CD player on and listen to a good ole blue grass gospel song that reminds him of Heaven and home where Sarah is waiting. But mostly he will listen to the Silence.

Written after a visit home in April, 2006
Doris Thompson
© Copyright 2006 ark mom (UN: datanner at Writing.Com). All rights reserved.
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