I hefted a laundry basket piled with wet sheets out to the deck. Pulling in the line hand over hand and pinning them on, I sent them sailing out into the darkness. They drifted with the warm evening breezes like soggy ghosts. I watched them for a moment and heard a bird begin to call: the sound, beautiful, lonely, out of place in the dark.
Every day for a month solid, we have had humidity reaching almost one hundred percent. The white noise of the fan oscillating wakes me several times during the night. It is startlingly similar to hissing-down rain, and I lay silent, my brain trying to separate two sounds. My sleep is fitful and we wake tangled in damp sheets, still tired.
The continuous rainfall coupled with the humidity is oppressive. I feel pressure in my head when I first get out of bed. In the bathroom I swat a deer fly that already seems dead. Bright red blood splatters the floor. I look at it and feel like I recognize it as my own. As I wipe up my/his blood, I wonder if the original death was spontaneous combustion from the humidity.
By noon the heat is bearing down on us. In the garden thinning carrot greens, sweat stings my eyes and I keep blinking trying not to wipe them with dirty hands. I hear the constant rising and falling pulse of the cicadas, like dry waves cresting and retreating. An August sound. When I get inside I wash my hands and look at myself in the mirror. Dirt smeared carefully around my eyes like a gardening raccoon.
We spend long, hot afternoons at the river. Bronte comes along if it doesn’t look like there will be thunder. A recent evening, after hiking and arriving at our favorite hole, smoothing our towels out over rocks and unwrapping sandwiches, we notice she had disappeared. Then we heard the rumble. Paul hiked all the way back to the truck to find her enjoying some stranger-love while I re-wrapped food and followed.
During a subsequent Bronte-less trip, lazily drifting with the current, I tilt my head back and follow the reflection of the moving water on the trunks of the trees that line the river. Shining and flashing, it reminds me of heat coming off pavement. A Kingfisher swoops up the river like it is a runway and squeals as it lights on a branch watching us swim. The water gurgles and pops as it slides over the rocks.
In the mornings I go about my chores to the soundtrack of the hens as they announce, one by one, that they have laid. The Blue Jays flit about, chattering in the trees hoping for an opening to grab some cracked corn. A hawk circles overhead and screams. The chickens turn one eye toward the sky and stand quietly, frozen like statues. The sounds as sure a community as if I am downtown doing errands.
The Hermit Thrush, like a clock, signals evening. You never see the thrush: its song, like bells, seems to spin outward from some deep, dark place in the forest. I listen and wonder who it is calling for. When the light is completely gone the song stops, suddenly and without warning leaving a space.
At daybreak I hear the Hummingbird from behind the blinds. She squeaks, like a tiny mouse, as she sidles up to the bar. As she drinks nectar, her throat continues to vibrate, contented and humming. I hear her buzz away, almost silently, but not quite. Sometimes there is a scuffle and I hear two sets of loud squeaks and intense flying going on.
This spring I heard the most incredible birdsong, and I went outside, covering my eyes against the sunshine trying to see where it was coming from. I had no luck until, looking out the kitchen window, I noticed that a small bird had moved into the impossible wood bird house we had suction cupped to the glass. I carefully took position on the other side of the bar and watched her silhouette as she moved furniture: not quite able to make her out until she hopped onto the ground and darted around under the broad leaves of the Hostas, more like a mouse than a bird. At one point, operatic in her stance, she opened her beak and began to sing. Such amazing sound coming from this little plain house-mouse of a bird.
After hatching babies she added a chiding noise to her repertoire, like the little tin toys we would spin around on New Year’s eve. I became very adept at recognizing her calls and it pleased me.
Too many days of torrential rain, washed out roads, houses, people. Often the sound of the water coming down is so loud that there is nothing but it: an impenetrable wall. I’ve begun to notice that when it stops, almost immediately, a bird begins.