The Echo

My neighbor, the miller, fell Quiet perhaps a week ago, leaving behind his wife to run the mill alone. There aren't many Quiet around our small town so it has become something of a scandal. Nobody blames her, of course; that would be cruel. It is well known that the Quiet are without cause and beyond reasoning. But even before this juicy tragedy she was the subject of rumors and side glances, and so this latest turn of events only adds spice to the gossip. In pitying tones I am told what a shame it is for her, reminded of how young she is, and given the opinion that somebody really ought to do something about the recent plague of Quiet.

In fact there is no "plague", but this kind of talk is unavoidable. The last Quiet we had around here was when I was just a boy. One of the church deacons fell Quiet during a sermon, of all things. Simply stood up and walked out, and away. Without comment, nor a backwards glance. I was sleeping, typically enough. Then my older brother jabbed me awake with his elbow. He didn't say anything, just pointed. I remember the trailing monotony of the pastor, extolling the virtues of faith and so on, breaking in mid-sentence, the rising murmur from the congregation, and all those eyes turning to the aisle as the deacon calmly strode out the building. When he reached the doorway it was clear what had happened and his wife shrieked most awfully.

I wonder how it happened for the miller and his wife. Was she even there? Or perhaps she returned home to find him missing with food half-eaten on the table. Or perhaps she was hanging the laundry and noticed the ass turning the millstone untended, plodding dumbly in its rut. Their home is only up the little rise from mine. I would've heard any calamity in the night or cries for help. Maybe she watched him go with stoic resignation. Or perhaps she was glad to be rid of him. These are the rumors, at least. There would likely be suspicion of foul play to account for his absence, except that he has already been spotted prowling among the trees; half naked and muddy, with a stitch through his lips.

The deacon lingered around town similarly for years like a spectre, a figure to warn your children about so they would behave.

As a young man I again encountered the deacon. I spent time behind the sugarhouse because it was secluded, but also because the smell of the sap slowly boiling into syrup was intoxicating. It clung to the wooden walls and was overpowering inside, but outside it smelled like candy. A little candy house like from a tale. I knew the process of tapping the trees and refining the sap. I would likely be expected to take over production as I grew older. But at the time it was a place to go under the pretense of doing my chores. I sat on the overturned tub and looked at the postcards my uncle gave me. He traveled far and wide to real cities and ports of call. He gave me his Bible to read when he visited and I would find little treats tucked into the pages. At first I thought they were his own bookmarks and I felt guilty for seeing such sights. Bits of card with printed images, retouched photographs of coy bathing beauties. Also images of junk ships with curious sails, half-naked cannibals, foreign dignitaries, and creatures with long, long necks. At first I left them where I found them, between the pages of scripture. The next day I gave him back the book and he offered to let me have it during his stay to study more carefully. This exchange pleased my parents, particularly my mother, his sister.

He visited a few more times during my adolescence. The postcards changed regularly. I kept them in folded leather, hidden behind the sugarhouse. It was our secret, and my Uncle and I never spoke directly about them. In some ways that was fortunate, for I don't know what I could've said out of shame. But on the other hand, I was also curious about what I was seeing. My mother didn't like him talking too much about his travels. Too much blasphemy in the world, too much rampant idolatry and misdirection. Exposure to the exotic was bound to corrupt and she openly feared for his immortal soul. The Bible he carried was a conciliatory gesture.

And then he stopped visiting. Word came later that the whaling ship he had last hitched aboard sank in a storm. My mother mourned that he died among heathens; the wages of sin. Ultimately, I possessed the only items which survived him, and when I would sometimes witness my mother's grief I was moved to show her the postcards. In this fantasy, she would accept or overlook the images and see in them something tangible of her brother, some part of his person that he was willing to share with me. He and I had a connection, small and strange, but still real and personal. In this fantasy, she would understand this importance; the postcards would help her place her emotions and enrich her memories. She and I could look at each one and marvel together, imagining his adventures, and celebrating his full life. It could be a happy thing.

But I knew this to be fantasy and I never told her about my collection. She would only see depravity. I would never be able to face her or make her understand otherwise.

Growing older and my youth sealed itself off neatly into a mythical before-time, my younger postcard dreams of giant squids, curious island women and gilded flotillas gave way to more local, mundane, reasonable fantasies. I would still go behind the sugarhouse, and I would still handle the worn images inside the folded leather - it was out of habit. In my head I was thinking of the girls at the well, or the smell of sex in breeding season. At a time such as this, staring into the shifting green of the woods, I saw that there were eyes watching me. It was the deacon, crouched among the branches, swaying on a heavy limb creaking in the wind.

He was a stone's throw away and clearly observing my shame. In the instant, I was again a child of the church looking up to him as one of many looming authority figures, but then the moment passed and I saw him plainly. He had fallen Quiet, he was bushy and haggard, entwined and adorned with leaves and twigs in his scraggly gray hair. His lips were bound by multiple stitches. He curled his toes on the bark and held his perch, remarkably agile for his paunchy age. There was no judgment in his face, no sign of familiarity or recognition. He looked me in the eyes and revealed nothing.

I am now a widower, my own dear wife (rest her soul) was taken by an accident. The sugarhouse has fallen into disrepair. It is easier and cheaper to simply buy cane sugar and other syrups now. The miller's wife is visibly pregnant. The obvious father is her husband before he fell Quiet, but there is talk.

Before her husband, it was a town deacon and before him, the last to Quiet was a beggar woman. This was the story my grandfather would tell as something of a joke. She was shunned as a witch and an orphan. She drank and caroused about the dusty streets in a stupor. Harmless and pathetic. The story is that she was known to be a drunkard and for stirring up trouble. This was before my time, as my grandfather would tell it: on a dare, he was made to offer her a bottle of cheap wine for sex. This was in his youth, he was the youngest of his friends and it was expected of him as some spontaneous rite of passage. My mother would leave the room when my grandfather told my brother and I this story. He ran his tongue over bare gums in the gaps of his smile. The anecdote never got old.

And so the exchange was made, and his friends could watch. In an alley, the deed was begun but at first my grandfather was too nervous to perform, and then suddenly too nervous not to. The joke was that she must have fallen Quiet along the way. For when released she stood, sober and grave, her face unreadable. She left the wine in the dust, and her rags in piles. She walked upright and with solemn purpose out of town and into the woods. Perhaps due to her age when falling Quiet, she did not survive for long. By my grandfather's recollection, she lived for only a few years longer; she had gathered three or four stitches through her mouth before disappearing altogether.

I never found the humor in this telling. But my brother did, and my grandfather. They were older and this seemed to mean something more to them than to myself. I laughed along, because it was expected. When my grandfather died, my mother told me I was her favorite and the man of the house.

The miller's wife comes to me for help now and again; I live the closest to her. It's not particularly demanding work, but everything is easier with a partner. I don't ask her about her husband and I suspect she is grateful for that. I still hear the rumors, though now perhaps not the ones that implicate me as some sort of illicit lover. I am spending more time there because the work is good. She pays me. I want to tell her about the deacon and my grandfather's story. But I won't bring it up unless she does so first.