Desert Song

Ava watched her own picture burn in the bonfire alongside the notes she had written her classmates over the years. She heard their taunts as her face bubbled and melted. She threw her red cup to the ground, foamy beer spilling from its side and soaking into the matted grass. She turned away from their laughter and headed west on foot across Old Man Zimmerman’s field. The grass was wet below a low fog dotted with dairy cows. She stopped on the train trestle and rested her elbows on the edge.

She stood on the bridge in the darkness, listening to the creek rushing below. The rapids conjured memories of tubing the length of town with her friends. She never minded the rusted machinery that littered the banks as she and the other town kids floated along. The creek’s babble was the most exciting sound of her childhood. It meant freedom. An afternoon away from her pious mother, who undoubtedly fantasized that her dramatic daughter was off drowning her voice once and for all. Now the thought of treading murky farm-runoff made Ava wish a train would come and iron her wrinkled clothes. 

“I like quiet girls,” Luke, her crush, had said to her in front of everyone last summer when she was telling them the story of pulling a leech from between her toes in the rainforest some years prior.

“Your stories are a bit intense,” Gabby, her so-called best friend, had suggested to her in response to Luke’s criticism. 

Her adventures from beyond the rust belt seemed like tall tales to those who had never ventured further than the decaying barns on the bucolic side of town. She couldn’t figure out why her parents, big city folk, had decided to move here. They never offered her any details from their private affairs, but one night she eavesdropped on an argument they had in the middle of the night. That’s when she learned that it all had something to do with her father “talking too much.” 

“They’re not looking for your opinions at work! So keep your mouth shut this time!” her mother yelled. Her poor, repressed mother had a tantrum.     

Luke’s outburst was the end of it. The end of her childhood. From then on, the outside world was as stifling as family dinner. And now things had finally come to a head. The sound of the creek became an intrusive white noise, another thing that swallowed her voice. She crossed the rest of the bridge, leaving behind the cacophony of crackling embers, rushing water and snide comments. 

On the other side of the trestle Ava’s feet sank into hot sand and she struggled to take a step forward. The sun was at its peak and she had to squint up at the cloudless sky. It was silent. No wind, no water, no traffic, no birds calling. Just desert. Ava’s throat was so dry she couldn’t call out for help. She opened her mouth, but her lips only formed soundless words. She wished she were back at the creek where she could scoop handfuls of brown water into her mouth. She made her way toward a dried up river bed and followed its trail of rocks and rusted bicycles. She came across an overpass with no road on either side. The underbelly of the overpass provided refuge from the vehement conditions. She lay on her back in the shade and covered her eyes with her hands.

Ava hadn’t rested a minute when she sat up abruptly. She heard something. It sounded like music. She tried to call out, but once again, she couldn’t produce a sound. On all fours, she waited for the glimmering stars to clear from her eyes. Then she stood, stepping into the blistering heat and following the sound. There was no doubt, as she grew closer, that what she was hearing were melodious notes springing from the keys of a piano. Then she saw it. A grand piano, sitting like a mirage, in the middle of a vast landscape. That shouldn't be there, she mused. Heat waves, or maybe they were sound waves, were emanating from the piano's shiny, black surface. A young man, with a shirt wrapped around his head, furiously threw his long fingers at the ivory keys while his hiking boots worked the pedals.

He stopped playing when she approached him. Ava attempted to ask him a question and he smiled when she could not find the words. He played a couple chords and, with his fingers resting on the keys, gave her an encouraging expression. She tried to speak again and he shook his head. He played the chords again and she understood that she was to sing. The only tune that came to mind was one from her mother’s hidden box of vinyl records. Ava had found them in the basement one day when she was snooping through the crawl space. She hated the song, maybe because the vinyl was warped and the music sounded distorted or perhaps because it just wasn’t her taste. She knew her mother had liked it at one time though and that made her want to master it. The young man rolled up his sleeves and played the introduction to the song that was running in her head. She stared at him, dumbfounded. He smiled and played the intro again. She began to sing, tentatively because she didn’t like the sound of her own voice.

When that song had ended, she sang the next on the album, and the next, and the one after that. With each song her thirst intensified, but so did her energy. Together, her voice and the piano grew stronger until she was belting out songs at the top of her lungs. She heard the sound of running water when she finally stopped singing.

“Don’t touch this river,” the piano player said. “Lest you be stuck here forever.” 

“Is that what happened to you?” she asked, watching the water roar down the riverbed that had been dry only a moment ago.

He smiled and began to play something somber. She didn’t know the words to his song and he didn’t intend to accompany her tunes any longer. When she looked up at the sun again, she saw it was a headlight barreling toward her on the train tracks. She leapt to the side of the trestle and came to rest on the banks of the creek, her feet just inches from the water. She curled her toes away from the sloshing sludge before standing. Then she continued walking west, humming a tune of her own.