More Than It Can Hold

Stuart Watson about 2,100 words

607 Ridgeview Court

Hood River, OR 97031

stu@watsonx2.com

541-386-8860

More Than It Can Hold

by Stuart Watson

We were gardening, pushing bulbs into the ground and hoping for flowers. I heard a car door slam, looked up, saw four young men carrying something really heavy toward the front door of the house across the street and two doors down. It’s painted red, but I couldn’t tell much about the thing they were carrying toward it. All I could tell was they were straining under its weight, spread out, struggling with their share of the load, but knees bent almost to the ground.

One man went down and the others hurried to adjust, to keep their load from falling and crushing their friend. He sprung to his feet, quickly grabbed new purchase on the load and they resumed their trudge. Maybe it was the bright setting sun, but I couldn’t tell what this object was. It had corners and edges, where people could grab it and lift. It was longish, maybe the length of a rolled rug, but it wasn’t a rug. Or at least it wasn’t what I could identify as a rug. Frankly, I’m not sure if it was anything. 

“New neighbors?” I said to Sylvia, tapping dirt from my trowel. 

My wife looked up, a smear of dirt like a mustache above her lip. 

“Looks like it,” Sylvia said. “House has been on the market so long. It will be nice having somebody in it.”

“Will it? I love empty houses. New people are always odd people.”

“Why?”

“Because people are odd? No, seriously, they just move in and go about their lives and none of it matters. Why should I care? Why not let the house be empty? So we can live in peace. They’ll probably have a dog. And let it sit outside and bark. The noise will drive me nuts. I’ll want to go over with my noise vacuum and suck it up and the dog with it.”

“What are they moving?”

“Not a clue. Can you see anything?”

She looked for a few seconds. “Nope,” she said. “But they sure look like they’re hauling huge stuff. Hey–” She got my attention. “--you think they’re mimes?”

It was the same thing all week long. I grew despondent. Groups of two to five men, carrying large items that, at least to our eyes, were invisible, but appeared to have considerable heft. One day, a really long item, maybe an invisible girder? The next day, something that could have fit inside a small apartment, floor to ceiling, wall to wall. 

“I’m guessing it’s a commercial laundry machine,” I said. “Dirty sheets in, gray sheets out.” 

“You know how when you’re on the freeway and get stuck behind some huge piece of industrial machinery on a low-boy?” Sylvia said. “Things that sort rocks or make concrete or turn forests into toilet paper? Maybe they’re DIYers, making their own butt wipe?”

“We should get them an Oversize Load banner. As a housewarming gift.”

That got us giggling like little kids, and the next thing you know, we were in the rack. When we were done, Sylvia rolled onto her side, propping her head on her hand. I’ve always loved the way her breasts slumped sideways at moments like that. 

“I didn’t want to tell you,” she began, “but when I was walking Oscar by their place earlier today, I heard … well, it sounded like the sound you hear when an elevator starts to move and picks up speed. Rollers. Rattling. Air rushing past. Hearts beating loudly, everybody hoping this isn’t the elevator that goes blooey.”

“Did it go blooey?”

“Nope, but I heard it ding and the doors open and suddenly a bunch of voices, like when you arrive at your floor and other people are waiting to get on and everybody stands back for the guy with the photocopy machine on a cart and maybe you know some of them. Somebody always says that line from the Aerosmith song. Good morning, Mr. Tyler. Going … down? ”

“Maybe they’ve got a big elevator in there?”

“It’s a one-story rancher, you idiot.”

The day after they moved the big thing in, I noticed an aroma. It was a little like fresh-mown grass, with notes of strawberry and lime, backed by a somewhat yeasty base. I imagined it was what a kombucha bakery smelled like. If there was such a thing. I asked Sylvia if she noticed it, and she said it smelled nice, like a lotion she wouldn’t mind rubbing behind her knees. The aroma lasted for a day or two, then waned. In that time, the house swelled to twice its previous size, mostly upward but a little to the rear as well. Lights pulsed behind the windows.

We hadn’t met the new residents, so we thought it might be nice to invite them over for dinner. Get to know them. Maybe satisfy our curiosities. 

Lars and Wanda arrived at six with a bottle of screw-cap red. Chateau Oaky Hills something or other. I already had a beer, but poured three wines for them and Sylvia. She had made chicken with roast potatoes, onions and carrots. Very Middle America. 

I toasted “to good neighbors,” hoping it wasn’t too direct. Then I offered my help, if they needed any, with moving their stuff in. 

“It looks big,” I said. “And heavy. I didn’t know sounds … and shit like that, they took up so much space.”

“Oh, you have no idea,” Lars said. “Big sounds, big space.”

“Well, if you need a dolly or a come-along, let me know.”

They thanked me. From there, it was pretty open-ended questions, hoping they would spill the beans. “Lotta stuff.” “Don’t you hate moving?” “Where did you come from?” “Are you among the lucky ones, remote workers?” 

They weren’t. They came from Dubuque. Two kids, in elementary. He was a sonic archivist. He saw our uncomprehending looks. 

“Like a sound engineer.”

“Oh,” I said. Then, “All abooooard!”

He looked at me like I was an idiot. 

“You know? Trains?”

“That would be the conductor,” he said. “No trains involved.”

It was a pleasant evening. Social events drain us both. We crashed. I was deep in dreamspace when the sound of a huge crash jerked me awake. Sylvia was screaming. “What is it? What is it?” Our room was fine. I slipped into my sweatpants and hoody, closing the door behind me in case we had an intruder, who had accidentally tipped over the refrigerator. I flicked on the hall light and slowly made my way through the house. All was normal. Nobody jumped out from the behind a doorway with a knife. 

So I went outside, out front, where activity lived. It was still dark. We had no street lights, by our choice, so I had to pick my way along our sidewalk. When you’re looking for a sound, or more precisely, the source of a sound, it can be challenging. Nothing presented itself. Across the street, I heard crunching and tinkling, like what you hear after a building has collapsed and the stuff on the top floor is just arriving at the bottom, all atomized and reduced to rubble inside a billowy cloud of concrete dust.

Otherwise, nothing to see here. I turned back toward our house and that’s when I tripped, stumbling forward and down, onto our lawn. What was that? I crawled to my hands and knees and worked my way back, feeling the ground for the obstruction. I found nothing but flat, pebbly concrete.

And then the voice. Ahh, that magic voice. Fred Parris. I’m old enough to remember when he first shone from the airwaves, he and his do-wop Satins. “In the Still of the Night” became the theme song to my lost innocence. Our lost virginity. But where? What was the source? I was lying on a sidewalk in the dark, no radio, no passing car, no lights from any window? The song’s lyrics trailed off, as if just passing through, which of course, any song does.

Sylvia had the lights on when I returned, and told her about that magic moment. She smiled that smile, and wrapped her arms around my neck. Still the same.

After the sun came up and everyone got after their yard chores, I could see the new neighbors – Lars and Wanda and two teenage boys – out picking up stuff from their yard. I couldn’t see what. Frankly, it looked like they were just going through the motions. There was nothing there, but they were bending over and reaching down and struggling to stand back up, whatever it was (or wasn’t) cradled in their arms. Then they would take it back into the house. 

I couldn’t resist wandering over, casual as can be, with Roscoe on his leash. “Lend a hand?” I offered. Lars looked up, smiled. “Thanks, no,” he said. “Think we got it.”

“Uh, it?” I said.

“Oh,” he said, looking around, almost as if it should have been obvious. “Our sound file tipped over in the night. Not sure why. But audio went everywhere. Still missing a few pieces. If you happen to come across The Still of the Night or Alley Oop, we’d love to get them back.”

“Records?”

He stared at me, geezer and dog. “No,” he said, finally. “Songs. The sound of voices and instruments. Gear on gear. Weather. Urbanity. Construction and transport. All for aural consumption. They’re beasts, these sound bites. And heavy. Especially the death metal. Cavernous”

I must have looked confused. “Sorry if it woke you,” he said. “Moving is a bitch. We hadn’t organized everything yet. Our Tower-Crane-Toppling audio … well, it toppled– ironic, right? –  and knocked over the 747-Crashing, and that tumbled into the Walk-Off-Home-Run-Cheering and the Atomic-Bomb-Detonating and …”

He looked at me, as if something on my face betrayed what, in fact, I felt – a mixture of confusion and incredulity and the sense that I was being fed a line of snake oil mumbo-jumbo. Or the jabber of a savant. So I jumped at the chance for clarity.

“Isn’t sound just air? Invisible vibrations passing through? Like a pulse? Not much more than a feeling?”

“Or like a stupid question,” Lars replied. “It’s not just air. Sound is … value-added air. It’s  the most valuable thing, the repository of words, emotions, speech, music, natural percussive echo and oral transmission of memory, the gospel rock of Sister Rosetta Tharp, bird journeys, exhalations swept away by atmospheric rivers, conversations in sidewalk cafes and the councils of government, where hate takes root, gains traction, where fear inhales and hides, where ...  “

“You’re stoned, right?”

To his credit, Lars smiled. Took no offense. Figured Rubes like me would never get it, so why waste time and breath trying to explain. He invited us to come by later. 

“This house is way too small for our collection,” he said. “Last night? Proof if ever we needed it: We’ve got far more than the house can hold. We’re having a yard sale later. You could find a bargain or two. I’ll give you a deal on a priceless Steam-Engines-Colliding.”

I nodded. Priceless? As if anyone would pay for something as evanescent as a sound bite from the 19th century? I didn’t know what to say, but I’m sure that when our eyes met, Bart realized that I thought he was nuts. 

“You could get a phone,” I said. “Upload all your noise. To the cloud? And download it. E-z p-z.”

Lars’s lips thinned out, tight, cinched into a grimace. It was like I’d insulted him and he didn’t want to get arrested for taking me to the ground and extinguishing my lights. Such as they are, my lights. Maybe I should’ve called it something other than noise, but it wasn’t exactly all music, was it?

“We gotta lighten the load,” he said. “Got a cacophonous shipment of stuff coming down the river on a barge. Need to make room.” 

On the way back to our house, I chastised myself for being too judgmental. Who was I to say that Bart and his clan were any different than some scruffy philatelist or presser of flowers between paper towels inside the pages of the Sears catalog, whatever that is? Was. 

Sylvia was sipping coffee when I returned. Slurping it. Loudly. At the top of her lungs. Or lips, actually. She peered over the top of her cup, expectant.

“News?”

“Lars is an air collector.”

“No shit? Where does he collect it?”

“Anywhere and everywhere. Only thing is? They’ve got too much of it. It’s crashing down around their ears.”

I suddenly felt the urge to capture Sylvia’s slurp, like a free-flying parakeet, and put it in a cage for future reference. To protect it, treasure it, appreciate it whenever I wanted. Then I realized that was unnecessary. It would always be there, every morning, until it wasn’t. Instead I told her about the yard sale.