The Sound of the Circle

by Michael P. McManus

After all, it had been nothing, he thought as he adjusted his belt, cinching it tight so his jeans would stay up as he began to wade out into the water. The temperature had started to drop because the sun could no longer be seen in the sky. It had been gone an hour, maybe more, maybe less, but the temperature was beginning to drop. He could see that in the way a mist had formed just above the water. It was odd to look at, the water moving fast by, but the mist lingering there as if it would never leave. Still, the water felt warm enough and in no time at all he had waded in up to his knees. In places the river current was strong enough to make him be cautious but in others it was sluggish and this made him forget about what he was doing.

But what was he doing here? Of that he was not certain, it was not quite clear. It had been that way for some time. Too long, he thought as he looked around trying to remember what had happened that morning. But the process of trying to remember that morning made him feel strange, made him feel as if what he was trying to recall had actually happened years ago.

He looked up at the moon. It was full and bright, close enough to touch, he thought. On the far riverbank were trees and beyond them the tiny distant lights of a farmhouse. The river water made hard to hear gurgling noises downstream. He walked upstream, surprised that the water did not get any deeper. But he knew that it had not rained for quite some time. He could remember that, and he could remember talking about the lack of rain that very morning while he had stood looking out his kitchen window. From there he had seen the brown grass, and beyond it the shallow stretch of the river with its exposed, white rocks that had been worn smooth, and in those arid times, bleached by the sun.

He started talking out loud as he was inclined to do when he had been drinking and no one was around. But he was not too drunk to know that he was walking upstream. He felt the river gravel underfoot, his sneakers filling with silt. And so he stopped a moment, addressing the issue by talking over the problem as if he had a companion. When no one replied, he nodded his approval, and kicked off his sneakers. He felt freed by this, a bit more liberated and so he laughed out loud but this made him feel guilty because he believed that he should not be laughing alone. Had he been laughing that morning? Now he could not recall anything but the way the river bottom felt on the bottom of his feet. In places it was muddy with bits of gravel and in others in was gravel with bits of mud. He laughed again at the thought of the repetition. He thought it might be nice to go insane here. After all, he had the river, which he had loved since childhood and he had the night and its moon. It felt wonderful to be in love with such things.

But something nagged at him again. It was not entirely unpleasant, much like the way his feet felt stepping forward over the uncertainty of what was below him. But had there been a child there this morning and had he ever been in love?

The current sucked against his legs. He stepped into a deeper hole and for a moment he was in water up to his upper chest. His white tee shirt clung to his body and he felt a sudden chill as he came up out of the hole. He moved forward and the current slowed. The river was dark on its surface but the moon made the darkness less ominous. In front of him he heard something slap the surface of the water and he looked in time to see the ripples a fish had made falling back into the river.

He no longer liked the way the tee shirt felt on his body. He took it off and smiled as he held it up in front of his face. The moon was blood red and it made the tee shirt look the same. At least to him, he thought, and that was all that mattered. Or was that all that mattered, he thought again as he turned and tossed his shirt though the air. He watched it land and float away.

He wanted to go insane and maybe then he could remember. He was remembering that he could not remember and the uncertainty of it all made him talk louder. The night air was cold against his skin and he talked louder and then he went silent. This morning he believed that he had gone silent when he had heard a child crying. He knew that he had been wearing the same tee shirt and the same jeans, and that he had started drinking sometime before noon. Sometimes it was not so bad going silent. Sometimes it was not so bad to begin drinking around noon. He stopped a moment so he could listen from the place where he was standing. He could hear the swirl of the river, and on the near bank he heard the sound of something large running through the tall marshy reeds. He heard crickets and from time to time he heard a distant dog barking.

There had been a dog there this morning. A big, white bone-thin one, an Irish Wolfhound, he believed. It was thin as if it had not eaten in several days and it's fur hung down on its sides like useless wings. The dog had barked and barked. But why, he asked himself as he started forward again. Why had the dog barked so incessantly and why had the child cried? And had he ever loved anything more than his own belief in himself? Surely he had. Surely he had loved the wind through the trees and this river with its cutbanks and overhanging tree limbs and the sleepy fisherman standing along the banks in the gray light on the opening day of fishing season.

Had the dog run away? He could not recall what had become of it. There was now only the river and the sound of his breathing as he labored forward against the strengthening current. He stood to catch a cold if he did not get warm soon, but he did not care because he was drunk enough to do and think whatever he pleased. He went under the water and he came back up, slicking back his black hair with his hands. It felt good to shiver. He had to piss and so he did, feeling the warm trickle run down his leg like blood.

There had been a time in his life when he could have remembered anything that he had decided upon. Even if he had been drunk, he could remember. But time had taken care of that. Maybe he had not loved well enough in his life, and now he was being punished. He laughed out loud and his voice left him like a covey of quail rising up through the tall grass, their tiny wings whirring against the autumn sun. But he knew that he had loved as best he could before it had left him. It had not been his fault and what now of the dog and the crying child? What difference did it make if he could not make sense of it all?

Even now at night, birds flew low across the water. He could not make out what kind they were, but he could see the shadows they made going back and forth, sometimes rising like a scream against the sky. Had there been a scream? Had there been blood and a scream and the child crying while the white dog barked at the shadow in the corner of the kitchen?

He squinted hard to see what was ahead, which for him was one way of looking back, trying to recall and remember. The moon was high now and the sky around it had a few clouds and the stars were in such numbers that he believed that there was no end to them. He knew that if he could end this, then he could begin again.

Up ahead the river twisted out of sight and he knew that there the water was deeper, the current stronger running down through the wide channel. He had been there many times before, but now he wanted to go back to his kitchen before he had started drinking.

He could see his simple gas stove. Sitting on one of the four burners was a black skillet filled with bacon and eggs. He could see his twenty-year old refrigerator and he could hear the hum the freezer made when its door was pulled open. The kitchen window had been propped up with a piece of cut two-by-four, and the morning wind came into the kitchen and carried the smell of the bacon and eggs out into the living room. There was the dog and the child and the sense of it all was beginning to return. But the shadow was still a shadow, a piece of black cloth held against a black sky. And then as a spark suddenly rises off a piece of struck flint, he could see her. But he was no longer certain who she was. He knew the river better than he knew her. But she was standing there in front of him as sure as he was standing in the water.

When a man no longer loves the place that he is in, it looks different to him. He did not recognize her. She began to scream this and that about love. She was screaming and running at him. He could not recall who had had the knife first. But he ended up with it in his hand. Then there was blood and screaming from the shadow in the corner, and then there was only the sound of the child and the dog.

After breakfast, he had gone out onto the front porch to begin drinking. He sat there, rocking back and forth in his favorite wooden rocker. He drank until the police arrived with their loudspeakers and defensive positions taken behind the opened doors of their patrol cars. It was all beginning to come back to him as he stood there in the river with his arms raised and the moonlight on him like a searchlight. He was happy as he recalled picking up his shotgun and walking down the porch steps. The officer's pistols had made popping noises and the bullets going into his body felt like hard punches from a club fighter. The dog had to be shot too, because in the end it had tried to defend him.

Now it all made perfectly good sense to him. He could remember and leave behind the place that he no longer loved. He knew that he was not going insane, and this made him feel, much, much better.

Copyright © Michael P. McManus 2004