Night noises

Round ten o'clock last night I grab a book and head outside to sit on the front porch to read.  Our block's quiet and empty but the neighborhood and the town beyond are alive with noise.

Noises of treefrogs and spring peepers.  Noises of teenage girls shrieking happily as they walk towards town where there is nothing open now except for a couple of gas stations and a bar they sound too young to even fake their way into.  Noises of children up late running around their backyard, and through the treetops across the way I pick out the upstairs light in the house I'm guessing is their house, possibly it's their bedroom light and someone's upstairs waiting for them to come to bed.

Noises of firecrackers, M-80s, thumping, farther off.

Noises of cars on the main street still damp from rain earlier in the evening, incessant, Friday night and we're on the way between everywhere you'd want to be on a Friday night.  Noises of adults laughing on their front porch and hearty good nights and car doors slamming.  Noises of birds startled from their roosts.  Noises of geese carrying a mile up from the river.

A night when sounds travel.  Low clouds, air damp.  Fire horn sounds and it's not the one from our firehouse.  The next town over's three miles away but that's to the south and this seems to be coming from the east which would put it six miles down the road.  The horn hoots for several minutes, calling the volunteers.  No sirens follow it.

Dog noises do.  Every dog has to answer the first dog that barked in surprise at the fire horn.

The fire horn stops.  The dogs discuss it for a bit and then settle down.  Traffic dies.  Nothing now but the peepers, clucking high, then low.  cheep cheep cheep CHEEP CHEEP CHEEP cheep cheep cheep CHEEP CHEEP CHEEP.

Another teenage girl cries out.  This one is angry.  Can't hear what she says.  I know her tone.  Her parents have offended her.  She lets them and the neighbors know it.

Quiet again, except for the peepers, and then some noises in the house behind me.  My house.  I go in to investigate.  The noises turn out to be a wife calling a cheerful goodnight and a 12 year old boy raiding the refrigerator for a glass of lemonade to take upstairs with him to bed and a 10 year old boy, long thought asleep, stumbling downstairs to use the bathroom and then making it no farther back towards his room than the couch in the living room, where he collapses, asleep again immediately.

Then there's the sound of a father shaking out a blanket to spread over the boy and then the noises of a computer ordered to boot itself to the ready and now just the sound of typing.

And the peepers and treefrogs outside the open windows, and a breeze.

Comments

[nothstine]

Nice. Is this what they call a tone poem? I've never gotten a bead on that. The connection it made--not your responsibility--was something along these lines:

I was a little too tall
Could've used a few pounds
Tight pants points hardly reknown
She was a black-haired beauty with big dark eyes
And points all her own sitting way up high
Way up firm and high

Out past the cornfields where the woods got heavy
Out in the back seat of my 60 chevy
Workin' on mysteries without any clues
Workin' on our night moves

Probably my issue to sort out.

bn

[Wren]

Lovely, peaceful images. Thank you for sharing such your quiet, joyful evening with all of us.

[Mike Schilling]

Another writer could use the same incidents: the screaming kids, the bratty teenager, the yapping dogs, the kids that won't go to bed when they're supposed to, as a list of the petty annoyances that consititute modern life. And that hypothetical sketch could be every bit as "true" as yours. There's something there about subjectivity and objectivity that it's too late to try to think through.

But what makes this piece beautiful is the love of your family and your home that illuminiates it. Thank you.

[harry near indy]

if you write that up as a full story or essay, ask your niece to make an illustration of it.

[Michael Bains]

Sounds like an awesome evening.

Good Memorial Day all!

[Michael Bains]

Oh yah, thanks for having Robert Reich listed in the 'bar. He was my favorite person in the entirety of the Clinton Admin, and I always enjoyed his writing on TomPaine.com. Which your listing reminds me I've not scoped in a while.

Thanks thrice!

[pete townshend]

Love this story - it summons up a really authentic picture of the enighbourhood. Best though, is that you do it by describing sounds. I often find myself trying to describe sound and music. It is a real art.

[geoduck]

I love eating gooey ducks. My mother loves to make it with rice, tastes great! Though I do think you have to get used to the texture.

Check out geoduck for info.