The Drones of Ear Drums

His instructor back at Fort Meade had encouraged Colonel Jacob Moss, U.S.A., Retired to compress his memories of things learned. To leave out excruciating details of his new life as his mother laid dying in the master bedroom of his homestead in Missouri. After all, time is relative and so is just the memory of that time. It was like the Yiddish language course he took at night school to get his BA degree (Georgetown University, class of O’ 81, a retro whoopie for him!) and currently for American Sign Language online to enable him to talk to the Poole family. He must not only work neatly but think neatly. For now, he must compartmentalize and compress his knowledge of Yiddish to make room for A.S.L.

Never mind the fact that his ex-wife, Beth, who had come with him for a few days and had left him with a strange task to work on. Never mind that at one point, she had told their grandchildren that she wished they had been flushed out of their mother’s womb like a couple of turds. The younger of the twins, Christopher Poole had shakily managed to retort, “Um, I guess thah why we don’s celebrate grandparents day.” The pear that Christopher had gotten for Beth had been left on the kitchen counter of his homestead, gently rotten and forgotten until Tessie, the attendant, had thrown it away.

Let’s keep this tale short if not sweet, and then we can move on with our daily lives, all right?

He knocked on the door, the military tech watch on his wrist barely glinting.

“A good housekeeping skill your mother needs, you think?” Beth said.

“She’s busy nowadays.”

“Doing what?”

“Dying, I think.”

The battered door with a fresh coat of paint on it opened, and there was only the glass screen door between them and the teenaged girl who opened the door. The girl signed a greeting, her face sullen and devoid of the expression required.

“Oh Meyn Gott, she’s a Black deaf-eh,” Beth said.

“Maybe we should’ve gotten an interpreter holographic service.”

“What? Spend money on him she loves?! so he can understand everything? I think not. She probably needs the job as a deaf Black in Missouri. Besides, we don’t want the Office of Standard Health Investigative Service to get a ping from us.”

“I am Black but not deaf,” the teenager said.

She opened the glass door.

“I’m sorry, miss. My name is Jacob Moss, and this is Beth Epting. She’s taking her name back.”

“My name is Tessie Stillmore from the Shephard Nursing Care. The Poole family made up the guest room for you two. It’s a bit crowded here, so please keep the peace.”

She opened the glass door wider for them to come into the house. Jacob picked up the luggage and he followed them inside. Inside the well kept interior, he appreciatory inhale the scent of chemical lemon and saw the Poole family standing by like servants for the master of the house.

The father of the twins, Michael, had gained weight, his body described as blubbery, but not fat yet. Gregory stood out most of all, the top of his head brushing the ceiling, his build like his father. His sunken blue eyes appeared dull. As for Christopher, Jacob remembered his daughter at twelve marveling at how the orchid mantis uses flower mimicry to trap bees, bugs, and butterflies. Angelic face,. lanky body, tan skin, innocuous green eyes, and well-shaped hands and feet. He could hit or kick anyone with the ballistic force of a two-ton car hurtling at a target. Gregory, probably with force of an eighteen wheels truck. They were the reason why Pennsylvania National Guards are doing door-to-door searches in their state.

Jacob fished out the tablet from one of the luggage. He looked at the link for American Sign Language.

MY MOTHER…. WHERE?

Michael and Christopher both looked pleased with his effort to sign.

“She’s in the bedroom on the second floor,” Tessie said. “After you finish putting the guests’ luggage away, your mother wants to see you, and the Poole family.” She signed for the Deaf members of the family.

“Terrific,” Beth said. “I’ll smoke outside.”

Beth told Jacob her version of what happened.

She was on her second cigarette, gazing at the expanse of their backyard. She did not think this visit will do anybody any good to see the twins, damaged goods since birth.

In the perfect center of the backyard was a pear tree. It stood lonely, draped with lovely pears, one of the temperature zone fruits that can grow in Missouri. The sky had grown brighter, its limbs stretching in the sunlight. It could have been something her rabbi back home would have called the tree of philosophy from the first testament of the bible. She heard a clatter of the glass door being opened then shut behind her.

“Thah’s a pear tree,” Christopher said, his funny voice irking her for no reason. Perhaps it reminded her of her daughter’s funny language when she suffered a brain trauma injury.

“Not much of an akeret habayit if she’s a fan of the song, Twelfth Day of Christmas.”

“I didn’s geh thah,” Christopher said, adjusting his hearing aid.

“It was just a joke, you know. Like… haha.”

“Oh,” Christopher said, unconvinced.

They looked at the tree in silence, not enjoying each other’s company. She recalled a dissertation that Jacob did. It was about the banality of evil and the evolution of the devil from the Greek Mythology as Pan, a furry entity to an middle-aged balding man sewing Nazi uniforms in Jerome Witkin’s painting, The Devil’s Tailor, with a sidestep and a backward look to the beauty of Lucifer in John Milton’s Paradise Lost. As for the older brother, Gregory, she was reminded of her husband’s lecture about Genesis Nine and Nephilim, a race of ancient giants. She did not know what to speak of stories about devils in the twenty-first century.

She turned to Christopher and pantomimed flexing her biceps.

“Superheroes, both of you, hmm?”

Christopher shook his head, beaming. “Noh alloweh to say.”

She squinted at the tree, fifty yards away. She reached into her purse and took out a military tech scope, the size of a pen cap that can magnify things 2.4 miles away. She peered through it. The very top of the now magnified limb had one lone pear clinging to it.

“Christopher, can you read lips?”

“Tweny percenz…seveny percenz.”

She pointed to the tree, still peering through the scope at the lone pear on top.

“Will you be my true love, and get me this…what the eff-eh?”

The pear was gone from her magnified view. The beautiful boy next to her timidly presented the missing pear to her. It was as if he had martialized into view.

“You can speak clearly sometimes,” he said.

Even though these things happened in a course of a few days, it felt as if time molted everything into just one day. After all, it is virtually impossible for Christopher to be at two places at once.

Everyone in the house appeared rattled. Jacob himself too. He spotted the pear that had been left on the countertop when he looked through the archway that led to the kitchen. It had a few spots on it.

His mother who have been sleeping for days had woken from her drowsiness in time to see him, Michael, Gregory, and Christopher. While Tessie attended to her, his mother’s eyes had snapped open, sharp and aware. She raised her head from the depth of her pillow. Her gnarled finger rose from her side and pointed at Gregory.

“Guh-guh…Gol…Golem.”

“Dad, what’s she saying?”

“Don’s know, Gregory. Gol?”

Her finger wavered and moved to point at Christopher.

“Goh…um too. Two golems.”

Jacob turned to the rest. He spelled G-O and waved them off. He signed PLEASE.

In their eagerness to leave, Gregory and Christopher mashed together at the doorway, and he heard a squeal as the doorframe buckled from the stress of their shoulders. Michael grabbed Christopher’s shoulder to let Gregory pass, and Christopher turned and looked at his father, an ugly snarl on his face. Sibling rivalry at its finest. Michael signed something soothing to him and they had left. After they were gone for a while, Jacob turned to his mother and Tessie.

Tessie stood at attention, her face composed into professional neutrality. His mother nodded off, her head back into the pillow again.

“When was the last time my mother was like this?”

“Three days ago. When she asked me to contact you and Beth about your daughter, Victoria Moss. CKD takes a lot out of your mother. I can keep an eye on her until 4:30 p.m. and take the early evening bus home.”

“I can give you a ride.”

“No, sir. The Office of Standard Health Investigation Service are watching us. It would not be good to be seen with you.”

“Okay, thank you. I’ll go out there and see what I have to deal with.”

When he stepped out into the living room, perhaps on another day, he looked around. The father and the two boys had stood in a loose cluster, and Jacob wished that he had learned ASL for the word huddle, and a way to tell him that the deaf were the ones who had contributed the invention to the NFL. He took out his tablet with all the notes and handed it to Michael. He gestured toward his throat and then to the air.

“Say them ous lou?”

He shook his head and gestured with his hand from his chest to the air. He pointed at Christopher.

“I can hear you talk,” Gregory said.

“Greah, someone geh him a medal.” That was Christopher.

Jacob started his campaign plan.

ALRIGHT…WE…. MEET….NOW. C-O-A…COURSE OF ACTION. WE…“um, I need that tablet, the A.S.L,,,”

He was losing them. Michael blinked dully. Christopher kept angling to be closer to Beth. Gregory’s eyes narrowed, and his bottom lip kept pooching out.

“And then we will drive all the way back to the east, and then turn ourselves in for complete surrender,” Jacob finished.

“What a great top secret plan! Hip hip hooray!” shouted Gregory who slapped his broad hip twice before cheering out loud.

“I know how overwhelming this is,” Beth said in bed, one evening. “You are taking on too much and you pity them. Don’t. Him she loves?! is reading your notes. I know you all can pull together. Just take it piece by piece.”

“I thought I would have it all sewn up and ready. That’s the sign for sew, right?”

“Funny, not funny. But you can’t fight this alone. You are going against God and country. Against your friends.”

“What else can I do?”

“Use them. Use Tessie. She can sign for you.”

“I see. So, are we to stay longer?”

“You are. I am going back home.”

“Back to him, you think?”

“Back to Peter, I know.”

“Let Macy, our lawyer, know of my last will. The document waiting on the table back at yours and your husband’s home.”

Beth nodded in the dim light. She switched off the light on the bedside table and turned to her side. After hearing her snores, Jacob turned to his side and silently wept as not to disturb her.

He told them the plan through Tessie’s signs. It must begin small. Like a cell to a body. Like atom to the universe. Like that peeling yellowed photograph of a grocery cart to a supermarket. For the first time since time began, they will find others and slowly band together to form what he would call The Painted Army. Michael had told him about the Shephard Club. Now, the first general of the Painted Army spoke firmly. As he spoke, he glanced at the pear molten and already rotten on the counter. Hopefully they won’t take it as a sign.