The Song of the Night

My wife snores. For that reason, I don't. I haven't slept a whole night in twenty years. No one told me that decades after you marry a woman, she could turn into a nocturnal nightmare out of nowhere. My doctor has been trying to convince me I have insomnia. That I can just take a pill and I'll "catch up" on all the rest I've been missing out on these last decades. I might be a humble kind of man but I'm smart enough to know that's not how it works. You miss sleep, it's gone forever.

Tonight, the popular snore on Sheila's set list is one I like to call "The weed whacker". It may not be the loudest but it definitely has the highest pitch. I swear it sounds just like the Black & Decker I have out in the barn. It could rattle the windows if it were just a bit more powerful. Maybe it'd even be the first snore ever to break a wine glass if I set one on her nightstand.

I've tried asking her to do something about it. I bought her some of those Better Breathing nasal strips. I found a weird neck brace that's supposed to correct your posture when you sleep. But every time I bring home a new remedy, she says the same thing. "You're funny. I don't snore." She did say she married me for my sense of humor.

Sometimes, I sneak out to the couch to sleep. The living room is cold at night and the lights on the VCR and the kitchen appliances through the hall are hard to block out. It's still better than the F150 or the B52 snore. Those could wake the dead. I have to be careful though. If I'm asleep on the couch when Sheila wakes up, she'll assume I'm mad at her for something and give me the silent treatment until I pick a fight with her. Tonight, I might just avoid that. I’ll take a walk until I'm so tired I could sleep through the yard equipment running in my bed all night.

Luckily, she's a heavy sleeper. She says it's because she's a sleeping beauty. I say it's because there's not a sound I could possibly make in the bedroom that's louder than the Harley motorcycle revving up in her throat. I could bust out my son's old trombone he played in elementary school and still wouldn't be able to compete.

"Honey, I'm going for a walk. Don't wait up." I tell her.

She shifts out of the weed whacker position. Cue "the low growl" snore. It's like an angry Rottweiler getting ready to fight you for your steak dinner. I actually don't mind that one as much. It's kind of soothing.

I pull my boots on. They get heavier and heavier, I swear. Then, I put a coat on even though it's summer and I'll end up carrying it anyway. I leave down the stairs and out the front door.

The air is cool. It even smells cool. The breeze in what's left of my hair feels like gentle fingers trying to lead me back to bed. But I refuse its request and walk down the driveway. I can still hear "the low growl" one story down and five yards away. That woman is powerful.

I walk to the end of the driveway and turn left towards the Peterson's house. They have the nicest looking crops in the moonlight. Corn mostly.

I pass by my barn first and notice that I can no longer hear Sheila. I can, however, hear a faint cooing sound up in the loft. I divert my route to investigate. The smell of dry hay floats in the breeze. The moonlight draws silver patterns on the barn floor. I climb the ladder to the loft and see a nest built in the west-facing window. Big golden eyes stare at me. Two smaller pairs flicker about as well. It's a momma barn owl singing to her babies.

It's beautiful.

I sit against a nearby hay bale and watch the birds coo back and forth. It's the most pleasant avian conversation I’ve ever witnessed. Such a calming sound, a barn owl's song. When they're not screaming at their prey or calling a mate, they are skillfully reciting nature's lullaby. The song of the night. Telling the world it's okay to rest. All your problems can wait till tomorrow.

Shit, I fell asleep. The sun is coming up. I'm in so much trouble. I glance at the nest and notice the momma is gone. Probably out fixing some field mice for breakfast. I hurry down the ladder, out of the barn, up the driveway and freeze.

"Where are you going, honey?" I ask. Sheila is at the top of the stairs with a luggage bag packed. Immediately, I think to myself "I really screwed up this time."

"My sister fell last night and had to go to the hospital. I'm all she's got so I'm going to stay with her for a while until she can take care of herself again." She says.

I was semi-relieved it wasn't my fault her bags were packed but I hate being apart from her. She's my best friend. Who am I going to trade sections of the newspaper with while she's gone? Who will make fancy chicken sandwiches and laugh at the new idiot newscaster on channel 2 with me? Who will call me out for cheating at solitaire or leaving the bathroom door open after going number two?

"I'll come." I offer. More for me than for her. I can deal with her judgmental sister for a few days if it means being with my wife.

"Don't be silly. We can't share the twin bed in Gene's guest room. You'll be fine for a few days." She says.

"Okay." I submit. I don't want to seem needy. I just get lonely.

Sheila kisses me goodbye and I help her put her luggage in the car. I wave her off and bring in the newspaper. Immediately, I notice the silence. Sheila always has a TV or the radio in the kitchen on full blast. She refuses to get her ears checked too. I think I’m going deaf by proxy. You’d be surprised how loud “The Price is Right '' or “Dancing With the Stars” can get. It’s practically a tinnitus starter pack of screaming audience members, loud game show hosts, and obnoxious computer generated bleeping and ringing.

I pull the plastic off of the newspaper, grab a cup of coffee from the instant coffee machine (the kind that takes the plastic pods full of grounds), and head to my chair in the den. Like I always do. I sift through the paper to find the sports section. “Broncos lose once again” is the headline. Of course they did. I pause. Whose voice is that? I read the first few sentences about the Broncos’ coach being to blame for the loss and stop again. I was mumbling along with the words. Have I always done that? Has it always been so loud in this house that I developed this habit as a way to think louder? I don’t know if I like that.

I read on but find it incredibly difficult to bite my tongue as I do. Even when I manage to keep my lips from moving, I hum the words in the back of my throat. The paper hisses as I clap it shut in an improper fold and slap it on the side table. My thoughts are too loud. It’s pissing me off. Maybe I’ll go for another walk.

It’s hot outside. The sun cooks the Peterson’s crops and I wonder when that corn is going to start popping right off of the cob as I pass by. Sweat starts pooling under my arms, in the small of my back and under the gut that I’ve been growing for thirty years since I stopped watching my weight. I’m used to walking alone but not being in an empty house. Sheila and I have our routines. We get groceries together. We go to movies together. We go out to eat every Sunday. She’ll be gone for all of that this week.

I come to the fork in the road where I usually turn left to get back home. That makes it a perfectly respectable half hour long walk. It also gets me thinking about the emptiness of the house and I go straight instead. I’ve never gone this way on foot before. No one owns the land out here. It’s just fields leading to a small outcropping of trees. A few acres of nature preserve between our home and town. Walking through it feels strange. I’ve never just looked at the trees here before. It’s beautiful and quiet. A few mourning doves call to each other through the canopy. I imagine they’re arguing about something. Probably something only doves argue about too like who the soap is actually named after. I bet it was a guy named Richard Dove or something. Yup, good old Dick Dove… makin’ soap to wash yer’… oh boy, it’s lonely out here.

A little hole-in-the-wall diner sits at the end of this road. Sheila and I eat there from time to time when we don’t feel like going all the way to the buffet in town. It’s not bad for what it is. You can get a steak there but you can’t get it cooked the way you want. Mostly, I go for the cheeseburgers or the liver and onions because it doesn’t matter if those are overcooked. It’s cozy though. It’s the only place I know of that doesn’t have six or more TV’s yelling and blinking at you all at once while you try to have a conversation. The radio plays oldies just loud enough to suppress the sound of chewing around you.

The door sends a twinkling sound through the dining room as I enter. Veronica, the young hostess greets me.

“Just one today? Where’s Sheila?” She asks.

“With her sister. She had an accident last night, Sheila’s taking care of her.” I respond as she picks out a menu and leads me to a booth.

“Oh that’s too bad. Tell her I said hi and I hope her sister gets well soon.” She says.

She sets the menu in front of me as I sit. I wonder how the hardware in her face doesn’t fall out like a spilled cup of loose nuts and bolts across the table. I counted three nose piercings, four or five in her ears, and another two in her eyebrow. I wouldn’t be surprised if her tongue is pierced too. I never understood the “goth” culture. My son tried to explain it to me. He said, “just because they wear a lot of black and have strange piercings and tattoos, doesn’t mean they were raised wrong”. Veronica seems happy, but I wonder why she chooses to walk around looking like a walking mechanical funeral.

After a while, I’m served my wet shoe leather that passes as liver and onions. I happily eat it with a dry baked potato and a few cups of coffee to wash it down. I catch myself starting to talk to the empty seat across from me. When I finish, I pay the waitress, an old lifer by the name of Betty who has been working here as long as I can remember. She’s very kind but smells like stale cigarettes. I leave her a twenty percent tip and begin the journey home.

The mourning doves have quieted, giving the stage to the monster crows in the area. I swear I’ve seen one as big as a german shepherd once. Sheila told me it probably was a german shepherd and I should get my eyes checked. She’s always trying to diagnose me with silly things. It was her idea to send me to the sleep doctor to see if I had that new goofy thing they talk about on TV all the time. Sleep-a knee-a or something like that. Once, she told my doctor I lost my sense of smell and probably have nose cancer. I was being polite when I told her I couldn’t smell her fart that one time. Nevertheless, my manners landed me with a pretty hefty e.r. bill.

Yep, the house is still quiet. I can hear myself breathing. I’m too cheap to turn on any of the electronics just for white noise. I don’t care for any of the programming these days. It’s all about which celebrity slept with who and with what fake terminal illness. Maybe my tone would change if it were about Tom Brady but until he makes the fake news for sleeping with Marilyn Monroe’s ghost on a bed made of cocaine and chemo drugs, I’m not interested. I’ll watch the idiot on channel 2 at nine o-clock and again at five thirty, but the rest of the day might as well be dead air to me.

I return to the den and grab the newspaper again. Screw it, I’ll read it allowed like I always have apparently. “The aliens are coming! At least that’s what the Harrelson County sheriff's deputy would like us to think.” Quality journalism.

I’ve never noticed how loud the bread bag is. The bag tie, specifically. Bending that thing off of the thick, air-tight, plastic is upsettingly noisy. Same with the bag the lettuce comes in. Can’t they make stealth plastic in case someone needs to make a midnight snack without waking the whole house? It’s obnoxious and it sends uneasy chills through my bones.

I gently pick the bread out of the bag and set it on the counter. Sheila would have yelled at me for not using a plate. I take a knife out of the clatter of silverware in the drawer and start to spread mayo on the bread. I realized after getting half way through the sandwiching process that I had mayoed, lettuced, and cheesed, two sandwiches. So I tried to wipe the mayo off the ingredients on one and put it back. That’ll be a problem for future me, I’m not eating two sandwiches. My gut is at a good place. Any bigger and I’d be too top heavy. I finished making one sandwich, grabbed a Coke from the fridge and returned to the den to eat it. Normally, I would’ve sat in the dining room with Sheila for meals. I can’t talk to any more empty chairs. It’s probably not good for me.

I read the rest of the day, humming the words. Annoying myself. I’m working through all of Agatha Christie’s works on detective Hercule Poirot. A brilliant and bombastic Belgium man with a killer mustache. I love how toxic he is and how Christie clearly began to hate her creation by the end of the character’s run. It’s hilarious how cartoonish this guy is written in comparison to the rest of the characters in the books. It’s almost like the early novel version of “Who Killed Roger Rabbit?” but better.

At five-thirty, I make dinner, watch the news, and return to the den and Monsieur Poirot. At eight, I doze and drop the paperback on the floor. I nearly have a heart attack because of how loud the pages clapped together on impact. I move to the bed after brushing my teeth and stripping down to my boxers. I’m not okay.

Staring at the ceiling, I can hear the old house settling. The floor creaks. The rafters click and groan as the wood cools in the darkness. The pipes hiss and whisper. Demons in the pipes trying to put bad thoughts in my head. After ten minutes of trying to sleep despite the noise, I give up. I get my clothes back on and drag my heavy boots out of the closet.

The moon isn’t as bright tonight. Clouds interrupt it’s glow and cast dim shadows over the fields. The calming breeze from the night before is now a nearly violent wind that thrashes through my clothes and dries out my eyes. I push through it and find solace in the barn. I climb the ladder to the loft. Maybe momma owl will be able to find me some sleep.

I prop myself up against the same hay bail I slept on last night and waited. Momma was quiet. The wind screamed through the cracks in the wooden shell of the barn. The glass behind the owl’s nest whistled and rattled in its frame. I thought about going to the shed and grabbing some caulk to fix the loose glass, but I didn’t want to disturb the happy owl family.

Hours passed. I sat in the loft staring at the nest. The baby owls shifted restlessly every once in a while but momma wasn’t having it. She was too cold to entertain the chicks. I realized I wasn’t going to be able to sleep as easily as she did up here so I gave up again. I returned to the house and sat in my armchair in the den. I pick up the Christie novel and continue reading. Dozing off every now and then, I’d have to pick the book off the floor, steady my heartbeat, and continue.

The next morning, I’m exhausted. I eventually managed to sleep a few hours but it wasn’t good sleep being propped up in my chair. One day without Sheila done, three more to go. They’re all more of the same.

Wake up after falling asleep in the den for a couple hours. Read the paper so loud the neighbors could recite the obituaries. Walk slash crawl to the diner to eat more wet shoe leather and wonder about the shady hostess. Walk back to watch the news, read aloud, and make a half a sandwich too many for lunch. Read some more, make dinner, watch the news again, and try to fall asleep in the den. I have become envious of the momma owl. Two chicks peeping non-stop yet every night I check on her, she tucked in her little feather ball sleeping like a rock. She refuses me her lullaby anymore. She keeps it for herself, no doubt, singing herself to sleep every day in her head. Wait a minute. A light bulb goes off in my head.

Sheila comes back tomorrow. I can’t believe it has taken me this long to figure it out. The sleep problem, at least. Loneliness is another issue but I have no doubt I’ll get some sleep tonight.

The gravely roar of Sheila’s tires coming up the driveway gets me excited. It was a long four days without her. I close my book and head out the door to greet her. She gets out of the car and I grab her. If we were younger, I would’ve dipped her like at the end of a dance in romance movies and give her a big cartoonish smooch. I settled for a really strong hug and a kiss.

“Welcome home.” I said, trying not to smile too big.

“Thanks, honey.” She smiles and pops the trunk of the car.

Without being prompted, I grab her luggage, close up the car, and follow Sheila into the house. She smells lovely. She’s wearing the perfume she picked out last Christmas as her gift from me.

“How’d it go?” I asked.

“Gene’s fine. Turns out, it was just a fracture. The surgeon went in laparoscopically and fixed it. I think they said they put pins in but I don’t know why they couldn’t just spackle the crack shut or something.” She said.

I knew she wasn’t serious and laughed. She continued talking about sister drama as we went upstairs. I half pay attention when she talks like that. It’s always the same. Gene was being an older sister and sticking her nose where it didn’t belong. Sheila was being the stubborn one and planting her feet on issues she felt weren’t being addressed properly.

“Did you get any sleep while I was gone? It was hard for me to sleep without you next to me.” She asked.

“I slept. Not until last night though.” I answered honestly.

The luggage bag bounced a couple times as I hoisted it up on the bed. Sheila came into the room after me.

“Do I smell gas?” Sheila asked. “What’s the weed wacker doing next to my side of the bed?”

“Momma owl just wasn’t cutting it.” I said. I’ve never seen her more confused.