Chapter Two

“Timothy Mark Tucker. Get out of bed this instant!” His mother’s voice woke him from sleep. Sleepily he scooted out of bed, knowing he better not wait for her to come to him.

Slowly, he walked into the kitchen, sat in his chair and laid his head on the table.

“Whatever has gotten into you this morning, Timmy?” his mother exclaimed. “Your father and brother had to do your chores this morning while you were lying in bed, and here you are falling asleep at the table.” She didn’t wait for an answer as she nudged his head off the table and quickly set down four plates, loaded with scrambled eggs, bacon and hash browns, just as his father and older brother came in the door.

“It sure is getting cold out there. We may have snow by this afternoon.” His father hung his jacket on the back of his chair before sitting down for breakfast. His brother did the same and sat down silently, glaring at Timmy.

Following the blessing, the meal commenced in silence, broken only by the sounds of chewing, drinking, and of silverware being set on the plates. Timmy glanced at his father wondering if he was angry.

“I-I’m sorry I didn’t wake up to do my chores this morning.” He glanced first at his father, then at his brother.

“I tried to wake you,” his father replied, “but you didn’t even wake when I shook you.” He paused then looked right at him. “Why do you suppose you’re so tired?”

How could he explain? It all seemed so silly now in the day time. What was he supposed to say? I heard a sound. Like music almost, but different too, and I wanted to see where it was coming from. I listened to it for hours, and that’s why I’m so tired.

No. He must have been imagining things. “Well…” he began, not sure what he was going to say.

“I’ll tell you why he couldn’t get up this morning.” His brother Eric’s voice was angry. “He was outside last night looking at the stars. I could see him from my window. I watched him stand there for the longest time, but then he went back to bed. I watched him, but I still got up.”

“You were outside alone, at night?” his mother sounded anxious.

“Yes.” He stared down at his hands.

His mother started to speak again, but was interrupted by his father. A strange look passed between them.

“We don’t want anyone outside at night without us knowing about it.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And we don’t want you not sleeping so that you can’t do your chores. After school, you will help Eric muck out the horses stalls, and you will take his turn hauling out the trash this week.”
Timmy looked at Eric, whose scowl turned into a smile at this pronouncement.

“Yes, sir.”

At that, the table once again fell into silence. The noise Timmy had heard in the night was gone. But wait. There it was again. He looked up quickly. No one else seemed to notice anything. It was the same, but louder and fuller than it had been in the night. He could feel it in his bones. That was when he realized that he had heard it all morning, just with his body and not with his ears.

He heard it. It vibrated through the fork he held in his hands, through the chair he was sitting on, through the table. He felt it in his feet and his hands. He felt it. He heard it.

No one else seemed to notice anything unusual. They ate in silence that wasn’t silent at all. They each rose and put their dishes in the sink without saying another word, but reverberations filled the air and soaked into his very pores.

It was noise. But it was noise he could hear with his ears and feel in his bones. Now that he recognized it, he couldn’t shut it out. He barely heard his mom telling him to get ready for school, or his dad telling him to have a good day. Not just one sound, like he had heard last night, but now it was more. He heard voices except they spoke no words--music, but he had never heard a song like it.

As the sun rose, the sounds grew until he couldn’t stand it any longer. He slipped into his coat, grabbed his backpack and ran out the door, down the driveway and kept running down the lane to the bus stop and kept running.

Only when he was out of breath and his heart pounding so hard that he could hear nothing else did he get any relief.

For a time, he managed to drown out the sound. For a time he could think straight. But he couldn't run forever. Would it stop?