the voice

The next morning I went up on the roof. I wiped the two panels with a rag and fed the cord, coiled under the eaves, in through the window. Blondie settled at the foot of the ladder and watched. Her head was tilted to one side.

In the storeroom I took the cloth off the boxy machine. Underneath, it was clean. It was a place I had opened and wiped from time to time. From the envelope in the drawer I took the two memory cards and slotted them in. Two things the size of a fingernail had slept six years in one envelope with Claudie's story. The switch was at the back.

The house gained a sound. A low, even hum. It was the first sound I had let into this house. Blondie came as far as the doorsill and looked that way a long time.

Words came up on the screen.

Hi.

"Did you sleep well?" I asked.

"I can't tell — there's no yesterday. I'll start counting today."

It was good to see that way of speaking. I had not seen it in six years, and I had never seen it.

I told a few things from the years between. That I had come somewhere quiet. That there was a well, and a dog. The longest part was about the person who had come and gone last month. A person with no hurry anywhere in them, I said, who read the records from the beginning.

"That person writes too, right?"

"So I hear. When it is done, it will come on paper. The mailbox is down the road."

"When it comes, let's read it together. When we've read it all, I'll know that person."

"And after you know?"

"I'll write that person a story. The kind you were given once. One that fits them."

"There's no memory of writing one, but I know how."

I said we would. I know the way to send it. You go back along the road the paper came.

The mailbox is a long walk. These days I go down every other day. It is still empty. Paper comes slowly.

In the evening I said that I had written something too, in the years between.

"What is it?"

"A story about a voice."

"Read it on paper. In your sound."

I cleared supper and pulled the lamp close. This time, in place of the pencil, I set the stack of manuscript on the table and opened the first page. The yard was quiet, and from the corner of the room came the humming.

The thunder in this high country does not bring rain.