The Road to Rumor

Sherry McCahn was born October 31,1950. Sherry's father, Jim believed Aideen when she wrote him that her pregnancy had lasted ten months and that the doctors all said what a miracle it was. "It could happen," Jim McCahn said to the newest star in the Korean night sky sometime in December 1950. He shrugged his shoulders. It was a choice to believe his wife, to believe miracles possible — and he made it easily.

By February, he was on a troop ship bound for New York, then a bus bound for Wyoming. Soon enough he stood on the black top of the Grey Hound terminal in Cheyenne, duffel bag at his side. Ahead lay sixty miles of perpetually lonely, sometimes dirt road. He shouldered the bag, quick-marched out of the city and settled into a soldier's shuffling gait. He didn't mind; he was used to it but this time he marched under an American sun with a destination he was eager to reach.

Jim camped by the roadside, used sagebrush to fuel fires, never lacking enough — there was nothing but brush, dead brush, for as far as a naked eye could take in. On the second day he used an Army revolver to shoot a coyote that had been trailing him; on the third, he shot a rabbit at dusk, cooked it over a sagebrush fire and sucked the bones beneath a cold, starry Wyoming sky. He smiled at his ability to compensate for his deafness. His eyes saw everything, the smallest blade of withered brown grass dipping under the weight of a yellow butterfly; slight temperature changes; he could smell the coyote before he saw it. He felt empowered; he was in his homeland and took sustenance from the terrain that surrounded him.

The only other living thing he saw was a raccoon on a parallel pilgrimage. They met at the well of an abandoned ranch house.  Jim dipped the bucket and drank his fill twice over in the meager shade of the old adobe building, while the raccoon hunkered in the shade of the well. After Jim stood up and stretched, he shouldered the duffel and began his march again. From the fence line at the highway he stopped to watch the raccoon poking and digging at the base of the adobe wall. It waddled on tiny black paws to the well and seemed to wash some tidbit in the rusty bucket before consuming it. Jim considered the animal to be a good omen. If this animal of the forest and suburb had found reason to be traveling this way then Jim was glad to help.

Three days later, he walked into the Rumor Café in the city of Rumor, Wyoming and raised a dust cloud as he dropped the duffel bag and began to slap his pant legs with a filthy ball cap. His back was to his wife Aideen who was wiping the counter and talking perkily to a man wearing a shirt emblazoned with Bob's Auto Parts. The name patch said Dude.  Aideen, not recognizing Jim's back, told him twice to get outside and do that. "Hey! Don't you hear me soldier, this ain't no damn barn!" He turned to her, a sheepish grin replacing his dusty grimace.

From the day he arrived home, Jim asked no questions. His joy at being home was big enough for three and he was too grateful to be healthy and whole, albeit deaf — too close to exploding munitions, his eardrums had shattered one evening on the battlefield. In the field hospital, his buddies had all banged him on his back and shouted about his ticket home but he heard nothing except the great OM of the universe. He found that when he smiled, it put the people around him at ease and they assumed that he understood them. Most times he did, but for Jim deafness was convenient because he was free to enjoy or reject what was before his eyes without the prejudices of other people's voices and, of course, most of their expectations.

The moment he held the baby girl, Sherry, in his arms, he accepted her as his own. And Aideen accepted Jim — at first. She quit her job at the cafe to stay home, thinking to become an example of a modern American woman but the picture of her in pristine full-skirted shirtwaist dresses serving cocktails in a living room furnished in post-modern plywood never materialized. Jim never wanted to go out and Aideen was used to going out. It was as if Jim had used up his ambition in the war. Now all he wanted to do was cherish his family in his quiet world. She very quickly tired of the boring company of the deaf man and of little Sherry who required constant wiping, washing and feeding, so Aideen took to going out evenings.

At first Aideen was careful. She wrote notes to Jim saying she was going to the movies with a girlfriend or that she was sitting with somebody's aunt. But she grew more and more emboldened and eventually there was no more pretence. She knew her husband could not hear her date-making telephone calls, could not read her lips when waving good bye to the 'brothers' and 'cousins' of her girlfriends. The more Aideen ignored him the more sullen and distant Jim became.

But Sherry saw and Sherry heard. Little Sherry who was always in her mother's way. Sherry's room was at the front of the house. Lights from the cars turning in the driveway would shine in through the shabby curtains of her window. She would listen to her mother's voice and to men's voices — laughter and groans and — other sounds. Sherry toddled between a father who smiled at everything she burbled but couldn't hear, and a mother who seldom smiled but often shouted, "Shut up!" or "Get out!"

One night in Sherry's seventh year, her parents had a one-voiced argument. Aideen rained abuse upon Jim and he could do nothing but strike the wall with his closed fists. All the while she was screaming Aideen was throwing clothes into a suitcase. From her bed, Sherry heard her father strike the wall so hard that he fell against it. She thought she heard his body slide slowly down and crumple on the floor. Then the sleepy child heard the screen door open, bang the wall, and slam closed. In the morning Jim, by pointing at and touching her mother's things, let Sherry know in his own way that her mother had gone. Sherry dressed herself and her father showed her how to make coffee.  They sat at the table together, he with his coffee and cream and she with her cream and coffee. It was the initial performance of a ritual that would be performed daily for another 10 years. All the while Jim kept smiling and Sherry kept making her own cereal.

Sherry went to school, and as she grew older she began to shop, cook, keep house. The kids at school made fun of her for not having a mother, for have a deaf father, for anything they could latch onto. She would run home crying and he would stroke her hair, saying "There, there" without knowing why.

By the time high school rolled around, Sherry could comfort herself. Cigarettes and liquor were easy enough to procure in Rumor and even easier to hide from her father. He was a stranger to her now, just part of the furniture. He would spend hours walking the fields and highways. Oh, he worked a little, on and off at the Pure station, but mostly he just walked.

In her 17th year, Jim died, hit by a big rig out on 78. Deafness was not as beneficial as he thought.  Deputy Sweetwater came to her school and she was summoned to the principal's office. Two cheerleaders in her English class sniggered as she picked up her books and left the room. Deputy Sweetwater drove her to the hospital though it was too late.  Her father was gone. Now Sherry was alone for real.

On the second Friday after the funeral, she sat in the law office of Jake Lamb, he was explaining to her that after paying for the funeral and his fees, there was very little money left. She'd get a Social Security check every month for the next year but after that there would be nothing.  Judge Rockwell had agreed that she was capable enough to live alone.  Sherry finished high school the next year. She graduated on May 24, 1968; sitting on a stage listening to thundering applause directed at forty-seven other students. None of it was for her, but she celebrated anyway that night with a bottle of vodka and a football player.

Soon there was a For Sale sign in the front yard and she was beginning to dream of something bigger than a life in Rumor. So on the anniversary of Jim's death, she began packing. She was caught up in the excitement of adulthood and starting a new life. Sherry caught herself smiling as she passed the hallway mirror. She heard herself laugh as her daydreams became more elaborate. She soon had a small pile of boxes and cases sitting in the living room of the small house. She tied one of her father's bandanas around her hair and climbed the stairs into the attic searching for more suitcases. Sweat popped out on her brow as she rummaged through boxes and bags.  She found a train case full of her mother's make-up and costume jewelry. She found a zippered dress bag with a wedding dress and a uniform inside. She found her baby clothes tossed in wooden crate, a yellowing pile of rags which made a convenient nesting place for house mice.

Finally, beneath an old tarp she found two more suitcases. She opened each one, and finding them empty, tossed them down the attic stairs. Behind the tarp was the large suitcase she vaguely remembered her mother packing that last night. There must have been two she thought. She pushed it over on its side and banged on the rusty locks until they gave way. With the case opened, the rank smell of decay arose out of a stained and tattered blanket which filled the case. She gingerly pulled back the edge and revealed the withered mummy of her mother. 

Sherry gagged, slammed the case shut and ran down the attic stairs. She fell over the suitcases at the bottom and lay on the floor stunned, not wanting to cry and wanting to cry all at once. Her father was dead; now her mother was dead. Why was her mother dead? In her mind, the last night she had seen her mother was playing over and over. Now she understood the meaning of the sounds; now she understood her father's ways. She lay on the floor staring at the ceiling. Eventually she stood up and walked slowly back up the stairs. She dragged the suitcase out of the attic and out to the trunk of the green fifty-something Buick.

She loaded the car with her belongings, locked the door of the house and drove sixty miles south to Cheyenne. It was a lonely road, nothing but sage brush for miles. Off to the right she saw the remains of an old adobe building, its walls crumbling in the heat, a dilapidated fence surrounded the building, posts broken down, barbed wire rusted and there was a well. She dragged the suitcase from the trunk and around the side of the building to the well. She wiped her brow with the bandana and levered the case up to the rim. She thought about saying something and in the end just pushed it. She heard the muddy splatter as it hit bottom.

Back in her old car, she checked her face in the mirror. Forty-five minutes later she entered the city limits of Cheyenne humming.