The Long Note C.B. Heinemann

The Long Note

C.B. HEINEMANN

Nobody could pin down the precise moment that the sound began to chew its way into the consciousness of every man, woman, and child on the planet. People in every time zone noticed it at approximately the same time wherever they lived— about an hour before dawn—leading self-proclaimed experts to announce that it began in one place and worked its way around the globe.

Most claimed that it sounded like a fute playing a long, low note that never ended. Some thought that it sounded more like a bowed violin, while others insisted that it was similar to an electric guitar holding a sustained note. People with anxious personalities assumed that it was coming from inside their own heads until repeatedly assured that everyone else could hear it too. Even the deaf community felt a low but insistent vibration.

That note flled the air in noisy, pollution-choked cities, hovered over icy mountain glaciers, bent and curled its way through labyrinthine medieval quarters in European towns, disturbed remote African villages on the plains of the Sudan and in the deep forests of the Congo, alarmed Eskimo hunting parties on the frozen edges of the Arctic, and awakened drowsy passengers on Amazon river boats. Even the crews of cargo ships far out at sea frantically checked their equipment to fnd the source of that sound. The note stayed with people in their homes, offces, farms, factories, workshops, schools, playgrounds, prisons, and shops. Musicians around the globe agreed that it was an F sharp, but could provide no further insight. Everyone complained,

speculated, and guessed about it in every language and dialect on Earth. The search for the source became the lead story in every newspaper, every internet page, and on every television and radio station in the world, with hundreds of conficting theories circulating that refected the views and preconceptions of those who promoted them. It was the only subject anyone could fnd to talk about because it was always present but never understood. Animals didn’t seem to be affected by the note. Birds and insects appeared unfazed. Fish were oblivious.

Israel blamed the Palestinians, while the Islamic world denounced Israel and the United States. Pakistan threatened India, which massed its army on the border. Ethiopia pointed at Eritrea, China railed against Russia, and Romania complained that the sound was generated by the Hungarians. Some blamed global warming while still others had the vague notion that it was a Communist plot. Seismologists listened for the note deep in the earth, while astronomers scanned the heavens. Scientists from every discipline strained their knowledge and resources to fnd the source of the note, but none were successful. The strenuously religious of every faith loudly proclaimed that it was the voice of God punishing those who did not adhere to their particular beliefs. Others were convinced that the note was the opening salvo heralding an alien invasion, a government clampdown, or the end of the world.

But the world didn’t end, no space ships arrived, and God didn’t conduct any more smiting than usual. Sales of MP3 players exploded, however, and it seemed everybody was racing to invent a better earplug. People found themselves forced to go about their daily lives with high-tech earplugs frmly in place and rarely removed. More and more people simply shut out the sounds of the outside world entirely in order to get away from the note, and only heard what they chose to hear.

In Cedar Crest, a small Wisconsin town between Milwaukee and Green Bay, a teacher named Jeremy Wickham didn’t hear the note. He had no auditory problems, no history of hearing problems in either his family or his personal life, and was perfectly sane and healthy. But the F sharp that stabbed like a thin, taut wire through the brains of everyone on the planet didn’t exist for him.

Jeremy was forty-one, married, with daughters aged fourteen and eleven, and had a reputation as a guy with a dry sense of humor and a fondness for mystery novels. He jogged every evening, played ragtime tunes on an upright piano with two missing keys that he meant to replace someday, and tried to grow Pinot Noir grapes in a small backyard vineyard. He had no obvious traits that set him apart from the rest of humanity or that rendered him immune from the tyranny of that note.

His wife Jan may have suffered from the note more than most because she was married to the one person who didn’t hear it. A lifelong interest in wine led to her become a consultant at Cedar Crest Wine & Spirits Boutique, and soon after that note made its appearance, sales shot up. Everybody wanted a wine that might take the edge of the strain that unceasing note created, and Jan couldn’t give much advice except that they might try pouring it into their ears. At frst that got a laugh, but as nerves began to grind down she learned not to joke about it. Her customers wanted relief. At frst, wine started selling out; frst whites, then reds. Eventually, customers turned to harder stuff than wine and they couldn’t stock it fast enough.

One evening she came home to fnd Jeremy sitting in the kitchen reading the newspaper. “Where are the girls?” she asked as she pulled off her shoes.

“In their room on their iPhones, earplugs frmly in place.”

“I can’t believe you can just sit there and not lose your mind.” Jan was a pretty blonde woman, originally from Minnesota, with long hair cascading down her back, creamy skin, and dark blue eyes always ready to spot anomalies. She had grown gradually wider below the waist in the last few years, but was still quite shapely. “Maybe you ought to put earplugs in, just in case.”

“I see they’re coming up with all kinds of decorative earplugs. I guess I’ll have to wear them just to stay in fashion. I read that gangs in LA use earplugs as their markers—better not wear the wrong earplug in their neighborhood.”

After pouring herself a glass of Old Vine Zinfandel, Jan dropped onto the sofa beside him and yanked out one earplug.

“I’m unusual now, selling something that appeals to the sense of taste rather than blocking out the sense of hearing. How’s school?”

“We’ve had to suspend some of the curriculum in order to teach sign language. It’s not a bad idea anyway, but it’s ridiculous trying to teach people who are constantly distracted. Fights, arguments, all kinds of discipline problems. As soon as the kids are signing, earplugs are going to be mandatory.”

She laughed. “Every kid’s dream, eh? And every teacher’s nightmare—a classroom full of students with earplugs in their ears.” She twisted her earplug back into place. “Unfortunately, we’d all lose our minds without them. I read that suicide is the latest world plague. I wonder how long it’ll be before we all do ourselves in.”

“That sound has to stop sometime, I’m sure.” Jeremy had to shout to be heard through the rubber in Jan’s ears.

“Why so sure? Maybe it’ll last forever. Maybe this is the way the human race goes down. When the aliens do fnally show up, they’ll wonder what happened to us. Who would guess that humanity succumbed to an F sharp? And it’s not easy driving with earplugs. Accidents all over the road . . .” “You’re not supposed to drive with those . . .”

“Ha. You try driving with that stupid hum in your ear.”

“Maybe I’d better do the driving for both of us.”

Jan paused a moment, fdgeting.

“What is it, honey?”She took a deep drink from her glass.

“I’m going to a meeting tonight.”

“Really? What kind of meeting?”

“Just some people from church.”

“Do you want me to come, too?”

She turned to him, her eyes wary. “It’s just a meeting for people who, you know, want to talk about what’s happening. The noise that won’t go away. Pastor Hahn knows a lot. Maybe he has some ideas.”

“Pastor Hahn?” Jeremy smiled. “You think he knows what this is all about?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know anything.” She turned to him. “You’re laughing, aren’t you? This isn’t funny.”

“I’m not laughing, dear. I just don’t think Pastor Hahn . . .”

She leapt to her feet with a sharp intake of breath. You just don’t get it, Jer! How can you? You don’t even hear it—you don’t understand. I can’t really talk about it with you because you don’t . . . I need something, some kind of comfort. You can’t know what it’s like with this going on and on and on and on, twenty-four hours a day.”

“I’m sorry I . . .”

“You read the paper, you see what’s happening. People are committing suicide, killing each other, going crazy. Almost everyone is on drugs, drunk . . . everybody on Earth is losing it, Jer. Society is coming apart and I’m not immune. Just because we live in a nice neighborhood in a nice town and we’re so nice and all that kind of crap, it doesn’t make any difference. I can’t imagine going on living for another forty, ffty years like this—I don’t want to grow old—not if this damned sound keeps going on and on. It isn’t worth it, Jeremy, it just isn’t worth living if it’s going to be like . . .” She twisted onto the sofa, sobbing.

Jeremy was frightened by the energy of her emotions, but he had no answers. “Honey, I’m sure it’ll go away,” he offered. “It can’t last forever.”

“You don’t know that. Nobody knows. Nobody knows anything anymore, and nothing matters. All we can do is wear earplugs, poke our eardrums out, or drink until we pass out. So I’m going to go and be with some friends at church and maybe we’ll fnd some kind of comfort in our faith. I know you don’t believe. But I’ve got to turn to something. I’ve got to turn to my

Jeremy wanted to comfort his wife, but he sensed hostility behind her words. “It’s not like I just decided one day to be a godless heathen. I spent years studying the history of Christianity, how the New Testament came about, how the church started, and the more I learned . . . it’s all just made up so some people two thousand years ago could gain power over other people. If God is speaking through you, who’s going to argue, right? All through history, religion has been hung over people’s heads to get them to obey the rulers or suffer eternal punishment. That’s all religion is about.” “I don’t believe it is.”

“Belief! That’s what they always harp on—belief, faith. Isn’t that what every scam artist and fim-fam man wants in people, too? Belief and faith? Think about it—how do you get people to believe something that isn’t true, that doesn’t have any way of being proven and nothing to back it up? You turn faith into such a virtue that you fush your own intelligence down the toilet so that some imaginary supernatural being will refrain from condemning you to eternal agony. Look at history—what good has religion really done? All it does is enslave people in ignorance and superstition.”

Jan sat up stiffy, blew her nose, and kept her red-rimmed eyes from his. “All right. You know so much. So tell me—what do I do to keep from losing my mind? Any answers?”

“Keep wearing your earplugs. The sound will go away eventually. Scientists will fgure it out.”

She sat for several minutes without speaking. Jeremy tried to read his paper. At last she turned to him. “That’s it? That’s all you and your reason can come up with? I’m sorry, but you have no idea. No idea. I’m going to church. You can stay here and not hear that note and be very happy with your rationality and reason.” “Honey, I’ll come with—” “No, no. I’ll go myself.”

“At least let me drive you.”

While Jan changed her clothes, Jeremy sat thinking. The air was still. He tried to hear the sound, but all he detected was the faint buzz of the air conditioner. He could sense that his marriage, his life, was like a beautiful, well-made piece of furniture, and that invisible note was sliding under it like a crowbar to heave, twist, and pry everything loose, snapping the glue apart and ripping up the gleaming veneer.

He drove her to the meeting that night, as he did many nights after that. On the way he listened to the radio—he was one of the few who listened without earpieces—while she sat alone with her thoughts. The news on the radio was all about that sound and very little else. Not much else could happen in the world with that note rammed into everyone’s brains. Scientists thought that they might be closing in on an answer, but it could still be months, if not years. Suicide and homicide soared in places that had never known serious crime. The problems were far worse in Third World countries. Wars, famine, and mass murders, all caused, directly or indirectly, by the note.

Jeremy sat in on the frst meeting. Pastor Hahn had the church ftted with earphones in the pews, and all those who wanted to speak could use a special microphone so nobody had to take out their earplugs. The meeting turned out to be more of a church service, with prayers, bible readings, hymns, and a sermon about the note. Pastor Hahn—predictably, Jeremy thought—said that the sound was a message from God, and that everyone should listen to their own hearts. We should see it as a gift, he said, a gift that will ultimately lead us to Him and his Word. After the service, people talked about the note and the problems it caused them while Pastor Hahn assured everyone in his bland Lutheran way that God would take care of everything. At the end, the pastor led the congregation in a prayer thanking God for blessing the world with that sound, and asking Him to give them the grace to accept it and hear His message.

Jeremy tried not to roll his eyes. At subsequent meetings, he drove Jan and dropped her off, then ran errands until it was time to pick her up. Over time they talked together less and less. They worked different hours. The meetings became more frequent, and Jeremy knew better than to comment. After all, what did he know? He couldn’t even hear that sound.

Much of the country was turning to religion for solace. Churches were packed every day and night. Religious leaders proclaimed that the note was sent by God for punishment, redemption, or as the last Trumpet before the End, depending on the denomination. Instead of fearing it and trying to block it out, we should all embrace it and hear its message. If we listened, all would be revealed.

That became the overriding theme at Jan’s church. “I try to take out the earplugs for longer periods every day,” she said. “Maybe it’s true. Maybe it really is the voice of God. If it is, I want to hear it. I want to know what God’s message is.” “Are you sure that’s a good idea, honey? Doesn’t it drive you crazy to hear that sound, that note, all the time, nonstop?”

“What do you know about it?” Jan would snap back. “You can’t even hear it. Everybody on Earth hears the note except you. What does that tell you?”

“I don’t know, I suppose—” “Maybe God isn’t talking to you. Maybe he’s given up on you because you’ve given up on Him.”

At that point, Jan usually jammed her earplug back in and retreated to the bedroom to pray.

One day, Jeremy got a call from a research lab in Michigan. The woman on the other end of the phone asked if it was true that he couldn’t hear the note.

“Yes, it’s true, but how do you know about that?”

“We received a letter from your doctor.”

“My doctor? Doesn’t that violate patient-doctor confdentiality?”

“You can, of course, choose to sue him. He told us in his letter that he was aware of that possibility and willing to risk losing his license. You are the only person anyone is aware of who doesn’t hear that note, and you could help us fnd an answer. You could help millions, maybe billions, Mr. Wickham.”

“It would only take a couple of days, and of course, you would be generously compensated. Transportation costs, hotel, all taken care of.”

“I’d love to help, of course, but I don’t know. I’ve got things to . . .” “Mr. Wickham, every person on earth is afficted with this. I’m no exception, and neither are the doctors and scientists here. So far, you are the only person we found who is not affected, and we need to know why.” Her voice took an unexpected curve. “I have never done this in my life, sir, but I’m pleading with you.”

“Let me talk to my wife about this and I’ll get back to you.”

When Jan got home that night, Jeremy told her about the call from the lab. “What do you think, honey? Should I go up and do this? It might help a lot of people.”

Jan looked at him. “I’m not so sure about this after all. Is that the right thing for you to be doing? That sound is a gift from God that we need to learn from. Should you be a way that God’s note is silenced? Or should you instead accept God’s word and at last you’ll hear him, too? Maybe God has a special mission for you.”

“That special mission might be to help fnd a way to block out the sound.”

Jan laughed incredulously. “Block out a message from God? Is that what you think you should be a part of?”

“People all over the world are committing suicide, murder. How you can you forget that the Carlsons, just a block and half from here, killed themselves because of this? This note isn’t from God—if anything it’s from the devil.”

“But Pastor Hahn says—”

“What kind of God drives people out of their minds and into doing terrible things, all to ‘bring them’ to Him? Does that sound reasonable to you?”

“What is reason to God is folly to man, what is reason to man is folly to God.” “Is that some saying of Pastor Hahn? What kind of psychopathic God would go to such terrible lengths to force me to ‘accept’ him?”

“That reminds me, are you still driving me to the meeting tonight? I want to take the girls. It might make them feel better. Other parents are bringing their kids.”

She said the words “other parents” with a sting that Jeremy felt. “Go ahead, but don’t keep them out too long. They’ve got homework to do.”

After driving his wife and daughters to the church, Jeremy sat listening to the radio in his car. The world was falling apart. People everywhere going mad, killing themselves, taking drugs, giving up on life. When his family returned, Jan sat in silence on the ride home and retired to bed early. Jeremy sat up reading the paper. All over the globe, sound-related violence was spreading. Industries inched toward the brink of collapse. In one feature story, a reporter investigated two sides of the crisis—the wealthy opted for a special surgery that cut out the F sharp frequency but left some of their hearing intact. Poor people—from Sao Paolo to Calcutta and Sierra Leon to Mississippi—poked out their own eardrums with sticks or pieces of old metal, desperate to escape. Many of them ended up with horrible complications and infections. Populations in many rural areas of the world were so decimated that they became virtually uninhabited. A few of the more strident commentators screamed that human beings might wind up on the Endangered Species list.

“Is this how God sends me a message to shape up? That’s absurd. I’ve got to go to Michigan.”

Early the next morning, Jeremy woke his wife by gently removing the earplugs from her ears. “Jan, I’m going. I have to. I know it sounds crazy, but I might be the only person on Earth who might provide some answers and some evidence that can help. Do you see what’s happening out there? Even in Milwaukee there are riots, food is running out. The human race is unraveling

Jan sat up, her eyes still half closed. “Don’t you see? The way is being prepared—Jesus is about to return. People all over the world and embracing the note, the one, pure, beautiful note that God has sent us all to hear together. Do you want to silence God’s beautiful note and close the ears of the people to His word?” Jeremy hoped she would laugh and say, Just kidding. She didn’t.

“I notice you had your earplugs blocking what you call ‘God’s note’ from your ears all night. What’s that about?”

“Jeremy, you just don’t get it. You don’t know—”

“Do you really believe all that stuff you’re saying? That God sent this as a message—a message that drives millions to suicide?”

“You need to open your heart so that your ears might also hear—” “Any actual evidence to back up this claim? Or is it just more of Pastor Hahn’s delusions? Any facts to get behind?”

“My faith is enough.” Jan’s face became hard. “My faith is all I need.”

“I’m afraid your faith isn’t doing much for those poor people out there killing themselves. Faith is just a way to run away from facts, from reality, and replace it with fantasy. Now you and your friends who live in some dream world want to impose their insane notions on the rest of the world. What are you?”

Jan leapt from the bed. “And what are you? You come in here and mock my faith?” She fung open her closet and grabbed handfuls of clothes. “You’re evil, Jeremy! I’ve got to get out of here—I’ve got to get away from you.” She turned, her face red and contorted. “I can’t hear this! I can’t listen to this!”

As she fell onto the bed in tears, Jeremy moved closer and leaned over to touch her shoulder. Jan recoiled with a highpitched shriek. “Get away! Don’t touch me! I can’t believe what I’ve married! What have I done?”

Horror spewed through Jeremy’s system. My God, she’s lost her mind, he thought. But he didn’t say those words—the words that burned to come from his lips. He thought a moment. “Maybe you’re right dear,” he murmured. “Maybe I need to open my heart to God’s note. Maybe the fault lies in me after all.”

Jan relaxed slightly and peered at him through the welter of tears. “Really? Are you willing to open your heart?”

Jeremy swallowed. “Yes, dear. I think I need to go away for a couple of days to think and pray. Maybe that’s what I need to do.”

“You’re not going to Michigan, are you?” Her face turned hard again.

“No, dear. I don’t want to silence God’s voice. I want to hear it, too.”

“But where are you going?”

“I’ll go to Lake Shawano. Nobody will be there except the birds and fsh.” He smiled. “If I hear the note anywhere, it’ll be there.”

Jan helped him gather clothes, a sleeping bag, the tent, and food. She kissed him goodbye as he climbed into his car. “Thank you, God, for speaking to Jeremy’s heart. It’s a good heart, Lord. You know that. He’s a good man. Open his heart to Your love.”

Jeremy drove out onto the interstate and let out his breath at last. “I don’t feel so great about lying, but this is our only hope.”

After about an hour, Jeremy pulled over at a rest stop and called the lab.

Several hours later he checked into the hotel and the room reserved for him. The next morning, a car arrived to take him to the lab. As they approached the massive white building, Jeremy saw dozens of protestors gathered at the gates.

“Don’t mind them, Mr. Wickham,” said the driver—a short, bald man of about forty with a frank, humorous expression. “They won’t hurt anybody. They think that our research is wrong,

can you believe it? This thing is making everybody crazy.” “I know that, for sure. I know all too well.”

“They think we’re trying to silence the voice of God. The whole world is going to pieces and they want to help it along. I just don’t get it. If I go without earplugs for more than fve minutes I start to lose it myself.”

Jeremy looked at the crowd of mostly older people in fannel and jackets holding signs with messages like Listen to your God, and Don’t stife the voice of ourLord. He felt a wave of vertigo. “I don’t get it, either.”

“You don’t hear it, either. In a way, I do get it. It just makes you crazy, you know? Hearing that sound, nonstop, never changing or getting louder or softer. With something like that in your ears all the time, you get all kinds of ideas. Your brain has to make some kind of sense of it, you know? I mean, hey, you’ve got to think something, right? You can’t just hear it and think nothing. Our brains won’t allow us to.”

A pretty receptionist at the lab greeted him and whisked him to a fourth foor examination room where an older doctor with white hair and glasses barely hanging onto the end of his nose gave him a thorough check-up while humming along with music he had going into an earphone. Later, several specialists came in, took his blood, his urine, even some saliva. A young Indian neurologist came in, asked him dozens of questions, and tested his hearing and balance for more than an hour. Two more doctors arrived and led him to a big room flled with high-tech medical equipment where he received a PET scan, MRI, and several X-rays.

“All right, Mr. Wickham, that’s enough for today,” the frst doctor told him. So far we can’t fnd anything different about you. You’re perfectly healthy. We still have to wait for results on some of the tests, but we don’t expect to fnd anything unusual. It’s been a tough day for you, I imagine. Tomorrow will be a lot easier.”

After taking a walk around town, Jeremy had dinner at an Italian place—with no other customers—and returned to his room.

He sat in bed watching television and wondering whether or not to call his wife. No, he thought. She’d see that he was calling from Michigan. It was better that she thought he was off in the woods, trying to hear the note. But what will I do when I get home? If there’s a way to shut it out, how will I tell Jan I found out about it? And will she do it, or let that note run her life?

The next morning the driver picked him up again and drove him to the lab. The same protestors waited outside. Jeremy spent the day talking to psychologists and psychiatrists, telling them the story of his life. They wondered if perhaps his emotions or unresolved traumas blocked him from hearing the note. Jeremy sensed disappointment when he told them of his carefree childhood and happy life.

At about four-thirty, a middle-aged woman in a gray pantsuit called him into her offce, took out her earplugs, and handed him a check for two thousand dollars. “We certainly appreciate your help, Mr. Wickham. Thank you so much.”

“Wow, this is a lot of money. Did you learn anything from me? Did I really help in any way?” “I think the information we got from you will help.”

“So there’s nothing about me that makes me any different from anyone else?”

“No, except perhaps for the fact that you are in absolutely perfect health, physically and mentally. The doctors were unable to fnd any irregularities.” She forced a smile, stood up, and thrust out her hand. “You have one more night at the hotel, so enjoy yourself and relax. Thanks again for your help.”

Jeremy drove home early the next morning with a sick feeling in his stomach. He had done all he could do, but it turned out to be of no help at all. He lied to Jan, all for nothing. Now he had two thousand dollars to deal with—how could he keep it but at the same time hide it from her?

Guilt prodded him to drive to Lake Shawano and check into a campground for the night. He didn’t want to be a complete

liar. Besides, he thought, he needed to think about what to do next.

Tiny lights jittered on the far shore of the lake, and moonlight glistened on ripples on the surface of the water. Jeremy sat by a fre in front of his tent a few feet from the shore, drinking a local microbrew. The smell of lake water flled his nostrils, and mosquitoes hovered briefy near him before being driven off by his electronic insect repellent. “What am I going to do?” he asked the Moon. “How I am I going to deal with Jan? What will I say to the girls? How can I live in a world flled with people going insane?” He felt a throb of fear. “I don’t know if I can.”

At last he emptied his mind and heard only the crackle of fre and the lisp of the lake. He didn’t know how long he sat like that, unmoving and unthinking. The world was quiet, peaceful. He tried to hear that sound, but couldn’t. He wondered why he, of all people, had been spared. Did it really exist or was it a mass hallucination? How could that be? And why?

He slept for a long time that night, waking occasionally when a fsh splashed in the water or a frog grunted in the distance. The morning arrived on pine-scented breezes under a lapis lazuli sky. It was time to go home.

Jeremy made up his mind on how to deal with his situation, though he knew it didn’t make sense. He stopped at a drug store, bought three pairs of earplugs and an earpiece for the television. “I’ll just have to go along until this thing clears up,” he told himself. “This is so stupid.”

During the long hours on the highway, he listened to CDs of Mozart and imagined himself going through life wearing earplugs and pretending to hear what he couldn’t actually hear. “I guess I’ll have to go to church with Jan, too. Maybe act all religious just to keep the peace. How much of this pretending am I going to have to do before I lose my mind, too?”

He slept for a long time that night, waking occasionally when a fsh splashed in the water or a frog grunted in the distance. The morning arrived on pine-scented breezes under a lapis lazuli sky. It was time to go home. Jeremy made up his mind on how

to deal with his situation, though he knew it didn’t make sense. He stopped at a drug store, bought three pairs of earplugs and an earpiece for the television. “I’ll just have to go along until this thing clears up,” he told himself. “This is so stupid.”

During the long hours on the highway, he listened to CDs of Mozart and imagined himself going through life wearing earplugs and pretending to hear what he couldn’t actually hear. “I guess I’ll have to go to church with Jan, too. Maybe act all religious just to keep the peace. How much of this pretending am I going to have to do before I lose my mind, too?”

As he neared his house, he put in the earplugs. When he walked into his house and saw Jan, her face was an exclamation point. “Are those earplugs I see? Is it true? Did you hear the note?”

He smirked. “Yeah, it started yesterday. I couldn’t sleep last night.”

She threw herself on him, laughing through her tears. “Oh, Jeremy!” She kissed his face, his neck. “I’m so sorry I was mean to you about this. I have some big news for you. You can take out the earplugs. We don’t have to shout anymore. It’s over. The note is gone. It went away last night.”

“Are you serious? It’s over?” He quickly plucked out the earplugs and stuffed them into his shirt pocket. “What happened?”

“Nobody really knows for sure, but they think they may have fgured it out. They say now that it was something to do with the Earth’s crust and tectonic plates. Gases stuck deep in the Earth expanded over time, and then sort of, well, came out all over the place, through all the little fssures and faults in the crust, making that sound. I can’t remember the whole explanation. It’s really complicated.” “But what about the Word of God? I thought . . .”

Jan gave an embarrassed laugh. “It sort of made sense that it could be God, at least. There didn’t seem to be any other explanation.”

“But now there is?”

“Everybody seems to think so. Scientists, the government, all over the world. Everybody says it was trapped gases escaping. Apparently it happens every thousand years or something. That’s it. That was the whole thing.”

Jeremy sat down, dumbfounded. “So what you’re saying is that Mother Earth just cut a great, big, long, worldwide fart?”

“Yeah, I guess you could say that, though it sounds really vulgar when you—” “So frst it was the word of God, and now it’s a fart?” “Yes, it seems so.”

He sat for a long time. At last he looked at her and shook his head. “That makes even less sense. No, that’s just crazy. Escaping gas? How can it sound the same note everywhere— everywhere in the world? That’s crazier than your old theory.”

“I don’t appreciate you calling me crazy.”

“No, no, I don’t mean you, I mean the theory. I understand that hearing that sound twenty-four-seven can make anyone crazy, and when nobody can explain it, God is about the only

“I’m surprised you didn’t hear anything about it, but you were off in the woods. All about geothermal shifts, atmospheric pressures, other complicated things. The sound is gone, people are starting to put their lives back together, that’s what’s important. It’s going to take time for everybody to recover. Why don’t you have a shower and I’ll make some dinner? The kids will be home soon and they’ll be happy to see you. They can explain this better than I did.”

That night, Jeremy lay in bed awake while Jan slept curled up beside him. “Escaping gases,” he whispered. “Now I’ve heard it all. The worst part in a way is that I had to lie and pretend in order to keep the peace. I’ve never done that before. I don’t like the way that feels. I can’t even tell anybody.”

At about fve o’clock the next morning, moments before the pre-horizon sun exhaled blue against the black sky, Jeremy jerked awake from a sound sleep. He had been lying on his left hand, and it had fallen asleep so completely that his arm felt like a lump of numb sand.

He rolled over and closed his eyes. It was then he frst noticed it. Low, hollow, like a fute. He shut his ears and it was gone, so it wasn’t some transient inner ear hum—it was coming from outside. “Jan,” he whispered. “What’s that sound?” She woke with a start. “What sound? I don’t hear anything.”

“That hum, like a fute.”

She lay listening for a few moments, then turned away.

“Go to sleep, Jeremy. You’re dreaming.”

But Jeremy wasn’t dreaming. The note grew louder. He was fnally forced to put his earplugs in. Of all the people on Earth, Jeremy was the only one who could hear it.