Wall

Clank. Clank. Clank. An old man with small withered hands sat before a crumbled stone wall; he struck the remains of the wall with an equally small and withered looking hammer. For a stone wall this one was quite long. In its prime it was said to have stretched over five thousand miles: through woods, over hills, and it was even rumored to have crossed a small lake. The wall had been hundreds of feet high and God knows how many feet thick. Of course that was a long, long time ago. Back then two people standing directly across from one another on opposite sides of the wall—exactly God knows how many feet apart—would have never been aware of each other’s existence.

The hammer on the other hand, was a completely different affair; it never was bigger than its current size; it was put together by tying a piece of sharpened metal to the end of a withered branch. The old man laughed at the thought of this once mighty wall falling further apart under his feeble strikes.

Clank. Clank. Clank. Another rumor concerning this wall is that it is filled with diamonds. Okay, perhaps “filled” isn’t quite the right word. But the old man had it on good authority from his wife’s dead right hand, which spoke to him nightly, that there were at least a dozen king-sized diamonds somewhere within the ruins of the wall. It was three years ago that his wife’s hand began talking to him. On the darkest of nights when the crickets were chirping, and (probably not by coincidence) when his wife was snoring her loudest, Tom awoke to find her hand, dead for all fifty-five years of their marriage, floating and talking above his head. Now, naturally hands can’t actually talk, they don’t have voice boxes, but Tom had had a deaf twin sister who taught him to read lips when they were teenagers. She died shortly after teaching Tom to read lips, hit from behind by a train furiously blowing its horn. The horn and the brakes made quite a ruckus just before impact. The conductor was quoted as telling the police, “It was like she didn’t even hear me.”

In honor of his sister Tom had kept his lip reading skills honed. Originally he practiced by muting his television while watching reruns of his favorite shows. This also inadvertently taught him to read body language and facial expressions quite well. This however, turned out not to be as useful when communicating with his wife’s dead hand. After the power went out for the last time, and never came back on, Tom had to resort to watching real conversations to keep from losing his talent.

Clank. Clank. Clank. He learned that Parker Brady was sleeping with Widow Deb. Mark, from down the street, believed ghosts were stealing the money he stored under his mattress. Jennifer R. had lost two sons to consumption before moving to Willow Wood. Tanya, the tailor, had always dreamed of being the President. His very own father swore on Sundays. George and Edna Donaldson affectionately called each other My Lamb and My Lion. The police chief was afraid of cats. Jerald Rich MD, the town’s florist and doctor, never loved his wife. Father Irving, who moved his lips when silently praying, always ended his prayers with, “if you’re really out there. Amen.” And nobody knew exactly where the power had gone.

In his early twenties Tom felt that he hadn’t learned anything interesting or useful from his lip reading and, besides, God would have surely given his sister her hearing back when she died, so he gave it up. It wasn’t easy to stop. He had to avert his eyes whenever he saw anyone in conversation. And, as it turned out, there was always someone talking within his line of site. He quickly realized that looking at the ground was the only safe way to keep his eyes out of other people’s conversations.

Tom had never been known for being crazy. People said he had a solid head on his shoulders; his friends and family would always come to him for advice about their lives and doings. He became an excellent listener, possibly owing to the fact that he stopped watching people and inadvertently started listening to them. So when his wife’s dead hand started talking to him he didn’t consider the possibility that he might be going crazy, instead he took it as a clear sign that something fundamental about the Universe had changed.

This wasn’t the first time he had to shift the way his mind worked because of alterations in the Universe. The first time the Universe moved on him was after the death of his sister. The second time was when he fell in love with Emma. The third time was when the power went out for the last time. The fourth time was when Emma fell in love with him. The fifth time was when he had his first child. The sixth time was when his last child died. The seventh time, and last prior to this wife’s dead hand talking to him, was when he first heard about the wall.

Tom originally discovered the wall in a dream and the wall’s existences was later confirmed by Father Irving during a Sunday sermon. In Tom’s dream he stood in a long line of young people. Even though he was in his seventies he didn’t feel out of place with these people; his body ached less than normal and there were fewer wrinkles and folds across the backs of his hands. The line he was in inched forward slowly and at an irregular pace. No one talked in line but many people could be seen eagerly looking over the shoulder of the person in front of them—they all desired to catch a glimpse of whatever it was at the front of the line. With a little effort Tom could see the line lead to a great wall that spread out across the horizon. He marveled more at his ability to see such a great distance—something he hadn’t been able to do in quite some time—than with the magnitude of the wall. People stood and sat in front of the wall. As the line grew shorter and Tom approached the wall he could see that many of the people sitting were actually kneeling in prayer before the wall. Those who were standing placed their heads gently against the wall and traced elaborate patterns over it with their hands. From time to time a person would stop praying or drawing shapes and the wall would shutter and shake before them, bricks were sucked into the wall or shifted to the side and a hole large enough for a person to walk through would appear. The hole never hinted at what was inside—it was just a dark hole that you couldn’t see more than a few feet into. Once the hole had opened the person would walk in and the bricks would shift back into place. The next person in line would take the missing person’s spot in front of the wall and the line would creep forward.

Father Irving said this about the wall: all man-made walls are made to either keep people in or out, but this one was made to be crossed.

Standing before the wall Tom could see nothing special about it. Green moss filled the gaps between the bricks. The bricks themselves weren’t smooth, nor were they uniform in shape or size. Ants, beetles and other insects scurried between cracks and crevices. The wall was cool to the touch. It looked like any other brick wall he’d ever seen, except much taller and much longer. He watched his nearest neighbors for clues about how he should interact with the wall, but he was unable to gleam any pattern other than praying and touching. Tom wondered if he was dreaming.

Father Irving said this about the wall: the wall was created out of ordinary rock by ordinary people. It took ten-thousand-years to complete.

Tom placed a hand upon the wall. Rocks had always fascinated him; he and his twin sister had a shared rock collection before she died. They had two tiger-eyes, a handful of rose quartz pebbles, some turquoise, a small bag full of fools-gold, a sliver of jade, a large piece of petrified wood, a normal-looking rock with some ancient fossilized sea creature in it, three perfectly spherical rocks (they sometimes pretended these were the Sun, Earth and Moon), a rock so smooth and flat that Tom was certain he could skip it all the way across the Pacific Ocean (his sister thought this quite impossible), a dozen quarter sized opals, a piece of glass they both secretly believed was a diamond, and a very real and very small ruby that had fallen out of their deceased mother’s wedding ring.

Tom rested his forehead upon the wall. His sister had loved taking a rock in each hand and banging them together. Clank. Clank. Clank. Although she couldn’t hear the sound they produced, she could feel them vibrate in her hands. She would mouth to Tom, “this is what it’s like to be alive,” and then bring the two rocks together as hard as her skinny arms could manage. Sometimes she would accidentally smash the tip of a finger between the rocks but that never seemed to lessen or dull her joy. Tom tried to replicate her enthusiasm but found the banging noise painful to his ears and couldn’t overlook the sting in his fingertips when his aim wasn’t true.

Father Irving said this about the wall: the other side of the wall held the Kingdom of God. But, strangely, when the wall came down all that was seen on the other side were trees, and grass, and cows, and houses, and people.

Tom slid his hand down the wall as he thought about his sister. He pictured her smiling with rocks in hand, he heard her strange giggle (which she never heard herself). She also never heard their father say that he hated them or that he blamed them for their mother’s death during child birth. She never heard Tom crying in their shared bed, although his sobbing probably shook the wooden frame enough that she knew. She never heard the train coming and she never heard Tom whisper, “I love you, sis” to her back while she silently marveled at their shared piece of glass-diamond.

Father Irving said this about the wall: just like the power, no one really knows why the wall came down. You can still see the remains of the wall. Head west out of Willow Wood until you reach a fork in the road. Take the southern road toward Tangle Hollow, and about two miles down that road you’ll come across part of the wall.

Tom’s wife’s dead arm said this about the wall: In the wall’s remains there are twelve king-sized diamonds.

Tom finally felt the rocks vibrate in his hands. He stepped back and watched as the bricks shuffled apart, splitting and rearranging until a perfectly Tom-sized hole stood open before him. Tom wasn’t especially fond of holes. In his youth he had accidentally kicked his favorite red and white soccer ball into an abandoned well way out behind his house. He had dropped his lucky quarter on the floor one day and watched in horror as it rolled across the wood before falling into a small hole. He and his sister were certain a pack of vicious trolls lived in this particular hole, they were thankful it was too small for trolls to actually crawl out of, but still, you wouldn’t want to be walking bare foot and have a dirty little troll finger reach out and poke you, or feel its vile breath on your skin, or—worst of all—accidentally make eye contact with a troll through the hole. Two days after losing the quarter his sister was hit by a train—so Tom never doubted the lucky nature of the quarter. Later in life he’d take his wedding ring off while shaving. He’d place it securely in the soap dish where it would be safe from harm while he shaved. But one crisp October morning there was a rumbling that shook the entire house. He heard his wife yell “Earthquake,” but it was over before he could do much reacting. When the quake had finished he made sure his wedding ring was still safe and that his wife was fine before getting back to shaving. After shaving he picked his ring up but he hadn’t noticed that it had shifted ever so slightly, covering itself in soap in the process. He picked it up and it promptly slipped from between his two fingers. His gold ring went round and round and then down the pipes. He believed his wedding ring was at least as lucky as his old quarter and so he spent the next five hours in a panic tearing apart the plumbing until he rescued his ring from the muck and grime. Life started from a hole; like an hour glass it flowed out of his mother and into him and his sister. He watched his sister lowered into a hole six feet long, four feet wide and six feet deep. Being her twin, he never thought that hole looked quite right all by itself.

Father Irving said this about the wall: remnants of the wall can be found all over the world. Sightings have been reported in Egypt, China, Croatia, Germany, Saskatchewan, Australia, and even Minnesota.

After the sermon Tom asked Father Irving how anyone could possibly know that all those walls were once part of the same wall. How could a wall stretch all the way from Willow Wood to Egypt? Might the wall in Egypt be some dead old farmer’s wall, just something used to keep the sheep from running off? Isn’t it like insisting every grave in the ground use to be one large grave? Doesn’t that seem crazy, that we’ll all be buried in the same grave? Well that’s how all these walls being the same wall sounds too—plain crazy. This was really just Tom’s way of saying that he felt like he was walking into his sister’s grave when he entered the wall. It also felt like his mother’s grave, and that little hole his lucky quarter fell into. But complaining about the impossibility of the wall was the only way he could explain how he felt to Father Irving.

Tom heard the wall piece itself back together behind him. The insides of the wall began to glow barely enough to see the grassy ground a few feet ahead. A small red and white checkered ball sat on the grass with one side gently pressed against the wall. The neighborhood kids were all disappointed when they found out that Tom had accidentally kicked his ball into the well. But to be accurate, they never actually found that out. Tom told them he had forgotten his ball outside one night and in the morning it was gone, no trace of it, just paw prints—twice the size of the biggest dog’s he’d ever seen—right where he had left the ball. This tale helped lessen the blow of having the neighborhood’s only ball lost. Soccer was replaced by imaginary wolf hunting. The boys put together expeditions into the woods—but not too far into the woods—carrying sidewalk-sharpened sticks, fist-sized rocks and red makeshift bandanas tied around their heads while the girls picked wild flowers at the edge of the woods waiting to greet the boys like returning heroes, even when they returned empty handed, which they was always the case. That is of course until the night a frightening howl could be heard all across the village; it was so loud it even woke little boys and girls in Shady Pines, a village ten miles away. The kids didn’t talk about the howl the next day—or ever—but they all knew they’d never be going into those woods again. Except for Tom’s dear sister who couldn’t understand why all of the sudden no one was interested in hunting the wolf anymore and who never realized that the other kids hadn’t believed her brother’s story until the howl turned his lie into truth.

Father Irving said this about the wall: when the wall came down even the deaf heard it. And even the heartless felt the earth tremble.

Many years had passed since Tom had last kicked a ball. One can’t always rely on one’s body when it’s as old as his. Countless times he’d seen groups of kids playing soccer, but he could never approach them. Even if it were just a single kid kicking a ball against the side of a house or wall, he couldn’t trust his body to not make a fool of him. A single flash in his mind of laughing, pointing, mean little children, or a single glance at his awkward, bent legs and stooped back was all it took for him to put away all thoughts of playing. “You are an old man,” he’d tell himself and continue on his way. But here his body felt young again; his mind was less afraid. And, besides, there wasn’t anyone here to laugh.

Still, he approached the ball with some hesitation. Even though he was feeling younger he was still out of practice. Suppose his body couldn’t remember the correct way to kick. Taking just the right number of steps before swinging your leg back and giving a ball a good whacking always required a great deal of concentration and practice. If you were off by just one step then the whole process was botched and you’d have to start over. Luckily the interior of the wall didn’t leave much room for any heroic kicks so Tom settled on a simple tap with his toe. The ball rolled forward. No laughter. No falling. But there was joy.

He kicked again and again, sometimes a little harder sometimes a little softer. He began to run as he kicked. The breeze of childhood memories blew across his face, into his lungs and down his legs. He stopped thinking about the wall. There was no sound. There was sound, but Tom didn’t hear it. The walls behind him rumbled and closed off paths he had just run through. Similar rumblings could be heard deep within the walls. He didn’t hear himself giggle, or the dull thud of his foot impacting with the ball. Wet spots on the grass and sharp turns caused him to fall a few times but they were of the fun childish hydroplaning sorts of falls, they didn’t hurt. Without much thought he’d get back up and continue his kicking. The noise he didn’t hear grew louder and louder. He kicked harder and ran faster. Then it happened. The wall came down around Tom.

He was unharmed. His ball was lost again, buried somewhere beneath tons and tons of stone. He looked around and found other people standing inside the ruins, people he had recognized from the line. They looked scared and lost. They caused him to feel guilt for his happiness, for smiling. This is where Tom woke, still smiling, still happy.

Clank. Clank. Clank. After Father Irving’s sermon Tom and his wife went home. Tom started a fire and then sat in his favorite chair while his wife busied herself around the house: dusting, putting books back in their proper places and watering plants, all the while humming a little tune about doll-houses, tea parties and little girls. She whirled around him as he thought about the wall. He hadn’t felt this good in years. She willingly stopped at his side when he grabbed her dead hand as she headed to the kitchen. He asked, “How big do you suppose a king-sized diamond is?”

She smiled and said, “probably about the size of a soccer ball,” and then went back to humming and cleaning their home.