* Author : Shelly Jones

* Narrator : Kate Baker

* Host : Setsu Uzume

* Audio Producer : Peter Behravesh

*

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Previously published by Luna Station Quarterly.

Rated PG.

The Watchers

by Shelly Jones

He did not know why he had agreed to marry her. For a long time he thought it was because she would hum at everything she did. She hummed while cooking. She hummed while cleaning and sewing. She hummed when she raked leaves and shoveled dirt and chopped firewood. She even hummed, or so he thought he heard over his own grunting, on the few occasions when they had consummated their union. Her humming was an intoxicating low rumble, a contralto line that lingered in the room even after she had left it. He remembered the first time he had heard her. They had been to a funeral service for the local baker, he with his mother and she alone, for all of her relatives had died when she was young. He had known this, of course, but it never really struck him until he saw her alone at the wake. How many other services had she attended as a girl for her family? She wore a grey smock and a thick wool coat, the color of new potatoes. While the other mourners stood silent with their heads bowed, clutching handkerchiefs or wordlessly mouthing prayers, she rocked gently, pushing her weight from one foot to the other and hummed a low, idle tune. But no one minded. No one thought her rude or obscene, though, for some reason, he feared they might. He could imagine an old, dour woman spitting on her, the thick mucus sticking to the wool, and calling her names for dancing and singing at the funerary rites. But no one seemed to even notice her. She was as much a part of the scene as a catbird in the tree or a period at the end of a sentence. Why, then, had he noticed her?

He never could answer this question. So many questions about her he could not answer. Or the answers changed as the years went on. But wasn’t that part of every marriage? He could not know. He only knew the conditions and terms of his own. He thought about this as he sat in front of a beehive in the middle of the night, a cheerless moon gaping at him and his chapped hands and lips. It was beginning to get cold at night. He would need to wear gloves and a hat for his nightly ritual. She would provide these for him. She always did. Wasn’t that enough? The old men in the village would say, “Everyman needs only a warm bed and a warm belly. And lucky is he who has someone to provide these for him.” Hadn’t she always kept him comfortable?

The older women in the village would smile at him on his way out of town each night as they sat balling up yarn or braiding rags of stained shirts and threadbare pants into rugs. “A good one, that one,” they’d nod his way. “A man of his word is more valuable than next year’s seeds.” He wondered if he was just that. Had he kept his word, and what exactly had he said? He tried to remember.

After the funeral of the baker, he had left his mother chatting with the widow and followed the distant hum through the cemetery. He had to almost run to keep up with her loping pace. Breathless, he finally drew up the courage to address her, despite the fact that she was still twenty yards or so ahead of him.

“Why do you hum so for a funeral?” he asked, realizing halfway through the accusatory tone of his question.

She stopped under a bough of a great elm and turned toward him, placing her hand on the trunk as if needing to rest a moment.