I lick my upper lip. “It comes back? The Noise?”
“Oh, yes.” He turns to me again. “If you don’t take your daily dose, it most definitely comes back.” He returns to his corner and slowly sits himself down. “You’ll notice there are no toilets,” he says. “I apologize in advance for the unpleasantness.”
I watch him sit, my Noise still rattling red and sore and full of askings.
“It was you, if I’m not mistaken?” he says. “This morning? The one who the town was cleared for, the one the new President greeted himself on horseback?”
I don’t answer him. But my Noise does.
“So, who are you then, Todd Hewitt?” he says. “What makes you so special?”
Now that, I think, is a very good asking.
Night falls quick and full, Mayor Ledger saying less and less and fidgeting more and more till he finally can’t stand it and starts to pace. All the while, his buzz gets louder till even if we wanted to talk, we’d have to shout to do it.
I stand at the front of the tower and watch the stars come out, night covering the valley below.
And I’m thinking and I’m trying not to think cuz when I do, my stomach turns and I feel sick, or my throat clenches and I feel sick, or my eyes wet and I feel sick.
Cuz she’s out there somewhere.
(please be out there somewhere)
(please be okay)
(please)
“Do you always have to be so bloody loud?” Mayor Ledger snaps. I turn to him, ready to snap back, and he holds up his hands in apology. “I’m sorry. I’m not like this.” He starts fidgeting his fingers again. “It’s difficult having one’s cure taken away so abruptly.”
I look back out over New Prentisstown as lights start coming on in people’s houses. I ain’t hardly seen no one out there the whole day, everyone staying indoors, probably under the Mayor’s orders.
“They all going thru this out there, then?” I say.
“Oh, everyone will have their little stockpile at home,” Mayor Ledger says. “They’ll have to have it pried out of their hands, I imagine.”
“I don’t reckon that’ll be a problem when the army gets here,” I say.
The moons rise, crawling up the sky as if there was nothing to hurry about. They shine bright enough to light up New Prentisstown and I see how the river cuts thru town but that there ain’t nothing much north of it except fields, empty in the moonlight, then a sharp rise of rocky cliffs that make up the north wall of the valley. To the north, you can also see a thin road coming outta the hills before cutting its way back into town, the other road that Viola and I didn’t take after Farbranch, the other road the Mayor did take and got here first.
To the east, the river and the main road just carry on, going god knows where, round corners and farther hills, the town petering out as it goes. There’s another road, not much paved, that heads south from the square and past more buildings and houses and into a wood and up a hill with a notch on the top.
And that’s all there is of New Prentisstown.
Home to three thousand, three hundred people, all hiding in their houses, so quiet they might be dead.
Not one of them lifting a hand to save theirselves from what’s coming, hoping if they’re meek enough, if they’re weak enough, then the monster won’t eat ’em.
This is where we spent all our time running to.
I see movement down on the square, a shadow flitting, but it’s only a dog. Home, home, home, I can just about hear him think. Home, home, home.
Dogs don’t got the problems of people.
Dogs can be happy any old time.
I take a minute to breathe away the tightness that comes over my chest, the water in my eyes.
Take a minute to stop thinking bout my own dog.
When I can look out again, I see someone not a dog at all.
He’s got his head slumped forward and he’s walking his horse slow across the town square, the hoofs clopping against the brick and, as he approaches, even tho Mayor Ledger’s buzz has started to become such a nuisance I don’t know how I’m ever gonna sleep, I can still hear it out there.
Noise.
Across the quiet of a waiting city, I can hear the man’s Noise.
And he can hear mine.
Todd Hewitt? he thinks.
And I can hear the smile growing on his face, too.
Found something, Todd, he says, across the square, up the tower, seeking me out in the moonlight. Found something of yers.
I don’t say nothing. I don’t think nothing.
I just watch as he reaches behind him and holds something up towards me.
Even this far away, even by the light of the moons, I know what it is.
My ma’s book.
Davy Prentiss has my ma’s book.
[TODD]
Early next morning, a platform with a microphone on it gets built noisily and quickly near the base of the bell tower and, as the morning turns to afternoon, the men of New Prentisstown gather in front of it.
“Why?” I say, looking out over ’em.
“Why do you think?” Mayor Ledger says, sitting in a darkened corner, rubbing his temples, his Noise buzz sawing away, hot and metallic. “To meet the new man in charge.”
The men don’t say much, their faces pale and grim, tho who can know what they’re thinking when you can’t hear their Noise? But they look cleaner than the men in my town used to, shorter hair, shaved faces, better clothes. A good number of ’em are rounded and soft like Mayor Ledger.
Haven musta been a comfortable place, a place where men weren’t fighting every day just to survive.
Maybe too much comfort was the problem.
Mayor Ledger snorts to himself but don’t say nothing.
Mayor Prentiss’s men are on horseback at strategic spots across the square, ten or twelve of ’em, rifles ready, to make sure everyone behaves tho the threat of an army coming seems to have done most of the work. I see Mr. Tate and Mr. Morgan and Mr. O’Hare, men I grew up with, men I used to see every day being farmers, men who were just men till suddenly they became something else.
I don’t see Davy Prentiss nowhere and my Noise starts rumbling again at the thought of him.
He musta come back down the hillside from wherever his horse dragged him and found the rucksack. All it had in it any more was a bunch of ruined clothes and the book.
My ma’s book.
My ma’s words to me.