Count Your Miles
Adam Sterling // October 13, 2011
A light filled the room.
One. Two. Three. Four. Boom.
The rumble echoed through my candlelit home, bouncing off the thick walls. The rain began in the late afternoon and, as the arms of the kitchen clock inched closer to midnight, had yet to give rest to the battered pines and drowned-out flowerbeds. When the power went out, the living room clung to the last of the daylight, and thirty minutes passed before we gathered candles, flashlights, matches, and batteries.
A dull flame nearby, I settled into the living room sofa with one of my brother’s favourite horror novels. I pulled my legs up and felt my feet scrape gently along the threadbare edges of the armrest. The Torrance family had just begun their trip to the abandoned and foreboding Overlook Hotel when I heard a slight scratching sound behind the sofa. I peered through the muddy darkness and saw two large glassy eyes staring back at me. A light filled the room.
One. Two. Three. Boom.
At fifteen years old, our black Labrador Retriever was unlikely to jump, run, or do anything except lay on the dark hardwood, scuffed and smooth from years of children. But for all his weak joints and frail bones, his fear of thunder was as strong as ever.
Perhaps ironically, his previous owner had named the dog “King”. When one imagines a dog worthy of such a name, strong posture and a husky bark immediately come to mind. King, however, seemed displeased with this name and took every opportunity to show his displeasure. When the crooked yellow strands of the kitchen broom swept across the floor, King would let out a high-pitched yelp before running out of the room. If a strange man were to come to the door, King would not attempt to intimidate him. In fact, he was more likely to hide under the kitchen table and wait for the man to either go away or introduce himself with a bone or treat.
King did not live up to his name. It was hard not to wonder, though, if King would have been more brave or bold, if he had known the sort of expectations his name evoked. As it was, when there was a clap of thunder, King would whimper and scratch at the back of the living room sofa, his dark eyes made mirrors by his tears.
One. Two. Boom.
“Why do you think it is he and Nanny hate the thunder so much?” I asked my father, who was sitting across the room in an overstuffed leather chair, his gray hair golden in the light.
“Probably just that they don’t really know what it is,” he replied, “I mean, your grandmother didn’t go to school, so she’s never learned. And you know her, she never listens when you tell her things. And King’s just a dog. If you can call him that.”
I stayed silent. He’s right, I thought. Aren’t all dogs terrified of thunder? Don’t they have every reason to be? The same reasons, in fact, that cause my grandmother to hide herself in her bathtub during every storm. There is simply no other reaction to the very sound of fury, as blinding light breaks across a darkening sky.
But I have no reason or excuse to be terrified. I know what makes that sound. Electricity. Vibrations. Hot, expanding air. That knowledge is stored up there somewhere, stuffed in my head alongside diagrams of biological systems and the proper spelling of mischievous. I am educated. Well-educated, even. But that’s not what keeps me out of the bathtub when storm clouds gather. It’s language.
One. Boom.
Words drip from our tongues and our pens without care, consideration or reverence. Those of us who come close to the boundaries of our language will very rarely understand those who do not. They hear a word, but not its meaning, see its shape, but not its content. They will never know an explanation for the rumbling in the walls or the light in the sky.
As I counted the miles from the lightning, I stared at King and began to consider the thoughts he would never put into words. There’s fear, sure, but what else? How much did he feel that he could never say? How much did he wonder, never knowing an answer? I felt pity, almost at once, but for a moment I also felt envious. One day, he will feel the cold steel of a veterinarian’s table against his belly and the quick jab of a needle in his skin. But unlike me, as he leaves his life behind, King will not waste his last moments searching for a few words to justify all the ones that came before.
Boom.
Boom.
