Wheeze

Wheeze                                                                                 by:  David Tongay

   The alarm in my head goes off early.  Looking at the window through sleepy eyes I see the sun hasn’t peaked over the eastern horizon, yet.  It’s quiet time in the house, but outside the house is a different story.  The animals that live by day have been up far longer than me fighting for territory, searching for food and moving from minute to minute just trying to survive the day.  My windows and doors shut off their world leaving me with a setting of semi-silence for reflection and in a sleepy state.  Me?  I’m just trying to get downstairs without knocking a picture off the wall.  Scuffing into the kitchen I pluck an empty coffee mug from the cupboard and pour out a cup full from yesterday’s brew.  Set the microwave on “nuke” and wait 90 seconds at full power yields a passable cup that is still far from fresh and an insult to all baristas and coffee aficionados.  I settle into the overstuffed chairs as it exhales in receipt of my butt.  Outside the house is a muffled riot of sounds, but only as ambient, not present since the windows and doors are just about average insulators. 

   Then, I hear it…a distant asthmatic wheeze or creak that interrupts the darkness of the room not loud, but distant and mechanical.  Not paying much attention to it I let it pass preferring to think more of the warmth in my hand and a possible nap while still trying to wake up.  There is no schedule to keep at this time.  Wheeze.  What was that?  Wheeze.  Is it happening at regular intervals?  I count…one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, wheeze.  There it is, again.  I look about the room my senses starting to ratchet up.  Setting the cup carefully on a coaster made from my grandson’s last year Christmas’ project I decide to investigate.  I have a problem with diminished hearing capacity in my left ear that inhibits my ability to triangulate sound.  That makes me lucky to know where the television sits in the room.  It can be on in some anonymous room in another setting, but if I don’t see it, I have to look for it. 

   Walking toward the front door past the basement stairs I am thinking…gas pipe sound?  Is the dryer running?  Wheeze.  No, wait, it’s fainter.  I stop and stand holding my breath.  The tinnitus in my left ear rages endlessly.  Caffeine has a direct effect on it, but at the moment I don’t have that much coffee in me.  It’s always there, just not as loud. 

   I turn around and walk into the kitchen.  Wheeze.  Looking around I am thinking about the plumbing leak we had in the wall several years ago that caused a furor of DIY activity, power tools and trips to the home improvement store for paint and other finishing materials.  Drips don’t…wheeze.  Pantry.  Wait for it…wheeze.  I can’t find it.  Seeing last Sunday’s crossword on the table I decide it may be better to deliberate on this from a different angle.  The scenarios for imminent disaster are running through my head at full speed.  Wheeze (softer, but it’s still there).  Shit.  I can’t deal with the esoteric of some guy from New York’s idea of a good time playing with words when there is a full-fledged mystery afoot.  I push the    crossword aside.  Wheeze.

   I’ve decided it must be mechanical and not from a natural source.  Though it sounds like it could be a baby bird it comes to mind that baby birds are a little more random in their sounds than precisely every seven seconds.  Wheeze.  Throw that out.  Squirrel…hmm?  Wheeze.  Why would a squirrel make a noise every seven seconds?  Certainly they are not on any time fame to make noise on a regular basis, are they?  Wheeze.  Sit and turn your head toward the noise.  Use your good ear.  Wheeze (fainter).  Turn your head the other way.  Wheeze (louder).  Where in the…?

   My wife’s alarm upstairs goes off and I know the day for her will begin.  The creak in the upstairs floor (wheeze) telegraphs her mission to the bathroom.  Wheeze.  I hear her heading for the stairs where calls to me in her sleepy voice, “Hello…”

   Slowly taking a step at a time she descends the stair way.  Her eyes are squinting from the light that is now filtering into the room from the rising sun.  She pulls a pair of yellow sunglasses she picked up as a sample from the Chevrolet booth at last year’s Kane county fair from the pocket of her robe and puts them on.  Wheeze (very distant).  She starts off talking about today’s events and where we have to be and with whom.  I’m trying to listen to her, but not interrupt my search for the (wheeze) source of this sound.

“Have you ever noticed there is a sound in this house that occurs every seven seconds?” I ask.

“What kind of sound?” looking puzzled at the challenge of my question.

“It sounds like a small squeak, like a rusty hinge or something.  It happens every seven seconds.” 

She looks back at me with a dismissive look and says, “Now you’re sounding like my dad did when he started his dementia.”

   “No, I’m not going into dementia.  I hear this sound over here every seven seconds.”

She walks past me and opens up the patio door still not interested.  The ambient noise level is increased seven fold when the sound of nature invades my field of operation.  My test lab is suddenly polluted with bird chirps, awakening traffic noise and the sound of an ultra-light plane flying over head. There is no way I can isolate this, now.

   “So what’s it sound like?”  She bends and gives me a perfunctory good morning kiss.

Looking up at her a little miffed by her insensitivity I reply, “I dunno, it’s a small squeak that sounds mechanical.  It happens every seven seconds.”

   “Can you hear it, now?” She walks up to the front door opening it to even more noise level.

   “Not with all this extra noise!”

   “You’re half deaf anyway.  How can you hear anything like that?”

   “When everything is quiet I can hear it.  You’ve opened up the doors and now there is simply too much noise to pick it out.”

   “You can hear it where you are sitting?”

   “I suppose so if I try.”  She walks over to the chair and stands next tom me. 

   “Say something when you hear it.”  I sit quietly. (wheeze)  I raise my finger.

   “Did you say something?” she asks. (wheeze) I raise my finger, again.

   “You didn’t say something” with a little annoyance.

   “Listen and I will raise my finger when I hear it.” (wheeze) I raise my finger, yet again.

   “I don't what you are talking about.  I’ve got to go take a shower.”  She walks across the living room and mounts the stairs.  “You’re scaring me with this.  You need to go see the doctor.”

   “For what?  Because I hear something in this house every seven seconds?  What can she prescribe for that?”  I get an eye roll and she heads upstairs.

(wheeze)

   I abandon the search and follow her up the stairs.  It’s time to start the day. 

   The planned day unfolds.  We spend most of the time in the garden mixing soil and complaining about the chipmunks digging up newly planted seedlings.  We find several caches of peanuts buried in small mounds amongst established plants with foliage perfect for hiding treasure and a stored meal.  The noise of the neighborhood continues throughout the day burying any further thought about the mystery of the second sound.  It’s been abandoned for another time and a quiet setting. 

   It’s 4:18 AM.  There is no light coming into the bedroom.  The memory of the sound worms its way into my opening thought process.  I decide to get up and try it again.  But first…coffee.  I make a new pot, this time, sitting in the kitchen.  The coffee maker pops and hisses its course until the last drips of my morning ritual seep past the filter and plop quietly into the warm glass pot.  After pouring a mug I sit back down in the same kitchen chair where I heard the sound before.  The living room chair was the best place to hear, but I figure I would try the kitchen again to see if I could isolate it here.  Sound does travels in strange ways since the hearing loss in my left ear.  I wait.  I wait some more.  Where is it?  Maybe it was just a random thing after all.  I’m not hearing it.  These townhouses are co-joined, right?  Could have been something from the neighbor’s house...

   I get up from the chair and walk back into the original source of the sound, the living room.  Coffee mug in hand I open up the patio door to hear the morning sounds of the birds.  I sit down in the overstuffed chair and settle in.  My eyes closed I sip at the hot mug.  Wheeze.  My eyes open and I search the room.  Wheeze.  I’m going to find it this time…wheeze. 

   On the table at knee height facing me sits the source of the mystery sound.  Its golden eye blinks at me with regularity…on…off…on…off.  Then, wheeze.  In a previous life it sat on the wall table where it would spray a mist of scented air freshener at me every time I passed.  I would choke on the mist in the air.  After complaining about it, I found it in the narrow powder room on the toilet tank.  Its eye was facing the wall, but the nozzle aimed at me.  Once I started urinating I couldn’t stop until my bladder emptied.  Pfffft!  I was trapped!  This thing would spray at me every seven seconds…

Empty of anything that gave it a purpose its only function now is to react to the message sent every seven seconds by its on-board computer.  The long lived battery is driving it like an oil pump in a dry field.  No longer was it capable of emitting its choking gas powered package of air freshener.  It is now alive only by its memory.  Wheeze.  I'm looking at a zombie.

   “Did you see what I left for you on the table?”

   “Yes!  I did.  Thank you!”

   “What do you think of that? That was it wasn’t it?”

   “Yup, it sure is.”

   “So, what do you think about that”

   “What do I think?  I thought enough of it to write 1500 words about it.”

   “1500 words?  What are you going do with that?”