Silent Screen

by Carl Palmer

The wall-mounted tv across the room, just loud enough that I can hear noise but can’t make out words, is showing an old photo of me when I was a kid with no front teeth wearing a red football helmet. I’m standing beside an even redder bicycle. That makes me six years old in the picture. I remember getting to ride the bike to first grade that year. My teacher’s name was Miss Deal. She wouldn’t allow us to sing the alphabet or use our fingers to count. Dad said she didn’t play with a full deck, that she had the perfect name.

Why’d I remember all that?

I don’t know how long I’ve been focusing on the screen. Not really looking at what’s on the program, but daydreaming at it.

I must have dozed off on the couch in front of the tube. I’ve done that before. I’m still so sleepy, must have slept too long. Maybe I’m still asleep. Before this instant, I don’t know how long I’ve been gawking at the TV.

What are all these people doing around me? Why am I so tired? Am I at the airport, waiting at a gate? I can’t seem to focus.
 
I want to shush the crowd, ask one of them to tell me where I am. Turn up the sound. I just don’t have the energy. I’m exhausted.

I just realized that I’m still zoned in on the TV. I try to turn my eyes away, to view these blurry people moving around in my peripheral vision, to see what they’re up to, but the effort passes quickly, as I see that the screen is now showing a picture of me in my military dress uniform. No hat, so I must have been indoors, one of the rules. There were many rules in the military, just like church. The girls had to wear a hat in church or a veil, or a handkerchief held with a bobby pin. I used to make cootie-poppers out of bobby pins, raise a whelp and a welt.

Am I on drugs, a drug flashback?

This racket everybody’s making, yakking back and forth, back and forth as if I’m not even here, reaching over to hand each other stuff across me in my bed.

What am I doing in bed and whose bed is it, it’s not my bed. It’s not even my room.

All this noise; the loudest is this constant pumping sound of that rubber and chrome contraption going up and down, up and down just at the corner of my vision, and that insistent beeper blaring an obnoxious busy signal just above my head. This continuous “whish-thump, whish-thump, beep, beep, beep, beep” seems to grow louder and louder and louder and the people murmuring, no way can I hear TV.

Now they’re airing a picture of my wife holding an infant crying at the camera, a little boy, naked. Is that my grandson or my son? They looked so much alike at that age. Little bladders of liquid shit and vomit that overflow from both ends, boneless neck and miniature fingers. They grow up, get so big, run so fast, laugh so much and then can only be seen, on TV, if you have cable.

Do I have cable?

Why do these people have to keep getting in front of the damn television set? Why is it so blamed loud in here?

All of them crowding around closer, shoulder to shoulder, looking anxiously into my face and blatantly leaning forward to get in my way, looking at those electronic graphs and charts on that computer monitor someone wheeled in with the black coils and little colored cables and wires, bobbing their heads in agreement to the droning voice above my head as a finger points at icons on the screen, taking notes on their clipboards like freshmen at the university. 

I want to see the TV, but I can only stare in that general direction too tired to even blink, too much noise to hear it anyway, beep, beep, beep, beep, whish-thump, whish-thump.

Suddenly, silence. More than silence. Everyone stands up straight, looking at me as if I caused the quiet. The bleeping busy signal has stopped, just for a moment, and then the blast of an ear-splitting electronic alarm clock buzzer, beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee … loud, more than loud.

Is that my bedside clock? Is all this just a dream, time to wake up?

Suddenly a loud voice yells “Clear!” and everyone jumps back.

At least now I can see the TV. •