Commutation 

There were six wheels that day, two more than normal. I used to think that was the reason for all the carnage, but now I know those two extra wheels were simply following the path of the other four, just like the two rear wheels followed in the path of the two in front. So really, the two front tires were responsible for all the damage.  

Long ago, I forgave the two rear tires of the pickup and the two tires of the trailer. Anyhow, no matter the number of wheels, many locusts were killed that day when we drove down the dirt road toward my grandmother’s house in Oklahoma. This was the house she got from the Chickasaw Nation late in her life.  

Geron walked down the right-side rut of the cracked dirt road toward town. It was hot, and he really wanted a cold drink from Jimi’s Mart, the local convenience store. It hadn’t rained in a long while, but the humidity was still oppressive. Dark rings of sweat spread beneath his arms and under his carryall. 

His boots bothered him most. Despite the moisture in the air, the road was dry. A fine dust coated everything it touched. Each step kicked up a small cloud that settled back onto his new black boots, turning them a dull brown. Auntie had sent them to him last week, and already they looked worn and tired, like they’d belonged to someone else before him. 

Geron was also worried about his lack of cash. He had a charge account at Jimi’s, but he hadn’t paid in a while. Sara might still let him put it on credit, but if Vernon was there, things would be different. Vernon was the owner, the same smug Vernon from Mill Creek High School, the one who always got a new car every Christmas from his daddy’s Ford dealership. His latest was a bright blue F-150, the kind of truck that wanted to be seen. As Geron neared the store, he noticed it wasn’t parked out front. Maybe luck was with him today. 

Inside, the swamp cooler hummed like a living thing. Cold air drifted from the coffin coolers in the back, each one breathing relief. Sara stood behind the counter, quiet as ever, stocking the cigarette rack. Geron greeted her with a nod before wandering the aisles. 

He filled his basket slowly, thinking about what he needed and what he wanted, two lists that didn’t often overlap. Every item he placed inside seemed to weigh a little heavier than the last. He figured if his total stayed under a hundred dollars, Sara might let it slide. As he rounded the end of the back aisle, Geron saw a crushed locust pressed flat against the tile. He stepped around it without thinking, then stopped and looked back. One of its hind legs had moved. Or maybe the cooler had kicked on and stirred it: 

I know they were locusts because I later wrote a school report on the difference between grasshoppers and locusts. Did you know that all locusts are grasshoppers, but only one family of grasshoppers are locusts? Grasshoppers are usually solitary, and locusts are known for their ability to swarm. So, these were definitely locusts, the kind that entirely covered the one-lane dirt road we drove down to Sukiye’s house. 

Grasshoppers can transform into locusts under the right conditions - crowding, heat, hunger. Something changes inside them, chemically, and they become something else. There’s a good article about it in Scientific American, “When Grasshoppers Go Biblical: Serotonin Causes Locusts to Swarm.” I used most of it in my fifth-grade paper, but I didn’t cite it. Mrs. Browne might have thought I plagiarized it. I just didn’t want her to know that I’d learned more about transformation than I was ready to explain. 

Geron was so lost in his shopping that he didn’t notice when Vernon’s truck rolled up outside. He didn’t see Vernon walk in or slide behind the counter. He only noticed the weight of the basket in his arms and the ache that ran through his shoulders. 

When he finally reached the beer cooler, he lifted the lid and let the cold spill over him like a blessing. Then all of a sudden, smack. A hard, flat hand across the back of his head. 

“What’s up, Gamey? Tryin’ to cool down the whole store?” 

Geron turned. Vernon’s mouth curled into that familiar half-grin, half-grimace. 

“Nothing,” Geron muttered. 

“Nothing?” Vernon stepped closer. “Then why you got your grubby hand on my cooler lid? You can’t afford what’s in there. You ain’t got no money, and you sure as hell ain’t gettin’ any more credit. Did you pay your bill, Grubby? Hey, Sara, did he pay his tab?” 

“I got a check coming Friday,” Geron said softly. 

“You got a check?” Vernon laughed. “From where? You ain’t got no job, boy.” 

Geron closed the cooler lid and carried his basket to the counter. “I’m sorry for causing more work,” he said, setting it down gently in front of Sara. Then he turned and stepped back into the heavy heat. 

The quiet hit him first. It was so still, the air seemed to have stopped breathing. No cicadas, no trucks, no trains in the distance. The world felt paused, like a held breath waiting to exhale. Geron stood in the middle of the road and looked down at its length. The dust shimmered, alive with small movements. 

At first, he thought it was the heat waves, but then he saw them - hundreds, thousands of locusts rising from the dirt, small brown bodies twitching and lifting, wings catching the sunlight like shards of glass. 

They weren’t dead after all. Just waiting. 

Geron watched as the swarm thickened, the air trembling with their motion. They filled the space between him and the horizon, rising and falling in waves, like a pulse, like memory. He thought of Grandma Ma and her shotgun, of Sukiye and the land she got too late in life, of Gene yelling at the cowboys on TV. Every story, every wound, every name was just another wingbeat. 

He took a step forward, and the locusts parted for him, circling and reforming behind. The sound grew louder, almost human. A roar composed of a thousand small hungers. Geron felt it fill him, shake him, hollow him out. 

Then, for the first time in a long while, he smiled. 

The road stretched ahead. The same road that had once run beneath six wheels and a thousand crushed bodies. But now, it shimmered with life again.  

He adjusted the strap on his carryall, looked toward the horizon, and began walking. The locusts followed. 

Inheritance Dust 

Geron woke to the sound of wind scraping along the siding of the house like dry fingers. He didn’t have a clock, but the light coming through the curtains was gray and heavy, the kind that made you feel like the day had already passed you by before it even started. 

He lay there for a while, listening to the wind. There were no trains today either. No cattle trucks grinding their way up the hill, no dogs barking. Just wind and dust and the faint rattle of the loose tin on the shed. 

When he finally swung his legs out of bed, his heel landed on a dead moth. It crumbled under his foot before he could stop himself. Geron wiped the dust from his sole and sat there for a minute, staring at the crushed wings sticking to the floorboards.  

“Sorry,” he said aloud.  He’d started saying that a lot lately - to bugs, to the air, to nobody at all. 

The day before, he’d walked all the way to Jimi’s Mart, only to end up leaving empty-handed. Sara had given him a small wave as he’d left, but she didn’t say anything. He figured she was just keeping peace while Vernon hovered behind her like a watchtower. 

Now, he thought about walking back, though he had no real reason to. His cellar was still half full of canned food, and he could always pump water from the well behind the house. But the thought of sitting alone another whole day made his chest feel hollow.  

He grabbed his hat from the nail by the door and stepped out. 

The wind had picked up. Dust moved across the yard in soft curls, gathering against the porch posts. It had a way of building small dunes against everything - fence wire, boot heels, even the corners of the feed trough. Every few seconds, the wind carried a single, faint sound, like whispering in another room. 

Geron started walking toward town, following the same dirt road that seemed to stretch forever, the same one that had carried him to his grandmother’s house long ago: 

Sukiye stood on the porch as I looked back through the dust and dirt that caked up the back window of the car. She was facing sideways, away from us as we drove off. It was like she was looking at something in the distance, but I knew that couldn't be true. Sukiye was blind, and she had been since birth. Of course, if you didn't know her personally, you might never realize that she couldn't see a speck. The way she walked around the house was as good as any sighted person and better than most. 

As Geron walked, he saw a figure up ahead, bent low over something on the road. It took him a moment to realize it was a boy, maybe twelve or thirteen, poking at something with a stick. 

“You alright there?” Geron called out. 

The boy looked up, startled, then pointed to the ground.  

“Snake,” he said. 

Geron walked closer. The snake was small, tan with darker bands across its back, probably a prairie rattler, though it wasn’t moving anymore. It had been run over, its body cut clean in two. The tail was still coiled tight as if it hadn’t realized it was dead yet. 

“Did you kill it?” Geron asked. 

The boy shook his head. “Truck did. I was just lookin’.” 

Geron crouched beside him. The air smelled faintly metallic, like iron and heat. “Sometimes they keep twitchin’ after,” he said. “Body don’t get the message right away.” 

The boy nodded but didn’t look away. “You think it hurts?” 

Geron thought about that. He wanted to say no, that the snake had probably gone before it even knew what hit it. But he remembered other things that lingered - sounds, faces, old shame. Things that stayed alive in the body long after they should’ve died. 

“Maybe for a little while,” he said. 

The boy didn’t answer. He just laid the stick down beside the snake and stood up. “I’m supposed to be fishin’ at the pond. You wanna come?” 

Geron hesitated. “Ain’t got no pole.” 

“I got two,” the boy said. “One’s broke, but it still works.” 

The pond was shallow and green, a rim of cattails circling the edge like old sentinels. The water barely moved, but it reflected the sky so cleanly that it made Geron dizzy. The boy, who introduced himself as Caleb, cast his line and sat down on a rock, kicking one leg back and forth. 

Geron took the broken pole, careful not to tangle the line. He didn’t expect to catch anything, and he didn’t care much.  The stillness-  

Grandpa was the one who used to stock the pond with fish, but he'd been gone for a decade or more. Ain't nobody done much with the pond since then. I mean, old man Cox still pumped it full of water when the level got low so his cows would have something to drink. But he never put no money into it like grandpa.  

Anyhow, it never made much sense to me. Grandpa would buy fish and put them in the pond to only try and catch them later. Why not cut out the middleman? Why not simply buy fish and eat them, one at a time?  

For a while, neither of them spoke. Only the hum of insects and the slow lap of wind against the cattails filled the air. 

Then Caleb said, “You live in that old house down the road, don’t you? The one with the red pump?” 

“Yeah,” Geron said. “That was my grandma’s place.” 

Caleb looked at him. “The one with the shotgun?” 

Geron smiled faintly. “That’d be her.” 

“My uncle says she scared off the cattle men that tried to buy her out. Said she fired over their heads.” 

Geron nodded. “She didn’t miss by much.” 

Caleb grinned, wide, and genuine. “That’s cool.” 

Geron looked down at the water. He thought about his grandmother - how she’d guarded her little piece of land like it was a kingdom, even after it stopped being worth anything. He thought about his mama, who’d left the land and then the world, and about himself, who had somehow ended up right back here again. 

“You ever feel like the dirt remembers?” Geron asked. 

Caleb shrugged. “You mean, like, remembers people?” 

“Yeah,” Geron said. “Or maybe not people. Just remembers... that something lived here.” 

The boy didn’t answer. But after a while, he reached into the pond and pulled out a handful of mud, letting it drip through his fingers. “Feels alive,” he said simply. 

Geron smiled. “Yeah. It does.” 

They didn’t catch anything that day, but when the sun started to set, the pond lit up gold. Every ripple turned into fire. Geron felt the heat slide across his skin, same as always, but this time it didn’t feel like punishment. It felt like the light was trying to tell him something he’d forgotten long ago. 

When they finally packed up, Geron turned toward home. Caleb waved once and started back the other way, his shadow long and thin across the dust. 

The wind had died down. The air was still again, and for a moment, Geron thought he could hear wings - soft, dry, familiar, somewhere far off in the fields. 

He didn’t look back. He just kept walking until the sound faded into the steady rhythm of his own boots, one after the other, the road stretching ahead like a promise he hadn’t yet broken. 

Static Bloom 

Sara worked the counter at Jimi’s Mart for nearly eight years, though most folks thought it had been longer. She had a way of blending into the sense of the place, the dust and sweetened air of the swamp cooler, the faint hum of the refrigerators. To the regulars, she wasn’t so much there as she was part of the building itself, like the squeak in the front door or the fading sign that still promised: “Ice Cold Beer - Always.” 

Each morning she’d arrive before the sun had burned the mist off the fields, unlocking the double doors and listening to the tinny bell ring out like a question that no one ever answered. Sometimes she’d stand there for a while, looking at the still aisles and the strange peace that existed only before a store opens, when everything is waiting to be chosen.  

She liked that part best. The quiet. The promise of something unspoken: 

I remember that store. I remember how it smelled of gas, sweat, and sugar — a scent that clung to your skin like regret. Sara was there, always there, standing in that pale half-light, counting out time in cartons of cigarettes and cans of soda.  

When Geron used to come in, she noticed how he walked softly, as if he was afraid to disturb the dust. He’d nod but never smile. Most people thought him strange, but Sara never did. She saw something fragile in him, not weakness, exactly, but the kind of gentleness that doesn’t survive in towns like theirs. She let him charge what he needed, even when Vernon complained. 

“Man’s gotta drink somethin’,” she’d say quietly, eyes fixed on the till. Vernon would grunt, and she’d take the blame later if the books didn’t balance. 

After Vernon’s death - the heart attack, sudden and mean - Sara didn’t say much about it. She worked the next morning as if nothing had changed, though the town buzzed with gossip. Folks came in to ask questions, pretending to buy gas and sandwiches. Sara just rang them up and nodded. 

Only once, when the last customer had gone, did she pause to look out the window. The blue pickup still sat out front, gathering dust. She could see her reflection faintly in the glass - her face, his truck - both unmoving, both waiting for something that would not come: 

Sometimes I think that’s how grief works out there, not as a cry or a wail, but as stillness. The way silence sits down and refuses to leave. We like to say people disappear, but mostly, they just stay behind in a quieter form. 

Sara began tending to the patch of weeds that grew along the back wall of the store. At first, it was just something to do while the cooler rattled and the sun dropped low. But as weeks passed, she noticed that the weeds weren’t weeds at all. They were sunflowers - wild ones, stunted but stubborn, pushing through the gravel. She watered them from an old beer can. 

She never told anyone about them. It was her secret. 

Every evening, after closing, she’d step out back and stand among them, letting the static hum of the swamp cooler fade into the hum of cicadas. Sometimes she’d hum too, soft and tuneless, watching the petals catch what little light was left. 

One night, when the sky turned the same purple gray as bruised skin, she saw someone walking the road. A silhouette she thought might be Geron. But whoever it was didn’t stop or wave. Just kept walking into the horizon, swallowed by dust and distance. 

Sara turned back toward the store and locked the door: 

There’s something holy in that, the way people vanish and reappear in memory. Maybe that’s what Sara understood better than anyone. That all of us, Geron included, are just small movements in a long field of dust, the living and the gone stirring the same air, taking turns keeping watch. 

The next morning, the sunflowers had bloomed wide and wild. Their faces turned east toward the rising heat. She stood there a long time before unlocking the door, hand resting on the key, the hum of the cooler spilling out behind her like a long, mechanical sigh.  

Then she smiled and whispered something the wind carried away before it could be heard. 

Signal Ground 

When the power lines first came down, no one thought much about it. Wind like that always took something with it — a roof shingle, a fence board, sometimes a whole shed if the ground was soft. Some said the storm had come up from the south, riding the riverbeds and dry creek gulches like it had been waiting all summer to be remembered. 

Elias watched it from his porch; bare feet planted on the cool boards. The lightning had stopped by then, but the air still flashed pale every so often, like the sky hadn’t yet convinced itself it was done. Somewhere down the road, he could hear the faint hiss of the high lines sparking, the hum that comes when things try to carry more than they can hold. 

By morning, the world was quieter. The wind had dropped. The light had gone back to its dull November gray. He found a branch through the side window of his truck, and the radio antenna bent like a question mark. When he tried to start the engine, it clicked twice and died. 

He sat there a while, listening to the stillness that follows storms. There was that peculiar hush when every living thing holds its breath to see what’s left: 

When the first radio tower went up near town, my father told me it was a miracle. Said voices could travel now, not by road or letter, but by air itself. I used to think the air was empty. Didn’t realize it was crowded with all the things we’d said and forgotten. 

By noon, Elias had decided to walk into town. He didn’t have much reason except to see who else was still around. The store might have its generator running, and maybe the cooler would still hum. He followed the gravel road that led toward the highway, past the broken fenceline and the ditch full of brown water. 

Every so often he’d catch a faint crackle, the sound of something electric still alive somewhere — a transformer, maybe, or the last gasp of a dying radio. It reminded him of voices, though there were none to be found. 

At the edge of the field, he saw the old repeater tower. Half its frame was twisted, the top canted sideways. For years, it had blinked red into the night like a slow heartbeat. Now it was dark.  

He stopped and looked up at it, waiting for a blink that didn’t come: 

Dad used to keep a shortwave set on the kitchen counter. Big green dials, heavy as sin. He’d turn it on after dinner, the static rolling in like rain. Said he could hear the world if he listened long enough — fishermen in the Gulf, pilots over Nevada, sometimes even a voice reading scripture from some faraway church. I tried once, but all I ever found was noise. Still, I liked how it sounded. Like the ocean, if the ocean had a voice. 

When Elias reached Jimi’s Mart, the windows were dark. The bell above the door hung still, and the air smelled of dust and diesel. A single flashlight beam moved behind the counter. Sara looked up when he entered. 

“Generator’s dead,” she said. “Been out since midnight.” 

He nodded, “Storm take it?” 

“Or Vernon,” she said with a small smile.  

“He used to fix it when it went. Guess it’s my turn now.” 

Elias picked up a warm bottle of water and set it on the counter, “I can take a look after,”  

Sara hesitated, then nodded. “You always were better with wire.” 

They sat in the half-dark a while, the only sound the faint tick of the ceiling fan moving on inertia alone. Outside, the world glowed pale through the windows — the strange light that comes when clouds press too low to be ignored. 

“Feels different,” she said quietly. 

“What does?” 

“The air. Like it’s listening.” 

Elias didn’t answer. He knew what she meant. The storm had stripped the town bare — no hum, no buzz, no low undercurrent of electricity holding everything together. Just the raw sound of breath and dirt. 

When he went out back, the generator was half-buried in wet leaves. He cleaned the intake, checked the plugs, and pulled the cord. It sputtered, coughed once, then caught. A low hum filled the air again — mechanical, steady, alive. 

Sara stepped outside, wiping her hands on a rag. “You did it.” 

Elias nodded, but he was listening to something else. The hum wasn’t alone. Beneath it, soft and nearly imperceptible, came another sound - faint, rhythmic, almost like whispering through a radio left just off the right frequency: 

Static never really stops. Even when you tune past it, it’s still there, filling every gap between stations, every silence. Scientists say that some of it is left over from the birth of the universe. The afterglow of beginnings that never went out. I think about that sometimes, how even endings leave a kind of light if you know how to listen. 

That night, the power came back for most of the county, but Elias left his lights off. He sat on the porch again, the air cool against his skin. Out in the dark, the tower still leaned, broken, and quiet. But the static was back - faint, patient, familiar. 

He closed his eyes and let it fill the silence, the sound of something searching for a signal that might never come. 

And when the wind moved through the wheat like a breath drawn deep and released, he almost thought he heard a voice there - not words exactly, but the shape of them. 

He smiled, barely, and whispered to the dark, “Still here.” 

The static answered. 

Resonant Earth 

By the time spring came, the grass had grown tall around the base of the fallen tower. Most folks in town forgot about it, but Elias didn’t. He walked out there nearly every evening after the sun dropped behind the ridge. The metal still caught the light, dull red and bruised, like something half-buried trying to rise again. 

He brought a wrench once, thinking maybe he’d right the tower. But when he placed his hand on the steel, it was warm - not from the sun, but from within, as if the earth beneath it hummed with its own current. He left the wrench where it fell and sat down beside the tangled legs instead: 

Grandma used to say the ground listens longer than people do. Said every footstep pressed a word into it. I thought she meant it like a story, like poetry. But sometimes, when the wind is still, I swear I can hear those words again, moving just below the dirt. 

That year, the rain never quite came. The ponds dried to cracked beds, and the fields turned a pale, trembling yellow. Even the locusts stayed quiet. 

Sara kept the store running on routine - morning coffee, deliveries, the hum of the cooler that never quite cooled. After Vernon died, and then the storm, she’d learned to stop waiting for things to fix themselves. When she saw Elias through the window some afternoons, walking the road alone, she’d nod once, a silent greeting.  

Sometimes he came in for water or nails. Sometimes for nothing at all. 

“You still hearing it?” She asked one day, as he placed a jar of pickles on the counter. 

“Hearing what?” 

Saradidn’t look up, “That sound. You said it was in the fields.” 

“Sometimes.” 

“I believe you.” 

They didn’t talk about it again. 

There was a time when every summer evening smelled like lightning. The fields would hum right before the storm, and you could feel it - the air thick with charge, waiting for the sky to split open. Sukiye used to say that’s when the ground’s closest to speaking. Said if you pressed your ear to the soil, you’d hear it breathing. 

By midsummer, strange things began to happen. Radios in town crackled even when unplugged. The old church bell rang one night with no wind to move it. And near the tower, the wheat began to bloom early - the stalks thicker, greener than any others in the county. 

Elias took it as a sign, though he couldn’t say what of. The hum was louder there now, steady as a heart under the soil. Sometimes he’d bring a chair and just sit, listening until dusk. 

One night, Sara came too. She didn’t say why. She just walked across the field and stopped beside him, her boots sinking slightly into the soft ground. 

“You hear it?” He asked. 

She closed her eyes. For a long time, there was only the sound of wind brushing through the grass. Then, faintly - a pulse, low and patient, like something ancient waking beneath their feet.  

Sara opened her eyes.  

“Feels alive,” she whispered. 

Elias nodded, “maybe it always was.” 

They sat there until the stars came out, until the hum faded into the rhythm of crickets and breath.  

When she finally stood, she brushed the dust from her hands. “You think it’s dangerous?” 

Elias smiled faintly. “Everything that’s alive is.” 

After the tower fell, I took a handful of soil from beneath it and kept it in a jar by my bed. Sometimes I’d open it at night, just to smell it - that mix of iron and rain. I swear, some nights, it pulsed. Like it was waiting to grow back into something we forgot. 

By late summer, the fields had gone wild. The wheat near the tower glowed faintly at night - not bright, just enough to see the outlines. Some folks said it was phosphorous in the soil; others said Elias had lost his mind. But no one came out to see for themselves. 

On the last evening before the first frost, he went out there one more time. The air was cold enough to sting, and the tower was almost hidden by the waving stalks. He stood still and listened. 

The hum was softer now - distant, like a lullaby traveling underground. He knelt, placed his hand flat against the dirt, and felt it: slow, steady, kind. 

When he looked up, the horizon shimmered, not with light, but with movement. The field was breathing.  

He smiled, as if recognizing something long lost. Then he whispered, “Still here.”  

The wind answered. 

Maybe that’s what memory really is - not the keeping, but the staying. The part that refuses to vanish, even after the rest of us do. The way earth remembers every sound it’s ever swallowed and hums them back, one grain at a time.