Chapter One - A Profound Silence
In the kitchen, raucous noise gushed—deafening, unrelenting. Mama swung skillets, rattled the cookstove. Her radio, volume cranked, chattered like it had urgent news, but Mama didn’t hear. She was deep in her usual—channel 138.7 and that sweet church lady whose pet canaries joined in her hymns. Most days, their chirping felt like someone tapping on heaven’s window just to say hi.
Today, though, the music stalled. A voice cut through, rough and fast, announcing something about a prison break, over in Brownsville. Five men caught, one still out there.
One still on the run. That part stuck.
The announcer’s voice blasted through—"Stay inside. Lock your doors.”
Mama’s shoulder twitched. Immediately the canaries chirped like nothing happened. Bible verse. Organ hum. Birdsong.
I glanced at her with respect. I’d seen that twitch before. I watched as a hawk dove for her chickens—Mama raised her rifle, fired once. Feathers scattered.
The shot ricocheted through the gully, loud enough to reach town. I felt the echo in my ribs. That shot didn’t just ring out—it landed. Everyone knew: another hawk bit the dust on our farm.
Mama didn’t miss.
Coyotes knew it.
Hawks knew it.
Neighbors knew it.
I wondered if that twitch meant she’d already pictured the criminal—lined him up in her sights, introduced him to her eagle-eye justice. I glanced away. A twitching smile trickled across my lips. She was tiny, but mighty. I liked that.
But never mind.
That day we listened to the canaries and the Bible verses and spread the table for supper.
The clatter of Mama’s spoon against the iron skillet snapped through the house, louder than any shout. Noise meant movement. Movement meant trouble. My ears braced for the next crash—a plate, a voice.
In our house, sound didn’t travel. It chased.
She turned the radio off. Announcers and canaries gone. Outside, the crickets, in recognition of the radio’s death, burst into a full-throated concert like they’d won a competition.
Brushing sweat from her brow, Mama waved me to the cookstove and banged the skillet full of hissing potatoes next to a platter of meat. My mouth watered … potatoes and pot roast … they got my stomach growling. The odor wafted in waves.
“Help me set this out,” she snapped, like every night before. She never failed to turn cranky at suppertime. Her tone didn’t ask. It demanded.
I moved like a soldier. Not brave, just trained. Supper didn’t mean food—it meant battle formation. Scraping chairs, sharpening voices, the twitch behind every glance. And the agony of Daddy’s “blessing”.
Again, her voice—sharp and loud. “You guys get in here for supper!” It wasn’t a request. It never was. At our house, supper was a call to arms. You showed up like it was the front line, fork in one hand, nerves bundled in the other.
Yup. Time for supper.
Daddy and my brothers crowded into the house—rubbing raw elbows, cleaning garden dirt from their nails, brushing grime off their sleeves. Tan, hungry, sour as old milk.
"Scrub your hands," Mama snapped at Billy. He hit the sink three times before she let him sit. Every meal stalled while he fought her over fingernails or crusted elbows. This time, it was his face. “Go wash your face,” she snapped. Her voice like splintering glass. “You’re ten. You know better.”
Wide at the shoulders, Billy stood a couple of inches shorter than me. I was thirteen and only a little taller than Mama, who didn’t top five feet.
“I said get washed!”
Billy stomped off, and I noticed—he’d stretched again. In a couple of years, he’d tower over me. Jacob and Benjamin carried Mama’s bones. Me and Billy—lean, tall, sharp-edged like Daddy. Same fire under the skin. That fire scares me.
There’s a photo in the front room—Daddy and his brother Harry, at our age, shoulders squared. Billy and I look like them. Oralee stands beside them, a cousin we’ve never met. I study her soft face and want it for myself. Want her calm. Her grace.
Mama once said she was blind from birth. Learned a new way to see. Mama didn’t explain, not really. She left it dangling, like it wasn’t hers to tell. But she liked Oralee. It showed, and it made me oddly happy. Maybe one day I’d meet her.
In the photo, Oralee’s small, smiling. She looks younger than the boys, but braver somehow. They already carried their sour, hard mouths, their stony eyes loaded. Daring the world to hit first.
I never got why Daddy showed anger all the time. Did it come from his dad? Did it bloom on its own? Sometimes I stare at my reflection and flinch. What if I turn out like him?
Chairs scraped out like accusations. Forks and knives landed with metallic authority. Plates awaited orders. The table shuddered as Daddy dropped into his seat, elbows wide, claiming space like a general at war.
“Say grace,” Mama barked, already slicing the pot roast. Daddy didn’t fold his hands. He gripped the edge of the table, knuckles white, as if prayer was something you held on to rather than said. I kept my gaze down. Every clatter, every hiss from the skillet, felt aimed at me. Preparation for supper sounded like a battle call.
While Mama barked orders. Daddy towered in his chair. Billy slammed the washroom door. “Where you goin’?” he snapped. “It’s time to say grace.”
Daddy liked it quiet at the table. Billy pushed noise. Stomping. Scowling. Setting sparks. Mama’s fuse lit.
We took our seats. Daddy’s coal eyes seethed. Mama snapped. Billy sassed. Daddy’s gaze tunneled deep. His voice rolled—low, thick. A storm—waiting.
The crickets slowly fell silent. Like they dreaded the rest of the story.
“Boy! Get in here now, or you’ll miss every bite of supper.”
Billy stomped in, jostled Daddy’s elbow, dropped into his chair.
Daddy planted fists by his plate. His glare scorched down the row. “Bow your heads.”
We obeyed.
He dragged the prayer, testing us. Waiting. I swear a violin pierced my inner ears with a constant high E major. Intense. Waiting. I wondered if the church's saints' ears ever picked up music that sharp. Or did Daddy's sermons drown it out?
I peeked. Sure enough, Billy’s eyes locked onto a fly on the meat.
Three more words in—he swatted.
Daddy sliced off his prayer as if with a sharpened cleaver. Hush fell. Thick. Raw.
All heads down, we listened. Daddy’s silence stole our oxygen, replaced it with sucked-in dread.
Mama flushed. Jacob and Benjamin gulped air—their suffocating sweat choked the room.
My chest folded—skin crawled—like crickets scaling my arms.
Daddy locked onto Billy.
Inside, noise bled away, carved silent.
Cautious, outside, noise resumed.
Crickets harmonizing here and there.
The cow moaning for her calf. Soft.
A plane groaned overhead.
Inside, Daddy’s silence hung—a loaded guillotine.
The bruised sky smoked purple and orange. The sun fled.
My belly curled in on itself. Hunger retreated. Distress marched in.
Nothing moved. Not the air. Not even Daddy’s breath.
The blade fell.
“What’re you doing, boy?”
Thunder.
“You know better than to mess around during prayer.”
“Daddy, I didn’t do nothin’ wrong!” Billy shrieked. “I didn’t want that fly—”
“Shut up. Sit still.”
“I didn’t—”
Mama barked. “William, stop arguing.”
“I’ll handle this, Mother.” Daddy’s voice—molten.
Mama touched his wrist—gentle over clench. “Say grace, Alton. Let’s eat.” Her voice was like honey flowing.
He paused. Scanned our bowed heads.
“Bow your head, Billy.”
Billy’s eyes burned back, defiant. Daddy leaned, ready to grab.
I cracked. Head low, I hissed, “Let Daddy pray, brat,” and kicked Billy’s shin.
Mama’s glare sliced through me. Billy flinched. Shut his eyes.
Daddy restarted his prayer, jaw tight. Didn’t skip a word. Went all the way back to the beginning. After that he included Billy’s soul and mine and our list of sins too long to count. After pleading our cases to God, he finished up with prayers for the night’s church service.
By the end I knew—Like that convict, we were prisoners. Pacing our walls. Enduring sentences doled out by hard-bitten souls.
When Mama said supper. It felt like roll call. In my mind, I saw the runner—the convict not caught.
My gut twisted. Just let him escape. Find something clean. Scrub himself new.
I prayed for him.
I prayed for Billy.
… I prayed for me.
But my prayers felt hollow. Like letters to nowhere. Sealed in hope, dropped in silence.
But no echo. No reply.
Just me, pretending our house wasn’t a prison cell.
Daddy says God answers all prayers—even when the answers hurt. I’m still a kid. I want God to agree with me.
When Daddy finally ended the blessing, the food sat cold. Mama snatched the meat and potatoes and banged them back onto the stove.
Daddy stabbed me and Billy with his glare. He’d seen me kick. I always ended up in trouble for saving my brat brother.
Mama slapped the reheated pans onto the table. I poured milk. Daddy sliced bread.
The air eased. A thin bubble of quiet grew. And … of course, Billy shattered it. “Why’d I get in trouble? I only swatted a fly.” He stared at his meat. “It got on the roast while Daddy prayed. I can’t eat this.”
“I said eat!” Daddy stabbed a hunk of roast and shoved it into his mouth. Bit the meat as if it had foolishly talked back. Chomped like fury fed him.
When Daddy eats mad, it’s like he chews you instead of his food.
I watched and decided I’d yank Billy into the woods later—let Daddy cool. Billy never saw it as rescue when I did that. Argued with me every time.
“I can’t eat!” Billy’s eyes widened—the crickets paused like they knew what was coming.
—Boom.
Daddy’s fists hit the table like cannonballs.
Plates rattled. Milk glasses jumped.
I flinched. Of course. But why?
Me and Mama and the boys leaned back.
Billy froze and shot a sarcastic reply that I didn’t even notice.
While those two yelled. I stopped listening.
I watched milk crawl across Mama’s lace tablecloth—it bled into a cream-colored lake.
She’s proud of that tablecloth. She’ll blow her top.
Voices rose. I tuned them out.
Outside, crickets too long restrained, burst with song. The cow bawled. The dog yipped.
I nodded in approval ... of their symphony. Their rules.
…Their freedom.
*****
I faded into myself, eyes drifting to the window. Daydreaming. Escape. Like the convict.
The squabbling pierced my skull.
I could vanish into the woods. No voices. No fists. Just me, my dog Major, a pile of books, and whatever food we hauled. Live quiet. Eat locusts and wild honey like John the Baptist. Locusts are the same as crickets, right? I wondered if they tasted like dirt or tree sap.
Their argument spun louder. The room filled, like a jar stuffed with shouting.
Could the runner—the one that got away—be dreaming of silence too? Of forests thick enough to muffle memory?
The squabble swelled until it rattled every roof in three counties.
Then…
Wham.
Silver the size of a fork sliced past my face, stabbing into the pine wall, and hung quivering beside Billy’s ear.
My eyes bulged, staring at Daddy’s fork.
Tines buried deep. Handle shimmering, casting its glow against Billy’s skin. And while it shimmered, a flash of terror told me ... If that kid had turned his head, or moved a fraction of an inch, the fork would've hit him smack in the eye, or the temple.
The silence around our supper table told me the same terror struck everyone ... and no one moved a muscle.
The valley’s sound faucet clamped shut.
No breath.
No crickets.
No cow.
No dog.
No fight.
No sound…other than the fork’s terrible hum.
Every ear in the house, every squirrel in the gully, tuned to the silver vibration—until it stilled.
The hush swallowed us.
All eyes turned to Daddy. His voice landed low. Savage. “If I’d wanted your eye,” he said, “I’d have taken it.”
“NOW EAT.”
Billy dropped his gaze. Lowered his head. Speared a bite of meat. His ear twitched. Brushed the fork. We all shoveled food. Fast. Eyes flicking toward the silver. Voices sealed.
Inside me, something hissed—Lizzy. Run. We aren’t safe.
Not even the pulsing hymns of every cricket in the world drowned the silence that held supper hostage that night.
*****
As I tromped again on the squeaky porch board, my supper knotted up. I itched for a hard run up the trail to work off twisting anxiety. The crickets started again as I trotted through the tall grass, but they sliced off their sound before Mama scolded me. They expected her to yell. She always did.
“Come back and clean this kitchen.” Her voice crackled; fury coiled tight. Each scrape on the sticky pot bottoms, every slosh of the sponge sent a pulse through my skull, my rigid stomach. That note—high E—never left. For hours I heard it stretching through time, fraying me inside out.
Everyone avoided Daddy’s fork—left it stabbed into the wall—a warning from the future. It drooped like a shamed dog until morning when Daddy growled something and took it down. The day’s breakfast was silent.
After that supper, Mama cornered Daddy over his fork and temper. Their shouting stopped, but the fight smoldered—an underground inferno. They fell quieter than the hushed crickets.
To my thinking, they looked like they belonged in church, nailed to a wooden pew for three straight hours, roasting in brimstone. That’s what Daddy prescribed when I fussed. I smirked, bitter, imagining them side by side, sweating under a pulpit-pounding preacher’s hellfire missiles.
However, Daddy let no one preach in his church. He preferred pounding the pulpit himself. Naturally.
Sunday evening service kicked off at sundown, once the heat stopped strangling the narrow draw our town clung to.
Cooler air, long service. Their tempers would finally burn out.
I waited and watched.
***** Copyright 2026 Mary Baidenmann