- Prologue -
The Sound Before Supper
By the time Mama told me to call the men to supper, deep emerald shadows stretched across the pasture. Every cricket in the county chirped the evening’s song. Their wild, eardrum-pounding symphony throbbed into the thick evening air, echoing in my ears.
Mama rattled in the kitchen, making fried potatoes and meat for supper. “Tell Billy to get in here,” she barked.
A mosquito buzzed and landed on my arm. I smashed it real quick, and glanced down the hill, looking for Billy. Inside the barn, the cow murmured to her calf. Soft. Her low moo oozing through the evening shadows. I pictured Billy stripping sweet milk from her udder as he sat on his three-legged milking stool. His angelic voice blended with the crickets’ wild whirr, as he sang “Amazing Grace” to soothe the cow.
Somehow, it felt like the universe floated in a fragile bubble of calm. Billy, the cow, and the crickets’ symphony sounded like thick quiet pouring from a faucet. I hung back, soaking in the outpour. I didn’t want it to end.
I mused as to how all those creatures, singing at full volume, created a sense of deep silence? So soothing, you could believe in peace. Almost…
For a moment, I thought I did believe.
But—
Mama’s voice shattered the bubble with a whip across the silence. “I said, tell Billy to get in here!”
And just like that, my peace was gone. It didn’t matter. In our house, peace was a myth whispered in stories. By 1958, my first year of high school, I’d already learned: quiet never meant safe. At least not in our family. For us, the summer weeks and months slogged by as we scrambled from one bitter squabble to the next.
“Girl! Do what I tell you. Get Billy in here. Tell him to get cleaned up!” She barked again.
Our supper table—forever a battlefield. I dreaded each meal, but my insistent stomach growled again. I hopped on the squeaky board on the front porch and hollered toward the barn.
“Come to supper!”
Like a heavy door, the faucet slammed shut, crickets gone. Music gone. Plugged mid-spill. A tide of music hushed on cue, swept through the valley—a sea of silence. I settled beneath it, floating inside a quiet that wrapped around me.
It was mine now. A refuge. A trap.
The concert I’d clung to unraveled. Cold abandonment bled through the seams. I didn’t speak. Didn’t move, but folded inward—soft, small. The silence wasn’t only around me. I’d let it in.
Whatever peace the valley poured into me vanished. The crickets’ silence left a vacuum. Unfiltered noise waited to fill it inside the kitchen door.
My stomach growled, and the porch floor creaked beneath me. Billy stepped out of the barn, swinging his bucket through the throbbing silence.
I tensed—like clockwork.
Time for supper.
***** Copyright 2026 Mary Baidenmann