Roscoe

Roscoe and the Sounds

Roscoe sat up when the balloon burst, but of course there was no balloon. He had been visiting the Museum of Forgotten Sounds and on the wall he found a sign: “Call me and I will come to free you.” He did not know who might be the “I” of the statement. He went on to listen to the triangle the junkman jangled, the pumper’s bells when the horses came out the firehouse door, the sound of Owen Ward’s ice pick when Owen stuck it into a cake of ice, the Jewish peddler’s voice chanting pineapples for sale, “Pineys, pineys, the things with the shtickies on them.” Roscoe heard the women in black dresses and black head-kerchiefs speaking a foreign tongue as they cut dandelions from the field and dropped them into a cloth sack. He heard the bolt action of an ’03, the bell of the horse car entering the Lumber District, St. Joseph’s church bell on the morning of his father’s funeral, the bell on Judge Brady’s cow, the scissors sharpener’s emery wheel grinding the butcher knife. The sounds seemed to imply trauma. A voice from the gramophone asked, “In what year did compassion win the election?” As he left the museum, the female usher told him, “Call me and I will come to free you.”