rolling awake jonathan bitz Wake up. They tell you. Pay attention. In all those classrooms of your youth. On the sporting field. Wake up. Pay attention. To your grades. And your admission into the higher life. Wake up. Pay attention. To ambition. To your spirit. To all those deadlines straight ahead. Wake up. Pay attention. They tell you. "Hey…" "Hey wake up…" "Soren, wake up…" "Soren, wake up…" "You're having a bad dream…" + I hear this, often. They say it's my name. Soren. They say it out loud. Soren… From across a valley. The walls of my rooms are the ceiling of the sky and my mountains all around. But I also hear it when nobody is around. Soren… Sometimes imploring me. To action. They say it identifies me. This name. These two syllables. They say it's mine. Like I won it even before I had a chance to decline. Now I have to carry it. Make it mean something. + Picture this: You're in that moment, where the traffic jam is so bad. So congested. There's nothing but red lights in rows ahead of you. Parallel. Perpendicular. Cross-hatched. And you think, can these streets even hold all these cars? Everybody's leaving the city. Everybody. They're all running from something… But… what? When was the last time I listened to the news? Wait, what day is it today? + The day is a twenty-four hour chunk of time. Or, that's the convention. A day, for me, is defined by my bed. When I come and go from it. When I get out of it, I begin the day. When go back to it, I have ended the day. Oh, be sure, some of my days are as long as it takes to go to my mailbox, open it, retrieve some bills, and open a few. I've had days as long as telephone calls; as short as rejection letters. If I don't like what I see, I close my eyes. Sometimes I even lay down. As my life lives itself as such, I realized that I will live longer, in days, than most any other human has ever lived. The typical human will see 26,280 days. If they live for 72 years. By that time I will have lived about 70,000 days. + That was then. It is not any more. Oh, I still hear the voices. Saying, Soren. Hey, Soren… People talking toward… me - I guess is what I would call it. Me. Because what else do you call that loose bundle of impressions that you point to, when you say that dirty little word, "self"? So, wait. Is it a self. Or is it me? In each, there's only an "e". Not an I. Whichever way it's referenced, the fact is that I am without a girl in my bed. And I no longer have a bed in the city. Nor do I have the city in my head - swarming around as sirens and buses braking. That is no more. For me. For my self. For the "I" in mine. The girl moved on. And I moved out. Up to where everything's green. In the mountains, where I look into the clouds to see the lighted city scene. Up here it's quiet. And dark in the night. Outside the elk shuffle around the canyon and the highway traffic running through it. Up here, I have nobody to tell me that some things are just dreams. Up here, I have no voice to serve as both the beginning and the end - the line and the void that I call waking. Without the girl and the bed, I now sleep during the day. Work at night. I took a graveyard shift. They asked me just before Samantha left, and like it was my calling, I said yes. Now I carry a gravedigger's shovel in my trunk to complete the stunt. + I took a room in an old lady's house, on the main floor. Beneath the steps. She says that it's an old Georgian Mansion. But I tend to think it isn't any different than any of the other houses on this overgrown grassy mountainside. Up here, there is no newspaper delivery. And the old lady doesn't have a television. Or a radio. Up here, it's like last century still hasn't turned over. On Tuesday mornings the old lady waits for the dairy to come in the '46 milk truck. The old lady's house is tidy with quilts and an antique dining set. Rugs and musty fake flowers from four decades ago. The grandfather clock in the foyer doesn't chime anymore. But you can hear its arms tick and click in the quiet evenings. At night, the sound covers my steps. + The old lady comes halfway down the stairs to turn up the heat at night. Like an alarm clock it is, the creaking of the steps. Right above my head. I wake to this, and then the long stream of sound - of heat blowing over my face and bed. The old lady says she likes to have the house warm when she wakes in the morning. I dress, shower, smoke, and eat in the silence of the soft hum of heat before I leave. I keep the lamp in the living room on, because the old lady told me so. + I haven't heard the news for months now. I can't even recall the last time I saw a newspaper with a date on it. With pictures of people out there. Doing things. Seeing events. Causing conflict. Getting in and out of their cars. Having beginnings and endings. Since I've moved, it takes me 90 minutes to reach the city. 90 minutes in the middle of the night. Dead silent. No traffic, except under the red lights and street lamps. Sometimes though, I can look over at the drivers next to me in the canyon. 45 miles an hour, round the bends. The green lights of the dashboards on their faces. I wonder if they're listening to the radio. Or the news. I try to see whether I am awake or not. Never in my dreams have I heard the news. Or read it. Not in my dreams. + The first night up here, I went out to my car and was shaken by the sound of hooves pounding at the earth. Somewhere, out in the dark there was a mass of something. In the middle of the "I" in my everything. When I put my key in the car door I heard the most tortured and sorrowful sound I had ever heard. And it wasn't me. It was something else, out there. In the woods. It was mournful, dissonant and I thought surely something is dying. It echoed throughout our little valley. I had never heard anything die before. And I never really thought I'd actually use the shovel in my trunk. The next day I learned that it's the season for elk, and bugling. "No… they're not dying. They're mating…" The old lady said. For weeks I heard this sound, that mourning bugle. I sat in the heat of a well-lit room, eating my breakfast; and looking up and into the glass of the windows. Watching my reflection. Getting ready for my graveyard shift. + For several nights on end, the old lady started coming downstairs, just before I left for work at night. When I was in the kitchen. Eating. "Did you hear something, last night?" She asked, standing over me. I shook my head, shoveling my reheated breakfast dinner into my head. "Do you exercise on the stairs, or something?" She asked. "I don't." "Not even push-ups or something?" I shook my head as I shoveled some food inside. "Huh," she said, "'cos I heard something… footsteps on the stairs, last night." The next two nights, she came down again. "The footsteps are coming all the way up the stairs. To my door. What time is it that you leave again?" "Midnight." I replied. "Well, this was certainly after midnight." Pause. "And, well… this morning… the front door was unlocked. You don't have a key, so…" "No," I replied, "I don't have a key…" + The old lady never gave me a key. Why, I'm not sure. She didn't show me any of the other rooms in the house either. When I leave at night, I shut the front door and it locks behind me. When I come back, the old lady's awake. And so I knock. But everyday it's been getting harder for her to hear my knock. Like I'm growing quieter. Softer. She only tells me about the footsteps at night. When I'm eating in the dusty light of the kitchen light dangling. + "Now, I had Sheriff Tariff get me a background check on you…" I looked over my shoulder, like somebody was talking to me. "Isn't that what landlords do?" "Sure. But I just got yours today." The old lady stepped onto the kitchen's peeling linoleum squares. "It doesn't say anything…" I took a bite of a sausage patty and stared into the light fixture above me. It was hanging like the ceiling was a Cottonwood tree. The heat from the ducts was moving it slowly around. I heard a chair pull out next to me. The light intoxicated my senses and I couldn't see her. I just stared into the space where I heard her sound. "So, if you were going to do weird things, why would you start now?" She asked. "Weird things?" I replied, blindly. "I can hear you coming up the stairs…" "I've never even seen what the thermostat looks like," I replied. "Well," the old lady laughed confidently, "you can walk up the stairs without seeing the thermostat." "No, I'm saying that I haven't ever walked up those stairs… You never gave me a tour of the upstairs…" "Now, young man…" She didn't use the name. Soren. The haze of the light was clearing. "Why were the sheets in the guest room ruffled-up, like somebody laid in that bed, just last night?" I looked earnestly in her direction. "Sure… a great big 'ol body print in that bed. Big as somebody like you…" She paused and looked at the cracks in the old kitchen table. "I was in that room two days ago and the bed was perfectly made…" That was it. She said no more. And never did she say my name. Soren. + It had been three weeks since the old lady had said anything about footsteps. That they were going up her stairs. Past her thermostat. At her door. But still, every night, I heard her walking above my bed. Coming down the stairs to turn on the heat. And for three weeks I woke, dressed and ate - all by myself when the heat came on. Then I left. In ritual, I walked outside as quiet as I could, hoping not to stir the elk. I got into my car without fright and drove off, down the mountain. Alone with only the green light from my dials lighting the tip of my nose. Not even memories of previous passengers, in the seat smiling next to me were of any consequence. And every night when I pulled out onto the highway, there was no traffic. Everything was stable. And silent. Nobody seemed to be in their car - racing from the metropolis like something had happened. Like the tornado sirens were going off and I didn't know it. Then, one lonesome night, somewhere out there in the dark, came a pair of headlights. For ten, fifteen minutes they came. Behind me. Behind me. At the same pace. Finally the lights came up, and knelt down beside me. Cruising we were, together… Like I was really there. Like they were acknowledging my presence. It was a van, white in the pale moonlight. I sat upward, looked taller. Then steadied my hand and shifted my weight - to get a look over at it. I leaned up and over the passenger side window. Then I leaned further up. I saw no head. No arms. No green light on a face. All I saw was a seat. I pressed back into my cockpit. I looked over the dials, the gear shifter - all for comfort. With my arms fully extended, out and onto the steering wheel, I exhaled. There was nobody driving the van. I sank back and slowed my car a bit. To let it pass. But the van didn't. Like it locked hubs with me, it stayed right in revolution. In the dead of night. In the middle of the mountains where help is miles away. I tilted my seat back so the door jamb was in my eyes. Ahead, I could see the moon just over the blackened hills. For miles and minutes we rode side by side. I gave another strong look over and through the window of the van. And all I could see was the driver's seat. There was nobody driving the van. + I spoke nothing of this, or anything else, to anybody. I just went to work. Clocked-in. Clocked-out. This is also to say that it had been weeks since I received a phone call. Months since I made one. The girl in the city - I never saw her again, let alone spoke to her. The small amount of people that were around me, in my life, were only in bright midnight convenience stores paying for gas, and out on the road, under stoplights. I passed right through them. And they, through I. I could feel their warmth brush past me like shoulders, knees, feet - stepping off to somewhere away from me. It has been a close-forever since the last time I heard a real face mouth those two syllables: Soren. + Now I return to the old lady's house and the front door is just open. She's never there. And so I just go into my room. The grandfather clock hiding my steps. For weeks following the dead white van, the old lady didn't come downstairs and turn on the heat. For weeks, I woke, late. Nobody seemed to notice. My boss didn't phone me for reports or status, or… anything, anymore. The phone on my desk, at work, I unplugged. I stood up and looked around the office. The guy in the corner, he wasn't there anymore. The lady by the elevator, on vacation? Now even the lights were only half-on when I came in to work. Then I got up from my desk. There wasn't anybody in the entire building. I was inhabiting spaces that nobody else cared to. + Then, I was beginning to develop a talent for forgetting everything outside of me. Past and future included. I was beginning to forget what old faces looked like. Where I once had a clear representation of a face, or a scent - I now only had washed-out impressions. Vague ideas. I was narrowing my world. Living now only in the specious present, that moment that is gone before you can conceptualize it. And I woke for work, every night - late. The old lady still hadn't come down to turn on the heat and I was growing cold. And every night it was the same. I drove down the highway. Thirty minutes with only the rush of the wind at my windows. My stomach full from breakfast. My hair, wet from showering. My yawns, tired and telling me to go back. Bed awaits. Nobody knows… Then, I look over, and out of my silent night comes the shake of headlights. Off the mirror pavement, up and into the trees. My stomach shook and trembled. The headlights were creeping up, at that pace… I hunkered back in my seat and stared at the horizon plane of the highway. Concentrated on only the road ahead. I didn't see any yellow signs of impending doom. But in my mirrors, I could see those headlights. Creeping. Creeping. Finally, in one frantic push, it came into soft focus. And there it was, one more time, the dead white van. I slowed and let the van pull all the way up to me. But it slowed too, and the anxiety welled-up in my throat. For minutes it was like hours. I had to know. Was this the same white van? Was anybody driving it? Maybe I just missed the driver last time. Maybe they went in back, for a snack. I kept looking over my shoulder. Undoubtedly, it was the same van. Mimicking my pace. Teasing my curiosity. Then, just before the city lights, it pulled up a little farther. I craned my neck for a look. And then it locked hubs with mine. Perfect. Like it knew I needed to see that… there was… nobody driving the van. I don't remember the road after that. Whether or not I stayed in my lane. I don't know if I made big grand attempts to get a better look for a driver. I don't know. But then I came-to. Because in the strange way that fate lives in my life - we hit no traffic lights. There was no pausing. For another look. Just a soft careen at the big highway junction. I left. The van, was right. Over my shoulder, I watched its taillights fade over a hill as it pushed around the city, and not into it. Headless. I waved goodbye, "I will never see you again." + Now, I am standing in the darkness, the hush of everything gone. It's wrapped around my ankles, swallowing me like a cancer. I look around the black room for my shadow - for anything strange. I look around all the time for something that proves I am still among the living. I feel breath expand and contract my lungs. I am silence. I am that rush of wind that wakes you at night. I am passing through you on the street. I am Soren. Two syllables are barely audible unless you roar.