Rattle in the Dark

The drone's whirring wasn't what woke me. I'd grown accustomed to an ever present buzzing that descended upon the city every dawn, replacing cries of Red-winged Blackbirds and Chickadees, rooster calls of a modern age. I learned to drown them out until I truly believed air was born with the movement and sound of tiny propeller blades in flight. But blades hadn't woken me nor the groaning wind clamoring through the drain pipes engulfing my house in an eerie hollow moan. It was the rattling, chss-chss-chss chss-chss-chss, waking me to a hovering drone clasping a black box in alien claws. Scanning my side-door’s code and automatically signing for me, the busy winged-whippet scampered off leaving an ominous shoebox shadow neath the glass and turn-handle door. Still rattling. Swishing back and forth melodic in a metronom like way, lying motionless but shaking, chss-chss-chss. Maybe the drone had pulled a Jim Carry and punted the box robo-style down the streets, a sick parody of Pet Detective. Doubtful. In the twenty-eight years I’d gotten mail via flying messenger never once had I received a damaged or broken product. Not once.

Leaning against the wooden frame, peeking out through frost crusted glass in the wee hours of morning, I pondered this box quietly without unlocking the door. Strange since drones almost always put packages near the front fenced-in stoop. Coming round to my bedroom side door was an oddity. Perhaps, I thought smiling, I was witness to an assassin’s blunder who’d shoved a unwitting rattlesnake into a Nike box, written the wrong address, and patted themself on the back for a job well done. The shaking sounded similar to the old westerns yet too succinct, too measure for something living. Nothing alive vibrated unvarying, measured tones in the dark of a shoe box. Bending down closer with my face pressed close to the cold glass I read a note taped seamlessly atop the unmarked thing at my step.

Revive and beat against the dirt

A beating rattle’s heart

Crying babes seek love and light from out of shallow ground.

Whoever sent this was sick, genuinely fucked in the head. I tore open the door and grabbed the musically monotone prank from hell ready to throw it away, maybe burn it but when I lifted it up the entire top slid off in my hands. The type of lid was one which overlapped the entire box so I pulled the thing in two like a second skin sloughing off. And stared at the baby rattle.

Old silver, padded by silken lining, engraved with two empty eyed bears encircled by curious lacing. Sitting still yet shaking all the same, the steady chss-chss-chss chss-chss-chss quivered bout the entree and into the house.

In the sound I began to learn, through the bear's eyes came a meaning, an understanding. That I was alone and would always be. That my still born daughter was breathing under the ground by the sycamore tree and she needed her heart beat back. The rhythm I felt when I’d first heard Elsie through the stethoscope, laying awake and falling asleep to her in my ears until one night near the end she grew so, so quiet I plunged the rubber tips into eardrums and prayed stethoscopes could break. But here she was, promising return, I need only bury her once more. Running barefoot on gravel gouging blood as an awakening I clutch the black offering, cradling it sweetly. A small thing in my arms, small as Elsie when she was pulled from me steaming and lifeless. Tiny but whispering truths of rebirth, silver tongue, silver tune, silver rattle to bring back the stolen. On my knees carving out grass and earthworms from rocky soil I scratch dirt under nails, under broken nails, under nails replaced by dirt and I lay her down again neath the tree. Cover the pulse and wait, I stay, bowed head silent and believing that dark boxes come from dark places sheltering the dead. Til one comes postmarked; return to sender. Til the living grovel midst damp earth, kneeling patiently, listening to the branches wailing up above to the sound of wind.

To the wail of a rattling cry downward and rootward, unencumbered and digging upward.