Without A Day's End

When Josie awoke, a peculiar feeling stirred her through and through. The night was pitched in darkness and the silence was deafening. Not the stridulating of the smallest insect did she hear. On the farm, she would often awaken during the night to the sound of the crickets chirping their monotonous anthem. It was an unsettling feeling that arose from the sheer quietude, so much so that she compelled herself to strip back the bedsheets and inspect the house. The house was engulfed in the same blackness, but this did not disturb Josie. It was 12:30 in the morning and it would be stranger if the lights were on than off. She minced through the house on tiptoes and out the front door, onto the porch. The air was motionless and the starlight scarcely exposed the outlines of the trees. The street lights were off and the buzzing of the telephone lines was faint. Back inside, Josie poured a glass of water and climbed the stairs. She crawled back into bed and drifted off to sleep.

At dawn, she arose to participate in the making of breakfast, yet upon entering the kitchen, found the stove unattended. She pushed through the back door, strolling purposefully through the fields, and walked back into the barn. In the barn, she saw neither cow nor chicken, nor did she encounter her father or Billy, her younger brother. This was perplexing, but Josie shrugged away the ticklish feeling and started back for the house. The sun had begun to rise and the first rays of eastern light streaked across the sky. Setting aside politeness, Josie threw open her brother’s door and shouted his name. There was no response, and when Josie went in for further inspection, she gaped widely when she discovered the bed tidily made and Billy’s work uniform slung across a chair. Now Josie was unsettled. Her brother, who knew her father's demand for punctuality when it came to morning chores, had neglected work and had seemingly never come home from wherever he was the night before. Well, Mother would hear about this, and through Mother, the message would be conveyed. By now, Josie’s curiosity was piqued,and without regard for her mother’s sleep she barged into her mother’s room and approached her bedside. Once more, an uninhabited bed did she find. Further, and most disturbing, was the cleanly made bed and the work uniforms laid out, all of which suggested to Josie that no one had come home the night before. Josie’s cheeks were burning with perturbation, and, try as she might, she could not brush away her distress. Determined to untangle the web of confusion, Josie resolved to make inquiries in town. Defying her father’s commandment, Josie fished the keys out of the drawer where she knew they were always kept, and departed the house.

Outside, Josie climbed up into the exhausted tractor and brought the rusty old workhorse to life. Bobbing along the road, Josie passed Mr. Wutherson’s farm and, consumed by her curiosity, inattentively drove past the equally abandoned field. When Josie arrived in town, it was ten past eight in the morning, and the sunlight had painted the sky over in a hue of orange. The sky was unusually peaceful, and Josie sensed the same eerie quietness now as she had the night before. Despite being the small town that it was, at eight in the morning the bustle of passing cargo trucks was as common a sight as the grazing of cows or the crowing of the early-rising rooster. Yet, the town was asleep. No motion was detected, not a person astir. Carrie’s, the truck stop breakfast diner, was entirely soulless. The coffee shop held the same peculiar disposition. Well, she thought, if the working men, in their unaccustomed leisure, are sound asleep, the obligated men of the state will surely be accounted for. Josie walked to the post office. Deserted. She crossed the street and went into the police station. Vacant. Desperate, and beginning to feel alone, Josie walked two blocks down and headed into the town hall. All the incumbents have vanished or taken the day for themselves! she concluded, and wearily marched back to the tractor. She hadn’t gleaned any information, and instead began to feel very hollow inside. The whereabouts of her family were a mystery, and greater yet, the whereabouts of the town as a whole. There was reasonable explanation enough; it was just a matter of uncovering the plot, Josie decided. Climbing back into the tractor, and taking one final look around the desolate town, Josie started back towards home.

The sun had reached its zenith and was shining arduously upon Josie’s freckled cheeks. A breeze started in from the east, and the blades of grass rolled languidly against the tickle of the wind. Josie stopped along the beaten road and peered above Mr. Dunhill’s corn stalk for field workers. As she scanned the field, her heart jumped with excitement when her eyes passed over a figure in the distance. Jumping down from the tractor and working her way though the field, she approached the figure and grew awfully dispirited when she came to the realization that the figure was nothing but a long shadow cast by a pecan tree. Evidently, no one was working the fields. Slowly, Josie approached Mr. Dunhill’s porch, debating with herself all the way whether or not to knock. It was bad manners to knock uninvited on a neighbor's door. This had been impressed upon Josie from a young age and she knew it unquestionably, yet she could not let discourteous behavior, actions that could surely be amended later on, prevent her from unraveling the nature of her inconceivable predicament. Pushing away all final hesitancy, she approached the porch and, climbing the stairs, rapped the door knocker three times.

"It’s Josie Wilden”, she announced, and stepped back politely to await the arrival of Mrs. Dunhill.

Thirty minutes she waited, and received no answer. There was not even the slightest indication of movement in the house, not a creak of a floorboard, not the rush of a sink faucet; the house was determinedly empty. Yet, out of necessity, Josie knocked thrice more yet the silence persisted. Disheartened, she walked the path away and mounted the tractor once more. Back at the Wilden house, Josie contemplated what she ought to do. She settled on lunch, and ate cheese, crackers and fish. It was five in the afternoon when the idea suddenly came to her that she could check the train station. Calculating the time to and fro, she concluded that daylight would have faded before she reached home again, and it was not judicious thinking to set out for town this evening. Therefore, she resolved to go directly in the morning. The night proceeded very much in the same fashion as the previous, with the slight difference that now Josie felt much lonelier. Still, Josie was not hopeless; she reached many conclusions. It would be her birthday tomorrow, and perhaps her parents were in cahoots with the town and had put the slip on her. This warmed her. This line of reasoning was also most probable, and all others seemed tenuous when held against the prospect of a surprise party. It was a hard night’s rest for Josie; never had she felt so alone. Not that she was unfamiliar with solitude, but the quietude was oppressive. It was so dreadfully quiet. An ominous feeling had begun to dawn on her, and as she fell asleep, Josie swore she was sinking.

When Josie awoke in the morning, she conducted a meticulous examination of the household. Discovering nothing helpful and feeling utterly hopeless, Josie sulked out of the house and climbed atop the tractor, where she sunk down into the seat. Despite her fanciful conclusions from last night, she had secretly hoped her family would show up in the morning. Especially because it was her birthday. Overhead, the sky was gloomy and the sun did not shine. As she bobbed along the road down to the train station, Josie did not bother checking over the cornstalks, for she had a hunch that she would discover the fields in the same abandoned condition. The town was in the same deserted state. An understanding of the gravity of her situation was gradually entering her consciousness. Things had begun to feel ghastly. As if she were the single soul in a ghost town. At the train station, she found no salesman at the ticket booth. Knowing the arrival times by heart, she stayed planted in her seat the day over, and not a train passed through the whole time. With a woeful sigh, Josie reluctantly peeled herself from the train station seat and journeyed home. By the dim light of a candle, Josie sat alone and listened to the thunder clouds above and the rain pattering against the roof. Softly, she sang herself "Happy Birthday" and blew out the candle, climbed the stairs, and cried herself to sleep.

The next day progressed in the same way. First with checking the bedrooms, then the field, then the neighbors' fields, the town, the train station, and finally, a dim light and a puddle of tears. Ten days progressed in this manner. Then it was twenty. A year went by, and Josie aged much. Her thoughts often drifted off to her memories with her parents. How in the fall they would run through the corn mazes in November and drink cocoa in the winter. Josie had lost count of time. She was unsure how or why she was spared and never seemed capable of ridding her mind of the thought. How she yearned for her family, for the sweet comfort of their words! Longingly did she wish for even the worst days amongst them. Her days were soon consumed by revisitations to the past. She grew morose and silent, and seldom uttered a word, except on the Sabbath, as was her custom. Never did she understand what it meant to live while all others perished, and with each day, her mind became more obsessed with the idea of reuniting. It took possession of her, enraptured her and gave her spirit. This reunification was all the solace that was left for poor, miserable Josie.

Then, one night, an almighty storm began brewing. In the morning, the wind was in a frenzy, bellowing hard from the east. By midday, dark, forbidding clouds loomed overhead, and threatened with anticipation to open upon the mesa and submerge the land in a torrential downpour. The grumbling thunder came first. Then a deep roar shattered the domed sky and resounded through the empty land. A monsoon ensued and the erratic winds blew the rain laterally. Lightning, upon Josie’s doorstep, clapped the ground with Zeus’ might. Josie, with her heart set, walked through the back door and, paying no attention to the downpour, walked toward the shed. Inside, she located the old shovel and, swinging open the shed, embraced the tempest. A ways down, Josie stood before her grandmother’s grave and commenced to dig. When she had four shallow holes dug, she planted the tombstones and covered three of the graves. From her bosom, she produced a heart-shaped locket and, opening the possession, revealed a family portrait. Josie’s eyes flickered and she was transported to the day. It was sunny and warm and the sky was an azure blue. She and her brother had just received their first puppy and were overjoyed. The memory dissolved, and present grey was upon Josie once more. She kissed the locket lightly and closed it. Wistfully did she toss the locket into the final grave and slowly was the hole covered over. She smiled sadly, and all was well.