Swing Low: Chapter 3

The sound of your own voice.

There is nothing wrong with being a dreamer, so long as you are also a doer. Dreams are what fuel ambitions.                  -B.C. Crow

So I've been recording my voice as I verbally proofread these chapters. I gotta say, I don't like the sound of my own voice. Have you ever felt that way?

It seems that anyone I ever talk to, hates listening to a recording of their own voice. Now if you listen to my little podcasts, you'll also notice something else. Just me reading something sounds much worse than acting.

When I first started recording these chapters, I was curious to see how good I could make them sound. Now I'm realizing that a more realistic goal, is not making them sound as terrible as my unprofessional voice seems to trend. If you've ever actually listened to an audio book and compared it to say, my readings, you'll know what I mean. Those voice artists are awesome. But what makes them so much better than you or me?

Part of it, at least from what I've heard, is that they put actual time into their profession. They have multiple people helping them produce a show. And yes, it is a show. You may not actually see them. But they are actors. They just have much larger speaking parts than most visual productions.

I'd love to learn their trade. But already, I have my own focus. My focus is on writing a good story. If you've been following along on my podcasts as I proofread this, and you're not sure if you like the story, try reading the chapters instead, at least for a little while. I'd hate for my annoying voice to spoil your enjoyment of the book.

I guess I can only hope that if you are listening instead of reading this, that my voice isn't as annoying to you as it is to me. But in either case, I value you and your willingness to take valuable time out of your life to pay attention to something that I've put a lot of thought and energy into. I hope you have a good experience, and that you feel like you'd want to come back for more. Who knows, maybe by the end of this book, with any luck, I'll have trained my voice to sound good too.

If you're new to this, start atThe Beginning. And thanks for sharing my stories with all your friends.
Installment #4 of:Sing Low: The Hangman of the WoodsBy B.C. Crow (Download audio podcast here) ()Chapter 3Do you ever have days when your inner conflict is so strong that every choice of thought becomes wrong? Circumstances even change to our liking, yet for liking them, we commit the greatest of sins. If we reverse the scenario and hate what has happened, we become enemies of our own conscience. Even though we tell our minds that we truly want the old ways to stay the same, we can’t ever bury the deception that is told to us, by us.As I once was, so now do I place you at the crossroads. The only way forward, as far as I can surmise, is to be true to yourself. The dead will always follow us. We can never shake their influence. To some, this will disturb, but for me, it lightens my burden. No matter how far we stray from our parents’ best intentions at guiding us, their many other virtues will live through us, our future children, and theirs.This is immortality. With any luck, every generation will grow in wisdom and strength, becoming better than the one before. I pity those who never knew their parents and who must start the chain anew. Even more, I pity those who feel complacent about their parents’ progress, and fail to improve upon the generations of ancestors who strove before them.Weeks were inevitably followed by months. Every day the same. Go to school and try unsuccessfully to fit in. Not that there weren't any changes. The first was that I found myself walking through the woods more often. I knew I shouldn't. My mother would definitely not approve, and I really felt uncomfortable disobeying her. But I still went almost every day now. Unless I had a reason to hurry home after school, I'd add an extra hour to my walk home as I moved deeper into the formidable jungle. My defiance to my mother's instructions was illogical. Something about my encounter with the drunken man made me push past my promises. I don't think even I understood this irrepressible urge to venture in. Still, it never stopped nagging at me. I had to know what was in there.The place terrified me, but also seemed to sing to me. On more than one occasion, I’m sure that I’d heard the trees’ serenade. This day, as if in the distance, that low sweet sound seemed to speak to me. Sometimes I’m up, and sometimes I’m down / Coming for to carry me home / But still my soul feels heavenly bound / Coming for to carry me home. My mind might have been playing tricks on me, but if I didn’t hear the song plainly, I heard it in my heart. Usually as soon as I thought I heard it, I’d stop to listen, but it would be gone. The woods were a strange place, indeed, but I was a strange boy. I almost felt like I belonged there.I paused at one point when I found a rare moonflower. The delicate blossom, native to these woods, was still folded in on itself. I knew that it would be the jewel of the forest when it eventually opened. The flower, so fragile, would remain closed until the sky was dark. Then, under the light of the moon, it would spread open in a wide graceful twist. Its silky white petals would almost glow with the moon’s reflection. I wanted to stay here and witness it. This plant, so alone among all these trees, seemed perfectly at home. I wondered if I could ever be as comfortable in such formidable surroundings as this flower. Like the plant, I was at peace here. But I didn’t live here. I lived somewhere, arguably more formidable.By now I’d become somewhat familiar with at least the first kilometer that skirted the forest. When I reached a small valley, I followed a trickling stream. This same stream, only a few centimeters deep, and a third of a meter at its widest, would trickle down to the edge our neighbor’s garden. Every time they took advantage of the stream for watering their little track of vegetables, it would dry up completely for everyone else below them. Since most people relied on wells, this didn’t bother anyone. At least not anyone I knew.As I exited the last grove of trees, I dipped my hand into the water one more time. The coolness seemed to beckon me back into the trees. Nothing at home for you. Only sadness. Only pain. Come back and stay. These dangerous woods spoke peace to me. The stream was its voice. It truly was my imagination this time.When I looked back up, I could see a lot of commotion at my house. We rarely had company. When we did it was seldom more than two or three people. This time there must have been close to thirty, milling in and out of our little shanty. Most of them were family and neighbors. My stomach fluttered near my throat. The way everyone was milling about, heads down, shoulders slumped, told me something was wrong. Very wrong.Mother had been sick. For the last couple of weeks, she’d had a cough that wouldn’t subside. Of all the days to waste wandering in the woods! I ran toward our home. Oh please, oh please—I tried forcing the fear to a back corner of my mind. If by chance everything was just fine, I wouldn’t want anyone to see my eyes full of tears for no reason. But why else would everyone be here? And why did I even care what everyone thought of me? No one paid me any mind most of the time. Anyway, this was my mother!But it wasn’t my mother. I picked her out almost immediately. She was in the middle of the crowd, sitting—crying—alive. When she lifted her head, I could see how deep her sorrow truly ran. “Oh no,” I whispered. “Father.”“I’m so sorry,” and “Don’t worry, we’re here for you,” wafted at me from family. The local Christian well-wishers bade me “God bless you” and “Peace be unto you.” They always seemed to flock around tragedies, passing out their abundant supply of warm sentiments, not to mention a collection plate for donations to help support their prayers on behalf of the family. All this was happening as I made my way to mother. I paid little attention to who spoke. They were all hollow, anyway. At least I knew my relatives were sincere, but what, really, could any of them do?Mother looked up at me as I approached, as if she sensed my coming. Her arms, held tightly to her chest, now opened and swallowed me into them. I know boys aren’t supposed to cry, and I tried hard to be the man that I now had to be. But as soon as Mother drew me in, my jaw felt ready to quiver away from me. My eyes melted into great overflowing pools of salt water. My perfectly clear nose, now blotchy red, bubbled with translucent mucus as it ran into my mouth, mixing with my saliva. In under half a second I’d gone from forced composure to sobbing volcano.I’d let my mother down. I wasn’t strong, not even for her. Lost in my shame, I didn’t realize that she’d found some measure of composure. Someone always has to be stronger. She’d had more time to let this sink in than me, it was her turn to comfort me. Still, this was not acceptable. Why? I don’t honestly know. But I pulled away from her and ran. There would be no place to hide in our two-room shanty and I needed to be alone. There was only one place to go. I ran back to the woods. I didn’t go very deep into them. Just enough to avoid being seen by the mourners.Back at the little stream I’d followed only ten minutes before, I found myself sniffling at my reflection. What a blubbering mess I was. Father would not be proud of my sulking. “Be the man you need to be,” he’d tell me. Yes, the man that was needed, not the boy I wanted to be. But with him dead, I might be able to study medicine now. No sooner had the thought entered my head than I slammed my palm into the trickling water. It was a weak gesture and I felt more hollow for trying. How could I possibly look at my father’s death as a blessing? He’d been a great man and he’d treated Mother well. This couldn’t be said of all the men in our community.Determined to rectify my disgrace, I pulled myself back to my feet. More slowly this time, I walked back to our little home. This time when somebody apologized for my misfortune, I acknowledged them.“Thank you,” to my aunt.“If there is a God, I’m sure he’ll watch out for us,” to the Christians.Finally, to my mother, “I’m sorry I ran. I won’t leave you again.”“Iddo,” she soothed. “I don’t know how we’ll get by, but at least we still have each other.”I hadn’t thought about the future as it pertained to getting by. But now I wondered. Mother had no work. Her days were filled with cooking and cleaning our clothes by hand. Sure, she’d helped the neighbors with their chores, and this in exchange for a few eggs or an occasional chicken. That was meager compared to what Father had contributed. He went to work six days each week, and even then, we just scraped by.If nothing else, at least all the mourners were good for one thing. They all pitched in a little money to help us until Mother or I could find a way to support ourselves. All except for the Christians. But they had their place, too. Those donations they gathered helped fund their part of the charity. They offered to bury Father in one of their above ground tombs. It was a free service they offered anyone who died.After maybe five to ten years, when the body was just bones, it would be removed to make room for the next occupant of the concrete cubicles. They would say that this was done in similitude of our Savior leaving his tomb, but everyone all knew it was because the cemetery had limited space. Besides, the Believers, who also claimed a belief in Christ, had soured a lot of people from the mainstream Christian faiths. Since very few people could actually afford a permanent resting place for the dead and in an attempt to garner sympathy toward mainstream Christianity, these normal Christians offered burial service to anyone who needed it. As a result, the cemetery was always overcrowded.As children and teenagers, we used to make fun of the practice. We’d sometimes wander through the tall weeds of these cemeteries. The stacked tombs, sometimes six high, were each about half a meter tall, and just shy of a meter wide. Bodies would be inserted or removed through one end, then sealed up. Near the time that a body was ready to be removed, the weathered seal would break, revealing a perfect skeleton. As kids, we’d reach into the concrete boxes where the cheap ends had fallen away, and scare one another with the white skulls inside. Only an adolescent would be so brash. I may still be a teenager, but I doubt I’ll ever be adolescent again.“Where is he now?” I asked.“They’ve taken him to be cleaned.” These words were hard for Mother to say, and our next-door neighbor put a hand on her shoulder.“How?” was all I could ask next.This was obviously too hard for her to answer. She tried but our neighbor with the comforting hand stepped in to help. Her sweet voice held none of the sympathies that the other mourners carried. Yet it was this firmness that made it so genuine. It was something real, from a real person. “It was an accident at work. My husband watched it happen.” She paused.Most of the men in our little community worked together. You could say that the Tusk White Concrete Company practically owned our neighborhood. I was just about to press her for more details, but held back as she inhaled deeply.“Your father, may he never be forgotten, was on the shovel of a four-story building. They were setting the next lift when his scaffolding fell apart.”“Didn’t he have a harness?” I asked. “They’re always tethered.”Nodding, she continued, “The way my husband put it, their tethers are made with cheap stiff ropes. Most times, if somebody falls, curse those stingy Tuskies, the rope will swing them to a safe stop. This was one of those time, though, when your father was directly below the tether. There was no swing. It snapped his back. He died about an hour later.”There it was. One minute everything is great; the next, it’s all ended by dangling at the end of a tight rope. Everyone knows the risks of working at the Tusk. Something like this happens most years. Usually it’s somebody else. Everyone keeps working there because we’re so poor that we take what we can get. But the Tusk owns us, and they know it. We’ll likely get a month’s wages from them, but they’re not required to help us beyond that.The next day after school, Mother and I walked to the company to collect Father’s accident pay and to apply for a job. We would both work part time. The wife of a dead husband with a child to raise can work wonders on even the most hardened of business scum. By the time we left, we both had work. I would shovel aggregate after school for four hours on weekdays and ten on Saturdays. Mother would clean the tools and mixers, chipping hardened concrete off the surfaces if it had been left on for too long.Neither of us was very good at the work, which earned us both a dock in pay that first week. I had a hard time because my muscles weren’t up to the new task of lifting several tons of gravel each day. I might eventually develop the muscles. Mother’s job, on the other hand, was especially hard for her. The job would normally give a person hard calluses, but then her laundry scrubbing would take them off again. Because of this, her hands were always red with blisters and cracked skin. At night, she wrapped them in old cotton cloths. I was always tired and I knew she was, too. Still, she managed to cook dinner every night and put on a pleasant smile. The time for mourning was gone. Now it was time for working.School was like cleaning your foot off on the dirt. On the top clean side, all tuition for the year was required up front, meaning that I could finish that year of schooling without any additional costs. The bottom side, sinking as if it were in the new mud, meant that we’d have to save up for next year. Between Mother and myself, there was little extra to go around. Every week we set aside a little money for our basic needs, and the rest would be saved for school. This caused me great consternation. Not that we were poor. We’d always been poor. A little more so now, but if I had to work so hard for my own schooling, I wanted to go to school for something that I wanted to learn and do.Weeks passed as I tried to muster the courage to talk it over with my mother. After all, hadn’t I vowed not to bring this topic up again? I was supposed to be content with following my father’s ambition, and working in journalism, especially with his death sealing my honor to his will. Every quiet evening that passed, another brick was placed between me and my hope of ever breaching the topic.One night, as we were sitting down for our late supper, Mother looked at me with those deep tired eyes. A mysterious smile threatened to overtake one side of her face as she held back one of her coughing fits. “I’ve been thinking,” she started.Naturally I was confused. Usually when she began a conversation with those words, there was no smile. She was taking her sweet time getting to the point, but I said nothing. I just listened with all the attention of a dog waiting for a scrap of gristle.“I loved your father very much. But even though we loved each other, we still had our disagreements. He wanted the very best for you. A life in journalism here would provide a nice income for you. I never openly disagreed with him. Now that he’s gone, I have to consider, do we keep you following his path, or do I let you follow your own? I know that you’ve been wanting to be a doctor for some time.”At this point, my eyes were wide with astonishment. Not only had she read my mind, but was she about to give me permission to change schools?Her smile widened and she leaned forward. “Before this school year ends, I think you should choose. You can continue where you’re at or move to medical.”I wanted to jump up and hug her, but I didn’t. I wanted to shout for joy, but I didn’t. I just continued staring at her with surprise. I even mostly suppressed a cheesy grin of excitement. “Thank you,” I said as politely as possible, knowing that she expected more of a reaction from me. Maybe she could see beyond my display of restraint. “I’ve been thinking about this, too. I really, really would like to transfer. I feel bad to dishonor—”“Don’t you dare,” she snapped. Your father was a good man, but that doesn’t mean he had perfect judgment. Life is full of disappointments, sorrows, and hard times. If you aren’t careful, it will be too easy to get caught up in them. It happens all the time. If you can’t find the joy in living, you might as well give it all up, and don't you ever think of giving up."My joy is in seeing you happy. I know that your joy will be found in helping other people. Providing a financially stable home for us was your father’s joy, and that’s why he wanted you to go into journalism, so that you could provide for your family better than he did. You have your father’s strong will, but you inherited my compassion.”I didn’t feel like I had anyone’s strength of will, and I didn’t know if compassion was the reason for me wanting to become a doctor, but now was not the time to argue that. My heart was pounding so fast now. I was afraid that my mother would see my excitement and for some reason I felt like I should be tempering my outward emotions. I know it wasn't important, but at my age, it felt necessary.“Being a doctor might not be as lucrative, but it’s still not a bad career. There’s no school near here, though. You would have to leave me at the beginning of the year and go stay in the dorms over near New Tum District.”At that comment, my racing heart seemed to trip on itself. “But what about the pre-med building at my vocational school right now?”She shook her head. “I’ve already looked into that. Vocational pre-med would start you in the right direction, but you could spend two years there, then go to college, or you could go straight to college, study real hard, and just take a couple of the college-level pre-med classes. You don’t actually need to graduate from the vocational level. They’re mostly a place for kids to grow up a little before getting into the real school.“Besides, the next two years count as college credit regardless of which school you attend. You’ve already got the maturity to handle college and the brains to deal with a tough first year in a new curriculum. I’ve already called and cleared it with the college. With your grades now, they agree that you could probably manage the jump.”She was right. It would be hard, but I knew I could endure it. Besides, with our financial situation, paying for an extra two years of schooling versus combining those same classes in a real college or even testing out of them altogether, well, I would have to do it. Hard as I knew it would be, this was the path open to me. It's what I'd been wanting so badly. My body felt physically stronger, and deep inside, I knew I had it in me to succeed.There was one other implication. I knew it and undoubtedly my mother knew it, so it was hard to say it with a straight face. At this point, I figured it would just be a technicality. But I had to mention it anyway: “But that’s on the other side of the woods, maybe a day or two if I walked straight through them.” I know she didn't really expect me to hike through the woods. She knew what went on in there. Maybe she'd already thought of a way to pay for the trip around them.Her smile faded and that minor change in her face caused my breath to pause. She nodded. “It’s time you became a man. I can’t protect you from the world forever. There are dangers and unforgivable things that happen in the woods. But we can’t afford to send you on a transport around them. Eventually you’ll have to learn to master your fears. I already know that when your father was still here, you were disobeying us, spending more and more time in those woods. I think by now you must know a little of how to find your way in there.”My face grew hot with guilt. I slouched in shame. “I didn’t know you knew.”“Remember, I wash your clothes every day. You expect me to believe that those sticks and leaves that broke off in your pockets came from the marketplace? Not to mention how you always came home at least an hour later than usual? I knew.”I looked back up at her. Her smile was fading, but not because I’d been disobedient.“There is one small problem from what I can determine,” she said. “School costs the same, but the dorms will be an added expense. We barely have enough as it is.”End of Chapter 3Thanks for reading. Remember to comment on anything you liked or that you think should be fixed.Click here to read Chapter 4Copyright 2017: While I encourage you to share this link with your friends and family, please keep in mind that this is copyrighted material. Under no circumstances do you have the right to re-publish any or part of this content without specific written permission from BC Crow and Blue House Publishing.