In the Wilderness: Coming of Age in Unknown Country by Kim Barnes

Author:Kim Barnes [Barnes, Kim]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Family - Idaho, Families, Family, Women Poets; American, 20th Century, Pentecostalism, Barnes; Kim - Childhood and Youth, Wilderness Areas, Poets; American, Literary, Barnes; Kim - Homes and Haunts - Idaho, Idaho - Religious Life and Customs, Idaho - Intellectual Life - 20th Century, Biography & Autobiography, Family Relationships, Poets; American - 20th Century - Family Relationships, Wilderness Areas - Idaho, Pentecostalism - Idaho, Idaho, Idaho - Social Life and Customs
Publisher: Anchor
Published: 1996-04-30T23:00:00+00:00

I settled into my basement room, larger than many of the shacks we had lived in. I lay in bed that first night, gauging the darkness against the city’s sounds skipping closer, then more distant, like the radio shows my father used to tune in, ear to the Zenith’s speaker, catching the music and strange voices that drifted to us in the hollow from up and down the Pacific Coast. But the new sounds seemed even more foreign—sirens, tires screeching, the continual hum of cars on their way to or from destinations I could not imagine.

I found I couldn’t sleep with the noise and turned on the small transistor radio my cousins had given me for my birthday. The hard-driving beat the church believed incited lust filled the room, and I lowered the volume and listened until the song ended. Then George Harrison was singing “My Sweet Lord.” Beneath the covers I held the music to my ear, hearing the words repeated again and again: I really want to see you, I really want to be with you but it takes so long my Lord …

I was stunned. Was this worship or sacrilege? George was one of The Beatles and off limits to Christians, but this song seemed different. I remembered playing “Hey Jude” with Luke in the empty church, and I sensed in this song the same kind of spiritual melancholy. But hadn’t one of The Beatles said they were more popular than Jesus? Maybe that had been John. Maybe George didn’t believe it. There was nothing in the song that seemed evil, and George wasn’t screeching like some drug-crazed fiend. But maybe this was part of the world’s seduction: overt evil was easily discernible to the righteous; it was the backdoor variety you had to watch out for, that kind that made you rationalize, made you think you were safe.

I listened until the announcer broke in with his revving parlance, wishing I could hear the song again. Even though I liked my room and our new house, I felt lonely, a little lost. My parents slept in their room upstairs, and Greg had the room next to mine, but something about the largeness of the house and all the walls and carpet we could not fill or cover left me hollow. The music filled the space around me, and I found it comforting. As I listened, knowing that hours were passing only by what the voice told me, even the more raucous lyrics lost much of their ominousness. I liked the sound of the deejay’s voice and the way he introduced the songs like old friends, as though there was nothing more natural in the world than to be alone in a glass booth, talking to a microphone in the middle of the night.

In a way, we were alike, he and I, alone in our rooms, conversing with the air. Kevin was his name, and sometimes he asked me questions as though I could answer. “How ya doin tonight? Ready to rock and roll?”

I fell asleep listening to Kevin.

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