Sentries by Gary Paulsen

Author:Gary Paulsen
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers

FOURTEEN

Somewhere in California

It was filling now.

Peter had closed himself in the beach house and not answered the phone for two days, two days of listening to Bach while his music-mind free-based and worked by itself on the new sound, two days of eating macaroni and cheese boiled from the little packets he picked up at the store and drinking Cokes with the phone ringing all the time and the macaroni and cheese mixing with the Bach and the Cokes and the sound and now, now it was starting to fill.

A note.

He had the first note, a high one that dropped in the middle and he knew that could and would carry it all, carry everything he wanted to say, and it was starting to fill and he let it come.

He wrote in a spiral notebook and he could not write music but wrote in diagrams that he could understand, lines that went up and held, lines that came down or slid sideways, lines that meant the sound, little lines that moved and meant the sound. He wrote hard now, sat on the couch facing the Pacific with the glass doors open so he could hear the sound of the surf mixing with the Bach and the ringing phone and it filled and came faster and faster and then stopped. Did not end, but stopped with the feeling he knew that meant it could go on forever and he knew it was wonderful, a wonderful sound that was all he could be.

When the writing caught up with the sound he stopped and put the pencil down and looked out the window, saw the surf in the evening sun, the waves backlighted like a stage, and he was more tired than he had ever been, tired and lonely but not sad-lonely so much as rich-lonely. The loneliness that was supposed to be when the new sound came and he had to work alone, the filling loneliness that was so right because it fit the music.

Tired and hungry.

He brought some water to a boil and made another pot of macaroni and cheese and opened a Coke and ate with a spoon and drank the Coke and let the food that didn’t matter bring him back up from the exhaustion. When he was slightly better he went out on the balcony and looked at the water for a time, the waves piling in, slithering almost up to the pilings that held up the cottage, and he was amazed that he could not have smelled the sea or heard the surf for two days while he worked.

“Whacky,” he said aloud, looking at the water. “Brain-fade . . .”

He went down on the sand and ran for a time, less than half a mile up and back, then sat on the balcony again. He was pushing it away now, the sound, holding it off as long as he could. He had written it but had not heard it yet except in his mind, in the chambers of his mind.

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