The Listeners by Harrison Demchick

Author:Harrison Demchick [Demchick, Harrison]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-61088-084-8
Publisher: Bancroft Press
Published: 2012-11-01T23:51:00+00:00

The church had been transformed into a hostel. Pews were filled with suitcases and toys, and sleeping bags slumped off the edges of the benches, dropping onto the rough floor. One little girl slept in her sleeping bag, her head on the thigh of her worn mother, her legs, obscured by the sky-blue bag, nestled into the legs of her half-asleep father. In the right aisle, a group of young men, Tyrone and his friend Zeb included, played a game of Texas Hold ’em, while a teenage boy and girl crept through an unlocked door into an unoccupied hallway.

Sitting on the second stair leading up to the pulpit, Anton fiddled with the black walkie-talkie. It was not, of course, a radio, not in the classic sense; there was no music, there were no words, and for the most part there was no communication, perhaps because there wasn’t much to communicate, and partly because Anton didn’t know what channel to tune to.

Mostly there was quiet static, long-forgotten white noise it was suddenly easy to feel nostalgic for. They had lived here in this unfamiliar church since the quarantine began, around three weeks now, reasoning that they all had a better chance for sustenance and blessed morale if they would stick together and become the community under God that had always been more preached than practiced.

But Anton was not a part of that community, and hadn’t been since he was sixteen, and old enough, his mother reasoned (mere months before she passed away), to decide his spirituality for himself. In his mind, there was no God—something that had come up in conversation with McDaniel—so McDaniel was considerably amused by the fact that this is where Anton had settled in for the duration of the quarantine. “Found religion, huh?” he’d said.

“Found Ty,” Anton had responded. “Religion’s just something to put up with.”

“Got it, Brother Anton.”

This was another of the many ways Tyrone was different. Anton remembered a time when he was five, sick, wrapped in the thick covers his mother always used to sweat the sickness out of him. Seated on a chair next to the bed, thirteen-year-old Tyrone read Bible stories—Anton couldn’t recall now which ones—but he did remember the reason: to inspire him back to health. When Tyrone insisted they stay in the church, he’d said it was for community, for safety in numbers, but Anton was sure it had something to do with being close to God, and being able to pray to God should one of them fall ill. The “community” line was just the one Anton was more likely to believe. And he’d fallen for it. He was here.

It was a church, and so there was no television, save for the small black and white portable some young churchgoer had thought was essential, and there was a radio, but it had lousy reception and could pick up only a few local stations. Anton, in fact, preferred to pay attention to neither. He missed them both, television and radio—of course he did.

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