Migratory Roads
A Novel In Small Stories
by Trevor Scott Barton
Chapter One
My abuelo lifted the iron knocker on the oak church door and let it fall back onto it’s tarnished iron plate.
He did this again and again until a nun cracked open the door to the night.
The nun had worked in the inner-city for many years and had seen many things, but had never seen the beauty and suffering she saw our faces at the church door that night.
Our eyes were alight with beauty - the beauty of being.
Our bodies were heavy with suffering.
We were covered with the dirt and sweat and blood of thousands upon thousands of miles of migration along the migratory road.
Our shoulders sagged under the weight of months of homelessness.
The only homes we found during our journey were the simple kindnesses that people showed us along the way.
We were very still and very quiet.
The old nun wrapped her arms around us.
“Estoy aquí,” she whispered.
“I’m here.”
Chapter Two
Hilcias studied the yellowing eye chart on the back of the closed door of the room at the Barrier Island Free Medical Clinic and practiced saying the letters in his mind, from Spanish to English, from English back to Spanish, until he could think them into a seamless line.
His mamí flipped through the pages of an old Life Magazine with an immigrant mother and child on the cover.
His abuelo stared at a watercolor painting on the wall of a heavy laden peach tree, the colors of the ripe peaches glowing brightly against the white walls of the room, and then clasped his hands in his lap and looked thoughtfully into them as if he were looking into the deepest parts of the earth.
There was a tap on the door.
A young doctor walked into the room.
“Buenos Dias, amigos,” she said. “Me llamo Maria. Como estas ustedes?”
She had eyes like his abuelo, deep and earthy brown.
She wore a white doctor’s coat, faded blue jeans and an old pair of tennis shoes.
“Well,” she began, “Let’s talk about Hilcias.
We looked over his brain scans and studied them very carefully. We didn’t find any organic reason why he doesn’t speak. The other tests on his ears, nose and throat came back normal, too. So all of the parts that help him speak are well and good inside of him.”
His mamí put her arm around his shoulder, held him close to her, and breathed out a long, slow, quiet sigh of relief.
“But we still haven’t answered the question,” continued Dr. Maria. “Why doesn’t Hilcias speak?”
She pulled up a chair in front of him, sat down in it, and leaned her face close to his face until her nose gently brushed against his nose.
“So now we’ve got to walk together down a path into places we don’t know,” she smiled. “The only person who can tell us why he’s not talking…is not talking.”
He smiled back at her and looked away from her eyes and down at her feet.
Suddenly, he whistled the most beautiful notes Dr. Maria had ever heard in her life.
They reminded her of the joy she felt as a little girl standing in the fields with her family on their farm in El Salvador.
At the same time, they reminded her of the sadness she felt as she worked day after day to help person after person who was just trying to make a better life in a place where it was hard to live.
The music brought a stillness and a quietness to the room.
After a moment, his abuelo spoke.
“He says he does speak, but not many people understand him, I think.”
And it was true.
Chapter Three
from Trevor’s Encyclopedia of Guardian Angels
He looked up from the book in his lap as the Greyhound bus squeaked to a stop at the Greenville terminal.
The old woman next to him fell asleep on the trip up from Charleston, and leaned her head on his shoulder.
Her face was wrinkled like the bark on an ancient magnolia tree, and colored the beautiful brown of it’s trunk and branches.
She breathed in, and the air made a soft, whistling sound through her nose.
She breathed out, and it made a gentle, flapping sound through her lips.
“Life is a symphony,” he chuckled to himself, “Of whistles and kazoos.”
“Ma’am,” he whispered.
She didn’t move.
She kept right on whistling and kazooing.
“Ma’am,” he said a little louder.
This time he reached out and touched her weathered hand.
She opened her brown eyes and smiled a tired smile at him.
“Thanks for a lettin’ me use yo shoulda as my pilla,” she said with a gravelly voice.
“First time I woked up beside a man in a long time.
Hope my snorin’ didn’t bother you none,” she giggled.
“No ma’am,” he said with a giggle of his own.
“It was music to my ears.”
His knees and back snapped and popped as he stood slowly and smoothed the wrinkles in his pants and shirt.
“My goodness,” said the old woman, “You make music, too.”
He placed his hand on her bony shoulder.
“We could start a band called The Human Element,” he said.
“People would come from all over the country to hear us whistle, kazoo, flap, snap and pop.
You think?”
“Yep, they’d pay a bundle of money to hear that.”
He pulled on his jacket and waved to her.
“Goodbye, my friend,” he said.
“Thanks for the song.”
She waved back.
“Thank you,” she said.
“And do me a favor.
Lean on down here and let me tell you somethin’.”
He leaned down.
He was surprised as she kissed him on his forehead with a tender kiss.
“That’s the kiss of a guardian angel,” she whispered.
“Look closely, listen carefully and do not be afraid.”
Chapter Four
from trevor’s encyclopedia of beauty, genius, wonder and courage
Taki placed the palm of her hand on the trunk of the tree.
"When I was an agnaiyaaq, my aaka held this hand and walked me outside of Point Hope," she said, "and talked with me about the plants around us, the ones we can and cannot eat, the ones we can use for medicine.
This, Hilcias, is called the Balm of Gilead tree."
Hilcias looked closely at the buds on the lower branches of the tree and breathed deeply the sweet smell of the resin.
He whistled at the wonder of it all.
"Balm of Gilead resin can soothe a cough or keep a scrape from getting infected.
Maybe it could help a mute boy from El Salvador talk, huh?
Just kidding.
You can rub the resin on your skin or gargle it with water and it helps relieve burns and sore throats.
It grows here even out of the hard, frozen land.
Look. The heart shaped leaves show us the heart is the place we learn to care.
Aaka told me, she said, 'Taki, CARE keeps hearts beating and life living in these frozen, Arctic lands.'"
She closed her eyes.
She put her ear on the smooth, brown bark of the tree.
"Listen. The tree is saying, ‘Care for others.’
Chapter Five
“Cómo estás, Luisa?” Gabby asked the small woman in the window seat as she sat down beside her.
“Bien,” Luisa answered. “A little tired. I cleaned a lot of rooms at the motel today. Y tu?”
“Si, bien. Un poco cansado, tambien. I scrambled a lot of eggs at the Scrambled Egg. I can’t wait to put my feet up and rest them. What you doing this evening?”
“I’m going to cook for my family and take my daughter to help me clean the doctor’s office. Then I’ll rest.”
Gabby put her arm around Luisa’s shoulder and hugged her.
“Eres una buena mujer,” she said. I’m glad you’re my friend.
“Y tu, mi Amiga. Y tu.”
Gabby got off the bus in front of her apartment on the west side of the city.
She and her neighbors didn’t have much money, but they did have a lot of kindness for each other.
‘Sup Gabby. How you doin’?” asked Bryant, who everyone called Big B.
He had just come home from his job as a mechanic at the auto shop.
“Hola B. Not much. Just glad to be home. How was your day?”
“It was all good. The squeaky wheel got the grease, as they say, today and ev’ry day.”
“One of these days I’m gonna buy a car and the only person I’m gonna let work on it is you.”
“Deal. If you need anything, let me know, okay?”
“Sure thing! Same here.”
“You could come over and cook up some steak and eggs for me, you know.”
“Ugh, anything except that. I’ve cooked enough steak and eggs today...and ev’ry day!”
“Bet. I’m jus’ kiddin’ wit’ cha. Night Gabby. Be safe.”
“Night B. You be safe, too.”
She took her key out of her pocket and opened the door to her apartment.
It was one room.
There was a holey sofa that pulled out into a bed with a small table and a lamp beside it.
Three books, The House on Mango Street, The Old Man and the Sea and Poems for a Brown Eyed Girl, were on a bookshelf made out of a cut board and two concrete blocks against the wall. An ancient transistor radio was in the corner. A painting by Jasper Johns of three American Flags, one on top of the other, smallest to largest, was on the wall. It was a gift from one of her regular customers at The Scrambled Egg.
The room was simple and beautiful, like her.
She picked up the small book of poems, turned on the lamp, sat down on the sofa, stretched her legs in front of her.
She opened the book to the poem An Ode to Feet.
She read,
Her feet
were calloused and cracked
like rocks
in plowed ground,
like stones
in turned soil,
the soil
she walked over
barefooted
as her grandfather
turned the earth
with donkey and plow.
She had
the feet
of her grandfather,
for she had walked
beside him
down the long rows
of beans and corn
since the time
she learned
to toddle.
He had
walked
up and down
those rows
until his feet
were broken and bent
and made him appear
to be
continually
genuflecting
to God,
or to the wealthy land owner,
or to the land itself.
Her feet
would one day
be broken and bent
like that.
When her feet
were in the soil
it was
as if
they were part
of the land,
as if
they held the secrets
of the earth,
as if
they knew the mystery
of how seed
and dirt
and water
can become
a bean
in a pod,
a kernel
on an ear
of corn.
Her heart
was in her feet,
her heart
was in the land,
her heart
was the mystery
itself.
Her feet spoke,
"Estoy aquí,
I am here,
estoy aquí."
Her feet
were signs
to the world -
"I am
a human being."
“Estoy aquí,” she whispered to the world.
“I am here.”
Chapter Six
Taki saw Hilcias standing on the rocks that connected her land with the water.
The wind blew off the icy sea and whipped his body until it looked as if he might become a part of the sand, salt and sea that made up the Arctic land.
The three shirts and one coat he owned weren’t enough to protect him from the cold, and the skin of his cheeks and the water in his eyes froze with the sunset.
“He looks so small against the sky and the sea,” she thought.
“He looks so weak against the rocks and the ground.”
Small, weak things struggled to survive around the Chukchi Sea, she knew.
Her heart was big and strong, and that’s what helped her live in this icy cold place.
“His heart must be big and strong, too” she thought as she took the lantern out of the window and headed into the night to bring him in.
Taki wrote this poem for Hilcias -
we
stand
closely
side by side
i reach out for you
and take your hand inside of mine
our fingers intertwine and our palms make a small space
this space is warm in the deep snow that covers the ground of Point Hope
is warm against the icy wind that blows off the rocking waters of the Chukchi Sea
“life is in these small spaces between us,” I whisper
we stand quietly hand in hand
with the small space, and
then we smile
holding
small
space
Chapter Seven
Hilcias had small ears.
Well, they were less than small.
They were minute.
He used to be self conscious about them.
When he stepped into a classroom for the first time, his glasses slipped off one of those ears and hung crooked across his face.
Those ears weren't big enough to hold his glasses.
"We come from a family with little ears but big hearts," said his abuelo one day as Hilcias was moping down a row of tomatoes, thinking about the laughter of his classmates.
You can use your heart for listening. Your ears sure won't help you out much.”
As he grew older and fell in love with whales, though, he discovered that blue whales, which are the biggest animals to have ever lived on earth, have ears the size of the point of a pencil.
"The blue whales know how I feel," he thought.
And that made him feel better.
Hilcias really did have a big heart.
Literally.
One day, when he was a toddler, he fell at the end of a row of tomatoes in his abuelo's garden and bruised his ribs on a jagged rock.
His abuelo and mamí took him to the free medical clinic.
His abuelo wrapped his arms around him and placed his giant calloused hand on his chest to keep him still.
He took quick, shallow breaths because if he breathed slowly and deeply his whole body hurt.
When they looked at the x-ray the doctor exclaimed, "His ribs are bruised but, my God, look at the size of his heart! I've never seen a heart so big in a child so small."
An echocardiogram confirmed it,
"It's rare in children,” said the doctor, "But his heart is enlarged because his heart muscle isn't squeezing well and his heart grew bigger to compensate.
The good news is, we can treat him.
He can lead a nearly normal life.
He'll just have to use his heart in different ways than other people."
Later, with a book by his bedside, his abuelo said, "I want you to have listening ears and a big heart, mi nieto, so it seems like nature is helping my wishes come true.
Don't you worry.
I'll always love you just the way you are.
You're perfect to me and for the world."
His abuelo kissed him on the forehead.
It comforted him again when he learned that a blue whale has the largest heart on earth.
It's as big as a Volkswagen Beetle.
"I have a heart like a blue whale," he thought.
And that made him smile.
Chapter Eight
In case you don’t know, let me be the first to tell you.
Whales sing.
I learned this from the life and work of a scientist named Katy Payne.
She’s one of my heroes.
She lived and worked on the coast of Argentina.
She loved the whales that migrated along that coast.
In 1964, she took a trip to Bermuda to meet with a Navy engineer named Frank Watlington.
He also loved whales.
He was recording the deep sea with underwater microphones called hydrophones, which were used by the U.S. Navy to listen for Soviet submarines during the Cold War.
During these recordings, he picked up the sound of a humpback whale.
When Payne boarded Watlington’s ship, she didn’t know they’d be listening to anything.
“I don’t suppose you’ve ever heard the sound whales make, have you?” asked Watlington.
He played the sound of the humpback whale back for her.
Payne would later say, “I had never heard anything like it.
Oh, my God, tears flowed down my cheeks.
I was just completely transfixed and amazed because the sounds are so beautiful, so powerful - so variable.
They were, as I learned later, the sounds of just one animal.
Just one animal.”
Up until that moment, Watlington had kept the recordings secret.
He feared whalers would use his discovery to help them hunt and kill whales.
He gave the recording to Payne.
“Go, my friend, and save the whales,” he said.
There was something peculiar about the sounds that Payne didn’t recognize at first.
It took special ears and knowledge to find it.
She had both.
She grew up on a farm and went to college to study music AND biology.
She became an acoustic biologist.
She would spend her life watching and listening to elephants and whales.
What an amazing thing for a human being to do.
As she listened to the humpback whale, she wanted to see the sounds.
She used a spectrogram to see pictures of the sounds peaks, valleys and gaps.
She traced them with a pencil on paper.
She saw a structure, a structure that looked like melodies and rhythms.
“The whale is singing a song,” she whispered.
“Whales sing.”
Wow.
Almost 30 years later, a Navy hydrophone in the North Pacific heard the song of a whale. The whale sang and listened, sang and listened...but didn’t hear a response.
Normally, a whale sings it’s song and another whale sings back. The vast loneliness of the sea becomes a song of friendship. But this was not a normal situation, and this was not a normal whale.
Scientists named the whale 52 Blue because it sings it’s song at around the frequency of 52 Hz. This is the frequency of basso profundo, the frequency just above the lowest note of a tuba.
Because it sings at that frequency, no other whale can hear it’s song and sing back to him. Blue whales sing at between 10 and 40 Hz, so they couldn’t communicate with 52 Hz.
The 2004 edition of the Journal of Deep Sea Research reporter that the song of 52 Hertz came from a single whale whose movements “appeared to be unrelated to the presence or movement of other whale species.”
Whales are migrants, and like migrant workers, they follow a predictable path year after year. But not 52 Blue. His migration path is unpredictable. He is a wanderer.
Since he can’t communicate with other whales, and since he follows an unpredictable path, he is known as the world’s loneliest whale.
I wrote this poem for 52 Blue
Whale
Song
Lonely
Where are you?
Wandering, singing
Singing unheard wandering songs
‘Can you hear me? Are you there? Are you?
I am alone.’
Listening, longing for songs gently sung
‘I hear you, song over water, I’m here,
I’m here
We sing at diff’rent frequencies
Migrate along diff’rent routes
Wandering, wondering
Wandering the sea
Song on water
Singing unheard wondering songs
Wondering, singing
Who are you?
Gentle
Song
Whale
