Free The Woman Who Married a Bear by John Straley Page A

swimming in them, but you can’t hear them or see them. If you said you could you’d be crazy. That’s because they aren’t organic, that’s because they don’t come from the earth itself.”
    He leaned forward and spoke slowly so I would have time to understand this next: “Now this is true. Everybody is born with the ability to receive the earth’s transmissions, but most people can’t. The further north you go, the better your ability to receive. The earth concentrates the waves near the pole.”
    I hadn’t started writing and he was looking at my pad. I quickly wrote the date and then the words, “True … concentrated transmissions.”
    â€œThis is the truth. I know it may be hard for you to accept but something extraordinary has happened to me. There is a thin flap of membrane that anyone can open up by concentration. You have it. Everybody has it.” He pointed to my ear. “But to open it you must have intense powers of concentration. I have opened that flap. I am free to receive.”
    â€œWho is speaking to you?”
    â€œNow, put yourself in my place. I mean, you start hearing voices. That’s crazy, right? So you have to start sorting it out. That confused me for a long time. I was getting a lot of signals; there are so many signals, many voices, if you will. Think about it: tree voices, cloud voices, fish voices. I was getting them all.” He leaned back. “It was weird.” Then he lowered his voice to almost a whisper. “It takes concentration to be able to tune them out, but that is the Devil for you. That’s the Devil for you, because the key to remember is… don’t tune them out. Tune them in.”
    His voice was quavering. He leaned forward. “You can actually tune them in all together and get one strong signal, one incredibly strong signal.”
    He stopped and in an instant became aware of himself and sat back, a little embarrassed. Where at first he was coy he was now taut, staring like a bear assessing a photographer. At the same time he couldn’t shed that film of self-awareness. There was something ironic about him, in his gestures, the fake professorial diction, as if he were absorbed by his own act, unable to break out of character.
    â€œI knew the voices were the truth. But as weird as it was, I had to prove it to other people.”
    He reached into his pockets and took out two small pieces of tinfoil. He formed them with his thumbs until they were shaped like cups. Then he put the cups over his ears. He paused and rolled his eyes up to the ceiling, listened for a moment, nodded as if confirming something he had every confidence in and then smiled.
    â€œI’ve now blocked the transmissions; I can’t hear a thing. I can do this a hundred times and a hundred times the voices stop. These are verifiable and reproducible results. This is scientific. It’s not just my word for it. There has to be a physical basis for the voices or how else could the foil stop them?”
    A white man with a braided beard walked by on the prison side of the glass and made a face by pulling out his cheeks with his forefingers and waggling his tongue around. I waved and he walked on.
    â€œFunny? I know.” Hawkes smiled confidently. “Everyone thinks it’s funny but it won’t be so funny when I harness the full potential of these waves.”
    â€œAre you seeing a doctor in here, Alvin? Someone you can tell about these voices?”
    He fished into his shirt pocket for a can of snoose, tapped the lid twice with his fingertips, twisted the lid off, and took a two-finger dip of tobacco. “Don’t need a doctor. The reason I’m the way I am is I have terrific control. This is true. I know I’m different from everybody else here and they know it, too.” As he said the word “they,” he pointed his thumb toward the ceiling, leaving a question in my mind as to who