Throwback Thursday: ‘Thlush-a-Lum’ by Rebecca Gomez Farrell

Markella’s earliest memories are of the sounds outside her window. At hours when no men moved, rustling branches and shuffling grass woke her. A beating pulse like slower, fleshier helicopter blades banished sleep: thlush-a-lum thlush-a-lum. In summers, the heat in her attic bedroom hot enough to incubate, Markella pushed the window open and dozed to the endless static drone of cicadas. In winters, choking radiator warmth wrapped tight around her, she cracked the window and the low, deep hoots of an owl drifted in with the freezing breeze.  

The sounds crept in no matter the season. She did not know then that the noise of a UFO landing might be only the wind whipping through the woods. Or that the piercing cries of something caught in a monster’s jaws were likely car wheels screeching too fast past the roundabout. The unknowns terrified little Markella, curled up so tight on her bed that she’d spring like a can of snakes if touched. But no one touched her. Mother and Father had no patience for tucking her in or answering her questions about how the breeze and teakettles both could whistle. Even the dog, a playful chocolate lab that dug joyfully at every ant hill it encountered, offered no more than a whimper when Markella ventured near.  

As she grew older, Markella learned to tell the difference between sounds on her own. Wasps buzzed like a kazoo while carpenter bees plucked a bass. Snow fell quieter than rain, and a pan sizzled differently if there was oil in it rather than water. She took comfort in naming the noises that woke her, in having something to think of until silence and sleep came again.