Wichita Lineman by Grace Yannotta

​Wichita Lineman
​

   Something felt wrong the moment the GPS lost signal. Your car had been chugging dutifully since you had left the Northeast twelve hours earlier, but you had a feeling that these steep hills, the winding turns and ragged medians, might get the best of the old girl. Still, you regarded yourself as a good navigator. You could get out of here fine, make your way out into the urban sprawl for your mother’s birthday.  There was only one way to go anyways -- straight.
   You kept your hands very tightly wrapped around the leather wheel. Your eyes could not move from the dashboard -- you would not let them. It was only pale, fluttering fields around you, overrun with weeds. The stalks blew, flexible, in the wind. You felt some Orphean force behind your eyes. Look, it told you, see. You did not look. You kept your eyes on the uphill road ahead of you and turned the radio up.
   It was miles of that wheaten repetition. You expected, in your suburban ignorance, to see a farm or some cattle or just about anything, but you were proved, eventually, wrong. The blond stalks waved in praise to the cornflower blue sky. There was not a cloud in sight. You could not see the sun either. You supposed it was someplace behind you. Then, in the upcoming distance, you saw it, stark against the weeds - a chimney, pokes of red peeking out among the dirt, the last vestige, maybe, of a home once loved. The pale weeds straggled around it, wrapped, suffocating, tugging across the last of the musty bricks. Instinctively, you diverted your focus. You could not look at something dead for too long without flinching.
   The radio crackled, mumbled something or other. The radio had been changing constantly as you had switched between wavelength zones and you switched it on to the first receptor without static. You needed to hear something. Anything. But rapidly, the brass solo coughed, abruptly switching to something far softer.
                                                                                                           
                                                                                                           I hear you singing in the wire.

   Glen Campbell, you thought you recognized. His voice was smooth, soft, and for just a moment the sky grew richer, as you watched the sun cast a loving shadow over the endless fields. Something blinked in the distance and for a moment, you didn’t feel so far removed. There was a flash of color in the horizon. It felt like civilization -- no, you took it back. It felt civilised. Your eyes gravitated towards a church coming up on the left side of the road and sub-consciously you found yourself slowing down the car. You drank it in, simple white planks and the cross on the chapel glaring starkly against the jewel-toned sky. The sign in front was dirty, worn, you couldn’t even make out the name nor the description out front. But the church itself stuck out -- stark, shining, clean. You continued driving, eyes flicking back to your phone eagerly. It should be syncing up any second now, you thought. But the phone continued to search for its signal.
   Glen Campbell crooned. You passed another church and only bothered to drop your speed limit down by ten miles an hour or so. It looked nearly identical to the one you saw before, down to the vague, dust-dirt-laden sign in the front. At an intersection moments later you spotted another and yet one. You didn’t bother to stop. You needed to find a signal. But you could tell out of the corner of your eyes that it was the same as the past two churches you had seen before. Something in your gut dropped.
                                                                                                             
                                                                                                          I can hear you through the whine.

   Just as you prepared to pass the third church, your car huffed, choked, stumbled to a stop. It was old but it wasn’t that old. You blinked at the church just across the road -- no one appeared to be there. A vague tremble overtook your fingers and you took the key out of the start with the slightest fanaticism before shoving it back in again. Your car wheezed, sighed, and tripped itself until it began again. The radio did not turn on. You carried on your way, in the silence, trying your best to keep the world around you in your peripheral vision. That feeling of peace, of easy humanity, crept lower and lower in your consciousness the longer you lingered in front of the old church.
   You drove. Your phone did not sync. Twenty minutes passed and your heart had stuck in your throat -- a notification popped up on the screen of your cell. Hope rapidly took over your system and you pulled over, ripping your phone out of the mount on the dashboard. 10% Battery remaining. Your brows knitted - 10%? Your charger was dangling from the port in your phone. You did your best to check the charger from the butt and the USB but nothing would connect. You were so certain it was halfway charged just half an hour ago.
   You had to find somewhere to pull over. You continued to drive through the narrow roads, the skeletons of gas stations dotting the roadsides, wrapped in the tangled kudzu fingers. When was the last time they had gas, you wondered. Did they ever? A sign appeared in the midst of the weeds in front of you. Welcome to Canaan.
   Your phone flickered to black.
   Well, you hoped, you sort of knew where you were now. You could work with that.
   The longer you went with the fields at your sides, the deeper your tartaran pit of unease grew. But the landscape began to develop -- the weeds were unkempt but not as bad as they were before, they had been contained at least sometime within the last month, maybe earlier. A sign, then two, popped along the sides of the road but still, as it had been this whole time, the only way to go was straight.
   As if from the pastel sky above, a warped sort of downtown appeared in the street in front of  you. Walls were painted an off-cream concrete, juxtaposed next to aging bricks. Traffic lights flicked from red, to green, to yellow, and yet, still, there wasn’t a single car to obey their orders. No cars, of course, except for yours.
   Hesitating slightly, you pulled over to the first little building in the line, feeling as if you were intruding. Your phone had been dead for about fifteen minutes now -- your mom might have been getting concerned, without you having checked in in so long. How long had you been off the GPS track? You had no idea. The sky was looming in that odd place between noon-sun and heavy pre-twilight and you revelled in that lull for a moment. That pungent feeling of disconnect. Sighing, you grabbed your charger and headed out of the car.
   The first store appeared to be a homemade goods sort of antique store, a little Southern haunt. You were familiar enough with those -- if you bought a coke or something, maybe they’d let you use their outlet? You pushed open the door and it hit you, then and there, the smell of sawdust. You weren’t sure what you expected but it wasn’t the slate clean white walls and piercing lights. Something more quaint, maybe?
   A plump women sat with her legs crossed behind a table of opalesque jewelry. She was almost drained of color. Her shorn hair was a white-blonde, her skin was milky pale and her eyes, just a bit too far apart for your comfort, were a grey blue. The irises were made all the more eerie when reflected from the walls.
   You did not say anything. She did not say anything. You cleared your throat, tore your eyes from hers, and only then did she elicit the weakest, twangiest of welcomes.
   There was no vending machine or cheap snack shelf. Just hand-painted plates, smatterings of blurred color as if done by an elementary schooler. Part of you thought you should just leave but you thought it rude and beyond that, even though you knew for a fact that her eyes were currently locked on the iridescent necklaces, something told you that she was waiting for you to do something. Anything.
   You continued to look. The acoustics amplified your every inhale, puffed your every exhale. You weren’t used to hearing it.
   Towards the back of the shop a set of brown, almost-burlap-knit sacks hung haphazardly. Intrigued, you stepped forward towards them -- where would you have worn these dresses, anyways? Were there even sizes? -- to clasp the rough fabric between your fingers. The air was suddenly filled with the pluck of a banjo and there should be something soothing about it, but the echoing acoustics made it feel almost tribal. You realized a moment later that you recognized that song from somewhere. It was the one from the country station you had listened to in the car earlier, after your phone had blipped out of signal. There was nothing warm about it anymore, the sweet harmonies removed to the barest, most native of chords. No one uttered a word but somehow, you heard the lyrics in your head.

                                                                                                                I hear you singing in the wire.

   With a jerk, you snapped your gaze up and there sat a man on a stool, all wiry limbs where the other woman was heavy. They had to have been siblings, with the same grey-laced porcelain skin and colorless eyes, the only difference surrounding his dank brown hair in comparison to her blonde. He played, and he stared, and you snatched your fingers from the burlap dress as if scalded.

                                                                                                              I can hear you through the whine.

   Trying to stall your rapid breaths, you retreat to the other side of the room. A series of rain sticks linger, the wood looking sharp and dry and you couldn’t rip your eyes from the beads and feathers dripping from their handles. These people didn’t look Native American but the sticks were labeled as Lumbee. You supposed that these were real and took a step closer. None of them looked exactly the same and each had an individual, string-attached tag. Regal, one was labeled, bedecked in violet streaks. Humble, all amber beads. But they grew more and more bizarre; Lowlands was far too smooth and there didn’t seem to be a handle in the entirety of the stick. Subjugate, you noticed with a furrowed brow, the biggest stick in the batch. It probably had an inch or two on you. And the last, nestled lightly in the corner: Annihilate.
   It was the smallest out of all the sticks, you thought with an funny note of irony. What a stupid name for a walking stick. Who would buy it? After pushing a handful of the surrounding sticks out of the way, you wondered if maybe it wasn’t finished, that’s why it was pushed to the back, because it was splintered, looking almost painful to the touch. You didn’t think anyone could really grip it. The banjo music tweaked in oddity behind you and you reached out just to see if it was quite as sharp as it looked, and suddenly the music stopped.
   “That is not for your use.”
   You yanked back your hand at the sound of the woman at the front’s voice, as coarse and bland as her coloring and rough enough to elicit a primal sort of warning in the back of your mind. That is not for your use. Suddenly, the menial tag and messy splinters didn’t feel so amusing to you.
   Annihilate.
   You, motivated by the heavy, mortal sound of your own breaths coming in jagged streaks in and out of your chest, lost all sense of politesse -- did this situation even warrant it? -- and burst your way out of the corner store. You could find another place to charge your phone, or at least ask for directions. Anything to get out of here.
   Even after you returned to the outdoors, the sound of your breath still pulsed in your ears.
   You considered heading back to your car and getting in, but there was a line of restlessness bursting in you upon your exit from the corner store. There was a little shop right next door -- you might as well go there, sit down and grab something to eat for fifteen minutes, and book it back on the road. Every town had its weirdos, you were fully aware, and yes, the vines twisted around the siding of the small restaurant -- that was the way it was labelled, at least -- and you could not help but feel a brief blast of apprehension. It looked like a quaint old home, but it appeared to be on the only place on the block with any sort of life inside it.
   Besides the corner store, of course. But you could not fathom returning there.
   Steeling yourself, you pushed open the worn white door. The golden handle was not necessary. The door did not close all the way.
   You were hungry.
   A young girl a couple years younger than yourself tilted her head at you from the wooden entrance counter. She nodded at you and slid a menu over. You figured that with skin as translucent as hers you’d be able to see every vein and capillary but nothing. Pure white.
   You were very hungry.
   You were seated at a long brown bench. You wondered if you had stumbled into a hostel or something, you could not recall the last time you dined with strangers in this very way. The shop was coated in wood, but different shades. The floor was an orange streaky sort, wallboards a deep brown-black, and the table glaringly moderate, a red mahogany. You felt almost dizzy. Your blood sugar must be down -- you hadn’t eaten since you left your house how many hours earlier? You could not remember.
   A family was sat next to you, distant at the other end of the table. They all had those wide-spaced pale eyes and variants of that thin, nondescript hair. You wondered if everyone in this town was related. One of those towns, you tried to crack a joke to yourself. But it fell oddly flat. Looking at this family, and watching them blink back at you… You could not bring yourself to find anything funny.
   They spoke amongst themselves in warped twangs and you were sure, one hundred percent sure, it was English. It didn’t sound like a dialect you were familiar with but were there, truly, any niche dialects in the United States? You shifted on the hardwood bench. Maybe you should have gone. Continued to drive until you found a McDonald’s. There had to be one somewhere. You were in the American South, after all.
   You were just standing up when the waitress reappeared, bearing a small burger on a paper plate. You did not remember ordering. But you must have, it was just yourself and that family at the other end in the shop. That would be a notable mistake to make. You were hungry. That was it.
   You bit into it. The burger was almost exclusively bread, just a sliver of meat in between but you savored it. Would they make you pay for it? Thus so far, the shop had been nearly silent, delicately interloped with the quiet, vague conversations of the family across from you, but a static speaker cut the room like a knife. You stopped with the food halfway to your mouth. You knew this song, these cords, far more warped than the first time you had heard it, what, hours before? And still more twisted than the banjo in the corner store.

                                                                                                          I hear you singing in the wire.

   The other family did not react, just continued to talk amongst themselves in that ripped American way. You wondered if they could hear it. Almost jolting, you faced a terrible thought. What if you were the only one to hear it? What if there was no speakers after all -- you could not see them, scan after scan. From where? From who? You placed your half-eaten burger on the plate. The family spoke even now but you could tell out of the corner of your eye that their attention was on you. With the utmost care, you turned your head to look at them, to find them all looking back at you. Their eyes were so far apart you had to focus on one or the other. You could not look at both at the same time.
   You heard your breaths reflected in your ears yet again. This was not safe, said your instincts. It’s time to leave, said your animalistic core, and you had to go. Pushing away your food you slid out of the bench, trying to rationalize the world around you. The family ceased to speak and looked at you, unabashed. You did not look back, at those spaced, pale eyes. You could not. You shoved past the waitress, halfway to a run, and prepared to push through the door when it swung open. Reeling, you wheeled yourself to a stop. You were embarrassingly out of breath.
   But you had nothing to be embarrassed about.
   Standing in front of you was the tallest, widest man you had ever seen. There was not a speck of hair on his head. His worn, faded wifebeater was the same tone as his cargo shorts was the same tone as his sunken irises was the same tone as his sullen skin. His jaw jutted out and his eyes -- you could barely permit yourself to look -- his eyes were almost piscine, scooped to the side of his head, parallel on the same line.

                                                                                                        I can hear you through the whine.
 
   You sighed in ragged gasps and turned, motivated fully on your core. There had to be a bathroom somewhere, a back exit, this man was melting, his skin drooping and then for the first time you put a reasoning to the sentiment of unease that had been plaguing you: it was inhuman. All of it. You remember the splintered, spiked wood and you saw it flash behind your eyes: Annihilation.
   You slammed the bathroom door behind you and pressed your hands together. You stepped forward to do something, anything, maybe to wash your face, that would be a regular emotion to emit when surprised your voice did not sound the exact same in your mind but it was yours you had to be how amusing you thought that you could still hear the speakers from the bathroom you wondered if they cleared out your food or if it was still there you were hungry you were very hungry
   You looked in the mirror.
   You were yourself. But you were not. Your skin had lost a little of its glow and your hair its luster, something heavier hung in your face -- when was the last time you had slept? But most notable were your eyes. A little duller, shoved a bit too each respective side. Too wide for your face. You had to look at one, and then the other in the mirror.
   Humble. As you should have been. Regal. You hoped your food was still there. Subjugate. You tossed your charger, then your phone, into the toilet. Annihilate.
   You heard it then, again, on a permanent loop.

                                   
                                                                                                     I hear you singing in the wire.
                                                                                                     I can hear you through the whine.
                                                                                                     And the Wichita lineman
                                                                                                     is still on the line.

​

Grace Yannotta is currently in her senior year of high school in North Carolina. She's an aspiring author and an aspiring historian and an aspiring a lot of things. She has work published or forthcoming in Dream Noir, Angry Old Man, and Zin Daily among others, as well as an upcoming astrology column in Dark Wood Magazine.

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