THE SCREAMING STOPPED before the wind did. Because the wind endured it had the luxury of dissecting the scream, reducing it to its basic components, and dealing with them sadistically and selfishly: The consonants were tossed to silence among gray and faded purple low-growing flowers and bushes while the vowels and syllables were corrupted and distorted after they were made echoes off the high and long, semi-arching sandstone walls of the canyon, carved by time and wind and snow and fire.
The result was an erotic slurring, almost purring construct that suggested a perverse form of auditory foreplay.
From the heavy gray clouds that hung so low they were almost fog came the antithesis. Not in the form of sound but physically: A great bird, its shoulders rolled upward toward its head, its wings slightly curved and locked in position as it made a descent of such speed and swiftness it was almost not seen at first.
I moved to my feet from my position on a cold, wet rock where I had been seated for nearly an hour, and struggled to quickly take a position where I could photograph the great bird as it made its approach.
The Golden Eagle has impressive eyesight, and saw me move. It also saw the barrel of the camera lens come up and took it to be something else: The barrel of a hunter's gun. It broke off its descent and hurled upward, touching the edge of the clouds before it suddenly rolled and began a new descent. A descent preceded by a high, short cry.
Suddenly, from the dew-heavy grasses around me, they came, previously unseen because they had been hiding underground: Prairie dogs. Several actually ran across my feet as they scattered, trying to distract and confuse the raptor that was soon upon them.
The Golden Eagle was not having any of what they were offering. It remained focused on its intent and death came almost immediately to a female dog, quite pregnant: One of the bird's talons hooked the rodent in the throat, ripping it open as the prairie dog tried to flee and the bird flew past. By the time the animal had gone less than a dozen feet it was dead, bled out.
The raptor made a tight circle, and recovered its prey, which it consumed while it sat on a dead cottonwood tree atop the canyon walls. Nourishment was more important to the great bird than vanity: I was allowed to photograph it while it enjoyed its meal and a brief of contemplation afterwards.
By the time the Golden Eagle decided to move on the clouds had melted away and the sun had come out, warming everything, including me and my damp pants and hiking boots to the point they were slightly stiff.
Then the screaming started again. But it stopped before the wind did, once more.
The screaming isn't really screaming. Not in the traditional sense or definition. It is a curiosity, occurring when the wind blows over certain surfaces, through specific openings in the porous rock face. It is, as a matter of fact, the wind itself, playing tricks with sound. Simply, the screaming is the wind throwing its voice, much like a ventriloquist does. And depending on the time of day, the relative weather - including such things as humidity and temperature, the scream changes. Sometimes it sounds like an operatic diva hitting a high note - a C, perhaps. Other times it sounds almost god-like, as if God himself were speaking, albeit unclearly. The first time I heard the screaming it was late in the day, when the heat of the day was starting to dissipate and the sun had begun its silent march to darkness. The scream sounded like James Earl Jones speaking as he would in a normal Jehovahian tone of voice, through a microphone attached to a speaker system with a filtering system made of very flexible plastic tubing: God with a head cold, bellowing for chicken soup, in other words.
The first time I heard the screaming I was alone and no one had warned me of its possibility. My verbal response was justified: What the HELL is that? Surprised and concerned there was a wounded beast somewhere nearby, in gathering shadows and pools of night, I paused in my trek and listened again, if for no other reason than to avoid the animal - a wounded animal can be more dangerous than a healthy one.
The screaming stopped, but it has become an unsettling memory than has endured.
The second time I heard it I was out with a friend who wanted to take some photographs of the landscape for his grandfather to paint, because he could no longer get out. We both stopped, looked at one another, and quietly said: What the HELL is that?
That time it sounded like the sirens that lured Odysseus and his men with their song.
We looked for the better part of an hour, trying to locate the source of the scream, with no success. But later, when we stopped at a gas station to get gas, the subject came up. The weather- and time-worn gentleman behind the counter smiled, showing missing teeth, and laughed.
You done heard it, didn't you?
'It', we learned, was the screaming we had heard. And we were not the first to inquire about it. According to the gas station owner, a fellow about our age had once come through, wanting to know about the scream, because he wanted to record it and study it.
The gentleman behind the counter laughed. Funniest damn thing I've seen in a long time, he said. He had this fuzzy and long wiener-looking thing dangling from a pole he said was a microphone, and he was carrying this briefcase-like thing under one arm while he tried to clamp his headphones over his ears as he ran up and down the length the canyon trying to capture the sound and locate the source of it. He must done that for a whole day before he physically collapsed at one end. Just as he did the screaming started. He didn't have enough energy left to even point his wiener at it.
So the screaming, we asked. It's real?
Oh, sure. We were told. But it ain't screaming. It's the wind.
He then proceeded to explain to us how it happened, how it took on different 'voices' based on the weather and the time of day and the relative humidity, and even the position of the sun in the sky.
I visited that curious place a few more times thereafter. Once in the company of individuals who refused to believe what I told them. That is, until they heard it for themselves. But they remained steadfast in their belief it was not the "voice" of the unseen wind. It was too human, they argued, to be the wind.
Suit yourself, I replied.
I've thought of that place when I am writing. Not for the memories of the screams, but for the "voices" that were created, and endured in my imagination.
Of all the challenges that face a Writer by far creating and sustaining a "voice" in his writing is one of the top five. It is a challenge that becomes more so when one considers how many writers have more than one voice and what it takes to sustain them.
Several years ago, having achieved a measure of success with my writing, I decided I wanted to try my hand at a different type of writing. When I made this desire known, however, I was not met with pleasure or delight.
Curious as to why this was I pursued the matter, and quickly learned that readers are a fickle lot: They spend a lot of time and energy looking for things of interest to them, and when they do, they don't want it to be changed. In any way.
Especially the "voice" of the writing.
But I digress. As I was saying: Several years ago I decided I wanted to try my hand at a different type of writing from what I had become known for. A type of writing that called for a new and different "voice".
But a funny thing happened on the way to publication: I talked with several writers who had decided to undertake pursuits of this nature, with mixed results. One writer, who was known for - as he put it - 'white bread' thrillers decided he wanted to take a break from what he considered to be formulaic writing to try his hand at experimental writing. Put nicely it was soft-core pornographic literature.
Against the recommendations of his agent and wife he pushed on with his effort and had it published. Under a pen name, of course.
At first, readers embraced the effort. But then they found out who had written it and things, ah, they took a turn for the worse. This writer couldn't get arrested or published. No one wanted to be associated with him because his indulgence had been getting more and more attention, and that didn't help him.
Then there was the writer of what she called 'Christian Science Fiction'. After years of being a good girl she decided the time had come to become a bad girl, and write something that deviated from what had made her a success.
The result almost ruined her career as a writer. The audience she thought she was writing for found her effort to be too tame while the audience who had made her the success she was abandoned her because they found this particular effort offensive and inappropriate for a writer of her standing.
Which brings me back to me, and that effort I had planned.
After much consideration and contemplation I decided not to publish it. It lingers in my bottom desk drawer, and from time to time, whenever I'm feeling particularly important or self-righteous or beyond my position as a humble scribe - what the British call 'the station of Life' - I open the bottom drawer of my desk and urinate onto that yellowed, crackled, moldering thing.
Yes, I know: Kurt Vonnegut did it first, and did it better.
But I digress. That nastiness that dwells physically in the bottom drawer of my desk and psychologically in the dark recesses of my mind serves a purpose all the same. It exists as a reminder of what a Writer does and doesn't do. What a Writer should do and shouldn't do. What a Writer must do and musn't do.
A Writer writes. That's it. That's all. A Writer should know that what he does in the now is all there is. A Writer should never assume that what he does matters beyond a certain point in time and space. A Writer must accept that no matter how great his talent it doesn't matter if no one appreciates, admires, and respects it. A Writer must embrace the fact and truth that faces everyone: Immortality isn't real and isn't possible. What a Writer writes matters here and now. To believe otherwise is irresponsible, and to pursue that belief is to assure you will become nothing more than a curiosity of the winds of Time.