His words barely reached me. It was then when I really began
to hear the hum for what it was. Before, it had sounded like it was just
in my head; like there was something in my ear, humming away. But as
I watched Josh’s lips move and struggled to hear the words, I realized it
was all around me, all around us; it was more than in my head. It was the
fluid we swam in. It was denser than air. It smothered us. Our words and
sentences pushed through it, just barely making it from him to me, or
from me to him. It suddenly seemed deafening.
Turning back to the road, Josh kept walking. I followed. And
soon enough, the corner of the building pulled away to show the football
field. In the grass behind the building, we stopped and stared.
The field itself wasn’t there; it wasn’t visible due to the immense
crowd gathered on it. It
must have been everyone in town. Nobody seemed to move, and though
packed onto the field, they didn’t seem to interact. They just stood. The
crowd itself was seething – I could trace the waves caused by the shifting
bodies. A slight sway might start at one end or the other and fan out, like
rippling water.
It was clear then where the hum was coming from, and it took on
a new tone, one that was human, living, breathing. It wasn’t one sound
that they were all making, but the sound of the
crowd. It was the sound of so much life in one place, so much silence
crowded together.
We sat on the grassy hill behind the school and above the field,
watching as the field swayed.
Josh got up and began walking down the hill. “Wait here,” he
said, without looking back.
He hopped the fence and walked down to the field. I could se P