Whatver Crickets Eat

Swimmer’s Ear
By Chris Wagler

The green Cavilier swerved first onto the shoulder and then back to the road. The highway stretched empty under the steadily darkening sky.
“Honey. Just leave it alone will you? You’ll just make it worse.” Jeanette said. Wincing at the pain, Charlie Ford removed his index finger from his right ear and examined it for the trillionth time in the last three days. Except for a few flecks of wax there was nothing unusual. He kept expecting to see blood, pus, maggots, hell—anything to provide a concrete explanation for the mess he felt in his ear. Charlie glanced at the thunderheads that seemed to be forming directly in front of their path. Well, here’s the Great Midwestern Thunderstorm we wanted, he thought. Maybe the change in air pressure will pop whatever the hell’s in my ear.
On the first night of their vacation-road-trip they had slept in a western Nevada Holiday Inn and Charlie had insisted they go swimming. For the next three hours they drank chlorine-smelling Coronas and splashed around, sometimes having fun, but mostly trying to get drunk. Afterwards, in their room, Charlie had spent a great deal of time with his head tilted to the right, banging on his head in a display so ridiculous that Jeanette lost all interest in initiating a sexual encounter and resorted instead to laughing hysterically while rolling around on the perfectly smooth hotel bedspread. The next morning—well, 11:45 am is still technically morning—Charlie had complained that his right ear felt kind of fuzzy and full, as if it was plugged up or something.
“You just got some water in your ear, splashy,” Jeanette said in the middle of a yawn. “It’ll dry up by the time we get to the campsite.” Charlie responded by putting his finger in his ear and banging his tilted head again. Jeanette, in spite of her hangover, began giggling again. Charlie climbed out of bed.
“Think it’s funny don’t you?” Charlie said and added jumping up and down to his display. He jumped his way over to the bed and executed a very poor grand jette, landing on his wife’s legs.
“Hey! Ouch!” she cried, still smiling. Charlie pulled her on top of him.
“I’m sorry, couldn’t hear you. What was that?” he spoke in a mock British accent. Then he initiated the sexual encounter. Their marriage wasn’t perfect, often it sucked quite badly, but this was vacation.
By now everything Charlie did on this vacation-road-trip was diluted by the feeling in his ear. It was swollen, red, plugged, and throbbing. If he pulled on his earlobe the pain flashed enormously and he couldn’t sleep with it in his pillow because that produced a toothache sensation. He kept testing his hearing by fluttering his index and middle finger together rapidly like the wings of a hummingbird. This produced a very light, whispery sound that he could easily detect with his left ear, but the sound was muted to almost nothing with his right. It felt weird to even walk because his balance was frayed by whatever workings were mucked up in his inner (outer?) ear. In conclusion, it sucked.
Charlie raised his finger to his ear again, paused, and then put his hand back on the wheel. He flexed his jaw and heard small popping noises.
“It’s not getting better. Stupid pool at the stupid Holiday Inn with the stupid manager. I told you swimming was a bad idea,” Charlie said. Jean gave him an amused look.
“Maybe the next town will have a pharmacy or something and we can get you some drops if it’s getting that bad,” she said. They were heading north on highway 61, somewhere in northeast Iowa. Twenty minutes ago they had passed an intersection with a sign declaring the town of Lost Nation to exist two miles west. Charlie liked the sound of ‘Lost Nation’, it seemed like the name of a town in Iowa that he had never heard of before or been to.
The idea to drive from Santa Cruz, California to a remote place in Iowa had been Jean’s. They’d rented Clint Eastwood’s sweet cinematic tale, ‘The Bridges of Madison County’, and Jean just fell in love with the concept of Iowa. (talk about the concept of iowa) Charlie thought the movie was a bit of a gag-fest, but when she suggested that they might camp out for a couple days in some remote forest or something the idea began to take on a somewhat pleasant adventurous atmosphere. He suspected Jean’s desire to spend some time alone in the woods stemmed from the distance that had developed between them in the last six months or so. They were both accountants, both worked long hours, but Charlie felt himself becoming bored and restless more and more when they did actually find time to get it together.(this whole section needs serious revision) In the three years of their marriage, Charlie had never cheated, and he was sure Jean wouldn’t even think of it, so he just chalked it up to the Work of Marriage. People drifted, and sometimes they didn’t come back, but a lot of times they did. That’s what vacations were for, Charlie believed: to drift back.
The car was drifting again, this time towards the centerline. Jean elbowed Charlie and he snatched his finger from his ear, looked at it: nothing.
“It feels like my ear is both melting and expanding, Jean,” he said. “Is that possible? It has to be some kind of infection What if I’m going deaf right now?” Jean put her hand on his leg and rubbed his thigh reassuringly. Outside the car it looked almost as black as twilight, though it was mid-afternoon.
“We should get off the road anyways so we can watch the storm,” she said. “We’ll find a restaurant and get some coffee and ask about a doctor. I think the next town is only about ten mi–.” There was a sudden horrible cracking noise in the sky followed by a skull-shattering boom. The car swerved yet again. Jean issued a small scream and although he was silent, Charlie felt a tingling sensation spread up his back. He righted the car’s path as best he could and covered the hand on his thigh with his own.
“I think I heard that,” Charlie said.

The rain began with a few fat splatters that raised the dust from the baking highway creating a fragrance that delighted Charlie in spite of his growing discomfort. The topsoil here really won the lottery, it’s that rich he mused. Charlie flipped on the wipers. Suddenly the world was a black and white negative, the lightening silent, and the showers came with a swirling fury, lording itself over Wapsi County. The wind brought gusts that rocked the sedan periodically and Charlie locked both hands on the wheel. He eased the car down to thirty, but even that seemed to be pushing it. Jean still had her hand on his thigh and now she removed it and leaned forward, squinting at the rain-sheeted windshield. They were approaching a deserted intersection on the highway. Charlie slowed the car to a windy stop in front of the sign. The sound of the wind and rain was enormous but to him it held a queer muteness that was somewhat disorienting.
“There!” Jean said and pointed. “Elwood, twelve miles west and Berring just two miles east.” The other option, straight ahead, said that a town named Dubuque was 54 miles distant. The map showed Dubuque as being a rather large metropolis, by Iowa standards anyways, definitely a city of some sorts. Definitely a better chance of finding a doctor who could see him right away, but Jean would be a bit disappointed if they managed to find anything resembling traffic. The old proverbial left or right, I chose the path less traveled by and that has made my wife still consider sleeping with me, Charlie mused.
The rain was abating slightly, but Charlie and Jean didn’t notice. It was the most rain they had ever seen in their lives. Under the blackened sky, surrounding the car and deserted highway, were great expanses of fields, some with chest-high corn, some with hay maturing to a second cutting-season; and blending into the inky horizon, thousands of acres of lush tree-lines, their heavy branches waving madly with the gusts, seeming to nod and shake in both eager agreement and desperate dissent.