We were driving at night through the Pine Ridge reservation, down
I think it was called Bombing Range Highway, and the roar of the motor,
as always, drowned out every other sound. But at some point I swear I
could hear the sound of crickets. Thousands of crickets, chirping high-pitched
curls, endlessly, just past the edge of the noise of the engine.
I couldn't tell if it was just my imagination and consequently the sound grew
louder. It occurred to me that this ringing was just like the ringing of the
crickets in South Salem twenty years ago on some summer night in New York
when I didn't know what to do. So it was the sound of a memory, I suppose,
but I could swear I was hearing it. And then the sound of the crickets expanded,
and was like a given, like some ether that was always there and that was just
another form of the big, black, star-crusted sky, or the plains, and the roar of
the motor was a pitiful attempt at noise in comparison. The sound reached South
Salem twenty years ago and it reached into the night sky over South Dakota.
I thought it was in my head and in fact it was in my head. It vibrated through
everything here like beautiful, invisible waves and my head was just in the way.