“I live in a very white house starting with a white roof you can clearly see from the air — why I made it that way.
“Um, white ceiling fans…
“… white power outlets.
“White paint all around. Every room, every piece of furniture, every piece of art even. I like white. And, hopefully, my family likes it *too*. They haven’t complained *so* far (laugh).”
“Soo, ahem, back to The Hmm.”
“Oh yeah (laugh). The Hmm. Well, we logically suspected the new gas compressor station across the rails — really white buildings over there and I respect that but, you know (laugh), I had to get to the bottom of this thing (!). So I went over there one day, complained that we were hearing that dad blasted hmm in my house over 400 yards away, and it seemed, well, it seemed to be affecting our health (!). And, you know, could they DO something about it? I was sure they were the culprit, the source of it all. And you know what they said, they blamed everything else. Electrical lines, the railroad, water pumps in a nearby pond, Interstate 84. Could be any of these… and more. But not *gas lines*. And they laughed right in my face! (laugh). And me a retired mechanical engineer. Heck, I probably knew how their operations worked better than 80% of them over there. Not as much difference between machines and chemicals as you’d think.”
“Understandable that you were irritated,” I tried to empathize. “Is that when you decided to move away? To someplace new?”
“Well, the wife and I thought, maybe we should try out a new town to get away from the sound. ‘New town’ we kept saying to each other when discussing it — over and over. And then it hit us: Newtown. The town right next door to us. We could start new; fresh. It seemed *fate*. I told her, honey, our house is just off the Newtown topo map, which I knew from my hmm research in the local area. But shortly I realized the gas compressor station was actually just *on* the Newtown map, which seemed to be a bad sign. No, the hoped for sanctuary turned out to be *much* much further away, not one but *several* oceans away. It all started that very next day, when I found the drawing of the woman running on the beach at a Newtown flea market while we were checking out the place. Giselle, ha, was actually a bit jealous of my obsession with the drawing, with *her*. It was the whiteness, you see.”
“We’re talking about New *Island* here, right?” I suppressed a joke about him skipping right over New York.
“Yeah. Our brief dream of living in Newtown only pointed to this actual new place where we could truly escape the problems with The Hmm. By being immersed in it!”
“You found the source.”
“Indeed we did (!!).”
“Not gas lines?”
“(Laugh) No, but that’s part of it too. It all came from that novel. By the girl.”
(to be continued)
Sunklands 