She needn’t be so loud. Always chatting, gabbing, laughing. So much noise over the ball game.

And the business of others. My business. Church business. But never any real business. I was going to lose my mind. I’d asked her to be quieter, but she just mouthed, “Can’t hear you,” and pointed to the side of her skull where the earplugs were.

But I guess I wanna get laid someday or have a meal again, so I shut up. When I couldn’t take any more, I went to the garage and tried to listen to the game on the radio.

The silence before I clicked on the radio was beautiful. I almost didn’t turn my little radio on. I looked at the old thing. It had been a bright yellow once before, tiny compared to what most people had, and still functioned. The color had faded with lots of years of abuse and grease and smoke. I had to smoke outside now. But I really loved the old thing.

My dad kinda bequeathed it to me when he died. Well, he didn’t have a will and nobody else wanted it. My dad would listen to country western (he hated the term “country”) and Cowboys and Rangers games as he “tinkered” with the car or fixed something that he could carry into the garage. Sometimes he would listen to it low as he sat in the garage door opening and watched the neighbors go by or the rain.

I heard my feet shuffling across the floor. It needed sweeping, I thought as a smile formed. I felt a little silly, grinning at the little noises my body was making as I walked across the floor and like I said, I almost didn’t turn the game on.

Then she, with the phone on top of a basket of laundry, pushed open the door between the garage and the rest of the house. Her voice seemed to beat everything in its path. “But he didn’t. That man just…” I don’t remember the rest. It was just chattering and gossip, as if she was on a mission to destroy the agreeable hushedness of the world.

I watched her load the clothes in, retrieved her phone, and set the empty basket down with a piercing slap. With a grunt, she closed the door behind her. I could have been carving up a body for all she noticed.

The quiet was disturbed and different, and for all that mattered, it wouldn’t come back, so I listened to the click of the radio and the static until I found the station where the Rangers were playing. Soon the play-by-play was a murmur, and the only sound I registered was my broom arranging the dust underneath.