The Deaf Men

           There are three thousand women lying down in a field. They are equally spaced, rows and rows of them. Their ages and physical features do not matter, as they are just bodies in waiting.
           Partnered with each of the women is one man standing above. In one hand he holds a hammer, in the other hand, a sharpened wedge. The wedge is made of fine, white wood. Three thousand of them finished exactly in a clean point.
           The women's eyes could be opened or closed, or somewhere in between with eyelids fluttering. It would not matter, as the look in their eyes would be pained and terrible. Dresses draped down to their ankles, their alabaster legs are frozen in place.
           Three thousand men stand over the women, legs against the bodies of the lying down. They take their hammers above their heads; place the wedges of wood in the center of their chests. Here, the thousands of ribs meet the other thousands of ribs on one vertical piece of bone. Striking hard against the wood, they drive the wedge deep into the chests of their captors. The men may be deaf but not gentle, making full swings from high above their heads. They drive the spikes into the place that affords the heart.
           A field of sounds, a field of pain erupts. Strangely, the men can not hear the wailing women, their horror a chorus on the plains. The men can only see their rapturous faces, the wood driving deeper and deeper, their faces contorting. Thinking the beating was racing them to pleasure, they drive the wedges harder, their deaf ears not hearing the feminine terror.
           The women can hear one another's screams, like underwater warm-blooded beings and their hollow, watery moans. Smashing their chests with hammers, the men can hear each other pounding, faster and harder in a kind of rhythmic devotion. In death, sweet fingernails clutched the ground, uprooted dirt in clumps and stones.
           The women make the ground red and barren, exploded torsos and reeds. The men have done their job, crimson hammers at their sides. The wooden spikes are driven deep enough to stop what life had been in the field. A wall of woman noise had been silenced by thousands of men in a field with deaf hammers.

by mindy roth