The Listener (a short story)

Susan and I spent an hour yesterday morning in the waiting room at St. Vincent’s East Outpatient Surgical. It wasn’t our first visit, and likely not our last. The place was clean, quiet, and comfortable—the kind of quiet that feels padded, as if someone wrapped the world in cotton.

Most of the people there were around our age, a few perhaps younger. Some sat with spouses, others alone, but every single one was hunched over a cell phone. The entire room glowed with that cold blue light that makes faces look ghostly.

Nobody spoke. Not to their neighbor, not even to the receptionist. The only sounds were the buzz of the fluorescent lights and the soft tap-tap-tap of thumbs on glass. I’ve sat through my share of silences in my life—in hospitals, on fishing docks, at funerals—but this one was different. It felt hollow.

Susan was filling out a form, her reading glasses sliding down her nose. I leaned back and shut my eyes for a moment. That’s when I heard it—a faint murmuring, like someone whispering through an old radio just below the range of ordinary hearing.

I looked around. The television in the corner was muted, the receptionist busy at her computer. Nobody else seemed to notice. I tugged out my hearing aid, thinking it might be feedback, but the whisper grew clearer when I did.

It wasn’t one voice, but many. A shimmer of overlapping conversations, every syllable half-formed, as if words were trapped inside a storm. When I put the hearing aid back in, the sound vanished. I decided not to mention it to Susan. She’d only give me that look that says, You’ve been tinkering with too many old radios again.

---

When they called Susan’s name, a nurse led her back for her procedure, and I was left alone among the phone people.

The whispers started again almost immediately. I got up and walked toward the vending machine. In its polished metal front, I caught a reflection—not my own, but the faint outline of someone standing behind the row of chairs, watching. I turned around. Nothing there.

The reflection vanished too, replaced by the warped image of my own face. I felt that old tingle in my fingertips—the same one I used to get when a radio signal was about to come through. Back when I worked at the station, I could always tell when a frequency was right. The air had a certain pressure to it, like the world holding its breath. That’s what the waiting room felt like now.

I stepped outside to the car and dug through the glove compartment until I found my little portable AM radio. It’s been with me for decades—black plastic, half the buttons worn smooth, but it still picks up a signal like a charm.

When I turned it on, the dial hissed with static. Then the whisper came through stronger than before—a jumble of human noise, like dozens of people talking at once, each too soft to make out. I turned the knob slowly, and every frequency was the same: no music, no talk shows, just those whispers.

I leaned closer.

“…look at me… keep scrolling… don’t look away…”

That’s when I realized the voices weren’t coming from the radio. They were coming through it.

---

Back inside, the waiting room was just as I’d left it, except maybe quieter. The nurse who’d taken Susan back was staring at her tablet, mouth slightly open, eyes blank. For a moment, I thought she might have stopped breathing. Then she blinked and looked up at me, dazed, like someone waking from a dream.

I tuned the radio again. The static built, rising to a low hum. The lights overhead flickered. A man across the room dropped his phone and rubbed his eyes. A woman near the window looked up, startled, as if hearing sound for the first time in years.

The whisper grew sharper, hungrier. I could feel it feeding on attention like oxygen.

So I did the only thing I could think of. I tuned the radio to a dead frequency—one often used  to calibrate antennas—and began to hum. A low, steady note. The sound spread through the room like a ripple in water.

The hum met the static, and for one brief, beautiful instant, everything fell silent.

The lights steadied. The nurse blinked again. A young man near the window glanced around and said, almost apologetically, “Hi.”

That broke the spell. A few others laughed quietly, embarrassed. Someone coughed. The sound of real conversation returned—hesitant at first, then natural, like a muscle remembering how to move.

A few minutes later, the nurse called my name. “You can come back now—she’s in recovery.”

---

Susan was sitting up in bed, drowsy but smiling.

“How was the wait?” she asked.

“Oh,” I said, “quiet as a tomb. But I made a little noise.”

She laughed and squeezed my hand. I kissed her forehead and helped her get dressed. Before long we were driving home through the late-morning sun.

I kept the radio on low volume. For a while, all I heard was static. Then, faintly, a voice whispered—soft and far away:

“We hear you too, Listener.”

I smiled, shook my head, and turned the dial until I found a gospel station. The choir’s harmonies filled the car—rich, imperfect, and human.

Out the window, cell towers lined the highway like iron cathedrals, their red lights blinking in rhythm with a world that never sleeps. Susan dozed beside me, her hand resting on mine.

And for the first time in a long while, I felt the silence between us wasn’t empty at all—it was alive, and listening.

---

I'm not finished yet

 I want to give a huge Thank You to anyone who has ordered my book on Amazon. If you read it an honest review (on Amazon) would be greatly appreciated.

https://www.amazon.com/Ron-Howards-Simple-Musings-plainspoken/dp/B0FMS5TJNP/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_pl_foot_top?ie=UTF8

I have a few ideas for future work. Below is a preview of story that has been percolating in my brain for a little while...

The Curious Life of Ardell Broward

Introduction

Ardell Broward came squalling into the world sometime in the middle of the 1950s, in a little red-dirt town called Leeds, Alabama. Leeds wasn’t much to look at back then—just a handful of brick storefronts, a factory that made pants, and a church for every flavor of sinner. Ardell grew up there, somewhere between the train tracks and the better neighborhoods, never quite fitting neatly into either side.

He wasn’t what folks would call “book smart,” though he always ended up sitting beside the bright kids—the ones whose daddies sold insurance or owned grocery stores. Maybe it was luck, or maybe Ardell just had a way of looking like he belonged, even when he didn’t.

Adventurous by nature and restless by design, Ardell’s life would swing like a church bell on a Sunday morning—one moment he’d be singing in the choir, freshly baptized and full of holy conviction; the next, he’d be barefoot in somebody’s pasture, puffing on a joint and talking about cosmic energy and “the meaning of it all.”

Some folks said Ardell never could decide which side of the fence he was on. Truth is, he didn’t see much of a fence at all—just a long, winding road filled with odd detours, questionable companions, and stories that only a man like him could live through.

And so begins the tale of Ardell Broward—equal parts saint and sinner, philosopher and fool—making his way through life one misadventure at a time.

Chapter One

Ardell started off being a wanderer early on, always itching to see new things and just get “out there.” He had a sister, Janey, who was three hundred and fifty-four days younger, and the two of them were practically inseparable.

Janey had already met death once, having drowned in the bathtub when she was only two. If not for a neighbor who performed artificial respiration, her short life would have ended right then and there. But that experience changed her. At two years old, she had already faced the one thing most people fear the most—and come through it different somehow. Fearless. Bold. A little wild.

Five-year-old Ardell and four-year-old Janey made the perfect pair of explorers. They would often slip away from home to explore “the world”—which, to them, meant the few dusty blocks surrounding their house. Their mother loved them deeply, but she wasn’t the kind to keep an eagle eye on their every move. And so, Ardell and Janey roamed.

Sometimes they’d wander down to Jimmy Moore’s Grocery, where they’d shake the soft drink machine until loose change fell into the coin return. Other times, they’d wriggle their skinny arms inside and fish out a bottle of Coke. They only got caught once, and Jimmy Moore didn’t even tell their mother. Instead, he laughed, bought them each a soda, and told them not to make a habit of it. For Ardell and Janey, that felt more like a reward than a punishment.

When they weren’t at Jimmy Moore’s, the two could be found poking around the alleys behind Magdalene’s Beauty Shop or climbing the old wooden cooling tower just to reach the roof. From there, they could see the town of Leeds stretched out like a patchwork quilt—their kingdom, for the moment.

Later, when the family moved to Midland City, Alabama, their wandering ways didn’t stop. They’d ride their bicycles blocks from home, climbing into the hayloft at the local feed store or sneaking into the Baptist church to swim in the baptismal. Pastor Waters caught them more than once, giving a stern lecture about respect and holiness—but he never told their parents. And in the end, that only made Ardell and Janey bolder.

For such young kids, they were fearless. They rode their bikes all over the little town of Midland City, with no sense of danger and no idea how far was too far. Janey’s bike still had its training wheels, but that didn’t stop her from following Ardell wherever he went, sometimes riding a mile or two from home.

One warm afternoon, when adventure was calling louder than usual, they decided to pedal all the way to the other side of town. There they met a grown man who invited them into his workshop. And just as innocent children might, they went right in—two little kids sitting cross-legged on the concrete floor, watching the man tinker with his tools while he told them stories. They stayed for the better part of an hour, completely at ease.

Looking back, it’s the kind of thing that seems almost unimaginable today. But back then, in that small-town world where everyone knew everyone else—or thought they did—trust came easy. Maybe too easy.

Ardell never could remember much about that man, only that he smelled faintly of oil and sawdust, and that his hands were rough, like someone who worked hard for a living. The man told them stories about building birdhouses and fixing up old tractors. He even gave Janey a peppermint from a jar on the workbench. When the sun started dipping low, he told them they’d better get on home before their mama worried.

They pedaled back, carefree and laughing, racing through the golden light of late afternoon, Janey’s training wheels rattling like applause on the pavement. Nothing bad happened that day—nothing at all. But something about the man’s eyes, or maybe just the quiet of that dim little shop, stuck in Ardell’s mind long after they rode away. It wasn’t fear exactly, not yet. It was something else—a first flicker of understanding that the world might not be as safe as it seemed from a child’s height. He didn’t talk about it, not to Janey and not to Mama. He just tucked it away somewhere deep inside, one of those memories that didn’t feel important until much later.

And so life went on for the Broward kids—wild, curious, and still mostly innocent—but a tiny seed of caution had taken root in Ardell’s heart.

Married, with Kids

 On February 22, 1985, I married Susan Shaw Franks and, upon vowing to love, honor, and cherish, became “Dad” to nine-year-old Michael and ten-year-old Tiffiny. Without question, that day stands among the greatest of my life.

Before Susan, I had never pictured myself raising children. A year earlier I had been widowed, and what followed was a season of reckless survival.

Nights blurred together in seedy Miami bars, with too much liquor, too many drugs, and an aching emptiness that no amount of noise could cover. My routine was grim: get off work, collapse for a few hours, then hit the streets until dawn. Coffee, shower, work, repeat. I was on a downward spiral, certain that my life had lost its purpose.

But God had other plans. He nudged me out of Miami and into Dothan, Alabama, where I went to work with some former colleagues. Life there moved slower, and within a couple of months I met Susan—a strong woman raising two children on a convenience-store wage. From the start, our conversations circled back to Michael and Tiffiny. She told me about the years of moving between Leesburg, Florida, and Joiner, Arkansas and how determined she was to give her kids stability. I doubt Dothan was meant to be her permanent stop, but once we crossed paths, everything shifted.

The more time I spent with Susan and the kids, the more normal life felt again. I had convinced myself that God had sent me to take care of them, but I soon realized the opposite was true—they were sent to rescue me. They pulled me back into the real world, the world of ordinary, decent people.

Marriage didn’t erase our struggles. I carried debts from my Miami days, and Susan had been scraping to make ends meet. But we made do. Instead of bar-hopping, I poured myself into fatherhood. We took camping trips, bowled on Friday nights, and sometimes piled into the car for spontaneous Saturday drives that often carried us across state lines. No destination, no agenda—just the joy of discovering the world together.

I even built a treehouse in the woods behind our house, a project that grew bigger every weekend. It sprouted add-ons and even a ramp that stretched from the yard up to its deck. Before long, it became the neighborhood hangout. To the kids, I wasn’t just Michael and Tiffiny’s dad—I was the *cool* dad. Truth be told, I relished that role more than they ever knew.

Michael especially had been yearning for a father. He wanted someone to fish, camp, and explore with—someone to call “Daddy.” Suddenly, my life had meaning again. We fished every creek and river around Dothan, sometimes renting a boat for the day. One favorite spot was Cypress Creek, a little stretch of water just off Highway 231.

One evening, Michael and I stumbled across a car hidden on the trail near our fishing hole. It sat abandoned, but I kept us focused on fishing. Days later, the car was still there, unsettling us both. Michael wanted to "check it out", but I feared that the owner might be lurking nearby.  Weeks passed before the mystery unraveled on the evening news: that car held over two hundred thousand in cash, a .357 magnum under the seat, and drugs in the trunk. Michael shouted, “See, Daddy? I told you we should’ve looked inside!” I had to laugh, reminding him that the police would’ve taken the money anyway. 

Fishing became our ritual. I passed down my favorite lures—ones I had inherited from my father. Michael lost more than a few of them to tree branches or snags under the water, and I fussed, though I secretly lost just as many myself.

Together we fished across Alabama, Georgia, Florida, South Carolina, and Tennessee. Our favorite waters ran beside my sister Janet’s property, where we caught countless fish and collected a lifetime of stories.

It has been nearly a decade since Michael and I last fished together. His work—tearing down and rebuilding commercial jetliners—keeps him busy. I couldn’t be prouder of the man he’s become, yet I miss those days on the water. Maybe now, in retirement, I’ll carve out time again. Maybe I’ll dust off my rods, and maybe Michael will join me, just like he did when he was a boy eager to tag along with his dad.

Life with Tiffiny was different, full of the challenges and joys of raising a teenage girl. We bowled, roller-skated, and took road trips. Once she began dating, I couldn’t resist grilling her boyfriends as if they were applying for jobs.

Her poor prom date had to outline his education and career goals before she whisked him out the door, mortified. I probably embarrassed her often, but we had fun, and those years left me with memories I cherish.

There’s a sweet but fleeting season when your children see you as the smartest man on earth, when they trust you completely and call out for “Daddy.” That time passes too quickly. But the memory of it lingers like sunlight after a long day, warming me still.

And so, I think I’ll head out back and rummage through the shed for my fishing gear. You never know—Michael just might call, and if he does, I’ll be ready.