Specimen Days by Michael Cunningham

patiently with him, holding him as he wept for the horse. The next day she'd gone out and bought the music box, an extravagance his father said would be the ruin of them. His mother had laughed bitterly, told him he was miserly and fearful, insisted that they needed music, they deserved a bit of cheer every now and then, and a music box would not spell the end of the world no matter what it cost. Later, Father turned to leather, and the machine took Simon, and Mother went into her room.
    Lucas said, "It's only music, Mother."
    "I know what he's saying now. I know the language he speaks."
    "You should go back to sleep," Lucas told her. "I'm going to put the music box in the parlor for a while."
    "He's all alone in a strange land."
    "I must go. I can't be late for work."
    "We brung him here from Dingle. It's only right we should go to him where he is now."
    "Goodbye, Mother. I'm off."
    "Farewell."
    "Farewell."
    He left the bedroom and put the music box on the parlor table, where his father still sat, awaiting breakfast. "Goodbye, Father," he said.
    His father nodded. He had acquired an infinite patience. He would come to table at the appointed hours, eat if food was offered him, not eat if food was not.
    At the works, Lucas had to struggle to pay proper attention. His mind wanted to wander. He aligned a plate, pulled the lever, and then was at the back of the machine, inspecting the impressions, with no memory of having gotten there. It was dangerous, a dangerous condition to bring to the machine, and yet he could not seem to do otherwise. Trying to think only of his work align, clamp, pull, pull again, inspect was like trying to remain awake when sleep was overwhelming. Inattention took him like dreams.
    To steady himself he set his mind to the whisper in the machine. He listened carefully. It might have been the squeak of an unoiled bearing, but it sounded more like a voice, a tiny voice, though its words were indistinguishable. It had the rhythm of a voice, the rise and fall and rise again suggesting intention rather than accident, the tone implying a certain urgency more human than mechanical, as if the sound were being made by some entity struggling to be heard. Lucas knew well enough what it was to speak a language no one understood.
    He fed it another plate and another and another.
    The nature of the machine's song didn't disclose itself until afternoon. The song wasn't sung in language, not in a language Lucas recognized, but gradually, over time, the song began making itself clear, even though its words remained obscure.
    It was Simon's voice.
    Could it be? Lucas listened more carefully. Simon's voice had been deep and raucous. He had sung not well but with bravado, with the rampant soaring tunelessness of someone who cared less about sounding beautiful than about creating a sound big enough to reach the sky. This seemed, in fact, to be Simon's voice, rendered mechanical. It had that reckless, unapologetic atonality.
    The song was familiar. Lucas had heard it elsewhere, at a time and place that hovered on the outer edge of memory. It was a song of melancholy and yearning, a sad song, full of loneliness and a thread of hope. It was one of the old ballads. Simon had known hundreds of them.
    Simon was imprisoned in the machine. It made sudden, dreadful sense. He was not in heaven or in the pillow; he was not in the grass or in the locket. His ghost had snagged on the machine's inner workings; the machine held it as a dog might hold a man's coat in its jaws after the man himself had escaped. Simon's flesh had been stamped and expelled, but his invisible part remained, trapped among the gears and teeth.
    Lucas stood dumb before the singing wheel. Then, because he must not stop working, he loaded another plate. He aligned, clamped, pulled, pulled again, and inspected. In his mind he sang a duet with Simon, matched him note for note, as the hours passed.
    At day's end, Jack came to say, "All right, then." Lucas desperately