Kim Hunter - The Official Report on Human Activity

The wind piled debris above them, closing them off from the storm and daylight such as it was. The darker it got, the more frightened and panicked everyone became, including the woman. She could see almost nothing now but her Grandmother standing near the transport, singing as it pulled away, and though she could not hear her Grandmother, she knew what she was singing.

It had seemed sad but mostly quaint to see her Grandmother singing out loud to someone who could not hear her through the thick glass of the transport. It had brought a strange smile to the woman’s face as the Grandmother and the town disappeared. But now, with the daylight being swallowed, the full weight of that moment felt like another storm.

Oxygen was becoming a precious commodity in the sunken transport. Nonetheless, the woman’s sadness propelled her singing voice so that the sheer volume of it brought a level of discomfort that caused others onboard to try to wrestle her to the ground and cover her mouth. But they were weak from the rising heat and diminished air and were not fired with memories of a Grandmother singing and disappearing in the distance. So the woman was able to wrestle free and continued to belt out the song like someone possessed of the Holy Ghost or Orishas (depending on how you pronounce it), drawing the oxygen out of the small darkening space.

Weaker, twenty-first century-type storms were still rocking the area when the first rescue flights were sent. The machines were, of course, flown by inmates who could be persuaded to do so. One prisoner pilot who had gotten his privileges by singing and playing guitar thought he might have been hallucinating (could it have been the pain from the device strapped to his head to control the machine?) when his listening device fed him what sounded like singing. Did he know that song or was it just one of those songs that sounded like a song you thought you knew even though you’d never heard it before?

A probe confirmed there was life at the site of the singing. He sent for machines to probe the area. They were flown in quickly. Crews drilled air holes into the debris and began to remove it layer by layer. Nat thought the rescue of one person would surely move up his release date. When he discovered a transport full of people and got the lowdown on the singing, he could see total freedom on the horizon.

Acting against the orders issued during his training, Nat, the musical prisoner pilot, landed the flying device. The other crew member inmates were taken aback by Nat’s presence, by his going against orders to land the vehicle. Some, mostly the white people, thought he was another crazy black inmate and gave him lots of personal space.

There were levels of chaos swirling in Nat that had pushed or allowed him to land. One was created by the storm itself. The training that was to enable him to ignore it was as shoddy as any of the training he’d received.

The other source of chaos was more tinged with hope. That, of course, came from the Singer. Fragmented and tangential to all of that was a story in his head—a story that must have come from an old external screen or a grandparent. The parts of the story he could recall made him want to be the first person the Singer saw when she emerged from the wreck. But, when daylight touched the Singer’s eyes, the sky was what she saw, and it lifted her past the tears she’d shed thinking of her Grandmother.

Even in her sweaty disheveled state, or because of her sweaty disheveled state, the Singer was beautiful. She looked like she had barely escaped from deep inside a burning building or had just swum away from a vehicle that had crashed in the water or had done something else that demanded every ounce of blood, will, and focus to accomplish. Nat realized that was what he’d heard in her voice when he’d been flying over the wreckage of the transport—a desperation he’d thought belonged to him alone. It was the echo of that desperation in her voice that had made the unfamiliar song seem familiar and made him want to be with her and her music.

People were offering the Singer food, drink, and light wraps. She took the aid, smiling and thanking the people, all the while looking up. It wasn’t until Nat spoke that she looked at anyone for any length of time.

“I’ve heard that song. What was that you were singing?”

“You couldn’t have heard it before. But that’s a wonderful compliment and I’ll be sure to tell my grandmother.”

She felt the need to sit down, to gather herself. Her sweat dried and cooled her even through the light wraps. Time began to pass again. She could feel her own weight. She looked up just in time to see police hog tie Nat and all but throw him into a transport. Then she realized she and Nat were some of the very few dark-skinned people in the area and that she had been the only dark person on the transport.

The first part of the story that brought the Singer a bit of celebrity was that one of her fellow passengers had blood dripping from one ear. It had been damaged by the volume of the song the Singer sang in the transport. The person with the damaged ear wanted to take the Singer to court until the other passengers vehemently protested. What was one impaired ear compared to them all dying slowly and horribly buried beneath rubble? That surely would have been the outcome had the Singer not sang so loudly.

Reporters began to hound the Singer. She decided to use one of her Grandmother’s names and told them she was Tina. She repeatedly asked reporters if they knew the prisoner who had heard her singing from beneath the rubble.

Tina’s notoriety increased when they found the prisoner. The sight of him, knowing he was not dead, gave her a rush of relief. She embraced him even though his clothes were inexplicably damp.

She learned his name was Nat. Inevitably, someone suggested they form the Nat and Tina Turner Revue, but also suggested that, unlike his namesake, Nat should not murder white men, women, or children in the course of Black Liberation. Nearly every media outlet suggested they could, like Ike and Tina Turner, “make a killing with their music.” Many people thought that was a stupid thing to say even when they wrote it. But the media is filled with people paid to say stupid things, and this was one of those stupid things that spread like the flu.

Their high profiles and public curiosity actually gave Nat and Tina enough cover to circumvent the law and perform live without the usual bureaucratic nightmare of meeting virtually impossible qualifications. Even so, the Recording Institute for Public Safety (RIPS) was just biding its time before intervening. Their legal and public persuasion people decided their reputations could, as usual, use a little boost. So, they would let Nat and Tina go without hologram agreements for at least a little longer. The musical duo did keep up appearances by appearing in news grams, but for free, and as preludes to live performances.

Those performances, all of course in small, low-tech venues, were packed. Everyone wanted to hear the woman who managed to sing her way out of what should have been her grave. Some even thought they wanted to hear a voice that could damage their ears. What they got was blues updated by the Revue with a group of musicians that were drawn to Nat and Tina. Every show ended with an a cappella version of “River Deep, Mountain High.” Many in the audience heard things they’d never heard before, never knew they could hear, things they didn’t know were there to be heard.