Dirt Read online

  I’m going to start on the racks, she said. If any of you want to join me, you may. She had curled her hair. Long brown waves. And she was wearing makeup. Galen wondered if she had planned this for the special day, or if it had happened only because she was up early from his crowing.

  And then she was gone. He realized he was standing. Green Walnut must make up for everything, he said. Green Walnut has been very bad.

  Hallelujah, Brother, Jennifer said.

  She deserves it, his aunt said. You’re the perfect curse for her.

  But Galen ignored them, sallied forth out the pantry door and walked stiffly to the farm shed, trying not to lose the towels, same path he had taken last night into the orchard.

  He found the large bay door slid open. The green tractor, slim front tires, narrow ventilated snout. A thing of the past. But he tried not to be distracted. Stepped into the dark half of the shed, where his mother was hidden deep in the piles of racks.

  Just carry them out? he asked. Smell of dust and mildew, smell of walnut husks. Smell of his childhood. If he closed his eyes, he could go right back, and no doubt this was what his mother was doing now. We have the same childhood, he said. Because of the smell of this room.

  Not the same, she said. You have no idea. You can’t imagine what it was like.

  Fine, he said. Your specialness can’t be touched. So where do you want the racks?

  His eyes were adjusting and he could see them more clearly now, square wooden frames with mesh screens. Stacked like bricks, making a wall.

  I’m only telling you the truth, she said. It was a different time. I’m not the enemy.

  He clenched his teeth and made a growling sound and shook his arms. It was just what he felt.

  You won’t be able to do that to anyone else, she said. You treat me worse than you’d be allowed to treat any other person. I’m just about at the end of my patience.

  Your patience? Galen asked. He grabbed a rack and stepped around the tractor, into the bright hot sun. His blood pounding. He walked twenty yards to the staging area and set the rack down in the dirt. He got on his knees and grabbed big dirt clods like the earth’s own walnuts and set them in the rack. Dark crusted shapes already drier than the sun itself, and these would put the rack to good use.

  The towels on his legs were too difficult to keep in place, so he let them fall. Bare legs and underwear, a green sweater and green boots. He passed her on the way back to the shed, kept his eyes on the ground. I haven’t done anything to you, he hissed.

  Like jousting, he thought. Tilting at each other, only a brief moment of contact. He stepped into darkness, grabbed a rack and set it on the ground, grabbed another and stacked it, grabbed another. They were heavy, made of wood, and he wasn’t sure he could carry three at once, but he picked them up, his back washing out a bit, then recovering. He stumbled outside, his cheek pressed against wood, and tottered his way to the staging area.

  His mother was removing all the dirt clods from the rack he had placed. Those aren’t dry yet, he said. But she didn’t say anything in return. Just knelt there in the dirt in her work pants and one of her father’s old work shirts, sun hat and gloves, removing clods.

  He set down the stack of three racks and headed back for more. He grabbed another three, brought them out into the sun. Then he had an idea.

  He set all six racks next to each other in a long row, and he lay down on the racks, careful not to punch through any of the mesh screens. He made sure his butt and head and ankles were supported on the wooden edges. Another edge made a crease in his back.

  Why do you do this to me? his mother asked. Her voice as quiet as a whisper.

  Green Walnut needs to be dried, he said. And these are the drying racks. He tried to keep his eyes open, staring up into the midday sun. He was roasting in his sweater, and his bare legs and face would burn. He would stay out here the rest of the day. The wooden edges so hard across his back and neck he didn’t know how he’d last even the next five minutes, but he was determined. It would be a meditation, and who knew what might lie on the other side.

  All I’ve sacrificed for you for more than twenty years, his mother said in a low voice. Get up before Helen and Jennifer see you.

  Galen could hear his aunt and cousin talking at the shed, coming this way. Why does it matter if they see? he asked. I’m just curious. I don’t see why it would matter.

  Just get up now.

  No, he said. I’m staying here like this all day.

  The sun so bright Galen couldn’t see his mother, couldn’t judge what might come next. But she only walked away.

  He tried to relax into the hard wood, tried to let his flesh and bones find a soft way of fitting to the wood. The edges cutting into his butt were making his legs numb, and the edge across his back made breathing more difficult, but the one at his neck was the most urgent. He tried to exhale, stare at the sun, forget this existence, find something else.

  You already look like jerky, his aunt said.

  His thighs are white, Jennifer said.

  True, his aunt said. And I guess they should match his face and neck.

  Galen dizzy and blind, his eyes filled with flashes and spots, but he could hear the work on every side, a pointless task. The racks didn’t need to be cleaned or oiled or maintained in any way, unless a screen was broken. But none of them knew how to repair a screen. If one was broken, they’d simply put that rack aside, in the pile directly behind the tractor, and not use it. So what was happening today was that they were taking all of the racks out of the shed and then putting them away again.

  We’re just going through the motions, Galen said.

  What’s that? his aunt asked.

  Our whole lives, Galen said, just reenactments of a past that didn’t really exist.

  The past existed, his mother said. You just weren’t there. You think anything that’s not about you isn’t real.

  What about my father? Galen asked. Can you prove he’s real? Can you narrow it down to the two or three men who are most likely, at least?

  No answer to that. Never an answer to that. Only the sounds of their shoes in the dirt, the sounds of racks being picked up now, returned to the shed.

  I have some other questions too, Galen said. I’m not finished.

  But no one was listening to him, it seemed, and his back was so destroyed by now it hurt too much to speak. So he closed his eyes, saw bright pink with white tracers and solar flares, a world endlessly varied and explosive. His body spinning in the light. Face and thighs cooking, a stinging sensation. But he would stay here, he would see this out.

  Pain itself an interesting meditation. On the surface, always frightening, and you wanted to run. Very hard not to move, very difficult, at least at first, to do nothing. Pain induced panic. But beneath the surface, the pain was a heavier thing, dull and uncomplicated. It could become a reliable focal point, a thing present and unshifting, better even than breath. And the great thing about these racks was that they distributed the pain throughout his body. He was afraid his neck and back might actually be damaged, and that was a part of pain, too, the fear of maiming, of losing permanently some part of the body. Even an insect didn’t want that. No one wanted to lose a leg or an arm or the use of their back, and so as we approached this moment, we approached a kind of universal, and if we could look through that, and detach ourselves, we might see the void beyond the universals, some region of truth.

  Stop thinking, Galen told himself. The thinking was a cheat, robbing him of the direct experience. And it’s also bullshit, he said aloud. It’s all bullshit. I’m just lying on a rack, and that’s all.

  His mother and aunt and cousin having high tea now. All sounds of their movement gone. Only the sounds of flies and bees on flight paths nearby, the dry landings of grasshoppers, an occasional car passing. The world in its immensity and such disappointing nothingness. Galen rolled over, off the racks, into the dirt. Just like that. No decision, just rolled over, and now it was gone, the
entire experience, all wasted, and he was in the dirt again. Nothing learned, nothing gained.

  Chapter 5

  Galen tried to push up on his arms, but he felt broken. This sucks, he said. He lay facedown. The dirt scratching against his burned thighs hurt more than he would have guessed. The sweater an oven, a cocoon. A slick of sweat beneath, and he was thirsty. His face on fire.

  His butt muscles were coming alive, blood rushing into his thighs, and his legs felt like hollow tubes, the muscle not attached to the bone. He pushed up onto his knees, then tried to stand, his legs like straws. Points of pain everywhere along their edges, the muscles unreachable, not responding. But he was able to take a step, and another. His back had been folded for too long, so he felt like he was leaning.

  Almost got you, he said. You almost had to admit you’re not really a body. Just a fake, an illusion, and I’m watching you reassemble now. All the clanking around to pull the dream back together.

  He lurched his way around the shed to the fig tree where the other illusions were just finishing tea.

  You look a little stiff, his aunt said, smiling. And suddenly he understood. His aunt hated him. It was instantly clear. He liked her, and he had thought she liked him, but now he could see that she hated his mother and hated him as her extension. Her smile all meanness.

  Wow, Galen said. Holy shit.

  What? Jennifer asked.

  Nothing, he said.

  We’re finished now, his mother said. We’ll be leaving to see Grandma in a few minutes.

  Galen made his way carefully to the free chair and sat down. Cast iron, no cushion. His butt might fall back asleep. But it felt good to sit, and the shade was glorious. He closed his eyes to the smell of figs, a scent so rich it made a body of the air. Wow, he said. The figs.

  Nearly ripe, his mother said. Another week at most. And she poured him a glass of orange juice. Here, she said. Even when she liked him least, she would provide for him. And this was the difference. His aunt would push him off the edge if she ever had the chance, but his mother would never do that.

  Galen wrapped both hands around the cool glass of orange juice, and he wondered whether to drink it. He was thirsty, incredibly thirsty. And the orange juice would be delicious, cool and tangy, with a bit of pulp, and he loved the pulp. But he felt dizzy, the top of his head gone, a floating sensation, and he didn’t want to lose that. He felt he was seeing everything more clearly now. The orange juice might stop all that. Too cold, too acidic, a jolt that would bring all his attention to his stomach, and he would no longer be floating free.

  Freakazoid, Jennifer said.

  Galen closed his eyes and tried to focus. What did he really want? He held the glass of orange juice in both hands and brought it closer, close enough to put his nose into the glass and smell the sweet fruit. He breathed the orange juice, in and out, in and out.

  I can’t watch, his mother said. We’re leaving in five minutes.

  Galen didn’t like having the time pressure. That was changing the experience. An end was being enforced now, and that was going to fuck up everything. Damn it, he said.

  Whoa, Jennifer said.

  He didn’t want her here. Or his aunt. He wanted to be alone with the orange juice.

  And then he decided to just do it. He tilted the glass and tasted the juice, sweet and bitter and overpowering, and he held it in his mouth, refused to swallow.

  Does Mikey like it? Jennifer asked.

  He tried to forget her, tried to focus only on the sweet juice in his mouth, but it was impossible. He swallowed, and exactly what he had feared would happen did. The track all the way down to his stomach, and he felt the weight of his stomach, the caustic need, all of his awareness pulled downward, the top of his head no longer open. A stone sinking down, hitting bottom, stuck there now.

  Thanks, he said. Thanks for fucking that up.

  And what was that exactly? his aunt asked.

  Nothing, he said.

  Exactly, she said.

  Galen opened his eyes, chugged the rest of the glass, then set it down on the table.

  Welcome back, his aunt said. We are the humans.

  You are empty shells, he said. Husks and nothing more. He got up and walked into the house, had to use a hand on the banister rail to get up the stairs.

  He sat on the edge of his bed and bent over carefully to remove the sweater, drenched in sweat. Ow, he said. That really hurts. He could hardly breathe. He took off the boots, dropped his underwear, and stepped carefully into the shower. Took a cold one, for his legs, and even the cold water hurt. He dabbed himself carefully with a towel, then put aloe on his legs and face and neck. In the mirror, he looked unnaturally bright. The dark skin of his face had become bright pink beneath, a kind of secondary glow.

  Galen, his mother yelled. We’re waiting.

  I’m coming, he yelled back. He put on clean underwear, a T-shirt, socks, and tennis shoes, walked carefully down the stairs.

  Damn it, his mother said. Put on some pants. She was standing in the foyer with a hand on the doorknob. His aunt and cousin lounging in the sitting room.

  My legs are burned.

  Well of course they’re burned. Put on some pants.

  Fine, he said. He went back upstairs and found some old swim shorts that were too small and wouldn’t cover more than a few inches of his thighs.

  Cute, Jennifer said. I like that look. It would be even better if you pulled the white socks higher, up to your knees.

  Shut up, Jennifer, his mother said.

  I’m warning you, his aunt said.

  Then his mother was out the door, and they all followed. He got in the backseat, and Jennifer slid in beside him, his aunt up front. He had a boner by the time they pulled out of the lane. Suburbia all around them, housing developments. Theirs was the only undeveloped farmland for miles. Ten acres of walnuts, a few acres for the house and lawn, a couple acres for the driveway. Everyone else bunched up in quarter-acre lots or smaller.

  Newly paved streets, winding, with thin saplings planted all along. But soon enough they were in the old section, houses from the fifties. And the old shopping center.

  They have wonderful pumpkin pies at Bel-Air, he said.

  Stop, his mother said.

  They really do make wonderful pies.

  How about you give it a rest, Galen, his aunt said.

  It’s been so long since I’ve tasted pumpkin pie.

  Only the sounds of the car after that. A throaty engine, a big 350 or something, his mother had told him once. She was trying to get him excited, perhaps thinking he would start changing the oil and such, saving her some money. But he didn’t give a shit about cars. He didn’t care about anything that other people cared about. He was not here to be a slave to houses and cars and jobs and marriage and kids and TV and all that crap.

  He put his hand on his boner, squeezed it a bit, tight in the shorts. Jennifer staring out her side window. And then they were piling out of the car and he was trying to hide the boner by tucking it into his waistband and holding out the front of his T-shirt. Looked obvious, probably, and he couldn’t think of a way to make his hands look natural, but he couldn’t think of anything else to do, and his aunt and mother weren’t looking at him anyway.

  Suzie-Q, his grandmother said when they shuffled in. She just didn’t look that old. It didn’t make any sense that she was here. They were all waiting for her to die, but it might be a very long time. Twenty years or even longer. She was only seventy-one.

  She hugged Galen’s mother, and then she hugged Galen. A strong squeeze.

  My handsome grandson, she said. Are you getting ready for school?

  Not this fall, Galen mumbled. I’m deferring a year.

  Well, she said. I think that’s a good idea. We talked about that. Take a year off. See the world first.

  Galen couldn’t bear to look at his aunt or Jennifer. His grandmother squeezed him again and then finally let him go.

  Come sit, his grandmother sa
id. So nice of all of you to visit.

  There was nowhere for them to sit. One chair in the corner, then the two beds with their curtains, the old woman with the wet eyes in one of them, smiling at Galen now.

  Sit on my bed, his grandmother said. So they did that, which meant they were all facing outward, away from each other in a kind of ring, stiff backs like the half-buried rocks at Stonehenge, waiting. Galen’s grandmother grabbed the chair from the corner and brought it over to sit.

  Look at all of you, she said, smiling.

  How are you, Mom? Galen’s aunt asked.

  Oh, I’m fine, she said. How long has it been since you last visited? Has it been a year? And is that Jennifer?

  Of course that’s Jennifer, his aunt snapped. And it’s only been a month. Less than a month.

  Suzie-Q visits me every day. And Galen, even though he’s busy getting ready for school in the fall. She was smiling at him, that new and foreign face in her dentures, not the face he grew up with. Well, his grandmother said. Isn’t this nice.

  I’d like to talk with you, Mom, Galen’s aunt said. About the trust, and about college for Jennifer. This will be her senior year of high school, and then she’ll be going to college, so we need to make arrangements.

  Oh, we have plenty of time for that.

  I’d like to talk about it now, Mom.

  It’s maybe a little early, Galen’s mother said. We could wait until later in the fall, couldn’t we? Or even the winter.

  Shut up, Suzie-Q.

  Stop that, Helen. Don’t talk to your sister like that. You’ve always been like that.

  Galen’s aunt took a deep breath and closed her eyes.

  I thought there wasn’t any money for college, Galen said. Is there money for college?

  Oh, I don’t have any money, his grandmother said.

  That’s right, Galen’s mother said. There’s only enough to pay for this good care home.