do but you don’t.” He shrugged unhappily. He looked weary and old. “Lives get eaten.”
“I’m not giving you an option.” I took another step. “You teach me or it’s Simmons and Diamond. Or worse, the police. What you’re doing, it can’t be legal.”
“You sure have a lot to say tonight.”
“You too,” I said.
The night pressed in around us. October leaves were beginning to fall. Even at night you could see the vanguards, lazing in circuitous routes. In mere weeks, the yard would be covered. Footsteps would crunch. Rain would turn the dry matter into mulch. The mulch would decompose and become part of some new growth. All these miracles would occur around us in rapid succession, and in that time my father and I would remain stationary, strangers, unless someone did something right now to alter our courses.
“When you’re stronger,” he said. He set his jaw, decided he liked the irrefutability of his answer, and nodded. “When you’re stronger, then we’ll see.”
I felt the slap to my face, the kicks to my crotch, Gottschalk’s interrogative stabs. “I’m strong now,” I insisted.
“Prove it,” he said. He lifted the heavier of his two bags, loosened the drawstrings, and reached inside. It was like the unsheathing of a longsword: he withdrew a beaten old shovel and rolled it in his palm as if it were something priceless.
“This is Grinder.” He caressed the beaten wood.
“Your shovel has a name?”
He tossed it across the four feet that separated us. I overreached and it cartwheeled to the grass at my feet. We looked at the fallen tool, the verification of my worthlessness. Without another word he entered the cabin and shut the door.
Inside, the usual noises: the sacks being placed in the bedroom, the kicking off of boots, the rush of water hitting drain. I reached to the ground and gripped Grinder’s handle. The weight was unexpectedly satisfying. I moved into the backyard, seeing through a window my father at the new bathroom mirror, pawing his beard and peering intently at the foreign object of his face. The light above him flickered out and, for me, for now at least, he stopped existing. I aimed the shovel.
21.
SEVEN HOURS LATER THE first light of dawn lit up my work. I stood up to my knees in an ungainly depression six feet long, four feet wide, and two feet deep, located halfway between the back of the cabin and the river. My leg hair was matted with mud. Soil had found its way everywhere: my underwear, armpits, ears, and eyes. Every time I shook my head, dirt scattered like black dandruff. Each time I swallowed, it tasted of the bitterest coffee. My arms sang in agony. I sat on the edge of the hole, using my thumbs to poke at the runny blisters on my fingers, and considered the forty-eight cubic feet of dirt I had displaced.
Eventually my father ambled around the corner, yawning and raking a hand through his hair. He stopped at the garden and pulled an onion. He peeled away the skin as he approached. I watched and waited, flexing my cramped hands, my weariness overcome by the pride I felt in my overnight achievement.
“Onions shore up the immune system, lower cholesterol, and prevent cancer,” he said. Onions—this was what he chose to speak about? I was at a loss for words. He brushed off the vegetable and took a giant bite while toeing the edge of the hole, evaluating its various dimensions.
He grunted. “So that’s the best you can do.”
He turned and started back toward the cabin. Rage gripped me and I snatched Grinder from where I had speared her. I jumped to my feet and drove wounds into Bloughton. I did it again and again, the dirt flying, so that my father would hear the patters before he rounded the corner. I wasn’t done, I wasn’t even close.
Four more hours, five. I could no longer hear the river through the dirt in my ears. The sun rose to its apex and blazed; I felt my skin sizzle and wiped dirt on my neck as shield from the burn. The ground was changing. Grinder struck rocks, vibrating so hard upon contact that my teeth hurt. I fished out larger stones by hand and hurled them over the edge, where they disappeared into the till of ousted earth.
A heretofore unknown muscle that spanned from my armpit to waist convulsed. Reaching for it, I tripped and fell to my knees. The grass was at eye level.