Текст книги "Dirt"

Автор книги: David Vann

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Текущая страница: 9 (всего у книги 15 страниц)

See?

Galen was so frustrated he yelled and kicked at the door.

You’re an animal, she yelled at him. You’re an animal, and you deserve to live in a cage.

Galen stepped back and turned to kick at the door with the heel of his shoe. He kicked it hard. But it was tougher than it looked. I’ll show you some fucking abuse, he said. If you’re going to use that word, then you should learn what it means.

You’re just giving me more to say in court. I’ll tell them you tried to kill me.

Galen stopped kicking. He couldn’t believe any of this. She kept twisting things around. He needed to think. He needed to think his way out of this.

Look, he said. Let’s calm down. Let’s think about this. I never hurt you. I’m not an abuser. Can we agree on that, at least?

You’re an abuser.

Galen couldn’t stay here. He was going to just scream if he stayed here. He needed to go away for a while and calm down and think. But he couldn’t have her calling the police while he did that.

There was a bar that fit over the door handle. He swung this in place and then tried to close the padlock. It was rusty and didn’t close easily, but he brought a thigh up to hold the bottom of it and he pushed down with both hands until it locked.

What are you doing?

I closed the padlock. I have to think for a while. I have to figure this out. And I can’t have you calling the police.

She laughed. That’s perfect. You’re hanging yourself.

Are you my mother? he screamed. He screamed so hard his throat hurt, the same as when he vomited, his mouth and throat stretched wide open and burning. Are you my mother?

Chapter 19

Screaming at her like that made him weak. Everything gone inside, a hollow. It wasn’t even anger. It was something far more desperate, the entire world unmoored. He walked toward the house reduced to a shell. There was nothing left at all.

The blanket was somewhere in the house, and he would find it. Not that finding it would make much difference.

Her room a child’s room still. Wooden toys from Germany on the shelves, wagons and nutcrackers and small wooden girls. A full-size rocking horse also out of wood. Everything placed carefully, the most special of her childhood remembrances.

He didn’t really understand who his mother was. He hadn’t been there when she was made, or lived any of the years when she was remade. He didn’t have anywhere to start from. And what she was doing now was unimaginable. The way they were talking to each other was unimaginable.

What happened? he asked aloud.

He found her small suitcase in the closet, but it was empty, already unpacked from the trip. He pushed dresses and coats aside, found paper bags of sweaters and socks. No sign of the blanket.

Her bed small, with a light blue cover. He knelt down, looked under the bed, and there it was. An old brown blanket from the cabin, and somewhere on it the signs of his crime.

Galen lay down on the wood floor and put the blanket under his head, a pillow. He just lay there because he didn’t know what to do. He needed to undo things, to make them not have happened. Where had he and his mother first gone wrong?

The blanket was rough wool, very old. And this was the problem. Galen and his mother had gone wrong before Galen was even born. That was the truth. And it was outrageously unfair that he should be blamed now.

This is not me, he said. This is not even about me.

He rose and took the blanket into the backyard, dumped it on the lawn. Then he went to the kitchen for matches and returned to burn this blanket and everything it meant. He watched the flame start at one corner, nearly invisible in the sun. Hints of blue and orange. He could feel the warmth as the fire spread, warmer even than this hot sun, and he could see the wool turning black and thinning as it was consumed. The fire known by what it left behind.

The blanket shrank into a ball, knitted itself up tightly and blackened and then returned itself to earth and air, becoming ash and vapor, no more than a gray smudge against the green. This is what Galen needed to do somehow with his life. He needed to find some burning away, some regeneration, some promise to start fresh.

He washed himself in the shower, scrubbing mercilessly at his dick. There’d be no sign left of Jennifer. And no doubt she’d had three showers by now.

Galen took his underwear to the back lawn and burned that, too. Then he walked to the shed, stood before the door with its rusty lock.

I’m thirsty, she said. It’s hot in here. You need to unlock that door and leave. I’ll give you one hour.

I burned all of it.

What’s that?

I burned the blanket. I burned my underwear. I took a shower. And you know Jennifer’s had a shower already. So there’s no evidence left.

It won’t matter. I’m the witness, and that’s what’s important. How often does a mother testify against her own son? They’ll believe me.

Why are you doing this?

Why did you become who you are?

Not like I could help that.

Well it’s the same for this now. It’s not like I have another choice.

You need to talk to me. You can’t just talk like that.

I don’t need to do anything.

This isn’t even about me.

That’s what I was saying. I knew you’d think this wasn’t about you. I knew you’d feel it was just my problem and a betrayal and unfair. But I need you to know this really is about who you are. You’re an animal, and you deserve to spend the rest of your life in prison.

Mom. Galen didn’t know what else to say. I’m not an animal.

You are an animal.

The sun so hot. He walked around the corner to the small toolshed, built off the wall of the main shed. It would be shady in there. He swung open the wooden door and was reminded of his grandfather. The tools rarely used now, but his grandfather had been in here all the time, always working on the orchard or hedge or buildings when he wasn’t at work as an engineer. His entire life had been work. And that should have made him a good man, but he beat his wife, and because of that he would never be a good man. He was an abuser. That’s what the word meant. And everyone in the family screwed up because of it. He was the one who should have been locked away. Galen had done nothing wrong. His mother was blaming him for her father. She was sending her father to prison.

I’m not your father, he said, loud enough for her to hear through the wall.

Where are you?

I’m in the toolshed. And I’m not your father.

Why are you in the toolshed?

It’s shady in here. It’s hot, and there’s nowhere to sit, but at least it’s not in the sun.

Well it’s hot in here. You have to unlock the door and leave. I’m tired of waiting. I need to get out of here, and I need something to drink.

You’re trying to send your father to prison. That’s what’s happening.

This is about you.

Galen picked up a shovel and smacked the wall. It was a big shovel, heavy, with a wide flat blade, not rounded.

What are you doing?

He smacked it again, started a rhythm.

Stop that.

I’m going to keep doing this until you admit this is all about your father and not about me.

Stop it right now.

But Galen kept hitting the wood with the shovel, a steady rhythm, getting the face to hit as flat as possible for the loudest smack. Leaning over the smaller tools to get to the wall. Pruners and hedge clippers and small garden shovels, tools accumulated over decades. The shovel heavy very quickly, his shoulders burning and his breath ragged, but he kept going.

She had stopped talking, and that was good.

Galen wished he had used a smaller shovel. He didn’t want to interrupt the rhythm, but finally he just couldn’t hold it up anymore.

Keep going, she said.

He walked out into the sun and just wandered through the orchard, bareheaded and sun-crazed, the heat moving in heavy bands around him. The furrows uneven and clodded, unturned for years now. The irrigation system still working, thin dark tracks along the rows of trunks, evaporating. He took off his shoes and squished into the mud, cooling his feet at least. The shade here still hot, sunlight everywhere through the leaves, no real shade. The walnuts a brutal tree.

In the heat and bright noon sun, the trunks seemed farther apart, the orchard expanded, just like metal.

He moaned and growled for a while and walked aimlessly through the dirt. When his feet got too hot, he stepped in mud and then roved on. Weeds and stickers, every single plant unfriendly. Most of them looked dead, but they were still standing upright, thin brown and yellow stalks of crap bush and shitty weed and fuck grass. Years of dead and dried leaves decayed, a layer of skins. And where the dirt still showed, even the brown had been bleached out of it. Dirt become more white than brown. This desolate place. Great for the grasshoppers and bees and butterflies, the grasshoppers the worst, the sound of their landings all around him. He went after a few, stomped on them as they landed, smashed them in his hands, crunchy brown bodies, oversize heads with big black eyes watching him, legs too thin to be made of anything. What he wanted was for all of them to die and just take the weeds with them, clear out the orchard, and then he wanted some rain. He wanted the dirt to be brown again, and he wanted the sun to stop.

One parent, he said. I get one parent in life, and this is it. This is what I get. He walked to the far fence, a high fence the new subdivision had put up, twice as tall as he was, made of cinder blocks painted an orange-brown to blend in. The houses the same color, the top part of their second stories protruding. The racket of their air conditioners running all day and night. Another kind of prison, living in that subdivision, but nothing like the prison he had coming.

He couldn’t even think of it. He couldn’t see himself in a prison. That was not something his brain was willing to do. That was not a picture that could make any sense. It was like standing on the moon in a T-shirt and shorts, or lounging in a chair on Mars, having tea.

Galen felt dizzy from the heat, so light-headed, he walked over and sat against a trunk. The shade a kind of punishment. A reminder of shade without being the real thing, the walnut leaves not dense enough in this sun. They had grown more thickly before, when the trees were pruned and taken care of. They had dead branches now, and produced less walnuts, and were ragged looking.

Lemonade, he said. I need some lemonade. So he got up and walked all the way across the orchard, another moon mission, and said nothing to his mother as he passed the shed. He crossed the lawn and into the house and made a big pitcher, a glass pitcher with a glass stirrer, a long clear shaft with a clear bulb on the end. It made a nice sound as he stirred, and he added lots of ice so that would clink around. He was making lemonade from a mix, and he didn’t add fresh lemons as his mother usually did, but it tasted fine.

He brought the lemonade on a tray with two glasses to the table under the fig tree.

Galen? his mother asked.

Yep.

You let me out of here right now.

Sorry, he said. I’m busy. He pulled a chair closer to the shed wall, moved the table over. The shade here from the fig tree was perfect. Huge leaves, an old enormous tree, and none of it was dying. It was in the peak of health. He poured himself a glass, then he asked her, would you like a glass too?

What?

I just poured myself a glass of lemonade. Would you like a glass too?

Yes.

Okay then. He poured her a glass. There you go, he said.

That’s cruel.

It is what it is. You’re the one hiding in the shed. Safe in your special place. If you want the lemonade, then come out and get it.

He had a drink of the lemonade. Ah, he said. That’s good. I was really thirsty. It’s a scorcher today.

He could hear the shed door rattled and slammed, but muffled since it was far away on the other side.

Galen! his mother screamed.

That’s abuse, he said. Try to rein in that anger. Come and just sit and have a glass of lemonade and we’ll talk. We’re both reasonable here.

I’m going to tell them you tried to kill me. I’m going to tell them you locked me in here.

You locked yourself in.

Your fingerprints will be on that lock.

Yeah, he said, and tilted the glass. He closed his eyes and tried to focus on the lemonade, cold and sweet and bitter, also. He didn’t know how they had arrived at this moment, him sitting under the fig tree alone, his mother locked in the shed, sending him to prison. None of it was possible. I don’t understand how we got here, he said.

You raped your cousin. That’s pretty simple.

If you keep saying that, how can I let you out?

You let me out right now.

You know what I imagine when I imagine prison?

Walk around the shed right now and unlock this door.

What I imagine is standing on the moon in a T-shirt and shorts. That’s what I just imagined, when I was out there in the orchard.

If you don’t unlock this, you’ll get more than prison. You’ll get the death sentence.

It’s the moon, but the air is fine, and the temperature is fine. It’s really quiet, and there’s no wind. There’s only rock and dark sand stretching as far as I can see, and I know that this is it. This is all I get. I’ll never see another person. I’ll never see another color except the color of this rock and sand.

Prison is not the moon.

I know. What I’m saying is that I can’t imagine prison. I can’t even imagine it. I can’t go there.

You’re going there.

But that’s the thing. I’m not going there.

Yes you are.

Fine, he said. He stood up and grabbed the glass pitcher. He stepped to the wall and poured the lemonade against a wide plank. There’s your lemonade, he said. Enjoy.

I’m telling them all of this. They’re going to hear every detail. How you tortured me.

Torture, he said. Now I’m a torturer. Is there anything you’re not willing to call me?

I’m not willing to call you my son.

Galen laughed. That’s great. That’s great. Thanks, Mom. You’re a hell of a mom. Thanks for really being there for me.

Galen. You need to understand this. Every minute that you keep me in here makes it worse for you.

Mom. You need to understand this. You’re locked in a fucking shed.

Chapter 20

Galen lay on his bed staring into the dark caverns of his ceiling. Like craters, his own moonscape right here all along. Sunspots floating around his eyes still, solar flares. His mother another planet, far away, twisting and twisting. The two of them locked into some kind of orbit together.

The air cool in here, even without air-conditioning. Old house, thick walls, thick roof, heavy insulation and heavy drapes. A kind of fortress against the valley.

Galen closed his eyes, and the sunspots did not link up into any pattern. Rounded blurs floating and vanishing, moving suddenly to new regions, like UFOs. Able to appear and disappear in a wink.

He liked the idea of standing on the moon. The light would be always at a slant, like evening on earth, right before sunset, except the sun would never go all the way down. Long shadows trailing from every rock, shadows even in the large grains of sand. A presence to everything, luminous, and no other human. No tracks. He would always know that he was standing on the surface of an orb. He’d be able to feel that, the curvature wrapping away on every side. And when he walked, his feet would touch what had never been touched before. He’d go barefoot and feel the slight coolness of the surface, uniform and unchanging, every rock and grain of sand equalized for billions of years in the unchanging sun. Each step of his would be older than any dinosaur’s, disrupting sand arranged in an earlier era, broken and sifted in the time when planets were made, when the moon was ripped from the earth.

Going back. That would be the greatest gift. If he could go back even a few days, his mother would not be in the shed.

He tried to think of a way out of this situation. What she had said was true. Every minute was making things worse for him. He was more trapped than she was.

The inside of Galen’s mind was just empty. There was no direction he could go. So he sat up, walked downstairs and onto the lawn. She was yelling. He hadn’t heard anything from inside the house.

Help! she was yelling. Help me! Someone help me! All of it muffled. She was inside a box. She was banging at the walls.

Galen walked closer, tried to figure out where she was banging and what she was using. She wasn’t at the back wall by the fig tree, and not on the side wall either. He walked into the orchard and could see the sliding door flexing and shaking a little as she pounded.

What are you doing? he asked.

You’re going to swing for this, she said, and then she continued yelling. Help me! I’m in the shed!

No one can hear you.

Someone will hear me. And they’re going to drag you like a dog and put chains on you.

Well that’s a nice thought. Thanks, Mom. But where are these people coming from? I couldn’t hear you even from inside the house. Think about how far away the nearest neighbor is. And they all have their air conditioners running, for another two months at least.

You can’t get away with this.

I’m not getting away with anything. You’re the one who made all this happen. This is your show.

You won’t get away with it.

I didn’t do anything.

Trying to kill your own mother. You know how a jury is going to look at that. Trying to kill your own mother.

You! he screamed. You put yourself in the shed! You put yourself in the fucking shed! He slammed the door with his hand, slammed it over and over. Goddamn you!

If I had known who you’d become, I would have killed you. Just a hand over your nose and mouth when you were a baby. It would have been so easy.

What you’re not understanding is that you have to help me figure out how to let you out of the shed. That’s what you’re not understanding. And when you talk about putting me in chains or killing me, that doesn’t give me a great reason to let you out.

I’m not making a deal with you.

Yes you are.

You’re going to prison. Nothing is going to change that.

Goddamn it. I’m not going to stand here talking with you like this. It’s too fucking hot. How about you sit in there for a day and then we’ll talk again.

You let me out right now.

Yeah, I’ll get right on that. He walked around to the shade of the fig tree and could hear her banging at the walls. It sounded like she was throwing the walnut racks.

He sat down at the table and felt thirsty. The afternoon promising to stretch on forever, and the air was not going to cool. It would only become more dense, piling up over time, the heat melting and compacting it. What had been thirty feet of air was becoming five feet of air, unbreathable.

He needed some lemonade, so he went into the house, made another batch, didn’t have any ice this time but the water was cool enough. The air in here so much more breathable. He went for a handful of chocolate chips in the pantry, a treat, and saw saltine crackers and grabbed a packet of them. An inspiration.

I made lemonade again, he said. And I brought you some food.

She was whacking at the side wall.

He had the chocolate chips in his hand still, melting, turning his palm brown, and he dropped them, leaned down and wiped his hand on the overgrown grass. Too sweet.

I said I have lemonade, he said a little louder. And I brought some food.

She stopped whacking. Galen, she said. She sounded out of breath. I can’t do this. You need to open the door. Her voice muffled, and he didn’t know exactly where she was, somewhere there in the darkness and he was blinded here in the light.

I’d be happy to.

Well do it now then.

I have to know I’m not going to prison.

You’re going to prison.

Galen opened the white plastic packet of saltines, went to the wall, and slipped crackers in through the gaps in the planks. Here’s your food, he said. This is all the food you’re getting for the next day, so be careful with it.

This will be perfect. When I tell them I was dying of thirst in the heat and you fed me saltines.

The thing is, you’re not telling the story yet. You’re not standing in court. You’re still living the story. And that’s your food for the next day.

He slipped a dozen crackers through the planks and heard her come up close. She slammed the wall where he was standing and then pushed crackers out the bottom gap between ground and wall. It was a small gap, no more than an inch high, but Galen noticed it suddenly. The entire shed built on posts buried into the ground, and the planks came down almost to the ground but weren’t buried. She could dig her way out pretty quickly anywhere along the wall.

Fuck, he said.

What’s that?

Nothing. He walked all the way around to the toolshed, grabbed one of the smaller rounded shovels, and wondered where to start. It would be best if he could just follow her. If she started digging, he’d throw dirt back in that area. But that meant he’d have to stay awake. Even an hour or two of sleep and she could get out. Which meant he should start now and mound up enough dirt everywhere along the edge.

If he started shoveling, though, she’d know. And she hadn’t started digging yet. Maybe it would never occur to her. He couldn’t believe he was having these thoughts.

We have to stop this, Mom, he said. We have to figure something out. This is too awful. This is not me.

This is you. This is who you’ve been all along. All your New Age crap, how you’re an old soul. But you’re a murderer. That’s who you are.

Galen walked along the edge of the shed, walked the entire perimeter, gray wood reaching just short of the earth. The ground hard, untilled in close, and she had no tools, no shovel, so he doubted, really, that she could get very far, but it was hard to know. He’d become a jailor.

He found the largest gaps at the sliding door in front, so that was where he broke ground. The earth heavier than he had imagined. A shovelful a considerable thing. He had imagined before that the crust was so thin he could fall through and tumble to the other side of the planet, but now he wasn’t so sure. The world an illusion, but what seemed paper-thin one moment could solidify the next. It was all changing constantly. The fact that Galen was shoveling may have increased the thickness of the earth right here. The illusion testing him, responding to his consciousness. As we walked around, the world making and remaking itself.

The point was the struggle. The earth thickened here so that he would labor. The shovel felt heavy so that he could feel he was doing something. The world provided resistance, and as we struggled through, we learned our final lessons.

The sound of the shovel entering the earth. That was a complex and beautiful sound, deceptively fast and not all of one piece at all. And the light thud and sifting of stones and clods and fine grains falling away as he lifted the shovel, that was a reminder that we were all made of this. Everything we knew was fragment. Streams held together to appear as solids. The fundamental nature of all things. And the thrill was in the fling, when he flung the shovelful against the old wood, against the gap, and he heard it hit in a thousand ways all masquerading as one sound, as one action.

Galen knew now that what was happening here was important. His mother locked in this shed was a gift. This was his final lesson. It was here that he would feel and know the impermanence of all things. Not just think it or suspect it but know it. This was his river. Galen had always looked to water, thinking his meditation would be the same as Siddhartha’s, the water in which he would see all things forming and dissipating, but Galen’s rightful meditation had been here all along, a meditation on dirt. He had grown up alongside it, had known it all his life but never recognized it. He lifted another shovelful and flung, the million tiny grains spraying outward into pattern and collapse, and he felt an incalculable joy, a thrill that ran right through him.

My god, he said. It was right here all along.

What are you doing? his mother asked, but he ignored her. She was only the catalyst. She had locked herself in here to draw his attention to this, to give him this meditation. That was the purpose of all of it, of all their fighting and struggle. But she wouldn’t know. She wouldn’t understand her role. She’d try to distract him.

Thank you, he said. I honor this gift.

What are you talking about?

It’s okay that you don’t know, he said. You’re still locked in samsara. You’re a younger soul.

I’m locked in the shed, because you locked me in here.

Galen lifted another shovelful, the shovel become lighter, the action smoother. He lifted and flung again, watched for pattern in the dirt as it was lofted through time and space.

Galen.

He was being lofted. He understood that now. He was the dirt. He was watching himself being flung.

What are you doing with the shovel?

Shh, he said. This is important. I can’t have you as a distraction. I’m getting close here.

Hey! she yelled.

But he ignored her, plunged the shovel deep into the earth, powered now by a force that was beyond muscle and bone. He was becoming the action itself. He was the dirt, and the shovel, and the movement, but more than that. He was a million miles removed. These hands were not his hands. This breath was not his breath. This mother was not his mother. This Galen was not Galen. He had to let it all go, let the movement happen without attachment.

His mother’s fingers at the gap between wood and earth, white fingers pushing away the dirt that was building, and more dirt lofted through air, through time, onto those fingers, buried and emerging again, a beautiful dance, a movement known forever and meant to be.

The earth deepening, building against the old wood, and her fingers moved to the side, at the edge of the mound, found a larger gap, the entire back of one hand showing, and more dirt lofted onto it, buried now, and another shovelful, and his mother was screaming, a sound become muffled, a sound transformed, a sound that was cradled between earth and air and rocked and buried and buried again.