Dirt

by David Vann

  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 le
ssons.

  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.

  Chapter 21

  This meditation became the longest of Galen’s life, the most sustained, the most beautiful. The shovel into the earth, the swing, the dirt suspended in air and then falling, filling the gap between wood and untilled ground, the gap between human and earth, between past and present, self and truth. The old planks above becoming all that was transitory, pitted and weathering, meeting all that was permanent below, and the new dirt bridging the gap, dissolving distinctions.

  His mother a constant sound, an accompaniment, an honoring of the movement. Her fingers in the gap, enforcing distinctions, trying to divide the world, then buried again, a constant progression through opposites. The clearing of the gap and then the filling, the vanishing.

  Galen could feel his hands tearing, the hot blisters forming and then breaking and leaking and the raw pain in flashes but then it would fade again, and he remained far away, watched all of it, watched his breath. The heat become a dense layer around him, radiating from his skull especially, and he threw off his shirt, lost no more than a stroke or two and was back in the swing of the shovel, the movement. His skin bare to the sun now, and he could feel each individual ray like a dart through space and time, arrived from the origin of the world, the light not only of our sun but of all suns, finding his back now and piercing his skin, the heat and light-headedness and piercing a gift, not a distraction. They only increased his focus.

  He wanted something to drink, but that would wait. That was only samsara, distraction, and what he was riding here was his final meditation. He would ride this one all the way out, all the way past this incarnation, past unnumbered incarnations, past all that would hold him back, if only he could hold on.

  But that was pride. He needed to not think of the meditation as accomplishment. He needed to stop evaluating. He needed to remain focused on the dirt, each grain. The surface, whiter on top where it had been bleached by sun, darker beneath, the odd, broken shapes, rough faces. Each grain and clod and rock as the shovelful hung in the air, to see the position of each in relation to every other, to see the grid, the pattern, and then watch the collapse.

  His soul had done this through many centuries already, watched entire lifetimes form and fade, watched other mothers come and go. How many lifetimes? It was more likely he went back millennia, not just centuries. He might have been there when the caves were painted almost twenty thousand years ago, might have painted many of the horses and bulls himself. The cave cool and damp, somewhere in France, the cave dark, a place others were afraid to go, and each day he visited with his torch, brought charcoal from the campfire for his art. And there was a young woman in the camp who noticed this, who looked up from berry-picking when he passed, and who eventually followed him into the cave.

  Damn it, he said. This was supposed to be a meditation, not a porn show.

  What? his mother said.

  I’m not talking to you.

  You’re calling this a porn show? You’re burying your mother and calling it a porn show?

  Galen slammed the wall with the shovel. Shut the fuck up! he yelled. I’m not talking to you. You have no idea. You don’t know a single fucking thing that’s going through my head.

  You said porn show.

  Galen slammed the shovel against the wood over and over. The air around him on fire, and he was dizzy and drenched and seeing sunspots. His hands torn up. His shoulders so weak he dropped the shovel and stumbled around to the shade of the fig.

  He sat in the cast-iron chair and slumped forward onto the table. He was breathing hard. The air had no oxygen in it.

  You’ve called me crazy, she said, but let’s think about this. It sounded like she was close against the back wall, only a few feet from him. Her voice was rough, hoarse from the yelling. You’ve locked your mother in a shed, and you’re trying to kill her.

  I’m not trying to kill you.

  You’re mounding up dirt all along the wall, some weird kind of burial, and you don’t listen when she screams. And then you start talking about porn.

  Who is she?

  What?

  You said I don’t listen when she screams.

  She is me.

  Exactly. And who’s crazy?

  We could find you help.

  I thought you wanted to send me to prison.

  They have prisons that are also mental health facilities.

  I can’t listen to you, Galen said. I can’t listen to you ever again. He walked away with his hands over his ears and went into the house, looked through the kitchen drawers for earplugs. She had some wax earplugs somewhere. A
ll the old silver, real silver, an insanity right here in the kitchen. Everything about their lives was insanity. And what he was doing was cutting through that. He was the antidote. He would return to his meditation and not be distracted by her.

  Every small thing from the last century had been saved in these drawers. Ancient rubber bands, metal thumbtacks, a wooden ruler, buttons and scraps of twine, nothing ever thrown away, everything saved just in case. Galen removed a drawer, releasing the catch at the back, and took it out to the lawn, dumped a small pile of things brown or metallic, things that hadn’t seen the sun in many decades.

  Then he went for another drawer, and another, and he dumped them all. He took the drawers not only from the kitchen but also from the pantry, hallway, and dining room. He left everything heavy, all dishes and silverware, but took every drawer full of random little shit and dumped it. No sign of earplugs, but this project had become something else anyway, a purging, a burning back into sanity, a burning away of the old and useless.

  Here’s your past, he said.

  What? Her voice muffled. The shed not a great facilitator of conversation.

  Here’s your past, he said more loudly, and then he had an inspiration. Your photos, he said.

  What are you doing to my photos?

  Nothing yet, but I think they’re about to join this pile. Everything can burn.

  No. You leave my stuff alone, Galen.

  You’re welcome to come stop me whenever you’d like.

  Galen!

  He entered her room and just stood there and looked around. This was the last time he would see all her things, the last time her room would be her room, and that seemed worth taking a moment. He would try to remember what this had looked like.

  Mom, he said. Mom. He was trying out the sound of that, the accumulation of all that made the illusion. This room was part of it, this room that pretended a past, that stretched all the way back through her childhood. It was all illusion but had a convincing weight. Everything from the time period: the old wooden toys, the clothing, even her childhood drawings on the walls, of a house and family, the four of them holding hands under an enormous sun. That distorted sun should have been the clue.