Dirt

by David Vann

  Galen spread his arms wide and tried to follow his higher self. He tried to let his crown chakra open.

  He could hear the cranking, turning over and over, and she was working hard, turning as fast as possible, but the engine wasn’t firing. He didn’t know why that was. It maybe just needed to warm up, though that was difficult to believe on a day as hot as this. It was well over a hundred degrees.

  The most frightening thought was that the prison might be a psychiatric ward, a crazy farm. That was what she had threatened, and for keeping his mother locked in a shed, they might put him there. Far worse than being put in a box alone, to be put in a box with the insane. And the drugs. They’d pump him so full of drugs he wouldn’t know his own mind. Once they had him there, they could do anything they wanted, and no one in the outside world would ever know or care.

  Galen shook his head and his hands and all the way down his spine, the heebie-jeebies. He would not go to the nut farm. He was not willing to go there.

  He walked over to the pitchfork and picked it up. If she came through that wall, he was ready.

  He stood at the corner, where he could cover two walls, and he listened to the cranking. She had to be exhausted. The cranking was tough, and she’d been doing it for some time now. She was slowing a bit.

  The sun still hot on his back and neck and butt and legs. And what would someone see if they came through the hedge into the orchard? Galen doubted he could make sense to anyone. He was naked except for his shoes, burned and covered in dirt, holding a pitchfork like a spear, waiting, a guardian. Rough boards nailed around the shed in an uneven band, a furrow dug against it. All of this would look crazy, he realized. If you hadn’t been here, if you hadn’t seen each step happen, then none of it could make any sense.

  For the rest of this incarnation, Galen needed to be alone. He could see that now. Other people were the problem. They were distractions and attachments. They were noise. He needed quiet. He needed to hear back across lifetimes, and that required a stillness that was not possible if any other person was near. The final incarnation was meant to be spent in a cave, and this orchard was his cave, protected from the outside world. No one knew to look here. He would be safe here, once he eliminated this final attachment in the form of his mother. He was having to hammer and dig and fight this final battle because it was the inner battle made physical in the outside world. That was the gift he was being given, an external way to stage and complete the inner journey, the final journey before repose. He was creating a fortress against all that would distract. Once she was gone, he would sit in the dirt and listen back across all the shifting forms of self and being, and though he didn’t know what was to come after, because he hadn’t been there yet, he knew this was what everything was leaning toward.

  Chapter 26

  His mother cranked the tractor for a longer time than he could have imagined. And so he knew this was her final act. She was not saving anything. There would be no attempt to dig her way out or to hammer the planks loose again. If she failed to start the tractor, that would be it. She’d have nothing left.

  Galen listened carefully to the cranking, because he knew this was a meditation, a gift she was giving him on her way out. A strange sound and a powerful one because it connected all the way back through his childhood and through her own. It was a sound to begin his journey across lifetimes, a cable he could reach onto that was being winched back into the darkness.

  Thank you, he said. I honor this.

  With his pitchfork and his covering of dirt, he was being armed for a symbolic journey, and she was the opening.

  The sound fainter on each upswing, then hard as she came down, and there was a cough to that sound, the compression in the engine. Galen stepped forward on the cough, stepped into a furrow with his left foot. Then he rocked back on the upswing and stepped forward again as she swung down. A dance.

  Galen squatted lower, stepped harder and harder, held the spear high in his right hand. He stamped forward on that beat, shook his spear, felt the heat rise in him, his entire body wet with sweat. He had to find the right sound, the right voice, to go with the stamp, and he was afraid to try, afraid he’d have the wrong sound and wreck the moment. He was building to something here. This was his mother’s final gift to him. He didn’t know whether to go with a grunt or more of a ho. The ho more ceremonial, but the grunt more authentic. Or an aah that would be more of a yell. He tried to just let whatever would happen happen.

  And what came out was a grunt, a low huh kind of grunt. And that felt good. That felt right. It was real, just a low grunt, the first sound made by any human, the early sound. He shook his spear and grunted from deep in his gut, deep in his root chakra, his base, his chi.

  The grunt shaking all the spirit walls inside him, the long throat chord linking his voice to his chi, even his lung walls shaking, and the good smell of dirt, his guide, with him now, with him always, the dirt, and he reached down with his bad hand, scooped the dirt and threw it into his mouth, howled from the pain, the mangled hand coming alive, and he howled and grunted and chewed the earth and the pain rose in his head in wavy bands, his hand a pulsating mass, so he held that out front, held that to guide him into the spirit world.

  We could never see it, but we journeyed through it every moment of every day. The trick was to wake up in the middle of the dream and yet still dream, and then we could battle. To wake up, we had to tear away at illusion, and his hand was good for that. The cranking of the tractor was good for that.

  The crank, the whump as it went round and round, the cough and compression, his mother a kind of shaman, leading him forward, and he danced, he stamped as hard as he could, he shook everywhere inside, and he tried to dance through time. That was one way to break through the dream, to make time shift, to dance in an older orchard. Old wall, old dirt, dancing back.

  The spear an ancient weapon, from the first dance. The long jointed arm a thrower, formed for this. The first man shaking his spear, raging at the wilderness, at the void, claiming the world. Galen tried to dance back in time, tried to reconnect. Tried to make himself that first man, stamping at the earth, fueled by breath, a fire all around him, and he crushed hard enough to break furrow and crust, felt the spear’s power, and then he lunged. He lunged into the wall, lunged through the air headfirst with a scream and drove that spear into the wall, into the spirit fortress, and it hit hard and bounced and he flew and banged into the wall with his shoulder and head and fell to the ground and rose again. Aaaah! he yelled. Aaah! His hand a living thing, a hive of pain.

  He grabbed his spear and stepped back into place to stamp again. The same piece of earth, his blow felt all through the crust, reaching downward, sending shock waves. He built again, step and rock and the low grunts, feeling his source, the energy coming from deep within him. He would use everything to break through the spirit wall. He would circle back and come from another time.

  Galen turned in a circle as he rocked and shook his spear. The shadows long, walnut trees like sentinels, casting their truer selves across furrows. They had been waiting for this, waiting through lifetimes, waiting for him, for his coming. They would rise up out of their shadows in the earth, and that would be their shape. Not the shape of a tree, of what we imagined, but a deeper form. Galen screamed and shook his spear, triumphant. He had seen into the spirit world. This was his first true seeing, to see the trees would form up out of their shadows, that they were made of earth, not of wood. He might even be the first man to have seen this, the first to know the trees. Ho! he yelled, acknowledging the gift. He circled and crushed and looked sideways at the dark long shadows all around him, and he understood now that the stamping of his feet was what would free the spirit selves of the trees. He was the unlocker, the one to break through. He plunged his spear into the earth, rocked the handle as he danced to loosen all that would hold them back.

  They were growing as the light fell, and they would rise impossibly tall, great dark earth presences reaching into t
he sky. They would stride miles at every step, cross continents. They would carry him, loft him, and fling him.

  Half waking, Galen lived in the double world, seeing the presences and also still chained to appearances. He had to not look too long at any shadow, because if he did, it became only shadow, and the dirt became only dirt. He had to keep his vision moving, had to keep circling and spinning. Engulfed in fire, unable to breathe, his body failing but spirit gathering.

  Galen realized he was singing, a low, guttural song, a song of becoming. Gathering his previous lives around him, he saw that they were time itself. He was summoning time and being in his final burst of becoming.

  Galen began to feel afraid of what was happening here. The shamanic was different from the meditative. Shoveling dirt, he had focused on the fling and fall and the nothing. It was a dissipation. But this was a gathering now, something entirely different, something frightening because it might be exactly the wrong path, a trick. How could becoming be the goal? Detachment was supposed to be the goal, and detachment was not the same as becoming.

  Galen spun and stamped but he was exhausted and confused. He didn’t understand how it all fit together, and his confusion had made the spirit world recede. He was hot and tired and wet and muddy and the shadows of the trees were only shadows, and all had fallen so quickly and so terribly. He could feel the bones in his thin legs, the muscles locked and stiff. Empty, all his movements now.

  Galen stopped dancing, stood in place dizzy and hungry and thirsty. He was alone. The air still, no wind. The endless hum of the air conditioners all along the high wall. He realized there was no cranking. That sound had stopped. He wondered how long ago. He had been dancing for a long time.

  He dropped the pitchfork. The sun no longer burning, much of the orchard in shadow, and he lay down in a furrow, in the radiating earth, decided he would just lie here until he understood, but he was starving and parched and couldn’t focus at all. His head and shoulder hurt from lunging into the shed. So he rose on cramped legs and walked slowly to the house.

  That pile on the lawn still waiting to be burned. The grass still waiting to be cut. The house always waiting, through lifetimes. Impossibly large and ornate and white. A solidity that was untrue. The great chimney at the center, and the giant trees. A house that promised peace and reasonable people but had held only crazies. A house that was a way to hide.

  Galen walked into the kitchen and went for a glass of water, gulped it down, and then gulped another. And still he felt thirsty.

  He didn’t know what to eat. Always a problem. He held the refrigerator open and stared blankly at too many items that made no sense. Pickle relish. Not easy to make a meal out of pickle relish. Sauerkraut. He could maybe eat that. In a dish covered with Saran Wrap. He brought it to the kitchen table, took a fork from a drawer. Real silver, unpolished.

  It seemed that sauerkraut should go with something. He looked in the pantry, in the canned goods, and found French-cut string beans, took them to the counter, the electric can opener.

  He sat and forked the green beans from the can, cold and salty and without other taste. He chewed and swallowed and it felt like the inside of his stomach had collapsed and the food was having to push the folds back open. He forked sauerkraut and liked the vinegar. Vinegar was right.

  The house dimmed as he ate. The sky outside turning a darker blue. He finished the green beans and most of the sauerkraut, then drank another glass of water and went to the sink, where his mother usually stood, looked out at the shed and orchard and sky. Everything farther away as the light dimmed, all distance increased.

  He thought he might stay at the sink for a while, but found himself rising up the stairs to his mother’s bedroom, stood in the doorway and swayed in place, thinking nothing, then went to her bed. The house not hot like outside, the high ceilings and drapes a sanctuary.

  He lay on her bed and closed his eyes and could feel the inside of him spinning and tilting, everything caving. The dirt on his skin his blanket, his hand throbbing in a dull and reassuring way, and all was so peaceful. His mother resting now, too, in that place of her memories, in her own sanctuary. The land all around them breathing easily, the orchard at rest, the hedges, the fig tree, the oak. All resting, finally, and the heat fading away. She had wanted to keep him here, and here he was.

  Chapter 27

  Black rock. Volcanic. Rock that had boiled, shot through with air. Broken now, severed and sheared and sharp as glass. Pores and hollows. The walnut trees growing from the rock, roots worked into vents and cauldrons, snaking along fissures. Soft flesh of wood encased.

  From the surface, no way of telling how far they reached. The roots and trunks white against the black.

  Miles between every tree, the orchard grown. And Galen carrying a small sack of water, a sack made of flesh, and he had to let a few drops fall on the roots of each tree. Rare that he saw a tree at all. Mostly wandering, looking for the next, and the land growing as he walked, cracking and stretching, opening great chasms that filled with melt and hardened and he continued on.

  His feet torn, unshod, and clicking on the rock. His joints clicking also, each movement of knee or hip or ankle, even the movement of his eyes. The sack thick with fat held very little water, and it had to be held carefully. He must not drop it. If he dropped it, all would be lost. And so he stared at the rock, careful in placing each step and click.

  Galen knew that years were passing, that he had no hope of reaching every tree in time. He might not reach even the next tree. The water disappearing as he walked, becoming only a sheen on the walls of fat.

  The surface of the planet was bending. But the other problem was the melt. The melt delayed him, because he couldn’t help gazing. A deep red, rock transformed, all patterns round and edged with black, a slow boil and upwelling, and then the fade as the rock cooled and lost its color.

  He continued walking even as he woke, held on to the dream, tried to extend and understand. Walking toward the next tree. Strange dream. He tried not to think, tried not to let his waking mind take over, tried to fall back again into the larger mind. But the small mind refused. Galen had to pee, and the small mind was very focused on that.

  Fine, he said, and he rose and peed in his mother’s toilet and nothing felt real. Standing here in his mother’s bathroom, covered in dirt. Sleeping in his mother’s bed. His mother out there still. None of this could make any sense, and he didn’t want to participate in it anymore. He wanted to fall back asleep and dream.

  So Galen lay down and refused to wake. He felt exhausted still, enormously tired, and was able to fall back out of mind until he woke again this time without dreams and his mouth dry and stomach demanding food.

  He rose and peed again and bent down to drink out of the sink faucet, gulp after gulp, so dry. His mother’s toothbrush, purple and white, something from another life, a life already difficult to remember or even believe. Who we are now, he said.

  He walked downstairs to the kitchen, legs sore and tight, his joints clicking just like in the dream, bone ends catching as they worked. His hips no longer arranged correctly.

  The problem again of what to eat. A constant reminder that incarnation was enslavement. He wanted to just be done with eating, wanted to rip his stomach out and move on to other things. But it would not be ignored. Demanding and desperate, and until he gave it what it wanted, he would have no peace.

  What would your highness like? he asked. The pantry a jumble of colors, but the most colorful of all a large can of fruit cocktail. The bright red cherries, yellows and whites and greens, the grapes. All in syrup too sweet.

  The can heavy. He held it up to the opener as it circled. Fruit cocktail sandwiches, he said.

  Galen heaped the fruit into a hammock of bread and had a bite, the bread gone doughy from the wet. He ate a cherry on its own, could taste the dye. Other than the cherries, all the other fruit had become the same, all one taste. It was simply “fruit,” not peach or pear or grape or whateve
r else. And this was the same for people’s lives, going to work at the same jobs, living in the same houses, those houses over the high fence. But not Galen’s life. Galen’s life was not like theirs. He was wearing dirt, and that was the big difference. You knew a man by how he dressed.

  Galen was watering trees today. He would need to carry his sack of flesh with its small bit of water and bring a few drops to each tree across a landscape of black rock and melt. Except that the orchard was dirt, not rock, and there were not miles between each trunk, opening and increasing. How the dream world fit into the waking world was never clear.

  Galen gave up on the bread, forked the fruit in great mouthfuls and chewed quickly. He knew that what he was afraid to think of was his mother. Food always a substitute, never itself. He tied his shoes and stepped out into the oven.

  Afternoon already, a kiln for baking bricks, dry and stinging his lungs. Each day seemed hotter than any other, but they were all the same inferno. The shed bleached in glare, heat waves in the orchard, actual heat waves like melted glass a few feet from the ground, distorting the shapes of the trunks and weeds and furrows. The orchard looked like it might be only ten feet deep, something you could cross in one long step. Or it could be miles deep. Distance impossible to tell.

  He didn’t want to go near the shed. Its rough belt of wood, a partial furrow on the orchard wall, his mother somewhere inside. That his life had funneled down to this wasn’t fair.

  He stepped out of the shade into the full blast of the sun. The stream of light at impossible speed and pulsing as it hit, tearing away all. Any shelter was temporary. In the end, the sun would take everything.