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. All 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.

Her bookshelf had the photo albums. He grabbed two of the older ones, the white covers like faded linoleum, and walked out to the lawn.

Got a couple albums, he said. Memory lane.

Leave those alone.

Goats, he said. A lot of goats, right out here in the orchard, and you in your sundress.

I don’t have copies of any of those, Galen.

The goats were looking at the camera, posing along with Galen’s mother and aunt. His aunt older, much taller, and with no bow in her hair. She already looked unhappy. His mother smiling her cutest smile, performing, her head tilted a little to the side. You were kind of like Shirley Temple, he said.

Put those away, Galen.

Is that who you were trying to be? Is that who you’re being now when you’re all fake and weird?

Galen waited, but his mother didn’t respond. Never mind, Galen said. I know you don’t answer when it’s anything real. The cute moments are a sacred thing that can’t be talked about. He yanked the page out of the album and crinkled it, the layers of card stock and photo and thin plastic film.

No! she yelled. You stop that right now.

This is kind of fun. I like the shed. I can do whatever I like. I hope you have an eyeball stuck to one of the gaps between the planks so you can see all this. I’d hate for you to miss out.

You’re worse than anything I could imagine, worse than anything I can say. I don’t even have a name for you.

Try son. The word son might be a possibility. Here’s a photo of the walnuts. The fucking walnuts, and all the drying racks laid out.

Put that away.

Grandma and Grandpa aren’t that old here. I can almost imagine them having real lives, being people who weren’t just born old.

Their lives were real.

I don’t know, he said, but it does seem possible in this photo. The problem is that there are no answers to anything. Why did he beat her? Why did he work all the time? How did she lose her memory?

You’re talking about entire lives. No one can explain an entire life.

Wow. You’re talking with me about your parents, sort of. This is new.

I’ve always talked about them.

No you haven’t. You’ve never said anything real about anything important.

Galen.

It’s true. Why did he beat her?

He didn’t beat her.

See?

None of it was the way you think it was.

Well then enlighten me.

We were a family.

No. That’s one thing you were not. Because the word family means something special to you, and your family has never fit that word. You know what’s odd about this photo with the walnut racks?