What he liked most was the lofting, the moment all that dirt hung in the air. He remembered now that had been his focus in the earlier meditation.

The day passing, no longer an oven here in the shade, and the halo of heat around his head had broken. The alert world returning. But then he hit harder ground.

He didn’t want to lose his momentum, but he’d hit the edge of the tilled orchard, hit solid earth, and he couldn’t dip his shovel in and swing. The tip of the shovel buried only a couple inches, and when he pulled up, he had almost nothing. The ground like armor, with bits of rock in it, all compacted.

So he walked around to the other side, near the toolshed, baking in full sun. A slick all over his body instantly, the wall and ground radiating. He was able to dip his shovel deep into loose ground, pulled up and lofted, focused everything on the feel of that, studied that moment with each shovelful, felt his own body travel through suspension and fall.

Siddhartha had endured days, months, years in meditation, had sat at the water’s edge and waited, but Galen had found a meditation in action, a much faster form. It was a gift he should share with others. He should perhaps write his own book of meditation, to leave as a sign, as a trail of bread crumbs, or perhaps he would skip that and go right to poetry. He had seen what others hadn’t yet seen, and so even a simple description of his experience would be a poem.

He could see all the people lining up to meet him, not only at bookstores and libraries but even here at the house. The line stretching all the way down the hedge lane once they found out where he lived. They’d be out here shoveling, and it would take a bulldozer to flatten the dirt each day.

Damn it, he said. Stop thinking. Just shovel. Just dig and throw and watch the dirt. That’s it. That’s all there is.

There’s me, too, his mother said, so he stuffed the earplugs back in.

The dirt had become dirt again and nothing more. Just heavy, and the day had been passing but now it had stalled again.

Fine, he said, and he dropped the shovel, but then he picked it up again because he remembered there was a purpose to all of this. It wasn’t just a meditation. He was also mounding up dirt so she couldn’t dig out.

His skin felt itchy. He was hot and burned and itching all over, having to stop to scratch at his arms and armpits and belly and back and crotch. All the sweat in different layers. Jennifer would never do this.

He threw his shovel, just flung it into the orchard. There was no way to get his mind to steady and focus, no way to leave thought behind. He was thinking of Jennifer now, and that would go on until he jacked off, he knew. That was the only thing that could stop it.

So he trudged around the shed across the lawn past the pile of crap that he’d already forgotten about, something he needed to burn later, and went up to his room, grabbed a Hustler, and walked into his mom’s room. He was so dirty, he didn’t want to lie down on his own bed, and she wouldn’t be needing hers. It was all going out to the pile to burn anyway. He’d be taking her blankets and sheets out there and her pillow and even the mattress. Everything was going to burn until this room was bare. It was going to be only wood and wallpaper.

He dropped his shorts and underwear, and his crotch looked so white against the sunburned, dirt-covered rest of him. A boner already just from thinking about Jennifer and the Hustler. The opening at the tip like an eye, watching him, knowing everything about him, all his secrets, everywhere his thoughts had gone.

He took off the cotton glove, unwrapped the gauze, and his hand stung. It really hurt in the open air, the broken, exposed blisters. He tried grabbing on to his boner, but he couldn’t use his full palm. Only thumb and fingers, but it was hard to do much that way. It wasn’t very satisfying.

But he did his best. The man in the Hustler had just arrived in town, thirsty and with a boner. Even his horse had a boner. It was eyeing the camera.

This man wore spurs and stood at the bar downing a whiskey while a woman in red petticoats blew him. The man hardly noticed. Then she was bent over a table, and this was where Galen focused. High heels and fishnet stockings and legs spread, exposed and waiting, looking back to see what was coming. This was what Galen wanted. He’d never had Jennifer from behind. Something about this position was just more exciting than any other. He closed his eyes and tried to see her like that, tried to see what she’d look like in this dress. They’d get a small place out in the desert somewhere, let the dust blow in and cover the floor, and he’d wear spurs and bend her over an old wooden table. He’d drink a whiskey while he did it.

Galen had to grab on with his full palm. Otherwise it just wouldn’t work. His hand stung terribly and his mother’s bed was too springy. He was bouncing around, which was distracting. It was kind of weird, also, to be jacking off in his mother’s bed. He felt like she was watching, almost, so he opened his eyes and expected her to be standing right there, but she wasn’t. He was in here alone. He needed to focus and come and get this over with and get back to his meditation.

He was all distracted now, though, and he felt tired, incredibly tired. It had been a long day, far too long, starting at the cabin with breakfast and his mother rushing them out of there. Everything that had happened since had been insane, totally insane.

He had to look at the magazine again, at the woman spread over the table, and then at the man riding her from behind, drinking another whiskey. The man wasn’t even looking at her. He was looking up at the ceiling. He was the man who had never seen anyone he’d done. It was distracting. Galen closed his eyes again and tried to remember what it had felt like inside Jennifer, silky he remembered, hot and tight and wet and he sped up his hand and went full tilt, did his best to make himself come, but his hand hurt and he couldn’t focus and finally he gave up.

Fuck, he said. I can’t come, and I can’t stop thinking about sex. This is hell. His hand was throbbing in pain.

He curled on his side on his mother’s bed and rested. Eyes closed, his breath heavy, just a few minutes of rest and then he’d go finish shoveling. His chest falling in great exhales, so much more exhausted than he’d thought, and he was sinking. He tried to rise up out of it, but somehow that made him fall even deeper.

Chapter 23

An enormous grassland, and Galen walking. The earth volcanic, dark pumice covered in lichen. The yellow grass very sharp, growing in tufts like spines, growing from the rock itself.

Heat waves visible in the yellow and black and red, making mirages. Lone trees and cacti always at a distance, no shade. His feet and legs were not flesh and blood. They were more like pencil erasers, wearing down. As he walked, he was becoming gradually shorter, and so he had to hurry. He had to cross before he ran out of eraser.

Shadows of birds flying past, birds of prey with enormous wingspans, but he could never see the birds themselves. He squinted up into the sun, and then he tripped and threw out a leg and woke kicking at the bed.

Uh, he said. Uh. He had trouble throwing off the dream, felt he was still crossing that desert. He was in his mother’s room, on her bed, cool with sweat and covered in dirt. Uh, he said.

No light at the edges of the curtains. Darkness. And so it was no longer day. He had slept, and for how long? She could have dug her way out by now.

He got up quick, pulled on shoes and shorts and stumbled down the stairs through the kitchen to the back lawn. Moonlight, the shed lit up in relief, a dark hulk outlined in white, the bone trunks of the orchard arrayed behind. The sky enormous above. He listened but heard only the ringing of his own blood and breath and realized he still had the earplugs in. So he yanked them out and ran closer to the shed, heard wood hitting wood.