He didn’t want to see the sun. He wanted it not to rise today, and he thought he’d be willing to spend the rest of his life in this time of day right here, with the sky a beautiful dark blue and the air warm and the moon going down. A near darkness, everything present but not fully formed, the entire world in a state of becoming but not yet arrived. That would be the best time, the best kind of moment to hold forever. He would like that.

But instead, the very worst was coming, he knew. The sky would wash out and bake and the earth would set on fire with no air to breathe and he’d hammer at misshapen pieces of wood as his mother screamed in her cage. That was what he had waiting for him.

So as the sky began to lighten, as the dark blue became a lighter blue and shifted toward white, he rose and took off his shoes and shorts and stood naked, ready for the immolation, ready to be engulfed in fire, and he stepped over the rough ground to the toolshed. He searched along small shelves, able to see now, until he found nails, sturdy steel nails four inches long. He grabbed the nails with his good hand and walked over to the wall.

The old board lay on the ground with its twisted nails reaching upward, and he understood now that the other side was flat. He’d been on a fool’s errand before. He set his hammer and nails close along the wall, then lifted an end of the board, set its flat face against the shed, and reached down for a nail.

He’d have to hold the nail in place with his left hand. There was no other way. He tried to use only his thumb and pinkie, and he tapped the nail very carefully with the hammer. If he missed, the pain would be unbelievable.

He could hear his mother crying. He needed the earplugs again. But he tapped at the nail, then let go and swung carefully, measured blows, drove in the first nail.

You’re not getting out, he said. I’m nailing a band around the entire shed, all the planks linked.

I’m your mother.

You’re the one making me do this. And that’s fine. You’re the last attachment, and so it makes sense that everything should feel like hell.

I’m your mother.

Galen lifted the other end of the board and made sure it was lined up with the crossbeam behind the planks. He had to nail into that beam.

People are real, Galen.

He held another nail with his thumb and pinkie, tapped lightly. That sound of metal on metal, the sound of what people were, makers of metal. He could be making coins, minting right here at the shed. Stamping his own image, and why not? The world was only what each of us made of it. His coin would be known as The Galen. A perfect task for becoming. Coins were just like that dark blue sky, the day about to be.

Lightening quickly now, though, the heavens washing out, everything taken away too soon, all comfort, a test. He would be tested today, he knew.

He walked back to the woodpile for the next piece. No need to choose, because he’d have to use them all. A two-by-two this time, very long and light and perfect for the task. He dragged it into place, held one end up against the planks, set his nail and tapped. No stamp for the design of his face, but each coin individually tapped, each one a sculpture, civilization slowed down. A final recognition that the hordes did not exist. There was no one to make coins for. Beyond this shed and this dirt and the hedge leading down the lane, beyond the orchard and the high wall, there was no one. Galen let his breath slow, a long exhale. There was no one. He could relax, let the attachment go. The pain in his hand, also, an illusion. If he focused on his exhale, the pain paled. It receded and curled away like the snake it was.

I need water, she said, her voice a rough breath. He could hear now how dry it was. But he needed to focus on this new meditation, the hammering.

Each nail individual, metal worked by machine but not perfect, not without variation in how the tip had been sheared or the head formed. Lines cut on the shaft, also, and in this light, there was no shadow. Light as a presence, without source or direction or heat, a cold illumination that was general, and it was only in this light that you could see the true shape of a thing, the fullness of a nail. The robust presence of a nail. It might as well have been sixty feet high. Peering at it up close, it became enormous. A shape-shifter.

Galen held the nail with thumb and pinkie. His blood no longer dripping, clotted now, beginning to scab, and it looked a dark iron red in this light. The skin that had been bunched and torn seemed no longer a part of him. It would dry and fade and fall away. What was exposed now would be covered, and soon it would seem almost that this had never happened.

Chapter 24

It was tempting to think of those first shafts of light as fingers as they reached into the leaves of walnuts. But this was a second rising. That was important to remember. The first, the light, the illumination, was a gift. The second, the actual presence, was something else. The second rising was samsara. When we grew old enough for sex, that was our second birth, and that birth was a deformation, a reshaping from the clay of the first birth, and who we became then was something we had to run from for the rest of our lives.

Galen pressed back against the shed wall, stood with his arms out and his eyes closed and waited for the moment he would be blasted by the sun. Nailed to the cross. We were all sacrificed, every day, and no one could do it for us. That was the truth.

Water, his mother said.

Shh, he said. I’m focusing.

I’m going to die. If you don’t let me out, if I don’t have water, I’ll die.

Shh, he said.

Your mother is going to die. Your own mother.

Galen tried to focus only on the sun. He could feel its presence higher on the shed wall, could feel the radiation of that sudden heat. In moments, it would tick downward and set him on fire.

You were named after a doctor, Galen. An ancient Greek physician. You were supposed to help people. You were supposed to be different.

He thought of the earplugs. They were over on the lawn, or he could look for new ones. But he didn’t think he’d make it back in time for that first sun. It was rising quickly, but we should call it lowering, the rays of light levered down onto us, a giant seesaw balanced at the edge of the globe. He could feel the wood burning above him. So he held on, tried to just ignore her.

Galen.

His shoulders getting sore from holding his arms out. He didn’t feel he could hold them up much longer. Come on, he said. Come on. He wanted to feel his sacrifice. He wanted to feel the shape of the cross as the sun hit.

I won’t report you.

Shh, he said. He felt it, finally, in his hair, across his forehead, the heat, the burn, but not as hot as he had imagined. The power he had imagined was not there. He would not be set on fire, only warmed a bit, disappointing as always. The sun a cataclysm, billions of atomic bombs going off every moment, but it was too far away, just like everything else. Everything he wanted to reach was always just outside of his grasp. The world a small emptiness, like looking through the wrong end of a telescope.

Galen let his arms fall, his shoulders burning hotter than the sun, stupidly. The sun moving down over his face and neck and onto his bare chest.

I won’t report you to the police. I won’t say anything. And you don’t have to move out. We’ll just go back to the way things were.

Yeah right, Galen said. The minute you’re out, the cops will pull up, and they’ll chase me down and put me in chains or whatever it is you said.

I’ll sign something. We can write something.

My fingerprints are on the lock, just like you said. And you’ll show them you haven’t had any water. You’ll say I made you sign. You’ve made it all impossible.