Изменить стиль страницы

The sun moving down his chest, and the air already warmer. Not the sudden fire he wanted but instead a gradual cooking in an oven. He was going to be baked, and there was nothing glorious or interesting about that.

We can figure out a way, his mother said. We just have to work together.

The work I have to do is nailing these boards, he said. So you can’t pull your little stunt again. And I have to do it before the day gets too hot.

Galen, she said, but he walked away into the orchard, lay down in the dirt and rolled in it, used his good hand to cover himself completely with dirt, rubbed it into his skin, into his hair, gave himself a coating against the sun. He would not wear clothing again. That was his decision. He would wear only dirt, because dirt was his meditation, and he needed to not ever forget about dirt.

Good smell of dirt, and of weeds. He crawled along the ground, careful not to put any weight on his damaged fingers, using his palm instead, and smelled, and there was one smell stronger than all others, pungent, not a sweet smell, and he found it, finally, along the edge of an irrigated row near a walnut trunk, a place of more water and shade. A pale green that was bluish, almost, and a velvety sheen to the leaves. A plant he had never noticed before, and he didn’t know its name. It seemed so unlikely here, made possible only by the irrigation. A plant almost flat, its leaves reaching out along the ground like the legs of a starfish. A roamer, come from another world. The orchard suddenly new, a place he had never seen before.

This was the key, finding the new world within the old. The bitter stinky plant a perfect reminder. Somehow he had never noticed this powerful smell, never seen this unlikely, lush and velvety plant in the midst of all the dry weeds. And this was exactly what he needed to find in the dry husks of all the illusions of self. Something more pungent than self, something more unlikely and from farther away.

Galen lay beside the plant because he knew the irrigation system would turn on soon, and he wanted to be here when the water released. He wanted to feel this plant reaching for the water. Brother plant, he said. Almost time to drink. And he realized he was so incredibly thirsty himself. And starving. But that could be ignored. That was only the body.

He was very tired, so he closed his eyes. The smell of this plant a strong medicine, overpowering, and he stretched and traveled in that smell, elongated like the furrows, and he dreamed nothing he would remember, was lost in blackness and forgetting and the void we all return to, surfaced and was lost and surfaced again and finally he heard the water.

The air hot now. The water trickling in the furrows. He knew he should feel panic, should check to see his mother hadn’t escaped, but he didn’t feel any panic at all. He leaned closer to the irrigation tubing and put his lips to it, sucked in cool water. Amazing, water. Feeling it on his lips, in his mouth, was a kind of peace. A relaxing of the body, a relaxing of need, of desperation. This was what his mother needed. Something so simple, so basic, and how long could we go without it? Galen didn’t know, but it couldn’t be long. We needed air more desperately. We couldn’t do without that for more than two or three minutes, but water was next. Water was not a luxury.

He should want to bring water to his mother. That should be as basic a need in him as this need to drink or the need to breathe. And yet it was missing. He felt nothing. And that was worth exploring. How could he feel nothing?

Galen sucked at the tubing, suckled at a kind of tit, closing his eyes and humming as he felt the water. Philosophy was meant to do this. Philosophy was meant to make it possible to not bring your own mother a drink of water as she was dying of thirst. And religion was meant to make you believe that what you’d done or not done was good, and right, so it was even more powerful. But what Galen was feeling, or not feeling, was something beyond philosophy or religion, because those were still systems of attachment. What he was feeling was peace, simply peace, and that was the effect of detachment. You could never feel or see detachment itself but only its sign, this flood of peace. Or maybe flood was too active a thought. The important thing was the knowledge, or awareness, that there was no such thing as his mother to be attached to. Then there was no one to bring water to. This was truth.

Galen rose and felt ready to complete the task of nailing the boards. He looked at his injured hand, dirty and dark now, red-brown, and he thought maybe he’d never clean it. He’d let it just be whatever it was going to be. It still hurt, but not as sharply as before. It felt stiff.

He strode over to the pile for a new piece of wood, the sun pressing down, and was squinting so much in the glare his eyes were hardly open. The ground burning his feet. The feet were a problem. He didn’t know how he’d get through the day with bare feet. He tried to just ignore the pain, tried to make his feet not a part of him.

He was dizzy, too, from lack of food, but he liked this dizziness. He could use it to get past everything else. He dragged a six-foot board over to the shed wall and aligned it, tapped a nail carefully, drove it in and raised the other end, tapped and drove another nail.

I have a new plan, his mother said.

I don’t want to hear your plan.

This is a good one. You’ll like this one. Her voice was only a whisper from somewhere in the darkness of the shed.

Galen needed to drive a nail into every vertical plank, so that they were all connected. Each horizontal board a seat belt with a dozen nails. It would take some time.

I have a different checkbook, she said. One as executor of the trust.

I’m not interested.

It doesn’t have any limit for amount.

Please shut up.

Galen, you could have a million dollars, more than a million. You could withdraw it all, or maybe leave me just a little bit, and then you could go away, and when you’re safely away, you could call the police or fire department and have them come rescue me.

Galen tried to focus on the hammering. The sun merciless, a fire on his back, and his feet damaged. Damn it, he said. I can’t focus. Why the fuck didn’t we use some of that money? I can’t believe you.

I didn’t want you to go.

What?

I didn’t want you to leave me. I didn’t want you to go to college. That was all. I wasn’t trying to keep the money to myself. I just didn’t want to lose you, Galen.

You’re sick.

I love you, Galen.

You’re crazy. Stop talking to me.

I only wanted the best for you, Galen. I’ve always loved you.

Shut up.

And you can take everything now. You can have whatever life you want.

Galen hated all of this. And his feet were burning. He couldn’t just stand here. So he hopped around to the shaded side. Ow, he said, and he sat in the dirt and touched one foot with his good hand and could feel how hot and tender the skin had become.

You’ll have so much money you can do whatever you want, she whispered. She had followed him to this side. You’ll never have to work. You can buy a house somewhere.

Shut up! he screamed. His throat blown out, head dizzy, lost again. She had kept him from living his life. She had done the same to Helen and Jennifer. She had lied to everyone for years. He wanted to take the hammer to her head.

You could go to Mexico.

Damn it! he yelled. Shut the fuck up! You’re trying to destroy me.

I’m trying to live. I’m trying to not die in here.

Galen struggled to recover that sense of peace he had felt lying next to the irrigation, drinking the water. How could that leave so quickly? He was like a Ping-Pong ball, bouncing back and forth.

He needed shoes. He wasn’t going to be able to focus and get the boards done without shoes. So he hopped into the orchard, trying to keep his feet from touching the burning dirt, and found his shoes in a furrow alongside his shorts. He sat and tied the shoes as quickly as possible, the tender skin of his butt burning.