Okay, he said, standing up. I’m ready. No more distraction. The bottoms of his feet still hurt inside the shoes. The soles really had burned, damaged. It was amazing to him that humans had survived at all. We needed tougher feet, and more hair, or even hard shells, some sort of covering.

He dragged another board, squinting in the glare, and raised and hammered it against the shed as the sun roasted his back. The sweat appearing almost instantly everywhere, the air a coffin, close and thick and unbreathable. He pulled another piece of wood, and another, and found a nice rhythm, finally. The nails hot in his fingers, his mangled hand alive in pain.

He was so dizzy with hunger, he didn’t try to find the meditation. He tried only to hang on and remain upright. Just lifting each board and setting the nail and tapping in carefully, then driving. Whenever the burning on his back and shoulders and neck seemed desperate, he reached into the fresh dirt loose from his shoveling and covered himself with it, the sweat making a kind of mud paste that would protect him.

His mother destroying him and claiming to love him, same as Helen with Jennifer. Though Helen actually fought for Jennifer. He could believe Helen. She seemed possible. His mother did not seem possible.

Galen made good progress. The sun high overhead, no shadows or shade anywhere, his eyes burned, the world gone white, and finally he walked around to the spigot near the fig tree and opened it wide, drank deeply in desperate gulps, the water hot at first but then cool, and he knelt down in front of the blast, dipped and rolled in the grass before it and let it cool and clean him, this aerated stream the color of glass, the color of light itself, with the power to stop the burning. He was alert again, revived, and he lay there only a few feet from the shed on his belly with the water cascading on his back and his hand stinging, thinking of his mother who could not reach the water. All this water so close to her. He let it run and run, closed his eyes and thought about just taking a nap, right here, under the water, but he was fully in the sun, and he knew he was burning far worse now, even though he couldn’t feel it.

So he rose to his feet, turned off the spigot, and walked back to the closest furrows, the loose dirt, to lift great handfuls over his head and shower in the dirt while he was still wet, while it all would stick and cover and protect.

Water, he heard his mother whisper. She was close to him, only a few feet away behind the wall. Looking at him from between the slats, probably, but he couldn’t see her.

No water, he said. No water. Do you think Helen really beats Jennifer? Do you think she actually punches her or kicks her or anything?

She would never do that.

Never mind. I forgot who I was talking with, the denier of all. Nothing ever happened.

My sister would never beat her daughter.

Yeah yeah, he said. Your voice sounds a little dry. He tromped away, around to the other side for his hammer and a new board. He would finish this task. He was so hungry he felt folded in half, even his ribs and spine aching for it, but food could be put off for a long time. He knew that from experience. His own form of denial. Food wasn’t necessary at all. He could go weeks without it if he wanted. Only the first couple days were hard. The hunger was not real. It was a false sign.

Galen didn’t know why he had first stopped eating. He didn’t understand how it had begun. A decision whether or not to drink orange juice. It may have begun there. But who could say the beginning of anything, because it all had started earlier, in previous lives. Not eating was a way of punching through this existence.

The piano, his mother whispered from behind the wall.

Galen pinned a new board and tapped in a nail.

The piano, she whispered again.

He hammered the nail hard, bent it, swore, and placed another, tapped it carefully. His bad hand felt twice as large as a normal hand. Almost impossible to use it to grip something as small as a nail. This was one of the difficult things about a physical existence. The body kept growing and shrinking, always outrageous, and there was no controlling it.

The piano, she whispered.

What? This is so damn annoying. What about the piano?

The checkbook is in the piano.

What the hell? Who were you hiding it from? I didn’t even know it existed.

Bring it now. I won’t be able to speak soon. I need to sign now.

No. I’m busy. He hammered and kept placing nails. Roasting and sweating and pain everywhere, in his hand, in his gut, the bottoms of his feet, the skin on his back and neck, the dizziness in his head. Everything about this existence related to pain. He was sick of it.

Galen dropped his hammer in the dirt and walked away, across the lawn and into the house. He had been thinking he might never come in here again, had been thinking perhaps he’d just live in the orchard, but here he was already. No resolution lasted.

The inside of the house too comforting, cool and dark and speaking of sleep. He was very tired. He wanted to lie down and forget everything. That was the power of the house, that was how it was dangerous. The house had to be resisted.

He walked to the piano and stood there waiting for his eyes to adjust. The edges floating and shifting, the outline of the wood going white when he blinked. Only a dark shape in shadow, but gradually he could begin to see color, the deep reds and grains in the dark wood, and the piano took up its place, stopped shifting and swimming.

His grandmother playing this piano. Why did he have no memory of that? If they had really sung songs together as a family, if she had played this piano, then why did she stop? Why did everything about that life end before he had memory? If he was supposed to connect to that time, then why had the connection been withheld?

He lifted the top of the piano, a large flat polished piece of wood on a hinge, and he somehow knew to raise the piece of wood inside as a stand. He didn’t know how he knew that, some physical imprint without a corollary memory. Perhaps most our memories were like that, no longer accessible but still there somehow, and perhaps that was how we felt our previous lives, also. Their shadows, and their instruction, but no longer anything we could see. They waited and gathered and exerted their presence in some other way, so that every choice we made had already been made, and each random action guided, and the self was not an illusory thing at all, but something that could never die.

Chapter 25

The checkbook so small, so simple. The idea that it held more than a million dollars seemed impossible. He had wanted a Walkman for years. A Walkman cost about sixty dollars. He had wanted to go to college, and that might have cost ten thousand dollars per year. He had wanted to have a year abroad, and he didn’t know what that would have cost, but not much more than a year of college, probably. Everything had been possible, right here, but his mother had said no.

He didn’t understand anything about his mother, not one thing. Wanting to keep him here like some replacement husband. He had no idea who she was or how she could make any sense.

He walked out to the lawn to grab a pen from the pile of crap. He needed to burn all of this today. All his tasks piling up. He still had to finish nailing the boards, also, and finish the furrow of dirt the rest of the way around the shed, and it was already afternoon.

He sat under the fig tree, in its good shade, sat at the iron table and looked at the checks.

You have the checkbook, his mother rasped.

Yeah.

Let me sign.

Okay. He knelt at the wall and slipped the checkbook under the wood, in the gap between earth and shed, then slipped the pen under.