I’ll leave the amount blank. You can fill in whatever you want.

Sign all of them. But fill some of them out completely. Start with a check for $4,300.

Why $4,300?

Because that’s an easy amount. It’s nothing.

Okay.

And then let’s go for $47,500. Galen wanted to climb into the fig tree to wait, but he couldn’t with his bad hand, so he sat in a cast-iron chair at the table and looked at the part of the property he never visited. Behind the house and lawn was a jungle of other trees and bushes, a piece never claimed for the orchard.

Why doesn’t the orchard extend all the way? he asked.

What?

The mess on the other side of the lawn. It’s a big piece of the property, and nothing was done with it. No walnut trees. Why not?

That was Mom’s piece. She was supposed to get a garden, but there was never time.

How come I never heard about that?

I can’t speak. I really can’t. I need water.

No water.

Then you don’t get the checks.

Fine. I don’t give a shit. I need to get back to work on the boards anyway. He walked around the shed to the hottest side, near the toolshed, exposed to the full afternoon sun. He wanted the full heat, wanted to get as dizzy as possible. Dragged a splintery board that had been ripped and banged up and removed from something, and held it against the wall.

He tapped a nail and hammered and heard his mother screech, a raw voice he hadn’t heard before, a final screech, the end of a voice. It sounded like her throat ripping. And he was fine with that. He didn’t fucking care. I didn’t hear you, he yelled. What was that you were saying?

No answer, of course. He hammered at the hot nails and decided he didn’t need one going into every vertical plank. That was too many. They’d be held in by the seat belt without each needing their own nail.

He dragged another misbegotten piece from the pile, and another, the work becoming a routine, and gradually the glare from the bleached earth was reduced. Shadows forming in the clods and lengthening, and he was belting a new side of the shed, along the sliding bay door, the sun angling to his left, the time passing, a mercy.

The sun itself felt like a witness, always watching. He could see why the Aztecs or Mayans or whatever worshipped the sun. After it baked and burned you all day, the falling could seem like a gift. You could worship what had almost destroyed you. And if you were alone, the sun might even be a companion, moving along steadily, always there.

Galen heard a sound that he hadn’t heard in years. He recognized it immediately. The hand crank on the tractor. His mother turning the crank, trying to start the engine.

No, he said. He stood there with the hammer and didn’t know what to do. He couldn’t get inside, and if he couldn’t get inside, he couldn’t stop her. She’d start the tractor and come crashing through the wall. The tractor was easily strong enough for that.

Stop, he said. She was slow on the crank, but she might get it to turn over anyway. He was up against the sliding door now, pressed against it, trying to peer in through a crack, but the gaps weren’t big enough, and it was too dark in there, too bright out here.

He ran around to the toolshed and tossed all the tools into the dirt: shovels and picks and rakes, clippers, hoes. He needed to clear a space along the wall next to the tractor. He’d be able to see in from there. The crank turning, and she was going faster now.

Wait, he said. Let’s talk about this.

No answer. He pressed against the wood, put his hands up to either side to block the light, and he could just see the larger shadow of the tractor, shifting around in his vision. But he still couldn’t do anything to keep her from cranking. She would come tearing through the wall into the orchard, and there was a high gear that could go fast, a gear for driving on the road.

Galen left the wall and looked at all the tools he had tossed into the dirt. He needed something like a spear. Something he could throw. That would be his only chance. The pitchfork. That would do it. It wasn’t a large one, four spikes six inches long and with a spread of six inches total. He hefted that in his good hand, got the balance, and hurled it toward the walnut trees. It went about thirty feet, falling short of what he’d imagined, but it flew straight, so maybe that was good enough.

But what was he thinking here? That he’d spear his own mother with a pitchfork? That wasn’t possible. That was not something he could do.

Galen stood in the sun and closed his eyes and tried to find some guidance. Prison was all he could think of. Dragged away and locked in a cell, and he’d never see the day again. Never see trees, never see dirt, never watch the moon. Never run freely. Never see Jennifer, never go to Europe, never lie down in a furrow and sleep. Never see the mountains again, or the cabin, never listen to Kitaro or read Siddhartha. He would be put in a box and the box sealed and placed on a shelf somewhere to wait. And he might simply be forgotten.

Galen spread his arms wide and tried to follow his higher self. He tried to let his crown chakra open.

He could hear the cranking, turning over and over, and she was working hard, turning as fast as possible, but the engine wasn’t firing. He didn’t know why that was. It maybe just needed to warm up, though that was difficult to believe on a day as hot as this. It was well over a hundred degrees.

The most frightening thought was that the prison might be a psychiatric ward, a crazy farm. That was what she had threatened, and for keeping his mother locked in a shed, they might put him there. Far worse than being put in a box alone, to be put in a box with the insane. And the drugs. They’d pump him so full of drugs he wouldn’t know his own mind. Once they had him there, they could do anything they wanted, and no one in the outside world would ever know or care.

Galen shook his head and his hands and all the way down his spine, the heebie-jeebies. He would not go to the nut farm. He was not willing to go there.

He walked over to the pitchfork and picked it up. If she came through that wall, he was ready.

He stood at the corner, where he could cover two walls, and he listened to the cranking. She had to be exhausted. The cranking was tough, and she’d been doing it for some time now. She was slowing a bit.

The sun still hot on his back and neck and butt and legs. And what would someone see if they came through the hedge into the orchard? Galen doubted he could make sense to anyone. He was naked except for his shoes, burned and covered in dirt, holding a pitchfork like a spear, waiting, a guardian. Rough boards nailed around the shed in an uneven band, a furrow dug against it. All of this would look crazy, he realized. If you hadn’t been here, if you hadn’t seen each step happen, then none of it could make any sense.

For the rest of this incarnation, Galen needed to be alone. He could see that now. Other people were the problem. They were distractions and attachments. They were noise. He needed quiet. He needed to hear back across lifetimes, and that required a stillness that was not possible if any other person was near. The final incarnation was meant to be spent in a cave, and this orchard was his cave, protected from the outside world. No one knew to look here. He would be safe here, once he eliminated this final attachment in the form of his mother. He was having to hammer and dig and fight this final battle because it was the inner battle made physical in the outside world. That was the gift he was being given, an external way to stage and complete the inner journey, the final journey before repose. He was creating a fortress against all that would distract. Once she was gone, he would sit in the dirt and listen back across all the shifting forms of self and being, and though he didn’t know what was to come after, because he hadn’t been there yet, he knew this was what everything was leaning toward.