All I’ve sacrificed for you for more than twenty years, his mother said in a low voice. Get up before Helen and Jennifer see you.

Galen could hear his aunt and cousin talking at the shed, coming this way. Why does it matter if they see? he asked. I’m just curious. I don’t see why it would matter.

Just get up now.

No, he said. I’m staying here like this all day.

The sun so bright Galen couldn’t see his mother, couldn’t judge what might come next. But she only walked away.

He tried to relax into the hard wood, tried to let his flesh and bones find a soft way of fitting to the wood. The edges cutting into his butt were making his legs numb, and the edge across his back made breathing more difficult, but the one at his neck was the most urgent. He tried to exhale, stare at the sun, forget this existence, find something else.

You already look like jerky, his aunt said.

His thighs are white, Jennifer said.

True, his aunt said. And I guess they should match his face and neck.

Galen dizzy and blind, his eyes filled with flashes and spots, but he could hear the work on every side, a pointless task. The racks didn’t need to be cleaned or oiled or maintained in any way, unless a screen was broken. But none of them knew how to repair a screen. If one was broken, they’d simply put that rack aside, in the pile directly behind the tractor, and not use it. So what was happening today was that they were taking all of the racks out of the shed and then putting them away again.

We’re just going through the motions, Galen said.

What’s that? his aunt asked.

Our whole lives, Galen said, just reenactments of a past that didn’t really exist.

The past existed, his mother said. You just weren’t there. You think anything that’s not about you isn’t real.

What about my father? Galen asked. Can you prove he’s real? Can you narrow it down to the two or three men who are most likely, at least?

No answer to that. Never an answer to that. Only the sounds of their shoes in the dirt, the sounds of racks being picked up now, returned to the shed.

I have some other questions too, Galen said. I’m not finished.

But no one was listening to him, it seemed, and his back was so destroyed by now it hurt too much to speak. So he closed his eyes, saw bright pink with white tracers and solar flares, a world endlessly varied and explosive. His body spinning in the light. Face and thighs cooking, a stinging sensation. But he would stay here, he would see this out.

Pain itself an interesting meditation. On the surface, always frightening, and you wanted to run. Very hard not to move, very difficult, at least at first, to do nothing. Pain induced panic. But beneath the surface, the pain was a heavier thing, dull and uncomplicated. It could become a reliable focal point, a thing present and unshifting, better even than breath. And the great thing about these racks was that they distributed the pain throughout his body. He was afraid his neck and back might actually be damaged, and that was a part of pain, too, the fear of maiming, of losing permanently some part of the body. Even an insect didn’t want that. No one wanted to lose a leg or an arm or the use of their back, and so as we approached this moment, we approached a kind of universal, and if we could look through that, and detach ourselves, we might see the void beyond the universals, some region of truth.

Stop thinking, Galen told himself. The thinking was a cheat, robbing him of the direct experience. And it’s also bullshit, he said aloud. It’s all bullshit. I’m just lying on a rack, and that’s all.

His mother and aunt and cousin having high tea now. All sounds of their movement gone. Only the sounds of flies and bees on flight paths nearby, the dry landings of grasshoppers, an occasional car passing. The world in its immensity and such disappointing nothingness. Galen rolled over, off the racks, into the dirt. Just like that. No decision, just rolled over, and now it was gone, the entire experience, all wasted, and he was in the dirt again. Nothing learned, nothing gained.

Chapter 5

Galen tried to push up on his arms, but he felt broken. This sucks, he said. He lay facedown. The dirt scratching against his burned thighs hurt more than he would have guessed. The sweater an oven, a cocoon. A slick of sweat beneath, and he was thirsty. His face on fire.

His butt muscles were coming alive, blood rushing into his thighs, and his legs felt like hollow tubes, the muscle not attached to the bone. He pushed up onto his knees, then tried to stand, his legs like straws. Points of pain everywhere along their edges, the muscles unreachable, not responding. But he was able to take a step, and another. His back had been folded for too long, so he felt like he was leaning.

Almost got you, he said. You almost had to admit you’re not really a body. Just a fake, an illusion, and I’m watching you reassemble now. All the clanking around to pull the dream back together.

He lurched his way around the shed to the fig tree where the other illusions were just finishing tea.

You look a little stiff, his aunt said, smiling. And suddenly he understood. His aunt hated him. It was instantly clear. He liked her, and he had thought she liked him, but now he could see that she hated his mother and hated him as her extension. Her smile all meanness.

Wow, Galen said. Holy shit.

What? Jennifer asked.

Nothing, he said.

We’re finished now, his mother said. We’ll be leaving to see Grandma in a few minutes.

Galen made his way carefully to the free chair and sat down. Cast iron, no cushion. His butt might fall back asleep. But it felt good to sit, and the shade was glorious. He closed his eyes to the smell of figs, a scent so rich it made a body of the air. Wow, he said. The figs.

Nearly ripe, his mother said. Another week at most. And she poured him a glass of orange juice. Here, she said. Even when she liked him least, she would provide for him. And this was the difference. His aunt would push him off the edge if she ever had the chance, but his mother would never do that.

Galen wrapped both hands around the cool glass of orange juice, and he wondered whether to drink it. He was thirsty, incredibly thirsty. And the orange juice would be delicious, cool and tangy, with a bit of pulp, and he loved the pulp. But he felt dizzy, the top of his head gone, a floating sensation, and he didn’t want to lose that. He felt he was seeing everything more clearly now. The orange juice might stop all that. Too cold, too acidic, a jolt that would bring all his attention to his stomach, and he would no longer be floating free.

Freakazoid, Jennifer said.

Galen closed his eyes and tried to focus. What did he really want? He held the glass of orange juice in both hands and brought it closer, close enough to put his nose into the glass and smell the sweet fruit. He breathed the orange juice, in and out, in and out.

I can’t watch, his mother said. We’re leaving in five minutes.

Galen didn’t like having the time pressure. That was changing the experience. An end was being enforced now, and that was going to fuck up everything. Damn it, he said.

Whoa, Jennifer said.

He didn’t want her here. Or his aunt. He wanted to be alone with the orange juice.

And then he decided to just do it. He tilted the glass and tasted the juice, sweet and bitter and overpowering, and he held it in his mouth, refused to swallow.

Does Mikey like it? Jennifer asked.

He tried to forget her, tried to focus only on the sweet juice in his mouth, but it was impossible. He swallowed, and exactly what he had feared would happen did. The track all the way down to his stomach, and he felt the weight of his stomach, the caustic need, all of his awareness pulled downward, the top of his head no longer open. A stone sinking down, hitting bottom, stuck there now.