“Good morning, Errol,” I called. “Would you care for some breakfast?” I peered again into the hole. The sun was not yet very high and so Errol was mostly in shadow. His head alone was illuminated, and it seemed to hover above the darkness of the pit, disembodied. His hat was gone. I later found it buried in the pile.
“I think I’ll make some flapjacks,” I repeated. “Would you care to take a break for some flapjacks, Errol?” His answer was a shovelful of dark sediment, flashing in the sunlight. It seemed there was nothing to do but what I’d always done. I fixed breakfast, and when I was through I tossed Errol a warm flapjack, only to have it ejected in yet another shovel load.
My brother remained in his mine all morning. The Chinamen arrived ready to work, but I dismissed them. I stood near the lip of the pit, saying his name again and again and again, until his name went meaningless as a tong word. He never acknowledged me, only dug.
I offered him water. He dug.
I read him our sweet mother’s letter. He dug.
Noon came. The hole was not so deep that Errol could not climb out—not yet—but it was deep enough now that even when he stood straight, my brother’s frame was completely subterranean. I might have lain on my stomach and reached down to touch the top of his head, but I did not. He dug. The ceaseless sound of his shovel on the rock penetrated my every thought.
I flattered him. He dug.
I taunted him. He dug.
I bribed him. He dug.
I told him we could go to San Francisco and nap in feather beds. He dug.
I told him, finally, that we could return to Marjorie. He dug.
By dusk the hole had gone narrower. It was now over seven feet deep. I sat near the lip, dejected and alone. I had no one but Errol here and I suddenly felt it was very important to touch him. I laid my belly against the cool earth, inched my way to the edge of the hole and extended my arm down into it. I called softly for Errol to pause in his task for just one minute, to reach up above his head and stretch his fingers toward mine. So I could test his temperature, I said. But he would not turn his face to me.
Night fell, and with it came fury. I cursed him. I stood on the edge of the hole and shouted at him. Men came down to have a look at the commotion, and I ran them off. I shrieked into the pit. I said things I had never said to anyone. Things I have not said since.
I must have slept that night, because I woke before light, shivering with frost, atop the mound he’d made. The scraping went on. The sides of the chasm sparkled with frost, too, and this brought me a strategy. I filled the bucket at the river, returned to the hole, and began trickling water down into it. “Errol,” I called. “I think the river’s coming in. Hear that? That’s the river, old boy.” He said nothing, but his scraping paused, I thought.
“Don’t worry, Errol. I’ll get you out.” I tied one end of a rope to a tree. I refilled the bucket and poured it in. Then I flung the other end of the rope into the hole and called, “Grab hold, Errol! I’ll pull you up!”
The digging persisted, but now there was a watery sound beneath the scrape of the shovel.
That night I sat jiggling the rope, touching the notch my brother had left in my collarbone, saying I was sorry and could he please please please please grab hold.
When morning came I gathered the heaviest rocks I could carry and assembled them in a pile near the lip. I was desperate. I intended to brain my brother, climb down the rope, tie it around him, climb up the rope and then pull him up. Giddy images of his wilted body dangling from the rope passed through my mind at the moment I noticed a strange sound. It was silence. The absence of shovel on bedrock.
I approached the hole, bracing myself for the sight of my brother’s dead body at the bottom. Instead, he sat quite alive with his back against the earth wall, as if resting after a morning’s work and not three feverish days spent burying himself alive. It was noon and the sun was beaming directly into the hole. I could see his scalp burned pink where his hair had gathered in clumps, and his blistered, bloody hands. He had removed his boots and one was half-submerged in the water I’d poured upon him. The rope was well above where he sat, curled like an animal in a waterlogged den.
Then he began to sing. It was the first I’d heard his voice since he declined the now-crusted beans still awaiting him on the stump. The song was a popular one, and he sang it with an unsettling bounce:
“That’s a fine tune,” I said when he was done. I don’t know why I said it, except that it was.
Errol looked up at me, finally, squinting against the light. His face had gone gaunt and grimed and socket-hollow. He did not look like himself. He said, “There’s a good pile coming, Abigail.”
That was our mother’s name.
“I’m Joshua,” I said. “Joshua. Your brother. Say Joshua.”
“Sing me ‘The Old Oaken Bucket.’ You know that one, Abby?”
“Joshua!” I cried.
Errol reached his hand across the shaft and scraped some soil from the wall opposite him. He said, “There’s a good pile coming, Abby girl.”
I threw myself at the pile of rock and attempted to lift one. I intended to throw my boulders down upon him, smiting him as would the God of that hole. I did not care, at that moment, whether I stoned him to death or buried him alive. But the Lord had taken my strength. I only lay in the dirt and wept.
“Do you know ‘The Old Oaken Bucket’?” whispered Errol.
“No,” I said through my tears. “How does it go?” And then I passed into darkness.
XVI. A TROUT
A promise unkept will take a man’s mind. It does not matter whether the promise is made by a woman or a territory or a future foretold. I know that now. But this was years ago, when I was young and felt the whole world of Errol’s collapse was mine to bear. It is strange telling you this, because the boy I was feels so far away from the man I am now. I know I ought to consider that distance a blessing, given the darkness and the difficulty of the time I have described here. But it brings me no comfort to think how far I have traveled nor how much wiser I’ve become. Because though I was afraid and angry and lonesome much of the time, I was also closer to my own raw heart there in the territory than I have ever been since.
I woke at the Chinaman’s camp. It was dusk. The boy sat near me with a tin cup. Behind him was his uncle, sitting on a stump near the fire, and behind him was the dusky blue Sacramento valley with fires and lanterns burning here and there.
“Where’s Errol?” I said. “Where is my brother?”
The boy handed me the tin cup. “Where you think?” He frowned, as if disappointed in himself. “He is in the earth, still.”
“Is he digging?”
The boy shook his head.
“Singing?”
“No.”
I got up and walked upriver to the hole and looked inside. Errol sat in the muddy water with his legs folded to his chest, alive and shivering. He had removed his shirt and tied it about his head. I jiggled the rope and called to him, but he did not answer. He was apparently through digging, and his hole had not gained any more depth. Yet he felt farther from me than when last I saw him.