He tried to think of a way out of this situation. What she had said was true. Every minute was making things worse for him. He was more trapped than she was.
The inside of Galen’s mind was just empty. There was no direction he could go. So he sat up, walked downstairs and onto the lawn. She was yelling. He hadn’t heard anything from inside the house.
Help! she was yelling. Help me! Someone help me! All of it muffled. She was inside a box. She was banging at the walls.
Galen walked closer, tried to figure out where she was banging and what she was using. She wasn’t at the back wall by the fig tree, and not on the side wall either. He walked into the orchard and could see the sliding door flexing and shaking a little as she pounded.
What are you doing? he asked.
You’re going to swing for this, she said, and then she continued yelling. Help me! I’m in the shed!
No one can hear you.
Someone will hear me. And they’re going to drag you like a dog and put chains on you.
Well that’s a nice thought. Thanks, Mom. But where are these people coming from? I couldn’t hear you even from inside the house. Think about how far away the nearest neighbor is. And they all have their air conditioners running, for another two months at least.
You can’t get away with this.
I’m not getting away with anything. You’re the one who made all this happen. This is your show.
You won’t get away with it.
I didn’t do anything.
Trying to kill your own mother. You know how a jury is going to look at that. Trying to kill your own mother.
You! he screamed. You put yourself in the shed! You put yourself in the fucking shed! He slammed the door with his hand, slammed it over and over. Goddamn you!
If I had known who you’d become, I would have killed you. Just a hand over your nose and mouth when you were a baby. It would have been so easy.
What you’re not understanding is that you have to help me figure out how to let you out of the shed. That’s what you’re not understanding. And when you talk about putting me in chains or killing me, that doesn’t give me a great reason to let you out.
I’m not making a deal with you.
Yes you are.
You’re going to prison. Nothing is going to change that.
Goddamn it. I’m not going to stand here talking with you like this. It’s too fucking hot. How about you sit in there for a day and then we’ll talk again.
You let me out right now.
Yeah, I’ll get right on that. He walked around to the shade of the fig tree and could hear her banging at the walls. It sounded like she was throwing the walnut racks.
He sat down at the table and felt thirsty. The afternoon promising to stretch on forever, and the air was not going to cool. It would only become more dense, piling up over time, the heat melting and compacting it. What had been thirty feet of air was becoming five feet of air, unbreathable.
He needed some lemonade, so he went into the house, made another batch, didn’t have any ice this time but the water was cool enough. The air in here so much more breathable. He went for a handful of chocolate chips in the pantry, a treat, and saw saltine crackers and grabbed a packet of them. An inspiration.
I made lemonade again, he said. And I brought you some food.
She was whacking at the side wall.
He had the chocolate chips in his hand still, melting, turning his palm brown, and he dropped them, leaned down and wiped his hand on the overgrown grass. Too sweet.
I said I have lemonade, he said a little louder. And I brought some food.
She stopped whacking. Galen, she said. She sounded out of breath. I can’t do this. You need to open the door. Her voice muffled, and he didn’t know exactly where she was, somewhere there in the darkness and he was blinded here in the light.
I’d be happy to.
Well do it now then.
I have to know I’m not going to prison.
You’re going to prison.
Galen opened the white plastic packet of saltines, went to the wall, and slipped crackers in through the gaps in the planks. Here’s your food, he said. This is all the food you’re getting for the next day, so be careful with it.
This will be perfect. When I tell them I was dying of thirst in the heat and you fed me saltines.
The thing is, you’re not telling the story yet. You’re not standing in court. You’re still living the story. And that’s your food for the next day.
He slipped a dozen crackers through the planks and heard her come up close. She slammed the wall where he was standing and then pushed crackers out the bottom gap between ground and wall. It was a small gap, no more than an inch high, but Galen noticed it suddenly. The entire shed built on posts buried into the ground, and the planks came down almost to the ground but weren’t buried. She could dig her way out pretty quickly anywhere along the wall.
Fuck, he said.
What’s that?
Nothing. He walked all the way around to the toolshed, grabbed one of the smaller rounded shovels, and wondered where to start. It would be best if he could just follow her. If she started digging, he’d throw dirt back in that area. But that meant he’d have to stay awake. Even an hour or two of sleep and she could get out. Which meant he should start now and mound up enough dirt everywhere along the edge.
If he started shoveling, though, she’d know. And she hadn’t started digging yet. Maybe it would never occur to her. He couldn’t believe he was having these thoughts.
We have to stop this, Mom, he said. We have to figure something out. This is too awful. This is not me.
This is you. This is who you’ve been all along. All your New Age crap, how you’re an old soul. But you’re a murderer. That’s who you are.
Galen walked along the edge of the shed, walked the entire perimeter, gray wood reaching just short of the earth. The ground hard, untilled in close, and she had no tools, no shovel, so he doubted, really, that she could get very far, but it was hard to know. He’d become a jailor.
He found the largest gaps at the sliding door in front, so that was where he broke ground. The earth heavier than he had imagined. A shovelful a considerable thing. He had imagined before that the crust was so thin he could fall through and tumble to the other side of the planet, but now he wasn’t so sure. The world an illusion, but what seemed paper-thin one moment could solidify the next. It was all changing constantly. The fact that Galen was shoveling may have increased the thickness of the earth right here. The illusion testing him, responding to his consciousness. As we walked around, the world making and remaking itself.
The point was the struggle. The earth thickened here so that he would labor. The shovel felt heavy so that he could feel he was doing something. The world provided resistance, and as we struggled through, we learned our final lessons.
The sound of the shovel entering the earth. That was a complex and beautiful sound, deceptively fast and not all of one piece at all. And the light thud and sifting of stones and clods and fine grains falling away as he lifted the shovel, that was a reminder that we were all made of this. Everything we knew was fragment. Streams held together to appear as solids. The fundamental nature of all things. And the thrill was in the fling, when he flung the shovelful against the old wood, against the gap, and he heard it hit in a thousand ways all masquerading as one sound, as one action.
Galen knew now that what was happening here was important. His mother locked in this shed was a gift. This was his final lesson. It was here that he would feel and know the impermanence of all things. Not just think it or suspect it but know it. This was his river. Galen had always looked to water, thinking his meditation would be the same as Siddhartha’s, the water in which he would see all things forming and dissipating, but Galen’s rightful meditation had been here all along, a meditation on dirt. He had grown up alongside it, had known it all his life but never recognized it. He lifted another shovelful and flung, the million tiny grains spraying outward into pattern and collapse, and he felt an incalculable joy, a thrill that ran right through him.