He ran to the kitchen, where the keys were hanging, got to the car, opened the trunk, and felt around in her box of emergency supplies. The jug of water, food bars, emergency blanket, and two flashlights. He grabbed one, flicked it on, and ran around the house past the fig tree. The beam jagged, the world revealed in patches.
Dirt in relief, the shed a whirlpool and he was circling it, pulled toward the old wood, sucked toward the center, toward his mother, the earth canting to the side.
He washed up at the toolshed, marooned at its door, darted the beam around and found hammers hanging on a wall, everything arranged. Grabbed one and dropped the flashlight, fought back against the current, the hammer held high like an instrument of war. Aaah, he yelled, slogged along the wall until he could attack the plank she was trying to free.
Galen kicked at the bottom edge with his foot, hunched against the flood and rammed with his shoulder, hammered at the spot where nails met crossbeam. The holes not lined up. Driving the nails in fresh, and that would be stronger anyway. Black wood, old, but it was thick and strong enough still, a hand-sawed plank. Rutted and grooved on the surface.
His mother pounding from the other side and screaming. He could feel the impact. But he kept hammering, drove the two big nails all the way in, then bent down and battered the lower nails that met another crossbeam inches off the ground. He could smell the dirt and realized there was no flood at all. Marooned in a desert. The dirt in motion, though, difficult to keep his footing. All this noise in the middle of the night, but they were alone. No one else in this world.
He drove that plank flat, leaned back and roared into the void, his battle cry, his triumph, and ran into the orchard, wielding his hammer and his mangled hand, terrible appendages both, his claws that could tear at the ceiling of the world and bring it down, the earth cresting beneath him, the furrows moon-painted, and he ran again, leaped from furrow to furrow. The pain a pulse in the pattern, and the rage rose in him and he wanted to kill.
He ran the furrows until he landed full tilt against the plank that was loose, slammed it full body and fell back and rose again to rage against it with his hammer. His mother pushed from the other side, but she was nothing. The nails sinking in, and she could not stop him.
The nails singing higher and higher as they shortened until the blows were flat, the plank was flat, and she had no escape.
You are where you are, he yelled. You are where you fucking are. And then he ran to the pile of old cast-off wood stacked against the hedge. Abandoned wood from ten years ago, from fifty years ago, home of rattlesnake and lizard.
Aaah, he roared at the wood, and he slammed the hammer down, beat at the loose boards to send everything scattering, snake and lizard and spider and anything else. Get the fuck out, he yelled.
The pile a thousand shapes in moonlight, a burrowing of shadow. He pulled a long piece, an old board with nails sticking out, dragged it back to the shed by tucking it under his arm. His left hand maimed and useless, he tried to hold the board against the wall using a knee. He wanted it parallel to the ground, about four feet up, to run across all the vertical planks where they met the crossbeam. He’d make a giant seat belt. To free any plank, his mother would have to free a dozen all together at once. She’d never be able to do it.
He couldn’t hold the entire board up, so he tried to get one end at the right level, pinned against the wall with his thigh, and he hammered but the nails poking out the other side were gnarled and ancient and all going different directions. They only scraped and bent and made the board bounce.
Damn it, he said, and let it drop into the dirt. He grabbed the flashlight at the toolshed and walked back to the woodpile. The fury had gone out of him. Just gone suddenly, and he felt so sorry for himself, for his mangled hand. He would need to clean it, and wrap it, and he couldn’t imagine even touching that area.
The flashlight flattening the woodpile, showing dusty gray, the nails orange. Not a single clean piece of wood, nothing easy.
Galen flicked off the flashlight, walked toward the trees and lay down in a furrow. Held his left hand on his chest, careful. He didn’t know why he felt so lost suddenly. As if there were nothing to live for.
The stars fading, the sky a deep dark blue, the earliest sign of day. The dirt at his back still warm from the last day, the dry dead weeds all around him motionless, and what was coming was a scorcher, a day without breeze, a day in an oven. The air already warm and waiting.
He didn’t want to see the sun. He wanted it not to rise today, and he thought he’d be willing to spend the rest of his life in this time of day right here, with the sky a beautiful dark blue and the air warm and the moon going down. A near darkness, everything present but not fully formed, the entire world in a state of becoming but not yet arrived. That would be the best time, the best kind of moment to hold forever. He would like that.
But instead, the very worst was coming, he knew. The sky would wash out and bake and the earth would set on fire with no air to breathe and he’d hammer at misshapen pieces of wood as his mother screamed in her cage. That was what he had waiting for him.
So as the sky began to lighten, as the dark blue became a lighter blue and shifted toward white, he rose and took off his shoes and shorts and stood naked, ready for the immolation, ready to be engulfed in fire, and he stepped over the rough ground to the toolshed. He searched along small shelves, able to see now, until he found nails, sturdy steel nails four inches long. He grabbed the nails with his good hand and walked over to the wall.
The old board lay on the ground with its twisted nails reaching upward, and he understood now that the other side was flat. He’d been on a fool’s errand before. He set his hammer and nails close along the wall, then lifted an end of the board, set its flat face against the shed, and reached down for a nail.
He’d have to hold the nail in place with his left hand. There was no other way. He tried to use only his thumb and pinkie, and he tapped the nail very carefully with the hammer. If he missed, the pain would be unbelievable.
He could hear his mother crying. He needed the earplugs again. But he tapped at the nail, then let go and swung carefully, measured blows, drove in the first nail.
You’re not getting out, he said. I’m nailing a band around the entire shed, all the planks linked.
I’m your mother.
You’re the one making me do this. And that’s fine. You’re the last attachment, and so it makes sense that everything should feel like hell.
I’m your mother.
Galen lifted the other end of the board and made sure it was lined up with the crossbeam behind the planks. He had to nail into that beam.
People are real, Galen.
He held another nail with his thumb and pinkie, tapped lightly. That sound of metal on metal, the sound of what people were, makers of metal. He could be making coins, minting right here at the shed. Stamping his own image, and why not? The world was only what each of us made of it. His coin would be known as The Galen. A perfect task for becoming. Coins were just like that dark blue sky, the day about to be.
Lightening quickly now, though, the heavens washing out, everything taken away too soon, all comfort, a test. He would be tested today, he knew.
He walked back to the woodpile for the next piece. No need to choose, because he’d have to use them all. A two-by-two this time, very long and light and perfect for the task. He dragged it into place, held one end up against the planks, set his nail and tapped. No stamp for the design of his face, but each coin individually tapped, each one a sculpture, civilization slowed down. A final recognition that the hordes did not exist. There was no one to make coins for. Beyond this shed and this dirt and the hedge leading down the lane, beyond the orchard and the high wall, there was no one. Galen let his breath slow, a long exhale. There was no one. He could relax, let the attachment go. The pain in his hand, also, an illusion. If he focused on his exhale, the pain paled. It receded and curled away like the snake it was.