David Vann: Dirt

Galen waited under the fig tree for his mother. He read Siddhartha for the hundredth time, the young Buddha gazing into the river. He felt the enormous presence of the fig tree above him, listened for the no wind, for the stillness. Summer heat pressing down, flattening the earth. Sweat in a film covering most his body, a slick.

This old house, the trees ancient. The grass, grown long, making his legs itch. But he tried to concentrate. Hear the no wind. Focus on breath. Let the no self go by.

Galen, his mother called from inside, Galen.

He breathed more deeply, tried to let his mother go by.

Oh, there you are, she said. Ready for tea?

He didn’t answer. Focused on his breath, hoped she would go away. But of course he was waiting here for her, waiting for tea.

Help me bring out the tray, she said, so he sighed and put down his book and got up, his legs cramped from being crossed.

There you are, she said as he stepped into the kitchen. Old wood bending beneath his bare feet. A roughness from varnish flaking off. He took the tray, the old silver, heavy, the ornate silver teapot, the white china cups, everything that depressed him, and while his hands were full she leaned in from behind and gave him a kiss, her lips on his neck and the little snuffling sound she did to be cute, which made him flinch and want to scream. But he didn’t drop the tray. He carried it out to the cast-iron table under the shade of the fig, close against the wall of the farm shed with its small apartment above. He was considering moving out here, to get away from her, away from the main house.

His mother beside him now with the finger sandwiches, cucumber and watercress. They weren’t in England. This wasn’t England. They were in Carmichael, a suburb of Sacramento, California, in the Central Valley, a long, hot trough of crass, as far from England as one could be, but every afternoon they had high tea. They weren’t even English. His grandmother from Iceland, grandfather from Germany. Nothing about their lives would ever make any sense.

Sit, his mother said. Enjoying your book?

She poured him a cup of tea. She wore white. A summery white blouse and long skirt, all white, with sandals. Thighs flaring, the bottom half of her growing faster than the top half.

Have a sandwich, she said. You need to eat.

The finger sandwiches with crusts cut off. Cucumber and cream cheese. Even if he had felt any appetite, this food would have been near the bottom of the list of all foods in the world.

You look emaciated, she said.

What he returned to was breath. Whenever she spoke, he returned to his breathing, the exhale, letting all attachment to the world slip away. He counted ten exhales, and then he sipped his tea, hot and minty and sweet.

Your cheeks are all sucked in, and it looks like you have bones in the front of your neck.

There are no bones in the front of my neck.

But it looks like there are. You need to eat. And you need to take a shower and shave. You’re so handsome when you put in a little effort.

His breath coming faster now, anger always a flaring upward, a sense of broadening at his neck and shoulders, the top of his head gone. He could say anything in these moments, but he tried to say nothing.

It’s just food, Galen. For chrissakes, there’s nothing special about it. Watch me. And she raised a cucumber finger sandwich slowly in the air, a small square, and slowly pushed it into her mouth.

Galen looked down at his teacup, the tea a kind of stain in the water, darker toward the bottom. Wilted green leaves of mint, rough with tiny bumps. The world a great flood in which nothing would ever stop. It could not be controlled, it could not be held back. It was rising and compacting, pressurizing. School starts in a month, he said. I should be going to college. I shouldn’t be spending another fucking year having high tea.

Well you’re free to go.

We don’t have any money. Remember?

Well, that’s not my fault. We make do with what we have. And we live in this beautiful place, all to ourselves.

I’d rather live anywhere else.

His mother lifted her tiny spoon and swirled her tea, and Galen waited. Why do you want to hurt me? she asked.

The air was not breathable. So hot his throat a dried-out tunnel, his lungs thinned like paper and unable to expand, and he didn’t know why he couldn’t just leave. She had made him into a kind of husband, her own son. She’d kicked out her mother and sister and niece and made it just the two of them, and every day he felt he couldn’t stand it even one more day but every day he stayed.

After tea, Galen went up to his room. The master bedroom, because his mother slept in her old bedroom from childhood. So he slept where his grandparents had, a long open room of dark wood, the floorboards oiled and worn. Wood up the walls forming a ledge at chest level. Old fabric above that, French with fleur-de-lis patterns in dark blue set in panels three feet wide, separated by dark beams that went all the way to the ceiling. And the ceiling a series of boxes in more dark wood, with a carved area above the chandelier. A place ornate and heavy, too grand for his insubstantial life, something from another time.

Galen’s bed frame was made of walnut from this orchard. That was one thing that fit. He could go out and sit on the stump. But beyond that, he didn’t know how anything had come to be or who he was supposed to become.

He walked downstairs to wait for his mother at the car. A circular drive in front of the house, attached to a long lane of hedge, overgrown now. Flowers in the middle of the circle, also overgrown. Thistle and high grasses gone brown in the sun. There had been a gardener, and there was still a weekly fund paid out for a gardener, but the fund was what Galen and his mother lived on. That and the fund for weekly maid service.

The car twelve years old now, a Buick Century 1973, with a long sweep back from the headlights. A boat. Painted metallic orange, a new paint job from a year ago, Galen’s mother throwing away money. Let’s do it, she’d said. Let’s just do it.

The metallic paint a giant reflector, cooking Galen as he stood there without a hat or sunglasses, his skin gone dark and ragged. A few hundred feet away, a giant oak and cool shade, a wooden love seat, but Galen remained. Kept his eyes open as wide as possible in the glare.

Galen could feel the earth leaning closer to the sun, could feel the land shouldering its way forward, pulling the hot sack of melt behind it.

And then his mother emerged. Sun hat and several small bags in her hands, fumbling with the keys, carrying sixteen things though they were driving only three miles. Every day after tea they drove to see his grandmother in the rest home. Everything a production, and of every production his mother the star.

She smiled as she walked toward him, a wide, lovely smile, her best feature. A long walk from the door to the drive, a path bordered by lawn, some of it still green. The water bill for the sprinklers paid directly from the trust.

Here you are, she said. Shall we go?

For his mother, no bad moment had ever existed. They had not fought at tea. They had never fought. Nothing unpleasant had ever happened in her entire life. Galen never knew what to say. So he gazed at the hood, a blinding sun, and tried to stretch his eyes.

Galen, his mother said. Open your door and get in. Legs go first. It’s not tough, and it really doesn’t mean anything.

So Galen opened his door and put one leg in, then decided to put the other leg in without using his arms. He fell over with a hard whump onto the gravel, let his shoulder take the damage. His legs twisted over the doorframe.