The
Hole Between Them
by Gerard Varni
"There is a fatality, a feeling so irresistible and inevitable
that it has the force of doom, which almost invariably compels human
beings to linger around and haunt, ghostlike, the spot where some
great and marked event has given the color to their lifetime; and
still the more the darker the tinge that saddens it."
The boy raced
down the path, bare feet slapping rhythmically against dry ground,
raising puffs of dust that hung in the air for an instant, still
and still moving, before dissipating into a chalky haze. He moved
with ferocious grace, the eloquent symmetry of swirling arms and
sinewed legs concealing his true speed. He seemed to be fleeing
a predator. And essentially he was, fleeing the spent moments and
dust-fouled air He glided through clean air, beyond the silence
of before and the stillness of to come, toward the springboard at
the end of the path. Without breaking stride he reached the board,
stomped on it with both feet, and left the ground, legs bent, knees
pulled close to his chest. After two precise revolutions, he uncoiled,
threw back his head, stabbed his arms to the side as if crucified,
and landed flawlessly.
The hole was
eight feet long, four feet wide, and six feet deep. Exactly. The
boy's father had dug it using several different types of shovels
The father was equally as virtuous in constructing the wooden springboard.
He'd milled the 2x4s himself, chose an unblemished sheet of plywood
and soaked it in water until he was able to impart a subtle but
faultless convexity. He fashioned the springs from rusted shock
absorbers, spending hours removing the filth and corrosion with
a towel soaked in dimethylsulfoxide, a powerful industrial solvent
that the father and the boy's mother also valued for its medicinal
qualities. They applied it topically as a remedy for their various
ailments, which, taken together, included Diverticulosis, Candida,
Diabetes and spider veins.
The path that
led to the hole was equal in length to 22 of the boy's full strides.
The hole was 10 feet beyond the springboard. The proximity of each
to the other was fundamental. When the boy was added to the matrix,
it became organic. Surely, without the hole there would have been
no path; nor would there have been a springboard. And, likewise,
in the absence of the path and the springboard the hole would have
been unthinkable. Without the boy, though, and for that matter the
father and the mother, well . . . clearly the connections are evident.
The field where
the father dug the hole was on the cusp of an alluvial valley. Once
a vineyard, it had long lain fallow, the generative vines burned
and plowed under. It was bordered on the north by snuff-colored
foothills, scruffy lumps that seemed to hesitate before finally
slouching toward an unremarkable mountain range. Opposite the foothills,
on the field's southern edge, was a stand of old eucalyptus trees,
each one a gnarled sentry with bark like burnt skin peeling from
its trunk.
Every day just
after sunrise the father, the mother and the boy emerged single
file from the dark line of trees With her head wrapped in a blood-red
scarf, so that from the rear it looked like an overripe tomato perched
on her shoulders, the mother stood behind the boy as he prepared
for each run. She watched him rock gently back and forth, listened
for the deliberate exhalations of his breath, beheld the slight
twitch of sinew in legs that might have been hewn from tropical
wood. She sensed the small beginnings of motion even before the
furious in-suck of breath that signaled the renewal of the sacrifice.
And all the while, she caressed the smooth river stone she'd had
since the boy was born. Each time the boy left, with the dust rising
and mingling around her, she uttered the same soft incantation:
"Be well, boy."
The father
waited on the opposite side of the hole. He watched the boy, a spare
figure sketched darkly against the pale canvas of the river bed
that twisted away from the field and crept into the dry hills. The
father, whose worn denim overalls hung on a reedy frame, had a rawboned
face and black hair that shone like onyx but wanted washing. In
his hand, he held a ladder, which he'd built, too, and no less lovingly
than the hole or the springboard. It was simple, five feet long,
constructed entirely of hand-milled wood. The ladder.
He would lower
it into the hole after each landing, as it was difficult for the
boy to climb out on his own. The boy scaled the ladder slowly, methodically,
right foot first, four steps and out. He would turn, then, to his
father and the two would exchange a look, explicit but wordless.
As the boy traveled back along the path, and when the father was
certain he was beyond earshot, he would mutter, "Well done, boy."
The boy had
never taken lessons, never been taught the acrobatic feats he transacted
so effortlessly. The skills sprang from a place deep within, beyond
imagination even. Though at one time he had perceived the motions
only in his mind, they had become involuntary, as natural as the
blood coursing through his veins. The twisting and turning, the
layouts and somersaults, the rapturous sensation of soaring, even
the ineluctable melancholy of landing Day after day from dawn until
dusk, and season upon season, the boy and his father and mother
came to the withering field. It was an urge so irresistible that
it had the force of doom.
In the cold
morning, with the sun low in the eastern sky, the mother would squint
and raise her veiny hand against the light. This way, she could
track the boy's ghostlike visage through the roiling dust until,
for those few sacred moments, he flew like an obedient Icarus, soaring
well but not too close to the flesh-dissolving sun. And as he reached
the apex of his flight Slipping into the ground as if swallowed,
the boy would thrust his arms skyward, not in a gesture of victory
or even gratitude but rather submission, in keeping with the covenant
of the act. Upon seeing the hands like two dark stubs rise above
the hole, the mother would let out her breath with a staccato rasp
and loosen her grip on the stone.
In the evening,
it was the father who regarded the figure of the boy, although against
a far different tableau. The sun was a deep claret, spent and misshapen,
with all the fury of a sigh. It was then, in the ochre light and
with the boy striding away, that the father felt weak, almost forsaken,
as a person must in that awful moment before the plane hits the
ground.
One evening,
after yet another flawless leap and immersion, the father found
himself scrutinizing the setting sun. Swollen and crosscut by a
long thin cloud, it looked like a wet wound wrapped with gauze.
Yet he knew the cloud was powerless to stanch the flow of light,
anemic though it was. Only the slowly turning Earth could snuff
that flame. And only the Earth could ignite it once again.
Then the father
heard the somber thump of bare feet against dirt and shifted his
gaze to a gliding form that moved as smoothly as poured liquid.
The boy's head was a still point around which flowed atoms of unseen
energy. He ran toward the springboard, with its stamped image of
two dark feet The father heard the sharp crack and instinctively
hunched down. He thought the noise was a rifle report. He looked
around, scanning the field for a hunter. But there was no one, and
nothing to hunt. Then, he heard a low moaning coming from the hole.
He stood up, ladder in hand, and walked to the edge. The boy was
slumped against the back, clutching his left leg above the thigh
as if he were trying to strangle it.
The leg was
bent at an odd angle, and just above the knee the father could see
a shard of bone poking through the skin. It was smooth and shimmered
like the tip of an iceberg. The shattered femur must have perforated
an artery, for blood streamed from the wound and a viscous pool
accumulated around the boy.
The ladder
slipped from the father's hand. The boy was shivering, and he wept,
although the sound was barely audible; the father did not believe
the tears were from the pain but rather the anguish of having succumbed
at last. The boy lifted his head, looked up to the father through
wet eyes, tried to communicate his sorrow. Neither spoke. The father
beheld the sobbing boy The father stepped back, turning as he leaned
down to pick up the shovel. He looked beyond the hole, down the
path to the place where the mother stood. She was no longer watching.
Her hand hung limply at her side and she stared at the stone that
had slipped into the dirt. Even if she'd been crying, he thrust
the shovel into the earth, measured a uniform scoop of dirt and,
without looking, threw it behind him into the hole. He added another
on top of that. And another. There was no sound but the falling
dirt. It took him three hours to fill the hole, and by then it was
dark. He laid the shovel down beside the ladder and walked away,
paralleling the path but careful not to step on it. He encountered
the mother halfway. Guided by the listless moonlight, they quit
the field single-file: the mother first, the father several paces
behind, and a hole between them.
Gerard
Varni writes: "My work has appeared in printed journals, including
pleiades and the baltimore review, as well as online at blue moon,
crossconnect, web del sol, etc." His poem Upon
the Skulls of Unbelievers appears in this issue.
THIS
WORK IS COPYRIGHT OF THE AUTHOR.
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