Soil

  He put the shovel down and climbed out of the pit, which he’d dug in a wedge to keep from having to hoist himself up and down. He would build her a palace underground if that’s what she desired. It wasn’t too late to lure her back, only he had to make this place pure again. He had much to bury and burn, ashes to haul, a severed hand to find.

  Jay fetched the retort barrel with the keg inside it and rolled them into the pit and went to clanging on each with a ball-peen hammer, flattening the rims until the sides collapsed and they lay at the bottom of the hole like crushed beer cans, and next he took the cook pot and flattened it similarly, and he threw over top several bucketsful of dirt and stamped it down to conceal it all well, and then he ran back and forth to the house and brought the old wheelbarrow into the field with its multiple dumploads of shiny pieces, which he carried down bit by bit, careful not to spill—first the steering and pedals and rack engine, the gas tank and suspension, the brakes and exhaust and ignition and transmission, the gun mount and rear rack, and then all of the tiniest components—­the screws, washers, valves, seals, gaskets, bearings, and chains—and after all the metal was disassembled and laid to rest, too far down for detectors to make, there were the sliced tires and guards and cables, the seat covers and handles, a layer of dirt tamped down meticulously over each so that little would be left, and when it was complete and there were a couple of wheelbarrow loads of dirt to take down to the compost bins, he covered the long rectangle of freshly turned earth with plant debris, blended it well, and believed that within two weeks it would look like it had never been disturbed, and after that another century or more before the sense of its contents could be made.

  And if anyone was lucky enough to be around to find this, maybe they would be reminded that we’ve only ever been here, scurrying across or just beneath the Mother’s skin at her own gracious mercy, a self-propagating food stock for her deep crumbling hunger.

  * * *

  He slept well that night and much of the next day, and when evening came he crawled again into the pasture, toting a cumbersome garbage sack. He composed a fire for the boat, which he’d splintered with an ax that afternoon. Paperbacks provided the kindling, just a few old classics of paranoia, read and remembered. When the flames shot erect, he dipped the shovel into the sack, pulled up the corpse’s jeans, and handed them to the fire. The garment muffled the inferno just a bit and drove into the clear night a tall plume of smoke, which the wind took straight and mercifully away. The flames adjusted, welcomed the fabric, and fanned out. The jeans appeared to be melting in the heat. After a few moments, he reached in with the shovel and lifted them, and they fell apart like burning paper.

  He kept building the fire in layers, first the brambles and leaves, followed by a filthy bedsheet or blood-coated tennis shoe, then more branches. He burned it slow, a clue at a time, and then he’d sit back and stare off into the glow for a while, imagining that he’d always been destroying these things and that he would spend the rest of his life destroying them too, tending this sulfurous hell pit till kingdom come.

  When it seemed well enough past dinnertime he unwrapped some rations he’d tucked up in a bandanna. A little cake with a special filling he had recently discovered. It had started innocently with that first taste of honeyed mud at the washout by the river and then later the taste of dust and sweat across his lips. He’d licked the wall of the pit, a yellow-brown strata of clay, and enjoyed the seductive taste, pulled a nugget and eaten furtively. It tasted of rich vinegary mustard greens. The salt and the sugar were present with the sharp bitters. He heated a pan’s worth over the fire, fried it up with onions, just a little heat to kill any hookworms. He made flatbread with the old beetle flour and rainwater and ate them together, a dirty taco. A little gritty but uncommonly delicious. This could pass in finer restaurants, he believed. What more were your truffles and mushrooms but ambitious mud?

  Chipper, meanwhile, was roving the bountiful acres of unsniffed pasture when he stopped at the top of the hill and set to howling and barking. Jay crept up, flattened himself against the earth, and peered over the ridge. The moon spotlighted a trespasser under the carport. The shadow passed behind the Bronco and lingered before the dark window, peering into the house.

  Jay instinctively pulled the pistol from his waistband and cocked it, waiting to see if he recognized the figure. He heard a ripple of plastic. Someone was nosing under the char tarp. He popped off a warning shot, which brought a dose of adrenaline.

  The trespasser stopped and moved toward the gunshot. Jay stood, cocked, and fired again into the air. “Don’t shoot,” called a deep, familiar voice. The long broad figure moved out of the light and into the shadows of the pasture, the orange glow from his cigarette creating an orb of light around his face. It was Hatcher, his neighbor across the way.

  Chipper recognized him and darted down the hill. Jay ran to cut him off. Hatcher was extremely clever and would make him answer for everything that was amiss at the campsite. They met awkwardly in the middle of the slope. “What’re you shooting at?” the neighbor inquired.

  “You,” Jay replied.

  “Well, you got shit for aim,” the neighbor croaked. Not given to expression, he was almost impossible to read, all eyebrows, spectacles, and mustache. He wore a broad trucker hat over gray hair pulled back and tied in a ponytail. “Is that raincoats you’re burning back there?”

  “How’d you guess?” said Jay.

  “Smells like somebody baking tennis shoes.”

  Jay froze, grasping for a lie. “It’s some of Sandy’s old clothes.” It was an idiotic response he regretted instantly, nearly as bad as the truth.

  Hatcher took it without a flinch. “I saw her car over here the other day. Y’all get your mess sorted out?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “Didn’t think so, you burning her clothes and all,” Hatcher replied. “She aint in em, is she?”

  Of everyone, Hatcher would be the hardest to fool. His instincts were unequaled, almost paranormal. He could smell bullshit a mile away.

  “She’s not,” Jay replied, managing a smile.

  Hatcher craned his neck up the hill. Men like him were drawn to flames. He looked back and eyed Jay suspiciously. “What happened to your nose, she slam a door in your face?”

  Jay fingered the scab of his misguided self-mutilation. “Tree branch whacked me in the face.”

  Hatcher looked down at Chipper as if seeking confirmation. The dog was staring up with a dumb smile, wagging his tail.

  “Look, I’m sorry,” said Jay, impatient. “I’m all out of weed.”

  Hatcher was an old hippie, lost between worlds. A toke now and then would put him right, as it did for Jay. A year or so back he’d lost his son, a military hero in Iraq. Since then Hatcher’s wife had found religion and couldn’t abide him having grass at their house.

  “Well, I sure hate that for you,” Hatcher said. “But some crossed my path the other day. I come to share.”

  There was something ominous in Hatcher’s flat, expressionless tone. Jay urged him inside, where he had some rolling papers, anything to lure him away from the fire over the hill. The neighbor might go berserk if he found Jay burning a perfectly good boat.

  “What’s all this?” Hatcher asked, swatting the tarp as they passed through the carport.

  “Just some compost experiments,” Jay said, moving fast inside.

  Hatcher blew a snort of derision. Like many old hippies, he’d lost his optimism and pretended to disapprove of Jay’s sustainable farming experiment.

  “How’d that compost work out for you this year?” the neighbor taunted.

  “Not too well, Hatch,” said Jay. “But it wouldn’t, considering the circumstances, don’t you imagine?”

  “Should’ve grown rice this first year,” said Hatcher, handing over a folded-­

  up paper towel. “Like I told you. Rice don’t mind
a flood.”

  Had he, in fact, predicted the flood? Jay seemed to remember something about it months earlier. Hatcher was nothing if not a harbinger of misfortune.

  “Something you could eat at least,” Hatcher said. “Aint you got no food? You look to be wasting away.”

  Jay unfolded the wadded paper and broke the dusty green nugget apart with his fingers. He reached into his pocket for papers and rolled a bittersweet beauty, which he passed for Hatcher to fire off.

  “The deep freezer quit on me, spoiled all my fish and venison,” Jay said. “The solar panels worked great. It was the goddamn battery. One too many cloudy days, it kept tripping the inverter off and on. The old motor couldn’t take it.”

  Jay tried to get in there and speak the old guy’s language, but Hatcher was having none of it. He just shook his head. “You know, it’d be a hell of a lot easier if you just pay your light bill.”

  Jay bristled at the continuing assault. Hatcher sucked up the joint, held it for several seconds, and exhaled like a steam drill. White billows swirled around him, and smoke seeped out of him when he spoke. “You strapped for cash or something? Need a job?”

  “You got work?” Jay asked, accepting the joint and taking in a breath that expanded him to twice his normal size.

  “Always got work. And more than enough knuckleheads on the payroll who I wouldn’t mind shitcanning.”

  Hatcher ran a small plumbing outfit out of the shop behind his house, mostly small domestic chores. He once told Jay that he’d grown so depressed by the all-around shoddy construction he found on his jobs that it ruined the work for him. He hired out these little chores to a bunch of young trainees and just fielded calls and managed the workload. He put on a good act over the phone, sounding like a preacher with his assured bass. A roster of helpless old country widows kept him in business.

  “I’ll keep it in mind,” Jay said.

  “Sure,” Hatcher replied, “but only if your farming operation doesn’t pan out.”

  Jay couldn’t decide if Hatcher was poking at him, or if he was simply paranoid, hyperaware and hypercritical. He studied the effects of the marijuana on Hatcher, who was staring at the wall. He rubbed his arm against it as if to measure it plumb. They’d gotten high together enough that Jay could detect the gears of Hatcher’s mind switching in constant transformation. He seemed to possess the ability to hone in on some flyspeck in front of him, penetrate that point, and illuminate the broader implications, the reverberations spreading throughout all of time—past, present, future—always exposing something rotten and festering at the core of the universe.

  Hatcher had his nose to the wall. “Something’s dead,” he said.

  “Don’t fuck with me!” Jay cried out. Hatcher was onto him, the tricky geezer. As the owl sees through darkness, he knew the fear in Jay’s soul.

  Hatcher looked back and wrinkled his brow. “It’s probably just a squirrel or mouse or something, slipped down and got stuck in the crawl space. Not too old. You’ll smell it tomorrow.”

  Jay moved against the accused wall and stood there inspecting it. He turned to watch through eyes engorged and red as plums as the neighbor floated around the room in scrutiny.

  Hatcher noticed the gaps on the bookshelf. “What happened to all your books?”

  “I got rid of them,” Jay replied. “A man can’t put too much emphasis on book learning these days.”

  “He can’t?”

  “No. There’s too much real knowledge out there, the observable sort. I can’t waste my time on fabrications.”

  Hatcher pulled down a dog-eared Dostoyevsky. “I kinda like the Russians. When I’m in the mood.”

  “Bored ruminations of men too frightened to wander out of doors. You like that?”

  Hatcher paused and studied him. Was his behavior too erratic? Out of character?

  “I noticed some activity over here the past week or so,” Hatcher said finally. “Your hands look like they’ve been busy.”

  Jay looked at his hands, scraped up red and throbbing from the dig. He was gripped in a tingle brought on by the potent weed. His lungs felt full of concrete, his mind an engine that wouldn’t turn over. A confession rose in his chest. “Yeah, I’ve been gathering up wood to make charcoal,” he mustered. “For my cops. Crops. My crops.”

  “What crops? You gonna harvest them brown tomatoes?”

  Jay offered a rambling, incoherent explanation of biochar theory, the whole notion of pyrolysis and carbon sequestration, the Amazonian fire mounds. Hatcher snorted and took another deep draw from the stub.

  “You think some charcoal mixed up in your mud out there’s gonna do the trick?” he wheezed, holding in the smoke, then blowing it all about the room. “Save the farm?”

  “There’s a research group in Australia that’s done wonders with it.”

  “Australia?”

  “Yeah. They’ve been taking the brunt of global wrath, you know? Floods and sandstorms, blizzards in the middle of summer. It’s biblical, man. They’ll try anything. That’s where you see progress. It comes from desperation.”

  Hatcher glowered skeptically.

  “I found a deer in my front field there,” Jay confessed. He enjoyed the loosening in his chest as he began to unburden. “Drowned or killed somehow. I butchered him and made a batch of charcoal from his bones. Gonna see if it works.”

  “Let’s see it then,” said Hatcher. “Show me what you made.”

  “Well, it’s . . .” Jay grasped for something. “It’s not really done yet.”

  “Oh no?” Hatcher said. “Still just a theory? You must not be desperate yet.”

  This charade couldn’t go on. He should just come clean. Of all the people he knew, who would judge him less than Hatcher?

  Jay went outside and dug under the tarp to fetch the quart mason jar of black powder. He took it inside and handed it to Hatcher, who shook it, unscrewed the lid, and took a whiff. He sealed it back and tossed it to Jay and held him with a long suspicious gaze.

  “What is wrong with you, Mize?” he said firmly. There was godlike authority in his query.

  Jay wavered a little. He’d misjudged his neighbor. He thought they’d shared an allegiance to privacy and a respect for the cruelty of nature.

  “I used to think you were a pretty sharp tack,” Hatcher said. “Now I think maybe you’re some kind of . . . forestalled man-child.”

  He took a step forward, pinched the roach out between wet fingers. Jay swallowed.

  “You’ve got a beautiful wife. Smart, gorgeous. My God, if I had a woman like that.”

  Jay tensed, working his fists into furious balls.

  “Your boy is polite, clever. Both of them, so far out of your league you’re not even in the same sport. And here you are just playing in the dirt. Talking about how some jar of soot is gonna save your farm. Really? That’s how you plan to get em back?”

  Jay wondered what would happen if he reached out and grabbed the old guy’s neck and wrestled him to the ground. What sort of wiry strength did either of them still possess?

  “I’m sure it’s none of my business, but I think you oughta stop sitting around your house smoking dope and find some real work. You aint scared to work, I seen you out in that field all spring, but I’m telling you, it’ll never make you a dime. It’s already set you back to zero.”

  “What, you think I’d be happier running toilet snakes for you? You think my wife would respect that?” Jay snapped. “Or do you just want me to come be your son?”

  Hatcher stared into him with the entirety of his invincible pain and wisdom. “I oughta whip your ass for being such a trifling fool, you know that?” he said. “And believe me, you’d end up thanking me for it.”

  Hatcher placed the wet joint into Jay’s palm and closed and held it shut. “You keep the rest, brother. I’m gonna let myself out to piss.”r />
  Jay stood there, an apology dissolving in his throat. There was no sound but for the muffled night and the quietly decomposing rodent behind the wall and the blood chugging through his head. He walked out behind him. “Hatcher,” he called, but the night had sucked his neighbor up as if he’d never been there at all.

  Jay sat down on a workbench. He just wanted to tear off all his clothes and steal into the night, naked as any animal, down to the river and the washout, into that cold judgeless maw of earth. But his body refused to concede, and he fell asleep there, clutching his jar of ash.

  He awoke the next morning, shivering, Chipper’s tongue all over him. A strange cooler sat beside his makeshift bed. Someone had left him a gift to go on—a generous hunk of smoked ham, some individually wrapped containers of beans and creamed potatoes, a half-dozen dinner rolls, and a sack of sweet corn. “Who left this?” he demanded of Chipper, who sat obediently licking his jowls in anticipation of ham. He tore into the meal, not even with pleasure but with a wolfish indulgence, sharing only the rind with the dog. He finished and had to lie down on the bench with a stitch in his gut. He thought it must have been Hatcher who’d left it, trying to keep him alive for some baseless reason.

  He drank some water, managed to keep his food down, and studied the quart mason jar of dust. It amazed him how little was left of the unfortunate trespasser.

  He took the jar and a shovel down to a corner of the field above the waterline, where he’d arranged a row of wooden bins, each containing a batch of compost in some various stage of decomposition. The bins ranged from coarse materials like straw and leaves and corncobs to husks of manure, procured from the horseman Rakestraw up the road, to coarse mixes and hot piles to fine rich silts, fully cooked and cured batches, black and rich, ready to spread.