Dirt Read Free Page A

you.
    Well, his aunt said.
    The pantry door opened and Galen’s mother returned. Are we through now? she asked.
    We’ve only just begun, Galen sang.
    Jennifer smiled and put her foot up on his crotch under the table. Her bare foot on his jeans, held there lightly, feeling his boner grow.
    How was Mom today? his aunt asked his mother.
    She was fine.
    Any details?
    You should go yourself if you want details.
    It’s not enough that you’re the favorite? And that you get to live in this house and collect the checks? You also have to be snotty?
    You’re not going to be invited to this house anymore if you behave like this.
    No empty threats, please.
    Jesus, Galen said. Listen to the two of you.
    It’s the only sound in the world, his aunt said. How could we hear anything else?
    Jennifer pressed harder against his boner, pleasant at first and then it kind of hurt. He put a hand down to try to push her foot away, but she was too strong. He looked at her and she was smiling. Mascara put on too heavily, a child’s makeup. Blue eyes bright as marbles. But what he always noticed most was the down, the actual down along her cheeks and neck. He could see the tiny blond hairs, so soft. Something he wanted to feel against his own cheek.
    What are you two up to? Galen’s mother asked.
    Just a stare-down, Galen said. First one to blink has to stay here at the table and talk with the two of you.
    Stop it, Galen’s mother said. Jennifer, you look like a little tramp. And all of you have to stop it. Why can’t you just be normal? Why can’t we just be a family?
    Galen sighed. Okay, he said. May I have the plate of piggies, please?
    Thank you, his mother said. And she passed the plate. A dozen piggies in their blankets. Galen slid them all onto his plate and then he stuffed them in his mouth with both fists, hot doughy intestinal meat with the taste of butchery floors and tongues and hooves. His cousin laughing and his mother gone again and he kept stuffing and chewing and swallowing the little abominations until there were only shards on his plate, the ruins of the feast, and then he bent down to lick his plate clean, left the table with his stomach heaving and lurched up the stairs to his room and bathroom to vomit into the toilet. When he was done, he folded his arms on the toilet seat, his mouth acidic, and he took a little nap. Closed his eyes and slept on the toilet with the unclean water below, thought about dipping his head in for a drink, and he would have done it if his mother had been watching.

Chapter 3
    W hen Galen woke it was dark. The house silent. The time of peace. The way he wished the world could be. No people.
    He had to shake his arm to get it to wake up. He flushed the toilet and brushed his teeth. Then he walked barefoot down the stairs, stepping as softly as possible, trying to walk with no weight. His body lifted in the air, gravity gone. This world a dream, the house made of memory. His mother as a child walking these same steps.
    Out through the pantry, he walked beneath the enormous leaves of the fig tree, could smell its fruit, let his jeans and underwear and shirt slip to the ground, stood naked. The moon nearly full, and as he stepped around the farm shed into the walnut orchard, he saw the array of bones. Long rows of white trunks and branches all turned to bone in this light. Every branch hollow and too large, luminous. The leaves as shadows too insubstantial to cover.
    Galen ran as he had read in the Carlos Castaneda books, let his bare feet find their way in the night, their own path, closed his eyes and held his arms out to the sides, palms up. The clods of dirt crumbling beneath his feet, rocks hard, small branches, leaves. All of it hurt and made him slow down, but he wanted to be lifted free. He wanted to drift over the ground without sound or feel, his feet held just above the surface by a kind of magnetism. Instead, his feet sank deep into furrows, stumbled and