Nothing but Ghosts Read Free Page A

shovel, I have even tossed a rock, and Ida says, “Did you think that gardens were somehow bug-free?” and Owen says, “I don’t think they’re biting.” Old Olson says that bugs are why we kids are paid more than the minimum wage, and shrugs and walks away.
    They’re too small to be mosquitoes, and they’re definitely not flies, and even if they don’t bite I hate the buzz-saw sound of them. After a while, Danny sighs and says, “Girl,” then he reaches into his backpack and hauls out a Boston U cap. “Keep it,” he says, plunking it onto my head. “I’ve got an extra at home.” He pulls the bill down to my nose. He makes a little fan wave in front of my face, smiles his glossy white smile. Maybe it helps some, but I pretend it helps a lot and skulk back over to my edge of the hole. Everyone’s been given a different side to dig. Reny’s stuck with the part that has the fattest roots.
    Yesterday evening Old Olson chalked the site, and this morning I picked out a shovel from his old golf cart and started wedging in. Where the wall had been, the earth was still moist; there were snail shells and grub backs and a knot of string and all the bacteria and fungi that I knew from school had to be there, but that I couldn’t see. I could go maybe four inches in, andthen the earth got different—hard and stubborn, like it was protecting something, and now every shovelful is a gigantic effort, and it hurts. I am the Girl, and I am the youngest, but no way am I the only one who is having a tough time, because even Danny’s face is showing strain as he grips the shovel harder and puts more weight against the blade. The earth, four inches in, doesn’t want to budge, at least not across the stream at Miss Martine’s, and now Reny is complaining—swiping the sweat off his high brow and saying, “A gazebo? Really, Old Olson? Is this your idea of a joke?” Ida has big wet marks all over her white T-shirt. Owen has stopped for a bottle of Gatorade. I get a flash of my dad back home in the cool of his garage. I’d give anything to be there, giving him grief.
    “Pickaxe would come in handy,” Old Olson says after a while.
    “Didn’t fit in your cart?” Reny asks him.
    “Left it up at the top of the hill, against the backside of the main house. Was using it yesterday for a project.”
    “A knock-the-door-down project?” Ida asks Old Olson, and I don’t know, I genuinely don’t, why he puts up with her in the first place.
    “I’ll get it,” I volunteer, before anyone else can.
    “Get what?” Owen asks, because I guess he’s been orbiting outer space somewhere with his Gatorade.
    “The pickaxe.”
    “I can get it after lunch,” says Old Olson.
    “No, really,” I say. “It isn’t any problem,” because truly it isn’t, it’s a blessing—I can go around and over and back down and come back to a hole that’s more deeply dug. I can even outrun the bugs, or try. And at the end of it all, I’ll have been helpful.
    “Go on, then,” Old Olson says. “Quick as you can.”
    “See Girl run,” Owen says. I tug at Danny’s cap, and I’m off.
     
    I go the long way around because the slope’s less steep, and because there’s more shade that way. Walking Miss Martine’s estate is like traveling around from country to country. She’s got beds of red flowers, only red. She’s got groves of apple trees, and apples only. She’s got a pretty pebble garden that Yvonne weeds every morning, and everything that isn’t pebbles is either orange or pink. You can move from one country to the other, though some countries are divided by stone walls like the stone wall we just moved; Reny claims that walls like these kept the herds of Ayrshire cows from straying.
    High on the hill Amy’s thick, dark hair tumbles out of her straw hat as she bends in next to Peter, who snips away at the bottom branches of some tree. Yvonne is higher still, alone, taking care of the gladioli and the dahlias. On the opposite side