"All This Digging"

The title story from my debut collection of short (and short-short) stories:

“I hate all this digging,” the old man said aloud to no one. His overalls covered in dirt, he thrust his shovel into the hard ground. After three attempts, he finally broke through. He tossed the dirt aside, and wiped his brow with the sleeve of his flannel shirt. A biting cold wind blew across his face. He was already breathing hard, and the wind seemed to take any remaining breath with it. Turning his back to the wind, he shoved the tool into the ground.

Little pieces of dirt and rock broke off. He scooped them up and tossed them aside. For several hours, the old man hammered at the ground with his shovel. Stopping once during the day to eat half a sandwich and drink a small glass of orange juice, he went back to work until the ground before him hid in darkness. Before quitting for the night, he pulled a wide, long wooden board across the gap left by the day’s labor. Chilled air had reddened his hands. He tossed the shovel aside as he went in to the house.

Elmer walked into the small kitchen and rubbed one chapped hand through his thin gray hair. The kitchen could barely contain the olive green refrigerator in the corner, the orange stove on the wall opposite the table, and the countertop that held a single-slice toaster. He was alone now that his wife was dead and the small kitchen helped keep him company. He had not used the stove for anything other than making coffee and heating soup. The toaster on the counter had lost its chrome luster long ago, now looking as old as the man felt.

He walked over to a drawer and pulled it open, removed a sack of sliced bread, took out two pieces, placed one of them in the toaster and pushed the lever down. He caught his reflection in the faded chrome of the toaster. Eyes, once young and vibrant now sat at the bottom of two deep sockets, framed by the crow’s feet on the outside of each corner. Years of hard work and hard living had written themselves into the wrinkles on his face. The sound of wood crashing against the hard ground caused him to turn just in time to see a figure outside his window round the corner behind the house and disappear. The old man grunted, turned back to face the kitchen, walked over to the refrigerator and pulled out a glass of juice left over from lunch. After his toast, he went to bed.

The morning sun woke too late for the old man who had been out digging for at least an hour before the sun had risen. And, by mid-afternoon, the little pile of scooped out dirt had grown into a mound. He had worked through lunch while the wind cooperated with him this time. The air was cold, but the wind had blown very little. The shovel chewed the ground beneath it, and by the end of the day the old man could have laid down in the hole since it was as long as he was and about two feet deep. He could not help but laugh at the thought that this hole was beginning to look like a grave as he wiped his brow on the sleeve of the same flannel shirt worn the previous day.

There was no point in washing the thing. Not yet, anyway. Tossing the shovel aside, he covered the hole and went in for the night. He sat at the table after finishing his toast, listening to the sounds of a cold night. That is, he was listening to nothing in the silence of his empty house. Upon hearing the familiar sound of rubber on plywood, he turned off the kitchen light and went to bed.

The next day, his work began immediately. The shovel, now slightly bent at the end, attacked the ground. Soon, the lonely old man fell into a routine – digging, covering, eating and sleeping and digging, covering, eating and sleeping until his mound grew large and his hole sank deep to the point where he dug footholds into the sides to help him escape at the end of the day. He hollowed out that place until the green grass of his manicured lawn disappeared from view as he stood inside his creation. The excavation continued until he could easily lie down and not touch a wall without stretching himself, the hole resembling a grave now more than before. The mountain of dirt blocked the stone path that ran behind his house, leaving the hole as the only viable way through the yard.

A garden hose ran to the faucet on the other side of the house. The sky above had grown dark and the winter wind nipped the old man’s ears and hands as he turned on the water and sprayed everything. The mountain of dirt became a large, brown pile of mud in his backyard, the water running off the grass into the hole. A smile broke across the man’s face, despite the freezing water pouring over his hands while he sprayed the walkway, the walls of the hole, and the door to the kitchen. The stream of water lingered on the yard and the floor of the hole.

When finished, he threw the hose against the wall, walked around to the front of his house, went inside, opened the windows to the cold winter night and turned off the lights. In total darkness, rubbing his hands with a towel he had placed on the table before he went out that morning, the widower sat watching and listening. The sound of a peddling bicycle broke the silence followed by the sound of tires running over the breaks in the sidewalk at the front of the house. As the sounds grew louder, the old man grinned and bared the few remaining teeth in his head. A frantic shuffling noise and the sound of metal on ice swept into the room. The old man heard a short shriek, a grunt, and a very solid THUD.

He grunted as he stood from his chair and made his way to the windows, looking out to see if the neighbors had been awakened by the sounds coming from his backyard. Of course, most of his neighbors were in bed at this late hour, and even jet planes flying directly over their houses wouldn’t cause any of them to stir much anyhow. Satisfied, tired, and with a nearly toothless grin, the old man shut the windows, shed his clothes and went to bed.

Morning came just as it always had. However, the old man lay in his bed. He was not outside digging as he had been during recent days past; instead he slept until the sounds of the suburb floated past the front door. Every so often, a car would crunch past the dwelling on the packed snow covering the street. Some of the neighborhood children played down the street where they belonged. Waking up enough to wander into the living room, he peered out the large picture window. Snow covered the ground and hung from the trees, and he smiled at the beauty before him. This was no day for admiring the wonders of nature, however. He dressed, went out the front door and through the gate to his backyard. He shuffled along, taking care to remove any indication that a bike, or anything else, had come through his property. Slowly, he approached the hole.

He smiled again as he bent over the edge, peering inside to see the shape of the young trespasser lying at the bottom of the pit. The hooligan was unrecognizable because the snow - white, red and pink - piled up into a small mound where the rider’s rested. The old man stood straight again, looked around at the bright white that surrounded him, and rummaged through the snow. He uncovered what he had been searching for, pulling the shovel out from beneath its white fluffy blanket. He began to move his mountain, snow and all. His first shot landed squarely on the intruder’s head, causing the snow on it to shift. The snow, mixed with dirt and blood, slid away to reveal the torn and twisted profile of a young boy.

It was the Johnson kid or maybe one of the Jackson twins. Did it really matter? For a moment, Elmer Sullivan stood staring at the face below. He had killed a neighborhood child. And for what? Taking a shortcut through his back yard nearly every single night for the past two years? “Yes,” the tired, old man said between clenched teeth to no one; to the boy. Stroke by stroke, he moved the dirt, heavy with ice and snow, from the mound back into the hole. It fell in easier than it had been extracted, yet the old man guessed he had much work ahead of him.

“I hate all this digging,” the old man said aloud to no one.

(Copyright 2003, 2009 David Henderson)