Monday, July 22, 2002

 

Hole

On turning sixty-one, Edmond decided to dig a deep hole in the back yard. Maybe it was the beginning of something for him, but he wasnt so sure. You've got to start somewhere getting some things done. By digging the hole, the act of filling it with something would soon follow. It was his birthday and the neighbors exclaimed at how hard he worked at it at his age. He paid little mind to it and went about his task as if it were any other day. It's not easy digging a hole in the middle of the yard in the middle of the heat of the middle of summer. No way. But dig, he did. He dug all of the afternoon, and kept on with it until after the sun set in the evening, stopping for a short rest to watch it go down along the I-75 highway, turning the hazey horizon a pink color as headlights began turning on. At night, he remarked to himself at how much easier it was to dig when the sweltering heat had dropped. The moonlight was enough for him to see where the shovel was going, even if he had to squint. He had the right momentum and swung that shovel without even thinking after a bit. He could practically do it without looking.

Edmond continued digging through the night and into the next day, taking short breaks for food, which his wife dutifully and abley brought to him. She was perturbed... rather, confused... but she loved him so and didnt stop to question him. Instead, she brought him smoked ham sandwiches and a pilsner. The ham, on dry rye bread, with a slice of swiss cheese would be gobbled up in three or four quick bites.
"Aaah," Edmond said after taking a pull of of the bottle of beer," Those Czechs really know how to make beer."

Shaking his head in amazement, he finished it off with a couple of gulps and a couple of more exclamations about how the czechs knew how to brew beers, then it was back to that hole in the ground.


After a couple of days and nights, with naps every ten hours or so... That hole was dug as deep as a cavern and big enough for Edmond to lie flat on his back without his head nor his feet touching the walls. He walked around the hole in circles and counted his paces, 2... 4...6... 8...10...12...13. Thirteen paces made it close to twenty feet wide. It was as big as his office! Getting out of the hole was a task, so Edmond flung a rope down into it from above, making a rope ladder to enter or exit when he needed some tools from the shed or if he needed to use the bathroom. The more Edmond stayed underground, though, the less he came above ground. He began to prefer being underground, in fact. It was comfortable down there, in all of its muted glory.

"You can't hear the highway from down here!" he yelled at his wife with sandwiches and beer, "and there are worms down here, too! Worms with a million legs like they had nothing better to do but walk and crawl!"

"oh, honey, won't you please come to bed," she'd call back at him,"it getting late."

No, no," he said, " I must finish this hole."

Edmond only left that hole to use the bathroom. He planned on digging a side room where he could have a basin for him to wash in and a bucket for waste. The smell would be horrendous, but who would smell it? Just Edmond, and he could live with it.

The hole was more home to him than his 4-car garage. It had importance the he revered higher than his marriage. He felt as if he'd accomplished more by digging this hole than in winning any competitions he'd been in, and certainly this hole meant more to him than any of the foolhardy escapades he'd gone on. This hole was the sum of all his dreams to be, and all his goals to that point. It was the deepest he'd ever dug, and he continued to dig. He was committed to finish it. But when does a hole stop needing to be dug?

Eventually, he slowed his digging to near a halt. Edmond spent his days and nights underground listening to the muted world above him. It was never perfectly quiet. Even at night. Most the noises from insects to planes to trains and anything that hoots in the middle of the night became his orchestra, while he laid at the bottom of the hole and watched the pin-prick of a glimmering ceiling. He stared up and the busy world moved back and forth. The world was driving from the malls to the supermarkets to the drive-throughs to the movie theatres to the schools to the coffee shops to the bookstores to the supermarkets to the home to the drive-throughs and Edmond would hear it all as if he were in outer-space looking at it from a home made telescope.

He was far away from it all, and felt like that world was suffocating him all this time. His car, his wife, his home, his job, taxes and the Dow, all of it was stifling. The hole muffled the world and in the hole, he was able to breathe deeper than before. It was a silent place to be, and Edmond began smiling at himself. Laying there, he looked as if he were setting himself down to die, but he had never felt as alive. FUCK! He could hear his own heart beating, and his temples felt like gongs going off in his head to the rhythymhewanted to screambutsuppresseditto sustain the solitude. the silence .

If he screamed would anyone hear him?

Certainly not, but if something were to happen to him that he needed help, could he call out for help? Was he alone? Was he alive? The questions came to him in a flurry of panic, but soon subsided. The crickets chirped away and Edmond scratched his beard. Had he been down here long enough to grow his beard out?

posted by Hog 6:09 PM