Posted by Dusty on December 21, 1999 at 20:50:49:
It was a dry summer, and so hot it was a mistake to go barefoot
on the sidewalk. When a rare breeze blew off the ocean,
a few miles to the east, we could hear the rattle of leaves in the tree branches,
and smell the soft rubber and hot metal of cars in the street and driveway.
At night we kept all our windows open and I put two fans in my daughter's
room, one to suck hot air out the screen, the other directed at her crib,
where she slept in only a diaper, her curly hair matted in wet ringlets
to her temples and neck.
In the other bedroom I lay alongside my wife,
and waited for sleep with my hand on her swollen belly.
Our second child's due date had come and gone two weeks earlier;
my wife's mother and aunt had stayed with us then,
but no contractions came, and my mother-in-law had to go back to work.
So now we waited.
Those days I was doing carpentry work just two blocks from our house,
building a gate and fence in a treeless yard. Between post holes,
I had to dig a trench a foot deep, and by mid-morning I'd be wearing
only shorts and boots, headband and bug spray, my lean muscular torso
slick with sweat, my hair as wet as if I'd just gotten cool. Every time
I heard the ring of a phone coming from someone's house I would pause in
my work and look up, and whenever a car drove slowly by, I'd wait for it
to stop, expecting to see my lovely pregnant wife, her belly a full curved
promise, come to tell me it was time.
One morning, as I was setting my second post, holding my level to it,
poised to kick more dirt into the hole once I'd found plumb, I heard
breathing that wasn't my own and turned to see a small boy squinting up
at me in the sunlight. He was blond and thin, wearing a green tank top,
khaki shorts, and sandals. His legs were coated with dust from the street
and dry back yards. His hair was dusty too, and so straight and fine that
his normal ears stuck out. I think I blurted out a startled hello but he
just pointed to the four-foot level I was still holding to the post:
"So what are you doing with that"?
End of Part 1