Posted by Dusty on December 23, 1999 at 20:05:50:
(continued from Part 2)
I was holding the level to the four-by-four. I considered telling him it's
polite to ask someone for a sip of their water before drinking it, but I
was glad I'd had the water when he needed it, so let it go.
"Do you ever see your father?"
"He died when I was little." Adam looked up at me and made a sad face,
as if he were no longer sad but felt he still should be, that it wouldn't
be right to say her father was dead without showing me his downturned lips.
"Do you remember him?"
Now he did look sad, his expressive eyes looking off into the dry brush at
the yard's edge. "Know what I wish?"
"What?"
"That he was here and my mom was with him and she didn't even know
her boyfriend."
"Does your mother's boyfriend treat you ok? Is he good to you?"
He shrugged his bare shoulders. "Nah, he doesn't even look at us."
He began to kick more dirt into the post hole and I let out a breath.
"He doesn't?"
"He hardly remembers our names."
My thoughts tumbled in my head, making and breaking alliances like underpants
in a dryer without Cling Free.
A breeze picked up. It blew a feathering of sawdust into the trench.
It cooled my long legs and smooth, chiselled chest. Adam's long fine blond hair
blew sideways in his face and as he worked he reached up with his finger
and stuck a loose strand behind one ear.
I called his name.
"What?" He pulled his leg out of the hole, picked up the too-long shovel,
and began to push in more soil.
"Your dad will always be with you, you know."
He straightened and looked at me, the shovel hanging in his hands; his mouth
hung partly open and in his eyes was a tentative light. He blinked and looked at me harder,
and for a second I was afraid that my choice of words would be wrong,
that I'd stumble and drop him into a worse place than he'd been before.
But this doubt faded quickly. I begain to imagine being dead,
with my young child still on earth, and I felt sure I was telling him
the truth.
"Your father loves you too much to leave you alone. He'll watch over you
your whole life."
"He will?" Now his eyes were bright and alert.
"Of course he will. He's probably watching over you right now."
"Can I see him?"
"Probably not."
He looked down at the shovel in his hands.
"But you might be able to feel him sometimes." The breeze picked up again.
It blew through the brush and high grass at the yeard's edge. It began to
dry the sweat on my neck and upper back.
"Feel this wind? That could be him trying to cool you off."
He cocked his head at me, skeptical, standing as still as if his very body
was in danger of plummeting into deep disappointment. I began to wish I'd
kept my mouth shut, once again in my life wrestling with the question
of what true helping really was.
We continued working, the sun directly over us. The breeze died down, then
blew in one last time. I felt a chill and knew it was sunburn. My post
was leaning out of plumb and I put the level to it, then tamped the dirt at
the base. He dropped the shovel for me to pick up and use, but as I
reached for it I glanced at him and saw him standing there in the hot
breeze, his eyes closed, his chin raised slightly, a solitary blond hair
quivering against his cheek, his small hands held up close to his chest.
We worked together until almost lunchtime. He abandoned the shovel and
began to pull the dirt into the hole with his hands. The air was heavy
and so hot my lungs felt tender. Adam's mother called him from the front
stoop three doors down and out of sight. Her voice was shrill and coarse.
From too much yelling, I imagined, too much alcohol and cigarette smoke,
too much of some things and not enough of others, and I wanted to protect
my 9-year-old helper from it. He jerked at the sound, dropped the shovel,
and without a word cut through the back yard the way he'd come, wiping his
hands off on his shorts, leaving light f
ootprints in the sawdust and dirt.
Soon after, I covered my tools with my tarp and walked home for lunch,
and I think I knew then our second child would be a boy, that I would be the father
of a son and a daughter. As I walked down the shaded street,
I began to sense deeply that we would have a boy, and that loving
a daughter would be different from loving a son, the way loving rivers is
not the same as loving mountains, loving a half moon through the trees is
different from loving the sun on your back.
End of Part 3