It was a little hotter today. I went to fill up the water jug at the faucet. When the water stopped flowing, I could hear Mr. Marsh yelling into the phone again, just like he had done the day before. It may seem like an obvious point, but it was something I realized that day. Do not trust anyone, ever, if you hear them yelling into a telephone.
I spent the next two hours digging and rolling the wheelbarrow and wondering if I’d be able to make it through the day. I felt weaker than the day before. There was no way around that. I knew it was a simple matter of biology and physics. Eventually, I wouldn’t be able to do this anymore. It wasn’t even a question of pacing myself. I mean, you can only save so much energy when you’re digging a hole. Anything less than the basic minimum effort and you’re not even digging anymore.
Everything started to turn yellow again, my eyes too tired or too burned by the sun or God knows what. I kept the water jug full and kept drinking as much as I could.
You will collapse, I told myself. This will happen as surely as the sun rises in the east. You will collapse, and they will come and revive you. After a few days of recovery, you’ll go to that juvie farm Mr. Marsh was talking about. They won’t work you as hard there. Hell, they wouldn’t work you this hard anywhere. But it’ll be so much worse in so many ways. On top of everything else, you’ll never see Amelia again.
“I don’t know why you’re doing this.”
I turned around and saw her standing there. That same place on the edge of what would someday be her swimming pool. Today she was wearing cutoff denim shorts that went down to her knees. The same black tennis shoes. White shins and ankles in the bright sunlight. A black T-shirt with some sort of cartoon machine gun on it. It was way too hot to be wearing anything black today.
I stopped digging and wiped my face.
“You’ll never dig this whole thing. It would take you a year. Even if you did, so what? You think we’re ever going to use a pool back here?”
Extra motivation for me, I thought. Thank you so much. But God you are so beautiful.
“Adam’s away to college already. I’ll be gone after one more year. Who the hell’s going to use it?”
I stood there while she looked around and shook her head and then finally got to the point.
“So are you going to talk today, or what?”
I pushed the shovel into the dirt so that it could stand on its own.
“I’m calling your bluff. Okay? I know you can talk if you want to. So say something.”
I reached around to my back pocket and took out the pad of paper and pencil. I know you probably think this was a normal thing for me, having something to write on at all times. Seriously, though, I hardly ever did it then, and still don’t. I just don’t like writing impromptu notes to people in lieu of real conversation. I’m sorry, I cannot speak, so I’ll write down everything I need to say to you right here on this handy notepad that I carry with me for just such an occasion! & Thank you for your patience as I make you stand there with a slightly bemused look on your face while I carefully write down each word so you can then read it and pretend that we’re communicating like two normal human beings.
To hell with that.
But today was different. I had the pad in my pocket just in case I got into exactly this situation. I opened the pad and started writing.
I really cannot talk. I promise you. Really.
I handed her the piece of paper. She took two seconds to read it, then held her hand out for the pencil. Which didn’t make any sense, of course, because there was no reason for the writing to be anything other than a one-way process. I gave it to her anyway.
She held the paper down against her thigh and started writing on it.
“Amelia!”
A voice from the house, interrupting her writing as I watched the way her hair hung down as she bent over. Mr. Marsh, no doubt, on his way out to warn me off again.
But no. A younger voice. He was approaching from the house, someone our age, wearing an Oriental jacket, baggy pants. Ridiculously way too hot for this weather. Long hair tied together in the back, not just a ponytail, mind you, but with enough ties to make it look like a braid. Smug know-it-all face. A total good-for-nothing prick, I knew it from the first second I saw him. The next second bringing the sick realization, like a horse kicking me right in the stomach, that this was Amelia’s boyfriend.
“What are you doing back here?” he said. “Aren’t you supposed to be staying away from the criminal?” No genuine worry in his voice. More a double-edged insult, that I was a criminal but a criminal not worth taking seriously. I was already fighting the urge to hit him in the face with the shovel.
“I was just asking him a question,” Amelia said. “I thought you were at the gallery.”
“It was just boring today. Is anybody home?”
“I don’t know. I think my dad went out.”
“Is that right?”
“Don’t get any ideas. He could be back any second.”
“His car’s loud enough. We’ll hear him.”
“I told you, Zeke…”
The conversation stalled for a moment. This intimate back and forth I was forced to listen to, and on top of that now the utter ridiculousness of his name. Zeke!
“Come on,” he said. “Leave the miscreant to his digging.”
“His name is Michael,” she said.
“Whatever.”
She crumpled up the piece of paper she had been writing on and threw it toward me. Then she walked off with him. She paused to look back over her shoulder at me, until Zeke put a hand on the small of her back. When they were gone, I picked up the paper. She had crossed out my words. Below them she had written her own.
When’s the last time you tried?
____________________
That was a hard day. It really was. I mean, aside from my hands hurting and my back hurting and feeling like I was two minutes away from heatstroke. I was digging a rich man’s pool, working like a slave behind the kind of house I’d never live in. And Amelia… who made me ache. If only there was some way to get through to her. To make her see that I wasn’t really a criminal. Or a freak.
There’s only one way, I thought. I have to draw something for her. No matter how hard I have to work at it, it’s my only chance.
Somehow, that thought gave me the energy to keep digging for that last hour. I rolled the last wheelbarrow over to the woods, rolled it back by the hole, which was actually starting to look like a real hole now after eight total hours on the job. I put the shovel in the wheelbarrow and went around to the front of the house. That’s when I got my first look at Zeke’s car sitting there in the driveway. It was a cherry red BMW convertible. The top was down, so I could see the black leather seats and the stick shift gleaming in the sun. Then, just a few feet away, the old two-toned Grand Marquis with the rust along the edges.
When I got home, I didn’t go into the liquor store. I didn’t want Uncle Lito to see me and start threatening to call the judge again. I went right into the house. I took a shower. I ate something. Then I sat down to draw.
I had failed so miserably the night before. Trying to capture Amelia on a piece of paper… it seemed impossible.
You were trying too hard, I thought. You were turning her into the Mona Lisa. Just draw her like you’d draw anyone else, like she wasn’t someone who made you sick whenever you looked at her.
I was still going at midnight. I was so tired, but I was so close now. Maybe that’s what I needed, to be so wiped out I could barely see straight. To have to do it all by gut instinct. Just move the pencil and let it come out.
In the drawing, she was standing on the edge of the hole. She was wearing her cutoff shorts and her black tennis shoes and her black T-shirt with the machine gun on it. Her hair all over the place. One arm across her body, holding her other arm near the elbow. Her body language a mixed signal. Her eyes slightly downward. Looking at me but not really looking.