Special Issue #13 ISSN 1547-5957

“It’s almost dark and I need to get this tree planted before the rains tomorrow. Just
unbuckle your pants and drop it right in.”
“What?” Alan couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “Right in front of you?”
Mother cackled, her false teeth shiny in the dusk. “Do you think this will be the
first time I’ve seen you empty your bowels? I’ve been smelling your filth since you
were inside me.”
“I’m not doing this,” he declared, tightening his hands on his belt to stop them
straying towards the buckle. “I’ll go inside and—”
“No! The rains are coming. I need to beat the rains!”
“The rains can wait a few minutes.”
“But I can’t! I can’t wait.”
“Why can’t you wait?”
She looked at him squarely. “Because I won’t,” she said quietly. “Now get in that
hole and give me your dirt.”
Alan turned back to the hole he’d dug. He thought about throwing himself in
and begging her to cover him.
“Good boy,” said mother.
Two little words were all it took. Feeling cold and immense, he added three of
his own. “I love you,” he whispered, fingers already grasping for the shovel.
She cracked like an old tree struck by lightning. He was surprised as how
delicate she seemed, her bones snapping like dry twigs while he worked up another
cold sweat. Though broken, she remained upright at the edge of the hole, like an
old shrub bending softly into the winter wind. He shoved her gently; her bones
collapsed, tumbling quietly into the grave she’d made him dig.
Feeling alone, brave and beautiful, he covered her slowly with thick dry earth
that smelled of leather. By the time he was finished he was weeping uncontrollably,
but had no idea why.
It was a cool start to the Spring, but Alan didn’t mind at all. He had just cashed
his mother’s social security cheque and had filled the freezer with hot spicy food,
burying his mother’s fat home-baked pies below the frozen vegetables he didn’t
have to eat anymore. All the chili and ice cream he’d been eating had packed a few
pounds on his skinny self, but he didn’t mind that at all. He took a bath at 3:00 p.m.,
rooting through the jungle of unwashed clothes fermenting in the corner of his
room to find a shirt that didn’t smell as bad as the rest.
He still hadn’t conquered the washing machine. Nor the lawnmower, turning
the garden into a blizzard of grass surrounded by lurching strangles of bushes and
weeds. Looking down on it at 4:00 p.m., shirtless, finishing a bottle of half-drunk
beer he’d left beside his unmade bed the night before, he thought he saw something
stirring under a low shrub.
He didn’t like the idea of having to deal with rats. It had been mother’s job
to put out the poison and rake up the bodies. Maybe he could lay a trail of food
leading to the neighbour’s garden.
36 The Literary Hatchet