A series of repeated actions: pulling and picking and setting down and turning over, left then right then up then down, over and over, one small movement after another until they add up to a conclusion—the compost is mixed in with that row of soil or these tomatoes are picked or this box is full of zucchini. We are the original conveyor belts, assembly lines, nothing but muscle and a few basic tools. This is what we’ve been doing since the beginning of civilization, taming the earth into something useful, making it do our bidding, our motions like prayer, like ritual. We massage the earth into an even greater fertility, and in return we ask for life.
There’s only so much talking we can do until we run out of things to say. Then all there is in the way of entertainment is the feel of our bodies moving, the sun on our necks, the voices inside our heads. For a head case like me, this is heaven. The rhythm lulls my noisy brain into something manageable, focused, linear; what is usually swirling and amorphous is now sharp. The soil calms me. I hold it in my hands and feel my feet on the ground, solid, connected to something bigger and stronger than me.
But you act as if you are being tortured. Every minute that passes is a lifetime. Every time I look up, you are taking a break.
“I think I’m dehydrated,” you say.
“But you already drank three water bottles.”
“I’m so tired. My arms feel weak.”
“It’s because you’re working. This isn’t supposed to be easy.”
“You don’t have to be such a bitch.”
You have always had a hard time staying in one place. There is nothing to do but be with yourself. The dirt does not distract you. These zucchini and tomatoes and greens and peppers do not distract you.
“Maybe I can get a job with the animals,” you say.
“Maybe.”
Three months of this to go. I wonder if you will ever stop complaining.
“Hey, look,” you say. I follow your gaze into the distance, beyond the rows of kale and eggplant and something that looks like a green tomato bursting out of a paper lantern. And there is Dylan, mysterious and far away as usual.
“I wonder if we’ll ever see him up close,” you say. “It’s like he’s a ghost or something.”
“I was thinking the same thing.”
“What’s that word I’m thinking of?”
“Enigma.”
“Yeah.” It no longer surprises us that I can read your mind. “Who’s that with him?”
I squint. “I think it’s Old Glen.”
“Huh.”
“I wonder where they’re going.”
Their clothes are clean, and they carry no tools. They don’t look like they’re planning on doing any hard labor.
“I want their job,” you sigh. “Whatever it is.”
I return to the zucchini, and you continue looking into the distance, as if you’re searching for something to rescue you. The spiny fuzz of the vines is giving me a rash, but I don’t mind. I’m strangely proud of it, like these red, itchy welts are battle wounds, some kind of mark for a rite of passage. Maybe the earth is claiming me as hers.
“Have you noticed that dirt smells a little bit like blood?” you say.
“Yes,” I answer, and keep digging.
• • •
We peel off our sweaty, dirty clothes the second we get back to the trailer. You have your bikini on before I even have my pants off, and you’re running into the lake as I’m still hopping into the leg holes of my swimsuit. I run in after you, feel the first shock of coolness, the sizzle through my veins, the relief like steam from my burning skin, then the embrace, my whole body submerged like yours, the ceasing of all sound, the weightlessness, the holding of breath. I open my eyes under the water and see hints of you, white flashes through the murky brown. I stay under for as long as I can bear it, and the pain of my lungs burning is almost exquisite, like it’s something I’ve earned, like it’s something you’ve given me.
The absence of air is what makes that first breath so delicious. The withholding, the starving, the torture—it’s all for a purpose. We work all day for this, we endure pain for this: relief. This is something I’ve never been able to explain to you. We’re opposites in this way like so many others. You are on the eternal quest for instant gratification, the now-now-now of stimulation, while I can wait for it forever, like the waiting is part of the pleasure, like I’m building a nest for it, making it a perfect home.
I wait until I can’t stand it, and then I finally surface and breathe. It is a perfect breath.
“Look,” you say.
He is there. Of course. Dylan. Across the lake, sitting in the late afternoon shadows under the eaves of his cabin. He leans back in his chair with his feet up on a milk crate, taking up as much space as possible, like you do. Even from this distance, I can tell that he is clean, like he hasn’t lifted a finger all day.
“We’re swimming over there, Max.”
“What? Wait. No.”
“Why not? We’ve got to meet him sometime.”
“But we’re wearing swimsuits.”
“I know. It’s perfect. Don’t worry. You’ve got a hot bod.”
Sometimes I think I could I hate you.
You part the lake with your body and pull me along in your wake. I panic for a moment when I realize we’ve reached the middle, that there’s no turning back, that we’re equidistant from the past and the future, and the only thing that makes any sense is going forward. There is no room for negotiation. We are at the deepest part of the lake and we don’t know where the bottom is. It could go on forever, to the center of the earth, farther, strangled by water plants and all kinds of grabbing things. So we swim in the only direction left to us, and there is the shore, and there are his boots and his long legs in black jeans, and there is Dylan, watching us with a smirk on his lips.
The water spills off of you as you rise out of the water. You make it look effortless, as if you are being pulled up by some invisible force. You are shimmering, you are covered with diamonds, and I think this is what makes men believe in mermaids.
“Hello,” you say in your liquid voice.
“Hi,” he says, and his voice sounds exactly like I imagined it. Low and rough, like it is made out of gravel.
I follow you onto shore, but my feet stick in the mud, and I slip. I catch myself, but my legs and hands are covered with brown muck.
“Crap!”
“It’s slippery there,” he says.
“Yeah, I noticed.”
“Are you okay?” you say. How is it possible that your feet aren’t even muddy?
“I’m fine.”
“What are you reading?” you ask him. He holds out the book. Being and Nothingness, by Jean-Paul Sartre. How much more hipster can someone get?
“Sar-tree,” you say. “You read that for fun?”
“That’s, like, philosophy, right?”
“Yeah, it’s like philosophy,” he says. There’s something snakelike about him. Slithery.
“Max reads philosophy, don’t you, Max?”
“A little.”
“Oh yeah?” he says. “Like what?”
“Just the ancient Greeks and Romans, really. Like Socrates and Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus and Lucretius, Seneca. Stuff like that. Mostly just for historical context.”
“Max speaks Latin,” you say.
“No one speaks Latin,” I mumble. I hate it when you do this, when you put me on display and show me off.
“Ask her anything about ancient Greece and I bet you she knows the answer,” you say.
“Didn’t they speak Greek in ancient Greece?” he says, leaning into his chair even farther, flicking a speck off his pants leg. I can’t help but imagine that I am that speck.
I can’t look him in the eye. “They don’t offer ancient Greek as a language at our school.”
“Yeah, that’s generally not a class they have in high school.” He is smiling, but it is not a nice smile.
Sadie seems completely unaware of Dylan’s disdain. “Max is going to be a classics major. She’s already, like, best friends with the head of the department at Oxford. That’s in England. They’re practically begging her to go there.”
His smirk gets even smirkier. “Why would anyone want to study the classics?” He reaches over the side of his chair and lifts a silver flask from the floor of the porch. He takes a big swig, wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. “How irrelevant can you get?”
I am speechless. How am I supposed to answer quite possibly the rudest question I have ever been asked?
“Ooh, can I have some?” You reach out your hand, wiggling your fingers, too distracted by the shiny flask to even notice that your best friend was just supremely insulted.
He lifts his arm but doesn’t move to hand it to you. “Come and get it,” he says. You step forward and reach for the flask, slow and deliberate. You wrap your fingers around his before you pull it away. You have begun your mating dance. You drink too much, and your face reddens. I can tell you are trying not to cough. You are showing off for him.
“So, what do you do here?” you say.
“Things,” he says.
“What kinds of things?”
“Various things.”
“What were you and Old Glen doing today?”
“Stuff.”
“You don’t work in the fields?”
“Nope.”
“You’re lucky.”
He doesn’t say anything, just looks at us with disinterest.
“Do you ever get dirty?” you say. Oh God, Sadie. I am going to pretend you did not just say that.
“Sometimes,” he says. He is looking at you with half-closed eyes.
“How old are you?” I say.
“Twenty-one.”
“We’re seventeen,” I say.
“I know.”
I can feel you burning next to me.
He stands up suddenly, stretching the full length of his body. His hands touch the ceiling of the porch, and for a second it looks like he’s holding it up.
“If you’ll excuse me, ladies, I have things to do.”
“Okay,” you say. “See you later.” There is a tiny question in your voice, a crack in your confidence.
“Sure,” he says without looking at us, then goes inside and shuts the door behind him.