Digging

When I was a kid, my neighbour — a former military guy — spent every night out in his backyard digging. This lasted for almost a month. My bedroom was at the rear of our house and on humid nights, if I left the window open, I’d wake to the scraping of a spade over rock.

Some nights that sound would seep into my mind and I’d dream of a coffin being lowered into the ground, and that someone was digging up sods up earth and chucking them into an endless hole.

If I couldn’t get back to sleep, I’d lean my elbows on the sill and watch my neighbour as he excavated the stones or rocks that were in his way, throwing them into a pyramidal pile by the side of the growing pit. The moonlight would melt over the stones like syrup.

One night he saw me gawping from my window. He looked up at me, blinking — as he always did — every couple of seconds.

Dad said he blinked so much because he was still suffering from what he saw in the war. That he couldn’t sleep any longer for fear of bad things coming back to him in his dreams. You can’t control what comes to you in your dreams.

”He sleeps when he’s awake now,” my dad had explained, although if he believed it I don’t really know. “That’s why he’s blinking all the time — to get his rest without having to face his dreams.”

I thought about my own bad dream, with the coffin, that I kept on having. Of waking up in a cold sweat. I remember blinking as much as I could that day my dad explained our neighbour’s condition, hoping that I wouldn’t need sleep when nighttime fell. Of course, it didn’t work out how I hoped. I fell asleep earlier than usually — I’d somehow tired myself out with all the blinking.

This particular night, when my neighbour caught me watching from my window, he leaned on his spade and waved a hand.

I waved back then closed the window and returned to bed.

But I couldn’t sleep. I could still hear the soft tearing of turf and soil. And maybe because of it, whenever I closed my eyes I thought of the coffin lowering into the earth. So I got up, crept through the house and went outside.

The night was bright. It wasn’t just the moon but the stars were everywhere, like scattered bird feed across a black lawn. The soft silver glow of night changed everything in the yard into objects that looked familiar but also different. It’s hard to explain but it was like being awake and not.

There was a slim section of fence about halfway up that looked like a rotted tooth in a gum, its left half rotted away. I stood there in the gap and watched my neighbour dig.

”Hey,” I said after a time.

He looked at me, my neighbour, his eyes blinking every couple of seconds. Both sleeping and awake. I could only see his shoulders and head, the rest of him was inside the pit. It seemed deeper here than it had from my bedroom — a trick of perspective, I supppose.

”Your dad won’t like you out here this late.” He took a cigarette out of his jacket pocket and lit it with a match. “Or even you talking to me.”

I squeezed between the broken fence and into his yard.

”What are you digging?” I asked.

He let out a trickle of smoke that drifted on the breeze and made me think of musical notes. “I’m not sure. Maybe a shelter. I’m not sure.”

He flicked the ash onto the ground. “How about you? Why’re you up so late?”

”Bad dreams.”

”Oh, sure. I know about bad dreams. They can really keep you up.”

I frowned. “Dad says you don’t dream.”

”I try not to, that’s for sure. Maybe that’s why I’m digging. Gives me something to do instead of sleeping. Like I said, I don’t know for certain.”

I didn’t believe him — no one would dig each night without a reason. ”Is it true you don’t need sleep? Because of all the blinking, I mean?“

He laughed. “I still need sleep. I just choose to get it in the day, when it’s light.”

I thought about that a while. I figured the daytime was maybe a giant nightlight for him. That he didn’t dream bad things so long as the sun was shining.

”What do you see when you blink?”

”What makes you think I see anything?”

I shrugged. “Just, you spend so long blinking. I figured you must see something or why else would you blink so often?”

He seemed to consider this. “Whatever it is I see when I blink, I think that’s why I’m digging.” He smiled. “How about you? What do you see in those bad dreams of yours?”

I told him. I explained about a coffin going into the ground but it never reaching the bottom. That I lean over the edge worried that I’ll slip and fall, and watch as the coffin goes lower and lower without ever becoming any smaller.

He shook his head. “Hell of a thing for a kid to be dreaming.” His face eased then, his shoulders relaxed. “Come over here, will you?”

I cautiously neared him, as if he were a wild animal and not my neighbour.

“Take this.” He held out the spade.

”You want me to dig for you?”

He placed a hand on my shoulder. “No, I can dig plenty well enough for us both. That’s not what I want at all. I’m strong enough to dig.”

”Then what?” I said.

‘I want you to fill it in,” he said. “I can’t ever do that, so I want you to do it for us. I’m a little too weak to fill it.”

I looked up at the moon. It was almost pure white. To me, in that moment, it looked like the underneath of an iceberg. That we were both far beneath under the water and must be drowning.

”Here,” he said.

I took the spade and moved to the pile of dirt that was almost as tall as I was, and began shovelling it into the pit. I started with small, light clumps of earth. Then, as I became more confident, I filled the spade until dirt spilled off it.

”That’s good,” he said. “You’re doing great.”

I glanced at him as i shovelled. Oddly, his eyes were closed. He was just listening to the sound of earth falling into the pit. I tried to imagine what he was thinking but I had no real idea.

Instead I concentrated on filling in the pit. I shovelled spade after spade of earth into it, slowly packing it.

I imagined a coffin beneath the dirt. A coffin now being compacted.

Every time I blinked I saw Mom, just for a flash. Not even a second.

I tried not to cry as I shovelled earth into the hole. It was years ago now and there had never really been the pain they said I’d feel. The feeling of loss. I hadn’t even understood the moment, I think, when I’d watched the coffin be consumed by the ground. I only remember wanting to get home and play.

”You’re doing great,” he said. “Keep at it.”

And I didn’t understand this moment, either. But I didn’t think I was meant to. All that mattered was that I kept shovelling.

”You’re doing great.”

When I couldn’t shovel any more soil, I moved onto the pile of rocks. With trembling arms and burning muscles I plucked out the largest stones I could manage and threw those into the hole, too, until there was nothing left inside me but exhaustion.