by Iain Reid
I drove into the city to see a place, a modern basement apartment with stainless steel appliances but devoid of natural light. Turns out I’d be sharing it with a young professional couple, their mountain bikes, their caffeine-free energy drinks, and their penchant for reality TV. I stood in the doorway as they waited for a commercial break before showing me around the place. It was unnaturally ordered and tidy, and it smelled of citrus. “No smoking,” they stressed several times. They were both allergic to second-hand smoke. “And we don’t really drink or anything, either.”
I thanked them and left. I shouldn’t get ahead of myself anyway. Working spot-shifts would provide only a modest income, and all the apartments downtown were pricey — by my standards anyway — even the shared basements. And after that first and only visit to see an apartment, I decided socializing was overrated too.
Still, I haven’t broached the topic of prolonging my stay on the farm with Mom and Dad. It will ultimately be up to them. As I pick corn from my teeth, I figure it’s a good time to feel them out. “So I think I’ll be here for a bit longer, around the farm, if that’s okay with you guys. And I’m happy to help out with anything, you know, as my contribution.”
“Of course,” says Mom. “We really didn’t expect you’d be leaving this soon anyway. Who’d ever want to leave Lilac Hill?”
Dad is peppering his second cob. “It’s probably for the best, bud. That barn really needs a good cleanout.”
In the next few days Dad’s barn-refurbishing plan takes off. There is no possibility of avoidance or disruption. No delays or rain checks. The dig will start tomorrow.
After supper I go upstairs and lie down on the bed. I’m trying to recall more details about my past manure-digging experiences. I can remember the mini-assembly-line system my brother implemented to maximize our efficiency, and the way he was always able to use some form of circular logic or Socratic dialogue to dupe me into doing the worst parts of the job. I can remember the reversible basketball tank tops we wore as we worked, which we would inevitably remove a few hours into our shift and tie around our heads to keep the flies away. But I’m drawing a blank on all the stuff that concerns me now. Is it taxing work? Is there heavy lifting involved? How hot does the barn get? Do the sheep get in the way? Can Mom pick up a shovel? Does it smell? I think it has to smell.
I’ve been reminded of the health benefits for us, the labourers, by Mom and Dad, but more critically for the sheep. The sheep are going to love it.
I hear the familiar melody about twenty feet from the barn. There’s no mistaking that powerful feminine voice. I lower my head and slow my pace. The only rule we’ve ever had for digging out the barn concerns the soundtrack. The first person in the barn gets to pick the music. That’s it — that’s the only rule. My brother and I had similar tastes in music, so regardless of who got there first, the chances were good we’d be digging to Digital Underground or The Band. From the sounds of it, Dad was first in the barn today. He’s decided, enchantingly, that we’ll be digging to French love songs. It’s not that I don’t love Edith Piaf. I do. She’s great. I’m just not convinced she’s best suited to keep me motivated while I dig out eight-year-old shit.
The temperature outside is uncomfortably hot; inside the barn it’s stifling. The air greets me heavily, obnoxiously, like a foul hug. Flies are buzzing around Mom and Dad’s heads in sparse clouds. They’re both wearing white T-shirts (Mom’s has a picture of a border collie, Dad’s reads “Oxford University” across the front), knee-length shorts, and wide-brimmed safari hats. Mom and Dad have been productive. They’ve already removed about two square feet of manure from the north side of the barn.
“We left the pickaxe for you, bud,” says Dad, holding it out for me like a souvenir. “Be careful; it’s heavier than it looks.”
He’s right. I’d forgotten its impressive weight. The top layer of manure has been compressed by the herd into a hard crust. It needs to be broken up. It takes several blows with the pickaxe to loosen. When it’s cracked and peeled back, a different smell, one equally pungent but much richer, earthier, is released. Now I remember. The smells in the barn are unsympathetically kaleidoscopic. Sweat is already running down my forehead and into my eyes. It stings.
Mom and Dad are unfazed. They work serenely. They haven’t mentioned any of the things I’m focusing on: the heat or the smells or the flies or how the skin on the palms of my hands is starting to peel and blister. I should have worn gloves. They chat impulsively, cheerily as they dig. By noon the sheep have returned from pasture, gathering at the entrance. We’ve invaded their space but they haven’t come as agitators, only observers. They watch us with crafty, inquiring eyes. They aren’t hostile; instead they are calm, like granite.
For lunch we break outside the barn. Mom unwraps a peanut butter and banana sandwich and an apple for each of us. I eat the apple first and toss the core to the chickens. The sandwich tastes better than peanut butter and banana usually tastes, the way all food does after strenuous work.
It’s easy to lose track of time in the barn. I’ve put off checking my watch for as long as I can and try desperately to underestimate how long it’s been since the last check. I tell myself I’ve been digging for only forty minutes since the last time-check, secretly assured that it’s been at least an hour. Then I look: thirty minutes. The disappointment burns worse than the sweat in my eyes. Dad, on the other hand, is checking his watch every five minutes.
After supper I’m tired and dehydrated. I lie on the couch, flipping aimlessly through the channels, drinking bottles of beer. I swiftly empty three and fall asleep with the baseball game on. It’s late when I wake with a dry mouth and a headache. The TV has been turned off. I stumble to my room and topple face down on my bed. Within seconds I’m asleep.
The next morning, despite my hangover, I’m up early. I’m hoping to get a few hours of digging in before the heat becomes unbearable. Yesterday the worst hours were after lunch, when the afternoon sun made a sauna of the barn. I kept waiting for the sheep to walk in wearing flip-flops and with towels cinched around their waists. I must have spent close to eight hours in there, five during this undesirable period. Night digging is out of the question because the sheep are back inside by then. So morning — the earlier the better — is the time to dig.
I spend several valuable minutes searching for my work shorts. I have only one pair. I’d eagerly walked out of them yesterday as soon as I got back to the house, and left them on the laundry room floor. I’m standing in the laundry room now. They aren’t here.
I detect some rustling upstairs. It must be Mom in the bathroom. I call up to her. “Hey, Mom, you haven’t seen my work shorts, have you?”
“Uh, I don’t think so.”
“Well, they were on the floor last night and now they’re gone.”
“Which floor?’
“I don’t know; I guess the laundry room.”
“Oh, well then, they’ve been washed.”
“What?”
“I must have washed them last night.”
“So you have seen them?”
“Yeah, I guess so.”
“Can I get into them?”
“No, I’m sure they’re still soaked. Shouldn’t take too long for them to dry today, though. It looks lovely out there. It still feels like the middle of summer.”
I’m back upstairs now, burrowing peevishly in the back of my closet. I need to find something, anything. I don’t have an extensive wardrobe to begin with, so my options are limited. I can’t wear either of my two pairs of everyday shorts, because they will end up stained with sweat and manure. It’s too hot for long pants of any kind. Even cotton sweatpants or ripped jeans would be unmanageably warm.
Dad’s already outside getting started in the barn. How did he get up so early? Mom’s proceeding from window to window, humming, closing th
em shut and pulling down the blinds. We open the windows before we go to bed to let the cool breeze flow through the house. But without air conditioning, the house, like the barn, heats up quickly during the day. It’s already getting muggy in here. I can feel everything — the house, the land, my body — growing hotter by the minute. I can even feel my heart beating in my head. I wanted to be outside an hour ago. There must be something for me to wear.
“Have you checked your sister’s closet?” calls Mom from her perch on the hall windowsill. She’s still fussing with one of the blinds. “I think she left a box of her old clothes in there.” Mom jumps down, saying she’ll see me in the barn.
I haven’t been in my sister’s room, not once, since returning home. To keep the cats out the door is always left closed, and until now I’ve had no reason to go in. Nothing has changed. I move past her dusty awards collection from high school and her neatly arranged bookcase towards the closet. I open the closet door and see them sitting on top of a pile of old clothes: my sister’s old Hawaiian shorts. They’re baby blue and marked with white stylized flowery blossoms. There’s a white drawstring in the front and two pockets painted on the bum. And the bastards are short — skanky short.
Back in my room I slip them on with regrettable ease. They’re tight around my midriff. With only enough string to knot them once, they barely fit. I look at myself in the mirror. They leave very little to the imagination, providing an unfortunate view of my skinny white thighs and twig-like calves. My legs look like the legs of an old man who has spent weeks lying in a hospital bed — legs that have never felt the warm gaze of the sun, legs that have atrophied from neglect.
“Oh, great, you found a pair,” declares Mom as I walk in the barn. “I knew you would.”
Dad halts his work immediately and stands up straight. “Those look like girl’s shorts, bud.”
“I actually think the colour suits him. You don’t usually see men wearing that shade of blue. It’s unique.”
I stare at my parents, from one to the other and back again, for what feels like an hour. They’re smiling devotedly. I say nothing. My face is expressionless. I retrieve my pickaxe and begin to work.
“It’s fascinating,” says Dad. He’s speaking more slowly now, and pauses vexingly between each word. “Your legs really are quite skinny, aren’t they?”
I’m not sure whether the question is rhetorical or he’s hoping for a reply. I continue moving the dried muck around with my pickaxe. Mom answers for me.
“Yes, he sure does,” she says. “Skinny little ankles too.” She’s leaning on her spade now. Dad’s elbow is supported by the shaft of his shovel, his opposite hand resting on his hip. “Don’t you remember what the nurses said when he was born?”
“No, I can’t remember.”
I’ve decided that breaking up the manure crust is the worst job. But in this insipid trio, it will always be my job. I raise the pickaxe over my head and slam it down into the firm mat. The music is louder today and echoes off the barn walls. Mom and Dad have adapted by yelling back and forth at one another. Edith Piaf has been given the day off. Today we are digging to the collected works of Gilbert and Sullivan.
“Well, they said he was all legs, and then everyone started calling him ‘Chicken Legs’ — even the nurses.”
“Yeah, I can see that,” adds Dad, examining my exposed legs. “That’s fair; they’re quite chickeny.”
On my way back from dumping my sixth or seventh full wheelbarrow, I stop several feet from the barn door. I can hear Mom and Dad.
“I was just thinking,” Dad’s saying. “Iain’s legs are almost more like the sheep than the chickens, because proportionally the sheep legs are probably even skinnier than the chickens’.”
“You know, I think you’re right. They’re a touch closer to sheep legs than chicken legs.”
I enter the barn and grab my pickaxe. Mom and Dad are looking from the sheep to my legs and back to the sheep again. I slam the point down hard into the manure. They are nodding in amazed agreement, as if they’ve just excavated the Ark of the Covenant. On my next swing I want to miss the muck altogether and bury the sharp point directly in my shin. My skinny white shin.
On morning three I’m sore. I’m stiff. I’ve given up trying to get a head start and have slept in — fuck it! Blisters have formed on my hands in bunches. From the bathroom window I see Mom and Dad. They’re laughing. Probably at something one of the sheep did. Or maybe an old story Mom just recounted. I’m feeling angry. What’s their problem? I don’t want them to be so cheerful. I want them to plod along silently, slowly, petulantly, because that’s what I would be doing if I had rolled out of bed earlier. And that’s what I will be doing when I get there. Now I’m just standing at the window frowning, swearing, bitter, and sore.
I don’t know what the temperature is but it’s the muggiest day yet. It has to be the muggiest day of the year. By the time I get to the barn, my forehead is glazed with perspiration like a doughnut. I am, however, growing used to the smells. It’s taken until day three, but the manure actually smells normal. I’m thankful for that at least.
“You’re moving a little gingerly today, bud. Are you feeling all right?” asks Dad.
“I’m fine.” I pile another shovelful of manure into the wheelbarrow. “I guess maybe a little stiff. I have no idea why the backs of my legs would be stiff.”
“A little strange,” says Dad.
“You’re just not used to using them, I guess,” says Mom, as she heads out of the barn with a full barrow.
By the middle of the afternoon we’re close. In another hour or two the barn will be new again. The mound out back has grown like a smelly cyst on the land. It doesn’t seem possible that we could have removed all that mess from our snug barn. I’m not even concerned about my blisters anymore — the blisters that have popped, exposing the raw skin underneath; the blisters neither of my parents got. My feelings of hostility have faded with the possibility of a fourth day of digging.
As Dad wheels the last barrow of muck out to the hill, Mom and I stand in the barn, admiring its vacuity.
“We did it. Doesn’t it look great?”
“It does,” I agree. My shirt is wet from sweat. We are all sweating, but no one as much as me.
I’ve showered and changed. I’m dozing on the verandah when the distinct pop of a champagne cork perks me up. Dad walks out carrying the bottle, wrapped in a tea towel, in one hand and three glasses by their bases in the other. Mom follows with a tray. They’ve insisted we celebrate.
“Well, this is a treat,” Mom’s saying.
“A well-deserved treat,” answers Dad. “I know it’s a little exuberant, but we deserve it.”
Their faces are still flushed from the work and the heat, but not heavy with fatigue like my own. I’m parched, and the sight of the bottle delights me. Dad pours us each a glass of the bubbly golden liquid, and we toast the hollow barn.
“I bet this was harder than the work you’ll have to do at your new job,” says Dad.
“Yes, this should be a congrats for the new job too,” adds Mom.
I nod.
“What is your new job again?”
“Associate producer,” I say.
“Pretty exciting,” says Mom.
“Indeed,” agrees Dad.
“And maybe even if you’re an associate producer,” suggests Mom, “you’ll still be around next summer, and we can dig again.”
“We can start making it a tradition,” says Dad.
I can hear the blue jays and swallows in the trees to my left. Their presence causes both cats lying beside me to stir.
To accompany the drink, Mom has assembled some goodies: cheese, crackers, grapes, mixed nuts, salami, olives. Every so often she waves her hand overtop of the plate to keep the flies from la
nding. The flies are more interested in the snacks than I am. After another glass or two my appetite should emerge. Dad’s nibbling on a handful of nuts, but mainly we focus on the cold champagne.
I’m picking at one of the blisters on my hand with a fingernail when Dad clears his throat, confirming that he’s been constructing a thought. “Now, without getting into a lecture here,” he says, topping up our glasses, “in his poem ‘The Prelude,’ Wordsworth talks about what he calls spots of time. These are moments for everybody when they can get a sense of things, actually see into the life of things.” Dad fills his own glass last. He rests the empty bottle carefully beside his seat and grabs another handful of nuts. “Look out there,” he says, motioning to the rolling fields in front of us. “I think I know what he means.”
We sit contemplatively. Even at dusk the air hasn’t cooled. Summer is packing up to go but hasn’t left just yet. We sip our champagne willingly; I drain half my glass in one mighty pull. Every so often a car passes on the road. In front of us on the grass, both dogs are asleep.
The digging is done. My shovel and pickaxe will be replaced by a keyboard, monitor, and phone. I’m going to be doing some serious journalistic work; I’m going to be an associate producer. As far as I know, associate producers don’t dig sheep manure. They produce quality radio. And they earn a salary and contribute to society. And they start a pension. They are adults. And because they’re adults, they can’t spend full days at a farm with their parents. They have their own apartments, with their own furniture.
I balance my chair back on its rear legs, stretching my feet out in front of me. I look over at the slumbering dogs, then towards the pond, the fields, and out to the wandering sheep. Some nibble the grass; others stand chewing their cud, watching us complacently. They appear perfectly oblivious of their subtle yet necessary role in our little celebration.