“What the hell did you do to her?” he said. “Huh? What did you do?”
Okay, I thought, now this is interesting.
“I don’t know what the hell your problem is, but you’d better stay away from her. Do you hear me?”
Not really. Maybe you’d better say it again.
“You will really regret it, believe me. I promise you. You just stay away from her. Or else …”
Or else what?
“I mean, just … You’ll see.”
He turned and walked back to the house. Amelia was there waiting for him. She gave him an exasperated look. Then she looked over his shoulder. At me.
That look.
She didn’t give much away. But it was enough.
It was all I needed.
A couple of hours passed. More hard digging for me, of course, but it was the first afternoon in that hole that didn’t feel like a death march. It wasn’t any cooler that day, but maybe I was already getting a little bit stronger. Maybe Amelia had something to do with it, too.
I kept watching for her to reappear again, but she didn’t. No sign of her. No sign of Zeke. Or even Mr. Marsh. None of his daily yelling into the phone. For all I knew, the house was empty now.
About an hour later, I heard a car pull into the driveway. Amelia, I thought. Please be her. I just want to see her again. I went to the faucet for some water, heard Mr. Marsh yelling inside. All was right with the world again. A few minutes later, a man came walking out the back door. He was wearing a white dress shirt with a tie that he had undone so it hung loose around his neck. He was about the same age as Mr. Marsh, but he didn’t look like an overaged jock. Instead he had a slick polish on him like he’d be perfectly at home on a used car lot. He came over to where I was working. He stood there and lit a cigarette.
“Are you seriously digging this thing by hand?” he said.
I showed him the shovel.
“Okay, by shovel. You know what I mean. God, I thought I had a shit job.”
I kept working.
“He told me to come out here and cool off. What is it, like ninety degrees back here? Stupid jackass.”
He blew out a long stream of smoke.
“You been working for him long?”
I shook my head.
“You don’t talk much, do you?”
I shook my head again.
“I can respect that. World needs more people who know enough to keep their mouth shut.”
Mr. Marsh came out the back door and called to him.
“Case in point,” the man said. “I’ll catch ya later. Looks like you’ll be here a while, eh?”
I didn’t look up. I didn’t think about seeing him again, and I didn’t care either way. Little did I know.
The two men drove away together, leaving me there alone. As it got close to four o’clock, I gave in to temptation and left a few minutes early. I had important things to do, after all. I went right home and got out my drawing paper, sat there for a long time staring at it. You’ve got her attention now, I told myself. What’s the next step? Draw something that will shock her and intrigue her and make her fall madly in love with me. Piece of cake, right?
I started drawing her face again. Trying once again to capture what I saw in her. I realized after a few minutes of work that I was drawing the exact same portrait again. I put it aside and started with a new sheet of paper.
I can draw myself, I thought. A self-portrait that’ll help her to see the real me. Not just the dirt-streaked mute digging a hole in her backyard. That’s always been hard for me, drawing myself, but I worked on the drawing for a good hour. Then I put that aside, too. I went and got something to eat, came back, and started over.
I knew I was trying too hard. I knew I couldn’t win her over with one drawing, no matter how much I wanted to. But I didn’t know how else to approach it. I did a quick sketch of myself sitting there at my desk, trying to draw. I drew flames coming out of my body. That’s exactly how I felt. Fire! Madness! I drew Amelia floating in the air above me, rays of light shining from her face. Then me again, holding on to my chest. A broken heart above my head. Just stupid nonsense doodling, trying to shake loose an idea.
I thought back to the beginning. The first time Amelia spoke to me. She’s standing behind me, slightly above me. I drew the scene, working quickly, just getting the general idea and not obsessing over the details yet. Now, what did she say to me? What were her exact words?
“You are so full of shit, you know that?”
Yes, that was it. I wrote the words over her head, then enclosed them in a balloon. I drew a box around the whole scene. That was my first panel.
You have to understand, comic books were still something from when I was a kid, something to lose myself in during those long days in the back room of the liquor store. I didn’t know yet that they had become cooler than cool. I had never even seen a “graphic novel.” I remember someone in my art class had done something that looked just like a comic book once, and Mr. Martie had verbally destroyed it for her. “Lowbrow faux-ironic bullshit,” I think he called it. So I wasn’t naturally inclined to go in the comic book direction with anything. It just sort of happened.
The more I used it, the better it seemed to work. The next panel was me looking up from my digging, turning to see her in the flesh for the first time.
A wider shot for the third panel. I knew instinctively to keep using different viewpoints. Both of us in this one, with her talking again. “I already heard about you. Before you broke into our house. You’re the guy who doesn’t talk, right?”
Closer shot on me, the streaks of dirt on my face. Just rough it in for now. Don’t get hung up on making it perfect. Because here’s your chance to answer her. Finally, a chance to say something to her, even if it’s only in a thought bubble …
Don’t be coy, you idiot. Just say it.
“My God, she’s even more beautiful in person.”
Yes. That’s it. Next panel, back to her. Play it back in your head. Every word.
“What’s the deal with that? Because something happened to you when you were a little kid?”
Now what? What do I say to that? I drew myself looking away from her, thinking “Yes.”
Her again. “It’s all an act, isn’t it? I can see right through you. Because believe me, you want to talk about things happening to you when you’re a kid? We could exchange a few stories someday.”
A view of me from behind, her face visible over my shoulder, which I’ll have to come back and make just right. Another thought bubble over my head. “If only she knew how much we have in common …”
Then a shot of her walking away, me watching her. Then me putting the shovel back into the dirt. The last panel on this page, the last thought bubble. I worked it over in my head for a while. Then I gathered my nerve and wrote down the words.
“If she asked me to, I would dig this hole to the center of the earth.”
God, that’s ridiculous. So yeah, write that down, too. Recognize how ridiculous that sounds. Another thought bubble, to the right of the first, and slightly lower. “God, that’s ridiculous. But I think it’s true.”
Okay, I thought. Okay. At least you’re talking to her now. This might actually do something.
I worked for a couple more hours, filling in all of the details in the drawings. Getting the faces just right. The texture of the dirt. Some background here and there, never so much that it would be distracting. When it was done, I put it in another big envelope. Then I set my alarm for two in the morning.
I tried to sleep. When the alarm rang I was out of my bed in seconds. I put my clothes on, slipped out of the house, and got in the car. The trip I was already making every day, and now apparently even that wasn’t enough. There was a police car on Amelia’s street as I made the turn. I held my breath, kept driving, and didn’t look sideways. The police car passed right by me. I went to the end of the street, turned around, and came back. I parked far from her house again. Got
out and walked in the darkness, once again trying to act like I belonged there.
I ducked behind the house, got the tools out, and opened the lock again. Tonight it felt as easy and natural as using a key.
When I was in the kitchen, I stood there for a long time listening again. Feeling my heart beat faster, that same feeling, now so familiar. You could get addicted to this, I told myself. Just this part right here.
I went up the steps, paused at her door, waited for another minute, listening. This time, when I finally turned the doorknob, it wasn’t locked. That got me a little worried for a moment. I couldn’t help wondering if she was waiting for me on the other side of the door. Ready to turn the lights on, maybe. Ready to scream her head off.
No. I could see that she was sleeping as I pushed her door open. I stepped into the room, placed the envelope on her dresser. I froze when I heard a sound outside the door. I waited. Amelia rolled over, kept sleeping. I listened to her breathing.
I got that funny feeling again, at the thought of someone breaking into the house and standing there in her bedroom, watching her sleep. I mean, it’s not like I didn’t know it was wrong for me to be there, but somehow it was like that idea didn’t really apply to me, because I knew I was there for the “right” reasons, and that I’d never do anything to hurt her. I was more upset that it was so easy to do, and that anyone who really wanted to could follow in my footsteps tomorrow night and be standing here instead.
Nobody is safe. Ever. Anywhere.
I slipped out the door, down the hallway, down the stairs, through the back door, and into the night. Back to the car, got in and drove, all the way home. I tried to sleep for a while. It didn’t happen.
The morning came. I was so tired. I didn’t even want to look at myself in the mirror. I took a shower and put clean clothes on, wondering what her reaction would be to my comic strip. Today it felt like the biggest mistake ever committed in recorded history.
“If she asked me to, I would dig this hole to the center of the earth.” I actually wrote those exact words down on paper.
When I got to the house, I went right around to the back, picked up the shovel, and got to work. The hole was getting close to a decent-sized kiddie pool now. I hadn’t even started the deep end yet, but hell, I wasn’t thinking about that today. I looked around for Amelia. She was nowhere to be seen.
I’ve scared her away. The whole thing was just so wrong and so stupid. I might as well just beat myself to death with this shovel right now.
I had to live with all these crazy thoughts for the next four hours. Another hot day, another half ton of dirt to move into the woods. I still don’t know how I got through it. When four o’clock came, I dragged myself to the car. This is it, I was thinking. I won’t last one more day here.
When I opened the door to the car, I stood there for a moment, not quite sure what I was looking at. There was an envelope on the driver’s seat. It was the envelope I had left in Amelia’s bedroom. I picked it up as I sat down behind the wheel. I held it for a moment. My heart was pounding. Then I opened the envelope.
It was my comic strip. Obviously a big “No, thank you” here. Return to sender. Your submission does not fit our needs at this time.
But wait, there was something more. A second page in the envelope. I pulled it out and looked at it. Another comic strip? More panels?
Yes. That’s exactly what it was.
Amelia had drawn page two.
Now, I don’t have to have it with me, all these years later, to tell you exactly how it went. I can close my eyes and see it again, panel by panel. Every little detail. She was a better artist than I was, that was the first thing I noticed. Maybe not in a technical sense, but in this medium especially, she had a natural ability to reduce everything down to its essentials without losing anything. Just simple, clean lines. Her face. My face. The shovel across my shoulder, one hand resting on the handle.
Her first panel was herself standing on the edge of the hole, saying, “You’d have to drop the act first.” Her exact parting words to me that day, which I had left out. Second panel, her walking away. Anger on her face. A dark cartoon squiggle in the air over her head.
Third panel, her inside the house. The dreaded Zeke, sitting in front of the TV with a bottle in his hand. His hair swung around his neck and hanging down to his chest. “What’s the matter?” he says. Amelia responding, “Nothing.”
Close up on Amelia. Zeke’s words coming from off-frame. “I think we should go to that showing tonight. Linda is so cool and I think she’s got so much talent and if we get there by,” and then the words disappearing behind Amelia’s head. She’s ignoring him completely, her own thought bubble reading, “Maybe I’m being too hard on him.” Him being me.
Next panel, more words coming at her from off-frame. “Are you even listening to me? What the hell’s wrong with you today?” Amelia standing up now, looking out the window, thinking, “We’re not so different, right? If he can talk to anybody, it should be me.”
Last panel, me as seen through the window. I’m bent over, picking up a load of dirt with the shovel. Amelia’s thoughts at the bottom of the panel. “Why does it bother me so much that he won’t?”
End of page. I sat there looking at it for a long time. Finally I looked up and saw Mr. Marsh staring at me from the front porch. I put the car in reverse, backed out of the driveway, and took off.
When I got home, I laid Amelia’s page out on my desk, studied it and read it over a dozen more times, still not quite believing it was real. Then I put it aside and got busy with page three.
Okay, what to do here … Maybe go to the second day I was there at the house. I wrote “The next day …” in the upper left-hand corner. What did she say that day? She told me I was wasting my time digging a pool, that nobody would ever use it. Then she got to the good part. I’ll start there.
So first panel, her watching me again. Wearing shorts and a T-shirt that day. “So are you going to talk today, or what?”
Next panel, me looking up at her.
Third panel. What did she say next? “I’m calling your bluff, okay? I know you can talk if you want to. So say something.”
Here’s where I took out my little pad of paper that day. Wrote down that I really, honestly couldn’t say anything. Gave it to her. That was what happened in real life, anyway. Here on this page, though, I could do anything I wanted to, right? I could make my own alternate reality.
So fourth panel. Me talking. Yes, me actually opening my mouth and saying a word out loud. On paper, it was as easy as drawing a dialogue bubble instead of a thought bubble. My first word after nine years of silence … She said to say something, so I did. “Something.”
Fifth panel. Surprise on her face. “You can talk,” she says.
Sixth panel. My answer. A little smile on my dirt-streaked face? No. No smile. Just the truth. “I can talk to you, Amelia. To you and nobody else.”
I wanted to keep going. I wanted to fill up ten more pages and give them to her, but that wouldn’t be right. It would be like dominating a conversation, something I’d never done, as you can probably guess. No, one page back from me and then it’s her turn again.
I went over the panels and filled in the details, trying to be a little more selective this time. Following Amelia’s example. The time flew by. Then, as I was about to set my alarm, I stopped and thought about what I was doing. You don’t have to break into her house every night, I realized. If you left the envelope in your car, she’d find it.
But then you’d have to wait an extra day. For someone who’s waited his whole life for something like this to happen …
No. Not if she knew to look for the envelope when you first got there every day at noon. She’d have four hours then to draw her own page and give it back to you. Assuming she’s still up for this. So you don’t have to take stupid chances anymore.
I knew it was the right way to play it, but at the same time I was disappointed that the idea made so much
sense. That feeling I got when I picked that lock and stepped into that dark kitchen … I’d have to live without it for a while.
The next day finally came. I got to the Marshes’ house a few minutes early. As I got out of the car, I left the envelope on the dashboard, so there’d be no doubt where she could find it. All she’d have to do was look out a front window.
I felt the whole plan unravel when I went around to the back and saw the Lakeland art mafia sitting under the big umbrella again. Zeke was there with Amelia, along with the guy with the bleached-blond spikes and the girl whose hair color today had been switched from cotton candy pink to sour apple green. I did everything I could to ignore them, but I couldn’t help hearing the laughter, along with the unmistakable sound of one of them applauding my arrival.
I attacked the dirt for the next half hour or so. Whenever I dared to sneak a glance, Amelia seemed to be doing a professional job of not making any eye contact whatsoever. Finally, on my second trip back with the wheelbarrow, I noticed she was gone.
Another half hour passed. The remaining threesome kept working on whatever it was they were working on. The laughter faded with each passing minute. I caught Zeke staring at me. After another five minutes or so, he got up and went into the house. Ten minutes after that, he came out and said something to Blondie and Miss Green Hair. The two of them gathered up their things and left. Then Zeke came walking out to me.
“I thought I told you to stay away from her.”
I kept digging. I didn’t even look up.
“I’m talking to you.”
I stopped, cupping my hand to my ear like I was deaf. Then I picked up a shovelful of dirt and threw it into the wheelbarrow.
“You goddamned son of a bitch.”
He came at me then. I turned and pointed the shovel blade at his neck. That’s all I had to do.
“I will get you, you stupid bastard. I promise you.”
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