He peered down into the blackness.
The gaping grave shaped hole tugged at the rocks bulging from its sides, the
bottom obscured by the angle of the evening sun. It hadn’t felt like they had
accomplished much today having chipped slowly at the earth pressed beneath
layers of time. They pulled out two-handed stones, smoothed by the water that
used to run through this village, an eon ago. A hole reaching this depth
required a rickety ladder and some courage to climb down.
His dad said the hole would take
twenty-five years to fill. “Or fifteen,” he thought to himself, “on a diet of
oil-steamed potatoes.” The old toilet stood adjacent – a distance that called
for a courtesy cough and a turned back through the breaks in the piecework wood,
not quite shading indecency.
He wondered what the next “white
house” would be made of – or maybe they would just lift the old house from its
teetering perch and shuffle a few steps. He made up his mind right then to be
on the pulling side of that operation. He thought of the volunteer yet unborn
that may one day have the privilege of gracing this “hollowed ground” with his
bum.
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