Moon Blind by Joe Kearney

Author:Joe Kearney
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Original Writing

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

S tones, always stones, old and mossy; a double wall, the centre filled with clay—yellow, thick and heavy, that’s where he labours.

The boy and the man, bound together by an umbilical line of stones.

He is the one whose job it is to dig into the mucus–like soil. He attacks it with a long-handled shovel. Whenever he scoops up a blade-full, it won’t fall to the ground, just sticks to the steel. The man’s legs are stretched out before him, on the grass, half sitting against the stone wall. He is dazed but seems to be recovering. The boy sees this and renews his efforts. The work he does must be completed before the man awakens. The digging tool too heavy, too long, too awkward in his hands. He finds it hard to lift even without its cargo of clay. Time is against him. The stones of the wall are unstable where the soil filling is removed. They threaten to cave in. If this happens his work is lost, and he must start all over again, and all the while the man is getting stronger.

It’s a grey day, it’s always a grey day. The cloud so low he could puncture it with the shovel if he chose to thrust it upwards instead of downwards. He is frightened of what he will unleash if he ruptures the drooping cloud ceiling, so he crouches lower at his work. There is a ticking in his ears, loud, very loud—blood maybe? The sound makes him conscious of time. There is a pendulum swinging somewhere and he is caught in the place between tick and tock. He needs time to slow up so that he can get finished before the man recovers his senses. But time is doing what time always does, taking as much as it needs.

The man is naked. His skin gleams in the grass like a dewy mushroom in a field of pasture. He groans. The boy knows that his eyes will open so he takes the shovel and beats him upon the head, again and again. He sickens himself each time he lands a blow... the sounds they make...like eggs falling on concrete. The boy knows he should try to keep his strength for digging, but time and again he brings the blade down on the man’s head. The effort has become useless.

Now he notices that one of the stones has slipped from the wall and replaced the man’s head. The shovel rings out each time it strikes the rock and the man’s head has somehow replaced the stone in the wall and sits there sneering at the boy’s weakness. To begin the digging again, he must place his hands on the jeering, leering head and replace it with the stone. The mouth changes into a grin and he knows as soon as he touches the skull it will speak to him, address him by a name he knows. All the while the clock ticks inside his head. His arms are like lead when he reaches out to place his muddy fingers about the man’s skull.

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