Dirt 

God damn, it was hot. That’s how I remember it. Heat and dirt and a white sky burning above. My backyard was all dust and anthills, the only yard on Everglade Drive without a lawn or a fence. Right at the back property line, though, a patch of yellow sunflowers bent by the wind were just as tall as a fence and beyond them, the rest of the high plains went on and on. 

It was the summer before sixth grade. Dad was at work and my younger brother was spending the day at my aunt’s house, where he knew he’d be fed. It was just me and my best friend, Ryan. We were digging a hole. Little boys in Wyoming are born with dirt in their veins. Moving earth from one spot to another, by tractor or spoon, is a form of meditation. And that’s what we were doing, just digging to see how deep we could go. 

Next to our hole was an anthill. I raised the shovel above my head, brought it down hard into the pebbles that made up the dome, and turned it over. Ants the color of blood trickled to the surface, panicked and confused. Their whole world had been tossed upside down. I imagined underground air raid sirens and BREAKING NEWS banners streaming across tiny ant TVs in tiny ant homes. I imagined secret service ants rushing the queen to an undisclosed pod deeper in the earth. I imagined these insects wailing from their tiny mouths as they searched for loved ones in the rubble. I wondered if they understood what humans were. Perhaps they thought of us as another part of the universe, like stars or a tree? Or the weather? Were we natural disasters to them? Did they fear us like we were some sort of god? Most of the time, I felt less than everybody else, like really small, but looking down at that carnage, a godly streak ran through me. It’s good to be God, I thought. Again, I shoveled into their home, pulled up another load, and got off on watching the refugees run for their lives. 

The ants gave me an idea. “Let’s dig a bunker where nobody can find us. And tunnels. We could dig different rooms. Just disappear. Just me and you. We could do whatever we wanted without parents telling us what to do,” I said. 

Ryan tossed dirt from the hole onto another pile of dirt. “Like you have parents telling you what to do anyway. Your mom doesn’t even live here anymore and your dad is always working or out drinking. You’re lucky. You can already do whatever you want. I have to beg my mom just to come over. She said it’s anarchy over here. Whatever that means.” 

“My dad is always telling me what to do. He chews my ass all the time. It’s just different, I guess. And at least you have food in your fridge. You can eat anytime you feel like it. I have to steal quarters off Dad’s dresser to go up to Mini Mart for a lousy hot dog,” I said. 

“It’s fun eating at Mini Mart, though,” he said. 

“Not when you eat there all the time. Plus, I get yelled at and called a thief when he finds out I took his quarters and sometimes there are no quarters at all and I don’t know when I’ll get to eat. So, should we dig this bunker or not?” I asked. 

“I’m down. It might take all week but I think we could do it,” Ryan said. 

*          *          * 

We had two Doberman pinschers, a red male and a black female—Dobie and Dandy. That morning before Dad left for his shift at the railroad, he chained Dobie to one of the big beams under the deck and locked Dandy in the dog run. She was in heat. If Dobie decided to mount her, it was impossible to pull them apart. In the past, Dad had to spray them with a high-powered hose to get them unstuck. He didn’t want that happening while I was home alone. 

We were digging and meadowlarks were singing and off in the weeds grasshoppers buzzed like electric lines, when all of a sudden, Larry Hinker came riding out of the sunflowers into the yard. His hair was all feathered and a big red comb stuck out the back pocket of his shorts. He jumped off the bike, let it ghost-ride through the yard. He stumbled toward us, regained his balance and flicked his head back to separate the bangs hanging over his eyes. “What’s up, Hardon? What the fuck you fags doing?” he said, a wad of chew puffing out his bottom lip. He wore a mesh half-shirt and red, white, and blue–striped sweat bands on his wrists. Anybody who knew anything about Eighties fashion could see he was one of the cool ones. Too cool to talk to a skinny dork like myself, unless there were no other cool kids around—he’d talk to me then. We were the same age, but he seemed to have so much more life experience than the average fifth grader. 

I knew he’d tell us how stupid the bunker idea was, so I lied, “Just digging a flower bed for my dad.” 

“A flower bed? What a prick,” he said. “I’d make him dig it himself.” He spit tobacco juice into our hole. “Besides, your dad ain’t gonna plant no flowers. He hasn’t even planted grass. And look at your house. It’s been three years since he started painting and it’s still only half done.” 

I couldn’t argue. Larry was right. Two summers before, not three, Dad wanted to improve our lives, I guess, and decided to paint the house a new color. He ran out of paint halfway through and with him having sole custody of me and my brother—which meant feeding us, buying us clothes, doctor bills, all that stuff, and mom rarely paying child support—he couldn’t afford to buy the rest of the paint. So there it stood, half olive green, half puke yellow. I wasn’t embarrassed by the paint job, didn’t even think about it, until people started making fun of it. I was more embarrassed of having a dust bowl as a backyard. The other kids had soft green lawns to play football on. Our place was a gaping wound not just on the face of Everglade Drive, but our neighbors’ suburban dreams. 

As she panted, Dandy’s long tongue lopped from her snout. She whined, trotting back and forth in the pen. The sunflowers hunched in the heat as if they were a congregation praying for rain. The ants were already rebuilding. They formed lines carrying dirt chunks twice the size of their bodies in their steely mandibles. I crouched down to watch a gang of them drag a decapitated grasshopper from the rubble. While watching this go down, I got bit on the ankle. I picked the ant off and pinched it in my fingers until it popped. 

When I stood back up, Larry was shadow-boxing Dobie. It made me nervous. What those two didn’t know was that when my little brother was three years old, he was teasing that dog, hanging from the dog’s neck, when the dog bit him. Bad enough that my brother needed stitches on the top of his head and on the inside of his mouth. “Please don’t rile him up. Dad says Dobie’s in a bad mood because he can’t fuck,” I said. 

“Shit, I get in a bad mood when I can’t fuck, too,” Larry replied, pulling the comb from his pocket. He tossed his head back, took three quick swipes on each side and his hair came out perfectly feathered. Like a young Matt Dillon in Tiger Beat magazine. My hair could never do that. I’d tried to part it down the middle like that, but my cowlick made it impossible. Nobody ever taught me how to comb my hair in the first place. Before he put the comb back in his pocket, Larry pretended it was an airplane, flying it inches from Dobie’s face. He said something about the airplane comb being in a dogfight and I thought that was pretty clever coming from a guy like Larry. 

Dandy jumped up on the chain link of the dog run, jealous of the attention Dobie was getting. Off in the weeds, a ground squirrel whistled. Ryan said, “Larry, you must be in a bad mood all the time then. You’ve never seen a real pussy before.” 

Larry replied, “Shit, I’ve seen all kinds of pussies.” 

Then Ryan said, “Maybe one, the one you came out of. Your momma’s big fat pussy.” 

“That’s funny, because I was in your momma’s pussy last night,” Larry said. He was about to say something else, but stopped and pointed at Dobie. “What the hell is that? Guys, look! There’s a weird red thing coming out of his dick.” 

The dog sat stoic on its muscular haunches, his red coat sheening in the sun. And yes, a red thing was coming out of his penis. 

Not sure if anyone else noticed, but the air seemed to get thicker then. Almost like rubber. Maybe it was the sexual tension between the two dogs, maybe not, but something had changed. And I didn’t want to boss Larry around, but I had to say something, so I said, “Larry, please don’t touch the dog’s dick.” Then, so as not to sound bossy, I added, “I know it’s hard with how much you like dicks, though.” 

Larry flipped me the bird, grinned, and said, “You like dicks. That’s why your name is Hardon. Ha!” He bent down and cocked his head. “But really, what’s that red thing though? Is that blood? Is that a different part of it or is that the dick itself? Shit, if it is, my dick is bigger than that.” 

“You wish,” Ryan said. 

Then Larry, he ripped his shorts down to his knees, followed by his underwear. “Oh yeah? Eat this,” he said. He swung his hips around and around, his tiny pecker twirling like an old timey hat propeller. Little boys are infatuated with their dicks and I guess that never changes. There’s nothing more hilarious than having an alien appendage dangling between your legs. The three of us shrieked with laughter. Ryan dropped his shorts and ran in circles, whipping his dick side to side. Not to be outdone, I ripped my pants down and starting pissing. Pretending to be a sprinkler, I went Tic tic tic tic, ttttttttttttt, tic tic tic tic all over the ant pile. Larry went after Ryan, pissing on Ryan’s shoes. Ryan returned fire but missed. We chased each other around like that for way longer than we should have. 

My gut cramped from laughing so hard. I pulled up my pants, grabbed the shovel and went back to the hole. Eventually, Ryan followed. We got back to digging and I saw those ants again, the ones carrying the grasshopper. I thought, I could take that grasshopper from them and they couldn’t do anything about it. I felt like a villain and was thinking of other villainous things I could do to the little bastards, when I heard the sound. The worst sound I’d ever heard. A sound my young ears couldn’t process. The sound a howl almost. A raw and animalistic sound. When I turned around, I expected to see an impala calf hanging from the mouth of a cheetah, neck limp and its last breath whistling from a severed windpipe. Terrified, I forced myself to look. That’s when I saw Larry. A slab of fat or meat or something that used to be inside his face, was now on the outside, hanging from his cheek. Looked like his face was sausaging out of itself. Strangely, there was no blood. Dobie was under the deck, cowering the way he did when he got caught digging in the garbage. I knew then that he’d bit Larry. 

Larry stood in the white heat, screaming and shivering, eyes like the blind staring straight ahead. Then came the blood, all at once, cascading from the gash in poor Larry’s face. It ran thick and syrupy down his neck, the front of his shirt, onto the ground where it stained the dirt red. He raised his hand to the wound, nearly touching it, but stopping short for fear of what he’d find. Ryan was petrified. So was I. But it was my yard, I guess, since Dad wasn’t around. I unclipped the chain, rushed Dobie up the deck stairs and pushed him inside. From up there, I saw a group of women converging on the yard. Larry’s howl had hit on some primordial motherly instinct along Everglade Drive, a distress call to stay-at-home moms. One of the women held a baby in her arms. She bounced up and down to calm the child or perhaps herself. Larry was small-stepping in tight circles. When he saw the women he again began to shriek. 

“Larry, calm down, honey,” a woman with glasses said. “Let me see your face. Calm down, honey. It will be okay.” Hysterical, Larry froze, right on the anthill. The lady put her palms flat on each side of Larry’s temples. She tilted his head back for a better look. Larry’s face was falling off in that sun. His tears and snot and blood congealed at his chin, dripping to the ant hill below. The must have been tired of our shit, because they crawled up Larry’s legs, tearing at the pre-pubescent flesh all the way up, into his shorts. The lady with glasses tried picking them off with her long nails. “Stay still, baby,” she said. And they crawled all over her too. She did a little dance to shake them off. She grabbed Larry by the shoulders and dashed him away. “I’ll make sure that dog gets put down, before it kills someone. You can blame your father for that,” she said as she walked off with Larry. 

A third lady said, “Where is your father?” 

The lady with the baby said, “He’s never home. That’s why these delinquents run wild all over the place. I looked out my window earlier and saw them chasing each other with their pants down. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. That one there”—she pointed to me—“he’s the one who lives here. He has a brother, too. Look at this place. The paint has been like that for five years.” 

Every ounce of blood in my body freight-trained towards my head. I wanted to stick up for my dad, but no words came, just sobs. 

“Ryan, your mom is going to hear about this,” the baby lady said. “Actually, you better come with me.” 

“Where the hell is your mother?” the other one asked. They were all the same to me now. All three morphed into one blurry human silhouette. 

“Their mother left a few years ago,” a lady answered. 

“Imagine that. Daddy seems like such a great catch,” another one said sarcastically. 

Dandy hid in the dog house, her sad eyes barely visible in the darkness. They seemed to say, I wish there was something I could do. 

It was too much for me. I had no way of getting ahold of my dad. It’s not like he worked in an office where I could call and ask for him. He was out on the plains cutting a derailed train to pieces so they could haul it away. I took off running as fast as I could. I just ran. Hyperventilating and bawling. My mind ran, too. Sprinted from one side of my skull to the other. I couldn’t concentrate. The embarrassment, the awful things those women said about my dad, Larry’s blood, I guess I hoped it would all go away if I ran far enough and I really hoped that Larry was going to be all right. I felt like it was my fault. Run until you hurt. You piece of shit. I deserved to hurt and knew I’d get more of it whenever Dad got home. At that moment, I longed for him to smack the shit out of me, wake me up from this terrible nightmare. If only he were there. 

After about two hours, I couldn’t run anymore. I was far from home. My adrenaline was depleted. Exhaustion had set in. I decided to turn around and head back. When I got home, it was dark and Dad still wasn’t there. I never knew when he’d be back. 

I called Ryan not long after. He answered, said he was grounded and wasn’t allowed to talk to me, that’s why he was whispering. The woman who took him home told his mom that we were chasing each other around with our pants down, she saw us out the window. He said Larry had to get a bunch of stitches. That he saw Larry touch the dog’s erection like I told him not to do and it was so fast, he said, the way Dobie just snapped. No growl or bark, no warning at all. And he said that Larry’s mom knew he was going to be okay and if he really was trying to touch the dog like that, he got what he deserved. I was relieved that he was okay. I figured he’d never stop by again and I was fine with that. He could go back to ignoring me at school. 

I found batteries for the flashlight and went back to our hole. I shined the light on the ground. The earth was moving, at least a small part of it: the ants rebuilding what I ruined. My spirit was broken; the desire to destroy was gone. They had never done anything to me, anyway. If we spoke the same language, I would have apologized to them, I really would have. I said, “Sorry,” just in case they understood. And I wondered, was it possible to be a god and also feel bad about the things you’ve done? In any case, I stepped carefully so as not to crush even one. I propped the light next to the hole. The blood stains were still there. The shovels were lying where we dropped them. I began to dig. The soil seemed so much softer at night. I pulled out a shovel full, then another. I dug furiously. I stopped to catch my breath. I shone the flashlight into the hole, then the ant hill. The ants were crawling slowly now. Still, they crawled, into the cool Wyoming night. 

JASON HARDUNG

Jason Hardung began writing after a fifteen-year heroin addiction. Since then, his work has appeared in many journals, including Hobart, Grist, Juked, Cimarron Review, 3AM, Evergreen Review, The Common, and Word Riot. He has published two books of poetry with Epic Rites Press and Lummox Press. In 2013, he was named Poet Laureate of Fort Collins, Colorado. He also teaches the therapeutic value of writing in juvenile detention facilities, jails, and rehabilitation centers in Colorado and southern Wyoming.