step. One foot, then the other. Then the first foot again. Concentrating. Feet planted wide, and each step a stamp, as if there were a bug it wanted to shmush. Its hips loop around, hula hoop–style. Still, it goes on, determined; it doesn’t seem to mind even the pant legs, though when they get caught underfoot, the waistband pulls and the girl has to stop to roll the things up—a bit of a project, now that they are caked with mud. Still, she rolls, only to have them fall back down; they drag like the ankle cuffs of a chain gang. More steps. Chhung says something. The woman nods reassuringly; the girl answers reassuringly. The boy swats. The girl walks the baby away from the pit, swiveling her body as if in imitation of it. Planting her feet so wide, she looks to be wearing a diaper, too. She holds her head down.
And with that, peace returns. Chhung and the boy work; the woman slips away. Hattie resumes painting—wetting her brush, contemplating her composition. What now? A moment of puzzlement, and then a How about this? It’s no substitute for Joe and Lee, but it’s something. Her hand begins to move; Annie launches a fierce and protracted attack on poor Reveille’s tail as Cato takes a nap. He lies on his side with his legs stuck out straight—his arthritis. She’ll get him a warm compress in a minute.
B y day three, the hole—a trench, really—is a lot bigger. A car and a half long, maybe, and deep enough to bury a vehicle up to its windows. The dirt piles along its edge are so high that Chhung and the boy can’t throw the dirt clear of them anymore; they’re piling it onto a piece of cardboard instead, and sliding that up an incline. It’s an excruciating procedure to watch—like farm life before not only the invention of the wheel, thinks Hattie, but the deployment of the ox.
She finishes her current composition with disappointment. Three flat boards with thorns sticking out , her father would have said—a graceless thing. Ah, well. She feeds the dogs, bags up some old Nature magazines for recycling, then ventures downhill with a wheelbarrow. The wheelbarrow’s rusted out in one corner, an ancient thing left behind by Joe’s uncle when he moved north some years ago—back when Joe was wondering if it was enough to have moved, first out of the city, and then out of the suburbs; back when he was wondering if they shouldn’t move north like his uncle, too. Which Hattie did, of course, in the end: Here she is. But it was one of the differences between them that Joe was always looking to retreat from the world, whereas Hattie was looking for something else. To regroup , Lee said once. To reconcile your contraries and, one day, to fructify .
Fructify?
Well, whatever, as the students used to say. And who knows why Hattie brought the barrow with her when she moved. A little retentive, are we? Lee would have laughed—Lee who held on to nothing. You know, I have no last will and testament , she said, bald and weak, toward the end. But I bequeath to you my comments; may you remember them always . She opened her stick arms like a pontiff blessing a crowd; her I.V. line hung down.
Lee.
Anyway, for what it’s worth, Hattie’s always liked wheelbarrows. Their unassuming usefulness, and the feel of them, too. She’s always liked the spread of their handles spreading her arms—opening her heart, Adelaide, the new yoga teacher, would probably say. As if in stretching one’s pectorals one stretched one’s spirit, too. This wheelbarrow squeaks and rattles the whole way down Hattie’s driveway, though. Something’s loose; the tire’s flat; the handgrips have split. It’s work to push the thing even downhill. She wouldn’t give it to anyone else. So why give it to the Chhungs, then? Is it not insulting? She does not feel spiritually stretched by the idea, quite the contrary. She feels spiritually contracted, and by the time she reaches their drive, is half thinking to head back home.
The Chhung men,
And with that, peace returns. Chhung and the boy work; the woman slips away. Hattie resumes painting—wetting her brush, contemplating her composition. What now? A moment of puzzlement, and then a How about this? It’s no substitute for Joe and Lee, but it’s something. Her hand begins to move; Annie launches a fierce and protracted attack on poor Reveille’s tail as Cato takes a nap. He lies on his side with his legs stuck out straight—his arthritis. She’ll get him a warm compress in a minute.
B y day three, the hole—a trench, really—is a lot bigger. A car and a half long, maybe, and deep enough to bury a vehicle up to its windows. The dirt piles along its edge are so high that Chhung and the boy can’t throw the dirt clear of them anymore; they’re piling it onto a piece of cardboard instead, and sliding that up an incline. It’s an excruciating procedure to watch—like farm life before not only the invention of the wheel, thinks Hattie, but the deployment of the ox.
She finishes her current composition with disappointment. Three flat boards with thorns sticking out , her father would have said—a graceless thing. Ah, well. She feeds the dogs, bags up some old Nature magazines for recycling, then ventures downhill with a wheelbarrow. The wheelbarrow’s rusted out in one corner, an ancient thing left behind by Joe’s uncle when he moved north some years ago—back when Joe was wondering if it was enough to have moved, first out of the city, and then out of the suburbs; back when he was wondering if they shouldn’t move north like his uncle, too. Which Hattie did, of course, in the end: Here she is. But it was one of the differences between them that Joe was always looking to retreat from the world, whereas Hattie was looking for something else. To regroup , Lee said once. To reconcile your contraries and, one day, to fructify .
Fructify?
Well, whatever, as the students used to say. And who knows why Hattie brought the barrow with her when she moved. A little retentive, are we? Lee would have laughed—Lee who held on to nothing. You know, I have no last will and testament , she said, bald and weak, toward the end. But I bequeath to you my comments; may you remember them always . She opened her stick arms like a pontiff blessing a crowd; her I.V. line hung down.
Lee.
Anyway, for what it’s worth, Hattie’s always liked wheelbarrows. Their unassuming usefulness, and the feel of them, too. She’s always liked the spread of their handles spreading her arms—opening her heart, Adelaide, the new yoga teacher, would probably say. As if in stretching one’s pectorals one stretched one’s spirit, too. This wheelbarrow squeaks and rattles the whole way down Hattie’s driveway, though. Something’s loose; the tire’s flat; the handgrips have split. It’s work to push the thing even downhill. She wouldn’t give it to anyone else. So why give it to the Chhungs, then? Is it not insulting? She does not feel spiritually stretched by the idea, quite the contrary. She feels spiritually contracted, and by the time she reaches their drive, is half thinking to head back home.
The Chhung men,
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