Dig: Part 2

They juggle, not things but words. They dare to leap through the ring of fire that is TV news. They are contortionists of ideas.

The preacher says, “The pool at the palace is filled with unconditional love. Your brothers and sisters will join you here and you can bathe together in His light.”

She gets her magnifying glass. Through it she can see Gerald working so hard to walk, he stumbles. He moves his head for momentum.

“A bell?”
“It’s like, an heirloom or something. I think it was a souvenir someone got down south. It’s a slave bell.”

The Freak finds herself back in the tunnel she was in more than two weeks ago. Gray, rivets, lit only where she stands, and the sound of someone writing.

Safety is a lie. I’m floating in space with no tether.

“No,” she says. “Maybe. I don’t know. They’re not all that bad. And this makes us look compliant.”

The only word on my lips is shoplifting but it seems so petty.

He’s intrigued by the kid.

Marla’s grasp on the afterlife and Hinduism is tenuous. “The Consciousness is all-inclusive,” I explain.

Marla is resolute in this idea.

From behind the door, there’s the sound of weeping. Loretta thinks the critics will give them a rave review. Never has an act been so convincing.

“That research paper. My thesis statement was all over the place. All my sources were lame. I stopped caring.”

This is when my brain runway does its best work. The plane is in the queue, not taxiing yet.

She’s pretty sure she’s in Ireland or Scotland or New Zealand or one of those places where the grass stays vibrant green all year and the sheep speak English.

She finally arrives at the place she needs to be—a small charity consignment shop in the city.

He’s got two paint-soaked towels in his hands and is maneuvering them into a black trash bag.

Only when I take a few more deep breaths do I see that my knees are yellow from the paint and my hands are covered and I realize there is no way to hide the whole stupid debacle from Marla when she comes in.

They replay it every night and the husband character is working on his improvisation.

There’s always a surreal moment before dialing 911. A moment when you think you should do something else. A moment when you think it’s all a joke or a mistake or maybe you’re just not seeing things right.

She puts it around her mother’s shoulders and grabs the new afghan Loretta gave her for Christmas and puts it overtop.

She walks in front of the ambulance and they seem to be waiting for her, which is not an ambulance’s job, waiting. The driver is mesmerized, though, as if Loretta were already wearing her red-sequined gown.

There’s a rack of prom dresses in the back. Or dressy dresses. Formal things with tulle and satin, a pair of matching bridesmaid dresses.

“Thank you,” Loretta says, and curtsies once in each direction, bowing her head so she doesn’t get hit in the face with thrown roses.

She seems to be on the floor. There’s gaudy jewelry all around her.

Marla and Gottfried were supposed to be home by now. It’s past dinnertime. Marla is a stickler for dinnertime.

If Jake knew how to use the word prelude in a sentence, he’d describe this invitation as a prelude to a gathering.

When Marla is called to be seen, Gottfried helps her walk to the triage area and smiles at the teacher man and his sons.

They’d call me demented and lock me up in a home.

My superpower would be the Existentialism—a ray I could shoot out of my hand that renders people powerless to face anything but their own personal pointlessness in an absurd world.

My superpower would be the Existentialism—a ray I could shoot out of my hand that renders people powerless to face anything but their own personal pointlessness in an absurd world.

His diaphragm is crushed with the weight of knowing that if his father is dead, then he will be the only one left.

She moves her arm—ratchets it back and swings.

I can hear the pellet hopper release another load into the stove.

He only needs to read the first two letters of the last name and he catches the frontrunner in his memory and wins his own race. And then the robins are there, frolicking in the middle of the road in 1965, and he’s sadder than he’s ever been.

Running from his five kids who were too loud and unruly for him to handle because he was making money and needed to do that in a quiet place.

So close Jake can’t avoid him, and he brings the coffeepot down on whatever he can reach and the glass breaks over Bill’s back. More blood. More groans and garbled words.

No one noticed because she was flickering between Borneo and Idaho, and she no longer has a device on which to receive email, so her parents’ ecard is lost in the ether somewhere if they sent one.

The Freak has transcended Stuff.
The Freak only has room for Experiences.

She thinks Jesus probably lived and probably hung out with lepers and prostitutes and cared for the poor.