Читать книгу The Way the Family Got Away - Michael Kimball - Страница 11

They dug the baby-sized hole deep enough for any of the big-people to go down into it. One man pounded stab-holes with the bone-stick he pulled out of his shoulder and back and swung down out of his arm and into the ground and dirt-world. One more man did it with a big-spoon he dug out of the hole and bone of his leg and foot. They dug all the way down into the hole until we couldn’t see them anymore but for their hands and arms and dirt and spoons and bones and sticks. But they didn’t make the hole go all the way through. Neither one of them dug the baby-sized hole deep enough or far enough away or down enough under for my little brother.

But they could both go all the way down inside the hole and still be alive when they climbed back up and crawled back out of it. They were both too big to die and lay down inside the hole. But they pounded the nails down into the top side of the toy box so my little brother couldn’t get out of it and they tied him up inside it with ropes too. They swung my little brother up over the hole with the ropes and they knocked the toy box back and forth against the side-walls all the way down to the bottom where the hole stopped.

But they didn’t cover my little brother up with anything so he could stay warm and go away to sleep. They left the hole open so we could throw dirt on top of him but none of us were going to do it. They left the ropes with him for him to crawl with back out but we had to go and pull him back out of the ground and dirt-world with our hands and arms and backs and ropes. The toy box hit and knocked back and forth against the side-walls and the dirt and rocks all fell down under my little brother and started filling his baby-sized hole back up. We got the toy box out and knocked on its sides and listened for noises but my little brother was quiet inside. We unpounded the nails from the top side of the toy box and pulled it open and looked inside but my little brother was still inside there and he was still dead.

The pile of dirt and rocks by the side of the hole wasn’t high enough and far enough away or up for him to climb on up into the sky and cloud. But we pushed the dirt and rocks back down into the hole and filled it back up with our hands and bones and shoes and hot and string and down and sun and burn and hills and ways and years and names and big and in and dolls and blood and dead and we kept my little brother up above the ground and dirt-world and with us.