Fixing a Hole

Fixing a Hole by Thom Dunn

For Michael Victor Altieri.

Current Revisions by Thom Dunn, November 7, 2010 With special thanks to Andy Michaels

Thom Dunn 10 Westerly Street #1, Jamaica Plain, MA 02130 203-645-2073

A lone weeping willow stands on a small hill, under which NUMBER 6 has been digging a hole for quite some time now.

NUMBER 6 is also barefoot. The hill itself is not unlike a landfill--an ugly, heaping lump of discarded soil, sand, dirt, and grass, both green and dead. It is after midnight, as indicated by the melancholy crescent moon that peeks out into the sky. The air pressure is calm, as if a storm has just passed, or as if a greater storm is nigh. NUMBER 7 sits on the ground watching NUMBER 6 dig, seeming slightly aloof and drinking from a bottle that probably contains whiskey.

NUMBER 7 might offer NUMBER 6 a drink sometimes, and NUMBER 6 might take it.

NUMBER 6 struggles with his shovel.

He’s hit something hard and difficult to remove, but damn it, he’s going to try.

You alright, Six?

NUMBER 7 NUMBER 6 (struggling) Yeah. Yeah, I got it.

NUMBER 7 What, is it a rock, or...?

Not a rock.

NUMBER 6 NUMBER 6 finally busts the shovel through the hard sediment and scoops out and aside. Back to work.

NUMBER 6 It’s not a rock. It’s like, uh, what do you call it. Indian clay. It’s like Indian clay. I think.

Indian clay?

NUMBER 7 NUMBER 6 Native American clay, I don’t know.

NUMBER 7 I don’t think soil has a central nervous system.

What?

NUMBER 6

2.

NUMBER 7 It’s dirt. It’s not PC. The earth won’t get offended.

NUMBER 6 See, and that’s why we have this global warming problem.

Oh God...

NUMBER 7

NUMBER 6 Leave him out of this. Point is: Indian clay, Native American clay, whatever. It’s not really red, you know? It’s more like a...like a Burnt Sienna.

NUMBER 7 You spent too much time in that crayon box as a kid.

NUMBER 6 No, you spent too much time in that crayon box as a kid. I never saw color at all until-til we were older. Before that, I spent all my time with numbers. You saw color. I saw sines and waves and shit. Frequencies. Of light, refracting.

Nothing poetic or anything. Just a bunch of fucking numbers. (goes back to shoveling) Turns out that’s all we are anyway.

NUMBER 7 Ya know, the Native Indians orNUMBER 6 See now, that’s just completely wrong.

How so?

NUMBER 7 NUMBER 6 It’s the wrong culture entirely. “Native Indians” pretty specifically refers to Dotheads, not to Feathers. (beat) The correct teriminology is ‘Injuns.’

NUMBER 7 (somewhat jarred by these last few statements) Well then the Injuns or whoever, they used to believe that there was actually a giant personNUMBER 6 A giant person, or just a plain old giant? Like an extraordinarily large human being, or--

3.

NUMBER 7 I don’t know! Just let me finish, okay? The native tribe that lived here, they used to believe that there was actually an evil giant buried underneath this hill. That’s how it got its shape. Supposedly he was terrorizing the people, so then their Shaman, or WizardNUMBER 6 Plus 12 D6 dexterity points.

NUMBER 7 -he cast a spell that made the evil giant sleep, and all the undergrowth and brush just kind of consumed him over time.

NUMBER 6 What did he do? The giant. What made him evil?

Oh. I don’t know.

NUMBER 7 NUMBER 6 Exactly. You really think they believed that shit? The Native Americans weren’t idiots. Spiritual, sure, but they knew a lot more about the world then than we do now. Even if they gave it all stupid fucking reasons. It’s a folktale. Nothing more, nothing less. We’ve still got those today. Cute little cultural anecdotes that everybody treasures, all for the thrill of nostalgia. Imagine what the anthropologists six hundred years from now might say about us. “The indigenous cultures of the 21st century believed an egg-laying rabbit would bring them gifts every spring to celebrate the supposed resurrection of some psychotic Rabbi from 2,000 years earlier.” We just assume that these(beat) Huh. What?

NUMBER 7 NUMBER 6 I guess it is kinda red. When the light hits. But like a Brick Red. NUMBER 7 Are we talking people or clay now?

NUMBER 6 The point is, just because they lived in tents doesn’t mean they were retarded.

NUMBER 7 Oh, so we should be nice to the ground, to the Native American clay, but the mentally handicapped are fair game.

4.

NUMBER 6 Right. I’m much more concerned about the world’s well-being than I am with, ya know. People.

NUMBER 7 Do you remember that summer we were camping? You were Six. I was Seven. And-who was it-Eleven-Eight, I think. Yeah, ElevenEight had all that candy hidden in his tent, andNUMBER 6 (a mocking imitation of wild hysterics) “Number Two! There’s a raccoon in my tent!”

They share a laugh over this memory.

NUMBER 6 That was the same night our fathers snuck all that booze in, right? And they tried to make a fire.

NUMBER 7 Ha! Yup. Right in the middle of the path.

NUMBER 6 Wow. I completely forgot about that until now.

NUMBER 7 To be fair, I’d want to forget that awful rash you got all overNUMBER 6 Yup. Yup. I remember that now too, thanks. It’s like those vets, from the war, after all that fucked up shit they’ve seen. Their minds can’t take it so they just block it out to help them cope.

NUMBER 7 See, but then you lose the good with the bad.

NUMBER 6 But this war? It was all bad. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder from the war of adolescence.

NUMBER 6 continues digging, more furiously than before, and completely silent.

NUMBER 7 How’s your brother been?

NUMBER 6 He’s got a girlfriend now. I haven’t met her yet, but he seems pretty happy. We still get lunch every week. When I can, anyway. I guess it’s serious.

5.

NUMBER 7 How serious can two 8-year-olds get?

He’s 17.

Huh?

NUMBER 6 NUMBER 7 NUMBER 6 He showed me their pictures from formal.

NUMBER 7 They let 8-year-olds take formal now?

(NUMBER 6 ignores this, keeps digging) That’s so weird, he’s got a girlfriend. A kid like that, he’s just, always 8-years-old. Perpetually pre-pubescent.

NUMBER 6 Yeah, well. He’s not. Time moves faster these days anywhow.

Remember that Earthquake a few years back?

NUMBER 7 Heard about it, anyway. I didn’t feel it happen.

NUMBER 6 Of course you didn’t. But it did. It happened. And some of the plates, the tectonic plates, they pushed up against each other so hard, they started overlapping. One was finally forced under the other, and they got stuck that way. It’s like a puzzle where the pieces connect, but you just lay them out on top of each other haphazardly. It changed the entire shape of the Earth. Its mass is the same, but the diameter and density have changed. Meanwhile the sun’s gravity keeps pulling on it just as hard as it always has, despite its different shape. So the torque picks up, and the world’s been spinning faster and faster every day, and it’ll keep doing that until it finds a new balance new balance, some new equilibrium. In the meantime, the days will keep getting shorter, until it settles on a new rotation.

NUMBER 7 So the days are shorter because the Earth’s spinning faster because it’s smaller?

NUMBER 6 Not technically, no. It’s still the same mass, but the diameter has changed, so the density is actually greater than it used to be.

6.

NUMBER 7 Okay, but do we also go faster? Our lives, I mean. Like, do we age more quickly? Is a a minute still a minute, or is it less than a minute now? And so then do we age the same, but then live longer, according to the new time? So if I live to the equivalent of 85 or whatever, in time as we now know it, but then it takes 92 new-Earth-time cycles, the faster ones, to get there, am I then eighty-five, or am I ninety-two?

NUMBER 6 Well whatever, it’s relative. And you’ll always be Seven.

NUMBER 7 How much does he know? Your brother. We were about the same age he is, a little younger, butNUMBER 6 I don’t really talk about it with him.

NUMBER 7 Does he know about that place up north, the instituteNUMBER 6 It wasn’t an institute. It was a...school. It was a boarding school. That’s all! He wasn’t a baby then. He was 8 years old, as you so pointed out. He remembers shit. I don’t know how much, but he knows. He knows there were problems, that we were always fighting, and then one day I was gone, and no one talked about it but Mommy went and got her tits fixed up all big and perky-like. Then things got weird when I’d come home.

But...I’m not sure he knows the details. Or, if he does, I don’t know that he fully comprehends it, you know?

NUMBER 7 I guess it’s kinda hard to wrap your head around those things. Or even your hands, I mean, those are like fucking cantaloupes those things.

NUMBER 6 Can we please not discuss my mother’s breasts at the dinner table? I’d appreciate it.

NUMBER 7 Hey, you brought it up. Besides, you gotta admit, whoever did them did a great job. I mean a great job.

NUMBER 6 In the most objective, empirical, scientific way possible: yes. Okay? Happy?

Number 6 continues furiously digging.

Number 7 peers curiously at the hole.

7.

Hey, Six?

Yeah Seven?

NUMBER 7

NUMBER 6 NUMBER 7 Why is it-why is it always six, um, six feet under?

NUMBER 6 So when the dead awake, they can’t escape. Some things are meant to stay buried.

NUMBER 7 Wait. Do you mean like...zombies?

I mean like.

Seriously?

NUMBER 6 NUMBER 7 NUMBER 6 Yep. They used to bury people in tombs above ground, but then shit used to happen. Like three days later, some random zombie crawl out of his tomb and they’d start a whole cult around him that ends dominating the progression of Western Civilization for 2,000 years. You know, shit like that. But so, see, now the average caucasian male is about five-ten, so if you’re six feet under ground, it’ll be harder for you to escape if you’re a zombie, even if you’re standing up.

NUMBER 7 Holy shit. Well what about Asian zombies? Do they get dug in shorter graves?

NUMBER 6 Asians are immune to Zombification.

No way.

NUMBER 7 NUMBER 6 Oh yeah. Everyone knows that. Except for you, apparently.

NUMBER 7 That’s good though. For the living. Means we don’t have to worry so much about Ninja Zombie attacks.

NUMBER 6 That wouldn’t matter anyway. Have you ever really watched the way a zombie moves?

8.

NUMBER 7 Yes. Well, not in real life.

NUMBER 6 Zombies are slow and cumbersome. Everybody knows that.

There’s no way they could do Kung Fu like that.

NUMBER 7 Wait. But-Zombies can just reach their arms straight up and get an extra two and a half feet of height. Two arms, sticking out the ground, grabbing at your ankles.

NUMBER 6 That’s why we leave flowers behind on the grave. So the zombies grab those, instead of ankles. Plus the aroma is actually a known zombie sedative.

Really?

NUMBER 7 NUMBER 6 No! Not really! We’re talking about fucking Zombie attacks! I just pulled that out of my ass. Although the Zombie Jesus thing does sound like it could be a valid theory. Now come on, how deep do you think thisWhere are your shoes?

Pardon?

Your shoes?

What shoes?

NUMBER 7 NUMBER 6 NUMBER 7 NUMBER 6 NUMBER 7 Like, your shoes. The ones you wear...like feet shoes. Those shoes.

NUMBER 6 I know. What shoes? I haven’t owned shoes in over a year now.

Really? Why not?

NUMBER 7 NUMBER 6 I don’t know. Just don’t like ‘em. They’re too restricting, you know? They keep us so disconnected from the pulse of...of everything! All this talk of ‘souls,’ and what we do? We construct them. We galvanize them.

9.

We create them out of old rubber car tires--which cars are already ruining everything--and these artificial soles, they keep us all apart. They cut us off from the way the world moves. I mean, did you know that the universe is expanding?

Everything is moving away from everything else. Think of all the things we’re not feeling when we’re drifting alone in the dark. If more people didn’t wear shoes, maybe someone would have noticed that earthquake before it happened, would’ve felt the tension between the plates. We cut ourselves off from Nature, from the grass, the bugsRusty nails.

NUMBER 7 NUMBER 6 The rusty nails, the earth worms tilling soil, theYou already said bugs.

NUMBER 7 NUMBER 6 I know, I’m just specifying now.

NUMBER 7 Is this why you got so proper about the Indian clay?

NUMBER 6 Think of it like this. Think of all the rhythms we’re not feeling in the earth. One of these days, years from now, Africa will collide with Europe, closing the straits of Gibraltar. The Mediterranean becomes a vast desert of salt.

The Dead Sea ceases to be! It actually, finally, beautifully dies, after centuries of suffering. I mean, the oceans expand at the rate of human thumbnail growth, and no one even notices.

NUMBER 7 So you’re saying God’s not a nailbiter.

NUMBER 6 I’m saying God’s not much of anything.

NUMBER 7 You had that so rehearsed.

NUMBER 6 Oh, fuck yeah. You think a restaurant--super markt--any place that serves food--you think they’re gonna serve a guy with no shoes on? Of course I keep my convictions all nice and neat in monologue.

10.

NUMBER 7 Yeah, well, from the looks of you, you haven’t eaten in months.

NUMBER 6 I find I get most of my nutrients from beer these days anyway. Now come on--does this look like six to you?

NUMBER 7 Um...depends. How tall are you again?

Six. Six feet.

NUMBER 6 NUMBER 7 What? No way. You’re short, you’re shorter than me. You were always short. Right?

NUMBER 6 Yeah, when I was six. I was a bit of a late bloomer, ya know.

Hence the whole thing. You don’t grasp the whole concept of ‘change’ very well, do you?

NUMBER 7 No, it’s just that I’ve always been taller so I never think that anyone’s actually short I just think that I’m tall so they appear short by comparison. Except for you and Number Nine, because you were both so much smaller when we were kids. Like a little pair of midget lovers. Not people who love midgets, you know-not that there’s a problem with thatbut lovers who are midgets.

NUMBER 6 Dwarves. Dwarf lovers. Do you think it’s deep enough or not?

NUMBER 7 You’ve probably got another like, six inches to go?

Hrm.

NUMBER 6 NUMBER 6 goes back to shoveling.

NUMBER 7 Who--what’s it for, anyway? The hole.

NUMBER 6 shoots an incredulous look at NUMBER 7. The kind that asks “You really don’t know? Really?”

NUMBER 6 My Grandpoppy died. About 4 months ago. (beat) It’s not for him. I just--I thought you should know.

11.

Oh.

NUMBER 7 (beat) I didn’t. Know, I mean.

NUMBER 6 We had to rush the services. They, uh, they didn’t--no one was home. He was--my dad found him, 3 days later. No one had heard from him, so my dad stopped by to check on him. And that’s...yeah. He had already decomposed a bit.

Shit. I’m sorry.

NUMBER 7 NUMBER 6 Yeah. Well. Everyone is.

NUMBER 7 Where have you been living then? I thought you were staying with him.

NUMBER 6 Just on paper. I’ve been...I’ve been around. Wherever.

NUMBER 7 Which one is it? Around, or wherever?

NUMBER 6 It means I’ve narrowed it down to ‘where.’

NUMBER 7 Sometimes I regret teaching you sarcasm. I think I liked you better when you still lacked social skills.

Anvil into hammer.

NUMBER 6 NUMBER 7 I’ll say. You were a different kid back then.

NUMBER 6 Would you quit it with the nostalgia crap? You gotta get out of then.

NUMBER 7 Come on, you know what I mean. You were so quiet then.

NUMBER 6 I was always snarky. At least give me that. I had all the wit, but you had all the confidence. Then we both wore off on one another.

NUMBER 7 And thank God for that, huh?

12.

NUMBER 6 Why? He’s got nothing to do with it.

NUMBER 6 turns his back to NUMBER 7 and continues shoveling.

NUMBER 7 I remember when you tried to pick Lucifer as your patron saint at church.

NUMBER 6 See, this is what I mean. All that smart-ass shit you pulled back in worship. But then I played the ultimate trump card.

NUMBER 7 Yeah but they wouldn’t actually let you do it.

NUMBER 6 Doesn’t matter! I still tried. And that was such bullshit.

Lucifer was technically an Angel. At one point, anyway. He was just the one--he was the only one who questioned authority. He was the only one to say, hey, something’s not right here, God. Something’s not fair. And I admire that.

NUMBER 7 Hey, I’m not the one that needs convincing. But one thing you didn’t learn? Civil Disobedience. Not from me, anyway.

NUMBER 6 Is that what you call it?

NUMBER 7 Well, yeah. The TranscendentalistsNUMBER 6 Were too afraid to say that maybe, just maybe, ol’ Lucifer was right?

NUMBER 7 You don’t really believe that.

NUMBER 6 I told you: I don’t know what I believe.

NUMBER 6 takes another drink, then finishes shoveling. He steps back, observes his work, checks for mistakes, and ultimately decides he’s finished.

NUMBER 6 Well. I think that’s that.

That’s what?

NUMBER 7

13.

NUMBER 6 That’s the end. I’ve hit the bottom, I’m all done.

Just like that?

Just like that.

NUMBER 7 NUMBER 6 Silence. NUMBER 7 and NUMBER 6 stand there, unsure of what to say or do.

NUMBER 7 You know, it’s selfish. What you’re doing. It’s really fucking selfish.

NUMBER 6 Selfish? Seriously? You’re going to play that card? Tell me when was the last time you saw me do something--anything--for me? With myself in mind. Huh? I think-I think at this point, I deserve to be selfish. Just for once. All these years I’ve been nothing but selfless and cold. But this? I fucking earned this. This is what I want now.

NUMBER 7 Fine. Fine, whatever. Be seeing you.

No. You won’t.

NUMBER 6 NUMBER 6 picks it up his shovel, gives it to NUMBER 7. NUMBER 7 looks at the shovel, uncertain. Looks back at NUMBER 6.

NUMBER 6 Here. We all gotta dig our own.

NUMBER 6 walks back to the hole while NUMBER 7 watches and drinks. NUMBER 6 turns back one more time.

NUMBER 6 Hey. Seven? Thanks. Tell the other numbers. And men, if you see them. Thanks. For just, for being a friend.

NUMBER 7 watches as NUMBER 6 climbs down the hole. Looks at the shovel, throws it on the ground, and walks away. Black out.