Dirt

This is an excerpt from a novella I have been working on for a few years.

Dirt. Dirt is something that can mean a variety of things to different people. When you are little, dirt doesn’t bother you much. You will sit right down in the dirt and play with toy trucks or plastic green army men without giving it a second thought. When you are older and more cultured, you don’t like it when your lifelong friend and four legged confidant greets you and gets dirt on your khaki pants right before you are to leave to pick up your girlfriend. Later in life the dirt is like a tonic, soothing the nerves that have been fried by the rat race once you stick your hands in it to tend to your veggies. At the end, dirt covers us and protects the living from the nasty business of our earthly bodies returning to the dust. Dirt is pretty amazing stuff.

As Matt dug with the rusty old shovel, he remembered how his mother would hang the rug from the front porch up on the clothesline and beat it with a stick to get the dirt out of it. He thought about all the times that she had told him to “wipe your feet” before he stepped into the parlor in the home he had grown up in. “If I had a dollar for every time she had said that….” He thought. She had not liked store bought brooms at all. She preferred straw brooms made by a neighbor with sapling chestnut oak as the “stick”. He wondered if Mr. Eldridge was better, he had been sick a while back. He surely made a quality broom. He would have to stop in a see him soon. Ma swept the house and porch three or four times a day. She thought dirt was best if it remained outside.

The late day sun was warm on his neck as it filtered down through the trees. The mosquitoes would be out soon. Matt worked at a rock about the size of a football and finally got it free. He was standing in a good sized hole now. He reached down and with a grunt lifted the rock out of the red clay and onto the loamy leaf covered ground. Picking up the shovel he went back to his task and whistled a little tune between grunts. No sense dreading a little work. His papa had said “the worst part of any work is the dreading of it”. Work was all papa had known. He could outwork two city men his mother had said many times.

Matt lived alone now in the house. He had lost his parents a few years back. They had both gone within 2 weeks of each other. He always thought that his dad had just given up on livin’ once ma had died. Matt was a machinist and operated a small shop on the farm. He did work for the locals and was highly regarded for his custom work on guns. He could make anything out of metal and after the government had restricted ordinary folks from owning guns, he had set about to make them himself and sell them to friends and family. He made AKM pattern rifles and custom bolt guns mostly. Along with suppressors and the guns he also made drop in sear kits for AR pattern rifles and the assorted trigger parts to make them happily automatic like God intended. He made a living without price gouging and he really did it more as a community service. Matt was a country boy and this county and the folks in it were family as far as he was concerned. He just hated that politicians in some self righteous fit of dumb had blew a natural right into obscurity for the common man. He did what he could to fix that problem.

He had found the rifling machine in a closed up factory in New Hampshire about 10 years ago. Like most things made before the great war, it was built to last. The rest of his machine tools were old as well but dated back only to the 40s-50s. They were solid, dependable and just as true today as when they were made. He had a small fortune in his shop, but he had never married and the farm had always done well enough to put away money every year. The shop had really paid for itself after all these years, besides, can you really put a price on doing what you love?

Sweat covered his face and he was taking a little break for some water when the thought occurred to him that he would need to talk with Sheriff Boyle this week so he knew about everything. Can’t have the sheriff getting blindsided with questions he didn’t have the answers to. Boyle was a good man. He wasn’t a government stooge like the mayor had been. Matt couldn’t hold to stooges and finks.

Matt had been visited by a federal agent this morning. The man had said that he was just asking the locals a few questions about the possibility of some illegal weapons being manufactured. Matt had told the agent that he would keep his eyes peeled and would give him a call at the number on the card if he heard anything. He wondered how any word had reached FedGov about the guns, or even if it had. It could have just been a fishing expedition. A few others had told him they had been visited too when he ate lunch at Rose’s today. After all, this county wasn’t exactly pro-regime. Lots of people up here had simply not complied. The area was known as a place full of insurgents and sympathizers and though there were lots of rumors of threats, FedGov mostly stayed out. Didn’t matter, the shop was clean and he only worked on his gun stuff late at night. Everything was kept safely away from the shop when he wasn’t actually making stuff that goes bang.

“Just about right” Matt said aloud as he admired the opening in the earth that his own sweat had created. He sat on the edge of it and looked up at the moon that was just coming up pale and all milky white. The birds were still singing and the barking squirrels were chasing each other around the chestnut oaks, “just about a perfect afternoon” Matt said to the sky as he felt the cool dirt under his hands. Rising up and stretching his back, he decided to try to finish up so he could get home and grill the big ribeye steak he had put in some whisky marinade that morning. Nothing hits the spot after a busy day like a juicy ribeye and iced tea.

Matt stuck the shovel in the bag of lime and scattered some in the hole. Satisfied, he walked over to the tailgate of his truck and slid special agent Whitecliff out onto the ground, and then dragged him over to the hole he had dug and without much reverence, simply rolled him off into the earth. The remaining lime was scattered on top of the man and then in about 10 minutes the dirt was doing its thing, hiding what needs to be hidden. Dirt sure is amazing stuff.

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