Sweet Sour

The screen door banged as it swung open, and shivered nervous in its hinges as it closed. Em took the six stairs in three steps, bounding down to the garden-in-progress. In the dimming afternoon, they couldn't find their spade right away. They spotted a long depression in the tall grass after a moment of searching--an accidental cradle where they had cast it down in the tall grass. Picking it up, they surveyed their headway. Dislodged stones marked out the perimeter of their future garden. The crude rectangle started a couple yards from that shabby back porch, and stretched forty feet down toward the creek, stopping just before the slope became too steep to work. There on the low edge, some of the rounder stones had rolled clear down to the water. One, big as a basketball, had only been stopped by the sapling it now rested against. The young tree was bowed under the weight of the rock, the tender bark shredded, the roots straining to grip the precipitous slope of the bank. It would be a few years before the sapling was growing upward again.

Back up the hill, Em was already slick with sweat. Droplets accumulated on their brow then slid stinging into their eyes. They wiped uselessly with an equally wet forearm, leaving smudges of dirt behind. The sun had begun to sag from the sky, stirring a milky orange into the horizon behind creek's uneven fence of trees. A wren, looking for a safe place to roost for the night, cut through the blooming colors, a loom's shuttle coursing through the warp of the tree's silhouettes.

Em cursed and turned back away from the setting sun to their work. They tossed the spade aside again, where it clanged against an overturned stone still lingering inside the pockmarked garden bed. They took a couple strides over the pockmarked ground, their feet catching at the intermitted craters and clods. They fetched up the pick from where they had left it, and scanned in the dimming light for a near patch of un-turned earth. The pick was old, and Em could feel the seamy, cracking texture of the dried wood beneath their hands as they swung it down. The handle rubbed at young blisters on Em's palms; it tore at their raw skin where the blisters had already given way. Em panted, their shirt plastered to their back, their back continuously curved in strain. Mosquitoes, up from the creek, drank themselves fat at the exposed skin above Em's collar.

Em lifted their pick again, and adjusted their footing just as they began to swing down. Their toe caught in a cavity, their hip dipped, and the pick turned in its arc. The heavy joint between handle and head slammed into the side of Em's booted foot, and they fell to the ground cursing. Em breathed tightly in the pain, clutching at their foot. Their world had become a singular throbbing, but slowly their senses came trickling back. Their vision cleared and their fingers loosened. They gingerly unlaced the boot and slipped their foot out, sitting back. It was too dark to see the damage, but they probed the bruise with tender fingers. Nothing seemed broken. Em scratched their neck and leaned back. Their fatigue gently pulled them into recline on their elbows. The creek gurgled below, and the twilight birdsong was beginning to swell. Em took of their other boot. They closed their eyes, and they breathed it in.