Gastroliths

Abstract

Gastroliths Craig Reinbold (bio) Building a fence for my in-laws. I’m there early, in Dickies and a sweatshirt and my cold-weather work gloves, shovels out, posthole digger, pick mattock, coffee. And the last thing we need is another cook in this kitchen, but my father-in-law insists, and so the neighbor sticks his hands in his landscaper shorts and watches me struggle with the remains of a fence post I knocked out the week before: a decaying 4x4 lodged in 18 inches of concrete, buried. This fence professor looks at me, at the hole I’m in, at the line of holes ahead of me. “You know, you don’t have to do that,” he offers. “Yeah?” “Just move the fence eight inches and put your new posts next to the old ones.” “Yeah?” These posts are older than me, older than my wife, no one knows how old, or who put them here. How might I explain the thrill of this excavation? Our neighbor planted a pine in the far back corner of his yard, in the remains of someone’s old compost pile. With the first shovelful of earth, he uncovered a fat little Buddha, in repose, buried, for how long? He gifted it to my youngest, his nickname since he was a colicky baby, buddha. That statue now lives on our bookshelf, a token, a totem. Put a shovel in the ground, you never know what you might find. [End Page 29] The professor hovers, watching as I dig. Building fences is this man’s work, and he may be tired of it, tired, and looking for a shortcut. But I’m off today. This labor is my pleasure. A Mary Oliver pebble: Let me keep my mind on what matters, which is my work, which is mostly standing still and learning to be astonished. Here, I am in motion, but the work is the same, each movement a repetition, boot to shovel, hand to earth, fill the bucket, boot to shovel, hand to earth, fill the bucket, the repetition a meditation. I am working. Learning to be astonished. Of course, with the body occupied, the mind drifts. Drifts to the memory of an evening spent with my mother when I was young. She was sewing and watching a movie, and I lay on the couch, and we watched together. Like that, I stumbled on some of my favorites: The Big Chill, An Officer and a Gentleman, Arsenic and Old Lace. In this memory, we’re watching Anne of Green Gables, Anne who says, “Why must people kneel down to pray? If I really wanted to pray I’ll tell you what I’d do. I’d go out into a great big field all alone or in the deep, deep woods and I’d look up into the sky—up—up—up—into that lovely blue sky that looks as if there was no end to its blueness. And then I’d just feel a prayer.” Now I’m nearly forty, and I’m on my knees, reaching down into the earth, up to my shoulder in the damp, cold soil, wondering: Is that what this is—this repetition, this meditation, this focusing of attention? Is this a kind of prayer? Eventually I’ll carry this old wood and concrete to my dad’s pickup. I’ll drive these remnants, these remains, out to where I grew up, and I’ll haul them down to the pile of basalt and limestone that lives at the back end of my parents’ land. I’ll drop them among rocks green with moss, rocks that have been there, unmoving, unmoved, my whole life. My niece and nephew have built a stick fort a little ways up the hill. If I don’t say anything, they’ll see these new additions, maybe wonder where that rubble came from. It’s good to have a little mystery in our lives. Thoughts drift. The dinosaurs moved stones, too. [End Page 30] Chunks from the Baraboo quartzite bluffs I grew up climbing ended up a thousand miles west, in Wyoming, smoothed and polished, and how? A college kid hiking...