The End of FUN (42 page)

He dug like this for a while, scooping the earth out in chunks and setting it in piles outside the circumference—then the scoop hit something and the whole tractor shuddered. He whanged the shovel against it again. I ran up to tell him to stop, he was going to break whatever it was, but then with another whang he broke it, or more like fractured it, and as he tore it out of the ground there came a series of pops, like cords snapping.

“Roots, bro!”

From this point on, the digging was a lot slower, because in order to go any deeper he had to break through the roots, raising and then bringing the scoop down like a bludgeon, then ripping them out of the ground. About halfway through, it occurred to me that the odds of my grandpa burying anything
under
the roots were pretty slim, and yet I wasn't going to stop Oso. He was having fun up there. I followed the machine around the hole, sifting through the piles of discarded earth and roots. Another fork. A spoon.

Oso peered down from his high perch. “Just a couple more scoops, bro! Why don't you get up here and finish it off?”

“I don't know, man. I've really had the reverse–Midas touch lately.”

“No worries. I'll show you! It's easy!”

He sat me down in the cockpit and explained the controls.

“So this lever here manipulates the boom, see? In and out, in and out. It's hella sensitive, so you just gotta barely touch it. In and out, see? That's
boom
.” He grabbed another knob. “This one here? This controls the back and forth movement of the arm. Got it? That's
swing
. And this one right here? It controls the bucket itself….This direction and it moves OUT, and
this
direction and it moves IN. That's
curl
. Got it?”

“Not really.”

“You'll figure it out. You just swing the arm, stick out the boom, uncurl the bucket—
boom, swing, curl
. Piece of cake.” He climbed down from the backhoe and shouted up at me, “BOOM, SWING, CURL!
Dig that last bit out of there, Aaron!
”

Lightning flashed all around. I ran my hands over the controls in preparation. In and out. Back and forth. Up and down. Piece of cake. Boom, swing, curl. Following Oso's instructions, I scooped—or more like scraped—a bit of earth, not much more than a couple shovelfuls, and dropped it in the pile. OK. Not so bad.

And maybe I got a little cocky, and maybe I went a little too fast. It was like that fighting game I'd played with Katie,
BattleBorn II
—high kick, low kick, uppercut, jab. The other problem was I was glitching again—or I mean FUN
®
was—and GoldenGoose
™
(YAY!) had started up, and the stupid thing was hopping up and down on my head, squawking at me that it was getting ready to lay another bonus egg.

And then there was a gigantic flash and a
BOOM!
—the lightning was
real
close now—and I hit the lever to swivel the bucket. Only it wasn't that lever. It was the lever to rotate the cab—and it
was
hella sensitive, just as Oso had warned. I hit it too hard and it swung me around and the shovel whanged against one side of the hole, and the whole cab shook. In a panic I swung it back around the other way, and it whanged against the other side.

Lightning flashed.

Oso was shouting something at me. I could see his silhouette all lit up by electricity. He was making a yanking gesture, or that's what it looked like, so I yanked the lever harder, and the earth shook below me, only it wasn't the earth shaking, it was the backhoe sliding leftward and tipping and there was a loud
snap
as a tree branch punched off the side mirror—and we stopped.

The spatter of earth and falling rocks amplified in the hollow.

“Whoa! Hold on, bro! Your left outrigger's hanging over the edge!
Don't
—MOVE!”

I didn't. Not a muscle. Not even to speak.

Oso scrambled up into the cab and took hold of the controls. For a moment, everything was held in balance. The wheels spun, kicking dust up into the taillights. It could go either way: down into the hole or back onto dry land. At the last moment of tipping, the backhoe began to move. Away from the hole. The arm contracted, folding in on the machine like the neck of a great endangered heron.

Oso reset the outriggers and finished up the hole, that last little bit, drawing earth from the earth as delicately as a Zen monk with chopsticks working on a rice bowl.

Afterwards, we stood together at the edge of the hole. I could only catch quick glimpses in the illumination of the lightning strikes, but I could
feel
it, circling the tree like a defensive moat. I peered into the darkness below. I thought about what Katie told me, way back when I first started looking for the treasure: the hole inside us that can't be filled.

“It looks…deep.”

“Eight
feet
deep, bro. Can't wait to climb in there and check it out—right? Tell you what, I'm gonna go dock this boat, then how about we start counting down to sunrise?”

I watched him drive off with the lightning hitting all around, illuminating in brilliant white the dark retreating silhouette of machinery. It was pretty spectacular.

Then something happened. I was getting ready to head back to the house when the golden goose laid another egg on my head and then PrimalTravel
™
(YAY!) booted up: stupid monkey hopping around telling me about an amazing deal on rental cars in Cleveland. I could feel another TSD coming on, and I went to swipe the monkey out of the way, but in the process my foot snagged on some hidden object, like a root or something, and I tripped and stumbled forward and put my other foot out to brace myself against falling…but where I put my foot there was only air.

And in that strange deceleration of time between the moment of falling and the moment of landing, I reflected at some length over my situation. It was like that time I jumped off the roof of the garage:
Holy shit, I am falling. Am I? Yes, it appears that I am. I appear to be falling into the
—and then I hit. Sparks shot up from my ankle and I tumbled back, and the ground rose up and smacked the back of my head and the world was illuminated for a moment in a brilliant white light—and then everything went black again.

Homie
™
hovered in front of my face, illuminating the darkness but not actually illuminating, because the illumination was just an effect of the FUN
®
. And the darkness was dark. But the clouds had passed. I could see stars twinkling above the branches of the Russian olive.

I felt along my jeans to my ankle. It was pretty tender, all right. A bad sprain or something.

“Where's Oso? Call Oso.”

Homie
™
flickered. A wave of static glitched across its face.

I scooted through the darkness until I felt the edge of the hole, a tall dirt wall. Standing on my good foot, I raised my arm, feeling for the top. I couldn't feel it. The wall just kept on going up. Oso had really outdone himself with the digging.

“Go away.”

I ran my hands along the wall, feeling for a root or a low spot or some kind of foothold. Dirt tumbled down into the darkness.

Homie
™
popped back up again.

“Good.”

“Go away!”

I swung my fist at it, but there was nothing real there to make contact with. The momentum threw me forward, and I tried to catch myself with my bad ankle, but that was a mistake because it just flopped out from under me with this red searing pain and then I was on the ground again.

The wind picked up and blew a spattering of dirt into the hole. I lay there, curled in a ball, listening to the sound of being (very) slowly buried alive.

Homie
™
popped up again.

I didn't say anything. How could I? I was dead. I'd tripped and died right there in the hole.

Homie
™
flickered.

Homie
™
turned in a circle.

I didn't say anything.

Homie
™
blinked.

Homie
™
blinked again.

Homie
™
blinked.

It moved closer to my face.

It blinked.

I didn't say anything.

said Homie
™
.

I was silent. Homie
™
blinked.